On the Continent the selfish policy of the French, who could think of nothing but the extension of their own boundaries, ruined the success of the war. The Netherlands were invaded and rapidly overrun; Savoy and Piedmont conquered; but these successes on the extremity of the scene of action did not tend to the conclusion of the war. Frederick of Prussia advanced through Bohemia and took Prague, and thus saved France from a threatened invasion of Alsace; but, unsupported by his allies, he fell back from the Austrian dominions, and upon the death of the Emperor (Jan. 20, 1745) was unable to prevent the election of the Prince of Tuscany, husband of Maria Theresa, who ascended the Imperial throne as Francis I. Maximilian, the son of the late Emperor, had shown himself willing to accept the views of Austria; by the Treaty of Fuessen (April 22, 1745) he renounced all claims to the Austrian succession, promising to recall his troops from the French armies, and to give his vote to Francis, husband of Maria Theresa, who on her side recognized the election of his late father, and restored all her Bavarian conquests. Again it appeared that general negotiations might have been possible. But Carteret had been driven from office, and the Whigs under Pelham were bent on carrying on their hostility with France. His unpopular Hanoverian tendencies, and the offhand manner in which he had treated the Pelhams, secured Carteret's fall. His place was taken by Walpole's old colleague Harrington. With Carteret withdrew Lord Winchelsea and several others, thus affording Mr. Pelham an opportunity for carrying out that form of administration to which his timidity urged him. In exact contrast to Walpole, he dreaded opposition, and sought to make friends of all parties, and to establish his ministry on what was then called a broad bottom. He persuaded Chesterfield and Pitt to give up their opposition, and the former to accept the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. To the Tory Lord Gower he gave the Privy Seal, and even Sir John Hind Cotton, an undoubted Jacobite, was given a place about the Court. This was not done without great opposition from the King, who disliked Chesterfield and Pitt for their opposition to his Hanoverian schemes, and had a natural mistrust of Tories and Jacobites. The effect of these changes was almost to suppress opposition in the House. The ministry, now including most of the leaders of the Opposition, satisfied with a change of principles, made but little change in practice. The reunited Whig party felt that, as they were engaged in an open war with France, they were, even while subsidizing Germans, carrying out their true policy. Pitt openly declared that he no longer opposed subsidies in face of the present state of affairs abroad. He pointed out that the object of the war was somewhat changed, that, the minister who rested wholly on his foreign influence being removed, they were no longer