PREFACE
The studies of the author of this work, for the
last ten years, in writing the "History of Napoleon Bonaparte,"
and "The French Revolution of 1789," have necessarily
made him quite familiar with the monarchies of Europe. He
has met with so much that was strange and romantic in their
career, that he has been interested to undertake, as it were,
a biography of the Monarchies of Continental Europe葉heir
birth, education, exploits, progress and present condition.
He has commenced with Austria.
There are abundant materials for this work. The
Life of Austria embraces all that is wild and wonderful in
history; her early struggles for aggrandizement葉he fierce
strife with the Turks, as wave after wave of Moslem invasion
rolled up the Danube葉he long conflicts and bloody persecutions
of the Reformation葉he thirty years' religious war葉he meteoric
career of Gustavus Adolphus
and Charles XII. shooting athwart the lurid storms of battle葉he
intrigues of Popes葉he enormous pride, power and encroachments
of Louis XIV.葉he warfare of the Spanish succession and the
Polish dismemberment預ll these events combine in a sublime
tragedy which fiction may in vain attempt to parallel.
It is affecting to observe in
the history of Germany, through what woes humanity has passed
in attaining even its present position of civilization. It
is to be hoped that the human family may never again suffer
what it has already endured. We shall be indeed insane if
we do not gain some wisdom from the struggles and the calamities
of those who have gone before us. The narrative of the career
of the Austrian Empire, must, by contrast, excite emotions
of gratitude in every American bosom. Our lines have fallen
to us in pleasant places; we have a goodly heritage.
It is the author's intention soon to issue, as
the second of this series, the History of the Empire of Russia.
JOHN S. C. ABBOTT. Brunswick, Maine, 1859. |