His grandson, Prince MIKLOS [Nicholas] (1765-1833) was born on the 12th
of December 1765. He began life as an officer in the guards,
subsequently making the grand tour, which first awakened his deep
interest in art. He quitted the army for diplomacy after reaching the
rank of _Feldzeugmeister_, and was employed as extraordinary ambassador,
on special occasions, when he displayed a magnificence extraordinary
even for the Esterhazys. He made at Vienna an important collection of
paintings and engravings, which came into the possession of the
Hungarian Academy at Budapest in 1865. At his summer palace of Kis
Marton (Eisenstadt) he erected a monument to Haydn. His immense
expenditure on building and the arts involved the family in financial
difficulties for two generations. When the French invaded Austria in
1797, he raised a regiment of 1000 men at his own expense. In 1809, when
Napoleon invited the Magyars to elect a new king to replace the
Habsburgs, overtures were made to Prince Nicholas, who refused the
honour and, further, raised a regiment of volunteers in defence of
Austrian interests. He died at Como on the 24th of November 1833.
His son, Prince PAL ANTAL [Paul Anthony] (1786-1866), entered the
diplomatic service. In 1806 he was secretary of the embassy in London,
and in 1807 worked with Prince Metternich in the same capacity in Paris.
In 1810 he was accredited to the court of Dresden, where he tried in
vain to detach Saxony from Napoleon, and in 1814 he accompanied his
father on a secret mission to Rome. He took a leading part in all the
diplomatic negotiations consequent upon the wars of 1813-1815,
especially at the congress of Chatillon, and on the conclusion of peace
was, at the express desire of the prince regent, sent as ambassador to
London. In 1824 he represented Austria as ambassador extraordinary at
the coronation of Charles X., and was the premier Austrian commissioner
at the London conferences of 1830-1836. In 1842 he quitted diplomacy for
politics and attached himself to "the free-principles party." He was
minister for foreign affairs in the first responsible Hungarian ministry
(1848), but resigned his post in September because he could see no way
of reconciling the court with the nation. The last years of his life
were spent in comparative poverty and isolation, as even the
Esterhazy-Forchtenstein estates were unequal to the burden of supporting
his fabulous extravagance and had to be placed in the hands of curators.
The cadet branch of the house of Frakno, the members of which bear the
title of count, was divided into three lines by the sons of Ferencz
Esterhazy (1641-1683).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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