every man to his standard against the yoke of " an infernal crew, whose sword was suspended over the head of every citizen in his house, and of every peasant in his cottage." Frederick the king's third brother, armed West Gothland. The senate, as soon as it received intelligence of these movements, commissioned two of its members with full power to adopt all such measures as might be necessary for the maintenance of the constitution: and as suspicion was entertained respecting the dispositions of the body guard, the regiments of Sudermania and Upland were ordered to Stockholm. The king was required to recall his brothers, and not to absent himself. A letter from the duke of Sudermania fell into the hands of count Kalling, which left no doubt remaining as to the revolutionary intentions of the princes, or that they were acting in concert with each other. The senate sat during the whole night, and is said to have determined to secure the person of the king. On the following day they invited him to attend their sitting: he came; but his body-guard was already prepared to execute the measures on which he had resolved. Gustavus began to complain that so much business was transacted without his knowledge; and the senate, that he withheld from them the public dispatches which came to his hands. The dispute was becoming animated, when the senate was suddenly surrounded on all sides and all its members made prisoners. The colonel of the guard had refused to execute this measure; and had returned his sword to the king, saying, "I am also your prisoner; but am confident that I shall soon be your judge." The commandant of the place in vain summoned the citizens to arms on behalf of what he was pleased to call freedom; they had the good sense not to mistake aristocratic government for liberty. The citizens, the garrison and the guard, were informed by manifestos that "plans had been entertained for subjecting both the king and the nation to the power of a few nobles; but that the king would defend the cause of true liberty, which in his estimation was the greatest good." On the following day, all Stockholm, with the exception of a few of the chief magistrates, took an oath of adherence. The diet was assembled; the house was surrounded by the garrison and body-guard; and the king in his crown and robes, and bearing the silver hammer of Gustavus Adolphus in his hand, appeared among them, and made a speech concerning the dangers attendant on factions and the tyranny of the aristocrats, one of the effects of which they might perceive in the high price of bread. He spoke also of the ancient deliverers of the nation; said that he wished to become a second Gustavus Vasa, that he hated arbitrary power, and intended to reign according to the laws. The new laws were read; in which it was enacted that, in future, the king shall nominate the senate and shall summon and dismiss the diet; that he shall have the power of levying the ancient taxes, and in case of necessity, of appointing new ones that the whole force of the kingdom, both by sea and land, shall be at his disposal; that the power of declaring war and of concluding treaties of peace and alliance, is also placed in his hands, together with the privi lege of appointing to all the offices and dignities of the On the following day, the senate was dismissed and corn distributed among the people. Such was the termination of the constitution which had been established fiftytwo years before. state. SECTION XIV. THE DISPUTE FOR THE BAVARIAN SUCCESSION. A FEW years after these occurrences, MaxiA. D. 1777. milian Joseph, son of the emperor Charles the Seventh, and the last elector of Bavaria, died. In him that branch of the family of Wittelsbach, which had now honourably governed Bavaria during nearly five hundred years, became extinct; and left the remembrance of many valiant, politic, and even beneficent princes; but not the reputation of a very wise government, or of a constitution modelled upon noble principles. Charles Theodore von Sulzbach, elector of the palatinate of the Rhine, and head of the next branch of the family of Wittelsbach, was entitled to the succession by a family compact which had been formerly concluded, and was agreeable to the laws of the empire: he was therefore immediately proclaimed; and repaired without delay to Münich. He had, however, scarcely arrived in that city, when he was informed that the house of Austria had determined to enforce its ancient claims on lower Bavaria: and the new elector, conscious that he was able to oppose no successful resistance to the preponderating power of that dynasty, consented to a treaty by which he secured the possession of the remainder of his new dominions. Maria Theresa was still living; but Joseph possessed the chief influence in all state affairs of great importance: and the court of Austria, at his instigation, took possession of Lower Bavaria, required an immediate profession of fealty from the states of the country, and