Note 40 — Chapter XII · THE INVASION OF SILESIA.
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In this wicked world power seldom respects weakness. No sooner was the emperor dead than four claimants sprang up to wrest from Maria Theresa a part or the whole of the kingdoms she had inherited from her father; and this, notwithstanding nearly all the powers of Europe had guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction. The Elector of Bavaria claimed Bohemia, from an article in the will of the Emperor Ferdinand I., made two centuries before. The King of Poland demanded the whole Austrian succession, in virtue of the right of his wife, who was the eldest daughter of the Emperor Joseph, elder brother of Charles VI. The King of Spain claimed all the Austrian possessions, in consequence of his descent from the wife of Philip II., who was daughter of the Emperor Maximilian. The King of Sardinia hunted up an obsolete claim to the duchy of Milan. But for the embarrassment into which these claims plunged Maria Theresa, Frederick would hardly have ventured to invade the province of Silesia. The woes which, in consequence, desolated the nations of Europe, no mind but that of the omniscient God can gauge.