History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 09 by Thomas Carlyle

Franz of Lorraine, the young favorite of Fortune, whom we once saw at Berlin on an interesting occasion, was about this time to have married his Imperial Archduchess; Kaiser's consent to be formally demanded and given; nothing but joy and splendor looked for in the Court of Vienna at present. Nothing to prevent it, -- had there been no Polish Election; had not the Kaiser, in his Shadow-Hunt (coursing the Pragmatic Sanction chiefly, as he has done these twenty years past), gone rashly into that combustible foreign element. But so it is: this was the fatal limit. The poor Kaiser's Shadow-Hunt, going Scot-free this long while, and merely tormenting other people, has, at this point, by contact with inflammable Poland, unexpectedly itself caught fire; goes now plunging, all in mad flame, over precipices one knows not how deep: and there will be a lamentable singeing and smashing before the Kaiser get out of this, if he ever get! Kaiser Karl, from this point, plunges down and down, all his days; and except in that Shadow of a Pragmatic Sanction, if he can still save that, has no comfort left. Marriages are not the thing to be thought of at present! --

Scarcely had the news of August's Election, and Stanislaus's flight to Dantzig, reached France, when France, all in a state of readiness, informed the Kaiser, ready for nothing, his force lying in Silesia, doing the Election functions on the Polish borders there, "That he the Kaiser had, by such treatment of the Grandfather of France and the Polish Kingdom fairly fallen to him, insulted the most Christian Majesty; that in consequence the most Christian Majesty did hereby declare War against the said Kaiser," -- and in fact had, that very day (14th of October, 1733), begun it. Had marched over into Lorraine, namely, secured Lorraine against accidents; and, more specially, gone across from Strasburg to the German side of the Rhine, and laid siege to Kehl. Kehl Fortress; a dilapidated outpost of the Reich there, which cannot resist many hours. Here is news for the Kaiser, with his few troops all on the Polish borders; minding his neighbors' business, or chasing Pragmatic Sanction, in those inflammable localities.