Aunt Charlotte's Stories of German History for the Little Ones (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1878. Excerpt: ... and so the first course consisted entirely of horse-flesh, dressed in different ways. The next year there was another terrible battle at Malplaquet, still in the Netherlands, and harder fought than any had been before, though the French were again beaten. In the course of the battle Eugene was wounded in the knee, but he would not leave the field, saying that if he lived till evening there would be time to dress wounds then. But in this full tide of success a grievous blow fell upon Germany, Joseph caught the smallpox, and, according to the treatment of the time, was rolled up in twenty yards of scarlet cloth, with every breath of air shut out from his room, so that it was no wonder that he died in his thirty-third year, on the 17th of April, 1711. His only son had died when a few months old, and he had only two daughters; so he left his hereditary states to his brother, making him sign what was called the Family Compact, that if he too should have no male heir, Joseph's daughter should come before his in the succession. The war was, under Marlborough and Eugene, carried on in a much less savage manner, but the little courts of Germany were mostly in a very bad state. August of Saxony was the worst of all the princes, but they all wanted more or less to be as like Louis XIV. as they could, and imitated him in his selfish vices and extravagances if they could do so in nothing else. They despised German as a vulgar language, and spoke hardly anything but French, while they made all the display they could, and as they were mostly very poor, this could only be done by getting everything they could out of their unhappy peasants, who were very rough, boorish, and uncared for. Nor had the cities by any means recovered from the effects of the Thirty Years' War. ...