[Footnote 3: Cobenzl was a favorite of Kaunitz and a thorough courtier. At an earlier period, when ambassador at Petersburg, he wrote French comedies, which were performed at the Hermitage in the presence of the empress Catherine. The arrival of an unpleasant despatch being ever followed by the production of some amusing piece as an antidote to care, the empress jestingly observed, "that he was no doubt keeping his best piece until the news arrived of the French being in Vienna." He expired in the February of 1809, a year pregnant with fate for Austria.] [Footnote 4: He indignantly refused the stipend offered to him on this occasion and protested against the injustice of his condemnation.] [Footnote 5: Bavaria regarded these forced concessions as a bad reward for her fidelity to Austria. Napoleon appears to have calculated upon relighting by this means the flames of discord, whence he well knew how to draw an advantage, between Bavaria and Austria.] [Footnote 6: "Thus the emperor also now abandoned the empire by merely bargaining with the enemy to quit his territories, and leaving the wretched provinces of the empire a prey to war and pillage. And if the assurances of friendship, of confidence, and of affection between Austria and Venice are but recalled to mind, the contrast was indeed laughable when the emperor was pleased to allow that loyal city to be ceded to him. The best friend was in this case the cloth from which the emperor cut himself an equivalent."--_Huergelmer_.] [Footnote 7: A curious private memoir of Talleyrand says: "J'ai la certitude que Berlin est le lieu, où le traité du 26 Vendémiaire (the reconciliation of Austria with France at Campo Formio), aura jetté le plus d'etonnement, d'embarras et de orainte." He then explains that, now that the Netherlands no longer belong to Austria, and that Austria and France no longer come into collision, both powers would be transformed from natural foes into natural friends and would have an equal interest in weakening Prussia. Should Russia stir, the Poles could be roused to insurrection, etc.] [Footnote 8: "Exactly at this period, when the empire's common foe was plundering the Franconian circle, when deeds of blood and horror, when misery and want had reached a fearful height, the troops of the Elector of Brandenburg overran the cities and villages. The inhabitants were constrained to take the oath of fealty, the public officers, who refused, were dragged away captive, etc. Ellingen, Stopfenheim, Absperg, Eschenbach, Nüremberg, Postbaur, Virnsperg, Oettingen, Dinkelspühl, Ritzenhausen, Gelchsheim, were scenes of brutal outrage."--_The History of the Usurpation of Brandenburg, A.D. 1797_, with the original Documents, published by the Teutonic Order.] [Footnote 9: His secret memoirs, even at that period, designate Baden, Würtemberg, and Darmstadt as states securely within the grasp of France.]