The emperor urged the Pragmatic Sanction strongly upon the congress, as the basis upon which he would enter into friendly relations with all the powers.  Fleury opposed it, and with such influence over the other plenipotentiaries as to secure its rejection.  The emperor was much irritated, and intimated war.  France and England retorted defiance.  Spain was becoming alienated from the emperor, who had abandoned her cause, and was again entering into alliance with France.  The emperor had promised his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, to Carlos, son of the Queen of Spain, and a second daughter to the next son, Philip.  These were as brilliant matches as an ambitious mother could desire.  But while the emperor was making secret and solemn promises to the Queen of Spain, that these marriages should be consummated, which would secure to the son of the queen the Austrian, as well as the Spanish crown, he was declaring to the courts of Europe that he had no such plans in contemplation.

The Spanish queen, at length, annoyed, and goaded on by France and England, sent an ambassador to Vienna, and demanded of the emperor a written promise that Maria Theresa was to be the bride of Carlos.  The emperor was now brought to the end of his intrigues.  He had been careful heretofore to give only verbal promises, through his ministers.  After his reiterated public denials that any such alliance was anticipated, he did not dare commit himself by giving the required document.  An apologetic, equivocal answer was returned which so roused the ire of the queen, that, breaking off from Austria, she at once entered into a treaty of cordial union with England and France.

It will readily be seen that all these wars and intrigues had but little reference to the welfare of the masses of the people.  They were hardly more thought of than the cattle and the poultry.  The only purpose they served was, by unintermitted toil, to raise the wealth which supported the castle and the palace, and to march to the field to fight battles, in which they had no earthly interest.  The written history of Europe is only the history of kings and nobles—­their ambitions, intrigues and war.  The unwritten history of the dumb, toiling millions, defrauded of their rights, doomed to poverty and ignorance, is only recorded in the book of God’s remembrance.  When that page shall be read, every ear that hears it will tingle.

The frail connection between Austria and Spain was now terminated.  England, France and Spain entered into an alliance to make vigorous war against Charles VI. if he manifested any hostility to any of the articles of the treaty into which they had entered.  The Queen of Spain, in her spite, forbade the subjects of the emperor from trading at all with Spain, and granted to her new allies the exclusive right to the Spanish trade.  She went so far in her reconciliation with England as to assure the king that he was quite welcome to retain the rock of Gibraltar which he held with so tenacious a grasp.