A still darker danger threatened the throne of the Hapsburgs; namely, the marriage, which was thought very probable and very near, of Napoleon with the sister of the Czar. Thus imprisoned between two vast empires, between that of the East and that of the West, as if between hammer and anvil, what would become of Austria, shorn of its territory and its strength? There was but one chance, and a very faint one, of any defence against the dangers that threatened Austria, and that was, that the Viennese court might make the match which the Russian court was contemplating. Already, its matrimonial alliances had brought the country good fortune more than once, and it could not forget the famous maxim expressed in a Latin line-- "_Bella gerant alii; tu felix Austria, nube!_" "Let others wage war; do you, happy Austria, marry!" The last campaigns had been unfavorable to the Hapsburg dynasty; a marriage would set things to right. At Vienna a party which may be called the peace party had come to power. Mr. von Stadion, a statesman of warlike tendencies, had been succeeded in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by a young and brilliant diplomatist, Count Metternich. The new minister had been ambassador to Paris before the campaign of Wagram, and, while he had been unable to prevent the war, he had left a very favorable impression at Napoleon's court, where his success as a man of the world, as a great nobleman, had been very brilliant. He then, in the lifetime of his father, Prince Metternich, bore only the title of Count. In his desire to attest his belief in the possibility of a reconciliation between Austria and Napoleon, he had left his wife, Countess Metternich, in France during the war. When he came to power, he conceived a political plan which was founded, temporarily at least, if not finally, on a French alliance. But to secure all the benefits which he hoped to get from it, Napoleon's marriage with an Austrian princess was necessary; and Metternich, who was aware of the negotiations between the French and Russian courts, was not inclined to believe in the possibility of a marriage between an Austrian Archduchess and the hero of Wagram. Neither before nor after the conclusion of the Treaty of Vienna was a word spoken about this plan, either by Napoleon or by the Austrian court.