The war to which the Royal speech referred had been dragging along for some time. No quarrel could have less direct interest for the English people than that about which the Emperor Charles the Sixth and the King of France, Louis the Fifteenth, were fighting. On the death of Augustus the Second of Poland, in February, 1733, Louis thought it a good opportunity for putting his own father-in-law, Stanislaus Leszczynski, back on the throne of Poland, from which he had twice been driven. Poland was a republic with an elective king, and a very peculiar form of constitution, by virtue of which any one of the estates or electoral colleges of the realm was in a position to stop the action of all the others at any crisis when decision was especially needed. The result of this was that the elected king was always a nominee of one or another of the great Continental Powers who took it on themselves to intervene in the affairs of Poland. The election of a King of Poland was always a mere struggle between these Powers: the strongest at the moment carried its man. Stanislaus, the father of Louis the Fifteenth's wife, had been a _protege_ of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. He was a man of illustrious family and of great and varied abilities, a scholar and a writer. Charles drove Augustus the Second, Augustus, Elector of Saxony, from the throne of Poland, and set up Stanislaus in his place. Stanislaus, however, was driven out of the country by Augustus and his friends, who rallied and became strong in the temporary difficulties of Charles. When Charles found time to turn his attention to Poland he soon overthrew Augustus and set up Stanislaus once again. But "hide, blushing glory, hide Pultowa's day"; the fall of the great Charles came, and brought with it the fall of Stanislaus. Augustus re-entered Poland at the head of a Saxon army, and Stanislaus was compelled to abdicate. Now that Augustus was dead, Louis the Fifteenth determined to bring Stanislaus out from his retirement of many years and set him for the third time on the Polish throne. On the other hand, the Emperor and Russia alike favored the son of {24} the late king, another Augustus, Elector of Saxony. The French party carried Stanislaus, although at the time of his abdication, three or four and twenty years before, he had been declared incapable of ever again being elected King of Poland. The Saxon party, secretly backed up by Russia, resisted Stanislaus, attacked his partisans, drove him once more from Warsaw, and proclaimed Augustus the Third. Louis of France declared war, not on Russia, but on the Emperor, alleging that the Emperor had been the inspiration and support of the Saxon movement. A French army under Marshal Berwick, son of James the Second of England, crossed the Rhine and took the fort of Kehl--the scene of a memorable crossing of the Rhine, to be recrossed very rapidly after, in days nearer to our own. Spain and Sardinia were