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ANDREAS HOFER

LOUSIA MUHLBACH

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER
I 1809

CHAPTER I.

The year 1809 had come; but the war against France so intensely
longed for by all Austria had not yet broken out and the people
and the army were vainly waiting for the war-cry of their sovereign
the Emperor Francis. It is true not a few great things bad been
accomplished in the course of the past year: Austria had armed
organized the militia strengthened her fortresses and filled her
magazines; but the emperor still hesitated to take the last and most
decisive step by crowning his military preparations with a formal
declaration of war.

No one looked for this declaration of war more intensely than the
emperor's second brother the Archduke John a young man of scarcely
twenty-seven. He had been the soul of all the preparations which
since the summer of 1808 had been made throughout Austria; he had
conceived the plan of organizing the militia and the reserves; and
had drawn up the proclamation of the 12th of May 1808 by which all
able-bodied Austrians were called upon to take up arms. But this
exhausted his powers; he could organize the army but could not say
to it "Take the field against the enemy!" The emperor alone could
utter this word and he was silent.

"And he will be silent until the favorable moment has passed"
sighed the Archduke John when on returning from a very long
interview with the emperor he was alone with his friend General
Nugent in his cabinet.

He had communicated to this confidant the full details of his
interview with the emperor and concluded his report by saying with
a deep sigh "The emperor will be silent until the favorable moment
has passed!"

Count Nugent gazed with a look of heart-felt sympathy into the
archduke's mournful face; he saw the tears filling John's large blue
eyes; he saw that he firmly compressed his lips as if to stifle a
cry of pain or rage and that he clinched his hands in the agony of
his despair. Animated by tender compassion the general approached
the archduke who had sunk into a chair and laid his hand gently on
his shoulder. "Courage courage!" he whispered; "nothing is lost as
yet and your imperial highness--"

"Ah why do you address me with `imperial highness'?" cried the
archduke almost indignantly. "Do you not see then that this is a
miserable title by which Fate seems to mock me and which it
thunders constantly and as it were sneeringly into my ears in
order to remind me again and again of my deplorable powerlessness?
There is nothing 'imperial' about me but the yoke under which I am
groaning; and my `highness' is to be compared only with the crumbs
of Lazarus which fell from the rich man's table. And yet there are
persons Nugent who envy me these crumbs--men who think it a
brilliant and glorious lot to be an 'imperial highness' the brother
of a sovereign emperor! Ah they do not know that this title means
only that I am doomed to everlasting dependence and silence and
that the emperor's valet de chambre and his private secretary are
more influential men than the Archduke John who cannot do anything
but submit be silent and look on in idleness."

...

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  (approx 404 pages)

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