declared that the taxes should for the present remain upon the same footing as in the preceding year. The emperor also declared the counties of Schwabeck, Hohenwaldeck, Leuchtenberg, Wolfstein, Hals and Haag, the barony of Wiesensteig, the jurisdiction of Hirschberg, and other imperial fiefs, to have become vacant by the extinction of the family which had acquired them: and the barony of Mundelheim in Swabia, with all that part of Upper Bavaria which is held as a fief of Bohemia, was also pronounced to be forfeited, in the name of the empress-queen. A large tract of country, along the course of the Danube, the Inn, and the Iser, and the suburb of Ratisbon, where the imperial diet had held its sittings. during one hundred and sixteen years, now fell to Austria. No farther information relative to these proceedings had. been communicated to the relatives of the reigning family, or to the estates of the country, or national representatives of Bavaria. The boundaries of the lordship of duke John, which had reverted to Lower Bavaria three hundred and fifty-four years before, had never been accurately ascertained; so that the court of Vienna was obliged to assure the elector, that when it should have seized on the possession of this territory, it would undertake the demarcation with justice and moderation. Frederick king of Prussia, however, regarded this whole transaction as one which produced an essential alteration in the balance of power; testified his astonishment that it should have been completed without consulting him; and advised the duke of Deuxponts, who was the presumptive successor of the childless elector, by no means to give his consent to proceedings which so manifestly contradicted the constitutions of the empire and the treaty of Westphalia, without consulting the other princes of Germany, and especially the crown of France which had guaranteed that treaty. He represented to the court of Vienna, that according to all the maxims of feudal rights, the different branches of a family had an indisputable title to succeed to all the fiefs possessed by their common ancestor: that the succession of the house of Wittelsbach had been secured with extraordinary precision by family compacts, which were in perfect accordance with the laws of the empire, and by that great imperial law, the treaty of Westphalia : that the divisibility of an electorate was in direct opposition to the golden bull of Charles the Fourth, by which the majesty of the emperor and the dignity of the electors was regulated: that it was a cause of extreme astonishment, that so important an alteration should have been effected without any consultation with the empire, which was a stipulated duty on the part of the emperor: and that in reality a compact which had been obtained by surprize and violence from a single palatine prince, could not possibly be valid, in prejudice to the hereditary rights of his family. Fre derick demanded that the elector should be replaced in possession of all the hereditary dominions of Maximilian Joseph: and he declared repeatedly, and in the most positive manner, that as a prince of the empire, as a contracting party to the treaty of Westphalia, and as a friend of the Palatine family, he could not permit such an infraction of the laws, such a violation of the balance of power. The court of Vienna, on the other hand, replied; that the whole of Bavaria, before the period at which the house of Wittelsbach had acquired the sovereignty of that country, had been restored to their ancestors by the dukes of Austria, out of pure moderation and love of peace: that it was reasonable to require indemnification for so many expensive wars: that the present was not a question relating to an indivisible electorate, because Bavaria, as it was publicly and universally known, had acquired the electoral dignity by the contrivance of Maximilian, only a few generations previously to this time; which dignity could be transferred only to his immediate descendants: that the whole country of Lower Bavaria, which from very early times had always been ruled by its own land-marshal, was in reality no essential part of the duchy of Bavaria: that the house of Austria could perceive no impediment in the constitution of Germany, to the enforcement of indisputable rights, provided it were done with moderation and with the consent of those princes of the empire whose interests were most immediately concerned: and that it was important to know whether the king of Prussia was resolved to assume the office of arbitrator in all instances; and whether he, whose aggrandisement had been the most rapid, and was attended with the greatest share of peril to his neighbours, intended to set up his arbitrary will as the law by which all the princes were to regulate their conduct: that the emperor Sigismund, who had sold the electorate of Brandenburg to the ancestor of the present king of Prussia, had also conferred Lower Bavaria, which happened to fall vacant |