The three armies were immediately put in motion, and each took possession of that portion of the Polish territory which was assigned to its sovereign.  In a few days the deed was done.  By this act Austria received an accession of twenty-seven thousand square miles of the richest of the Polish territory, containing a population of two million five hundred thousand souls.  Russia received a more inhospitable region, embracing forty-two thousand square miles, and a population of one million five hundred thousand.  The share of Frederic amounted to thirteen thousand three hundred and seventy-five square miles, and eight hundred and sixty thousand souls.

Notwithstanding this cruel dismemberment, there was still a feeble Poland left, upon which the three powers were continually gnawing, each watching the others, and snarling at them lest they should get more than their share.  After twenty years of jealous watchings the three powers decided to finish their infamous work, and Poland was blotted from the map of Europe.  In the two divisions Austria received forty-five thousand square miles and five million of inhabitants.  Maria Theresa was now upon the highest pinnacle of her glory and her power.  She had a highly disciplined army of two hundred thousand men; her treasury was replenished, and her wide-spread realms were in the enjoyment of peace.  Life had been to her, thus far, but a stormy sea, and weary of toil and care, she now hoped to close her days in tranquillity.

The queen was a stern and stately mother.  While pressed by all these cares of state, sufficient to have crushed any ordinary mind, she had given birth to sixteen children.  But as each child was born it was placed in the hands of careful nurses, and received but little of parental caressings.  It was seldom that she saw her children more than once a week.  Absorbed by high political interests, she contented herself with receiving a daily report from the nursery.  Every morning her physician, Van Swieter, visited the young imperial family, and then presented a formal statement of their condition to the strong-minded mother.  Yet the empress was very desirous of having it understood that she was the most faithful of parents.  Whenever any foreign ambassador arrived at Vienna, the empress would contrive to have an interview, as it were by accident, when she had collected around her her interesting family.  As the illustrious stranger retired the children also retired to their nursery.

One of the daughters, Josepha, was betrothed to the King of Naples.  A few days before she was to leave Vienna the queen required her, in obedience to long established etiquette, to descend into the tomb of her ancestors and offer up a prayer.  The sister-in-law, the Emperor Joseph’s wife, had just died of the small-pox, and her remains, disfigured by that awful disease, had but recently been deposited in the tomb.  The timid maiden was horror-stricken at the requirement, and regarded it as her death doom.  But an order from Maria Theresa no one was to disobey.  With tears filling her eyes, she took her younger sister, Maria Antoinette, upon her knee, and said,