Hostilities had not yet commenced.The French court consequently birmingham home tour virtual rejected Maria Anne and sent her back to Spain, and married Louis, then but fifteen years of age, to Maria Lebrinsky, daughter of the King of Poland.After his reiterated public denials that any such alliance was anticipated, he did not dare commit himself by giving the required document.Charles, with the spirit of an emperor, declared that he would do birmingham home tour virtual no such thing.She went so far in her reconciliation with England as to assure the king that he was quite welcome to retain the rock of Gibraltar which he held with so tenacious a grasp.He made the most extravagant promises of the subsidies the emperor was to furnish, and of the powers which birmingham home tour virtual were to combine to trample England and France beneath their feet.In the meantime Ripperda, having so successfully, as he supposed, concluded his negotiations at Vienna, in a high state of exultation commenced his journey back to Spain.The frail birmingham home tour virtual connection between Austria and Spain was now terminated.When that page shall be read, every ear that hears it will tingle.The emperor, encouraged by the success he had thus far met with, pushed his efforts with renewed vigor, and in January, 1732, exulted that he had gained the guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction from all the Germanic birmingham home tour virtual body, with the exception of Bavaria, Palatine and Saxony., whose court, in the enormous expenditures of vice, exhausted the yearly earnings of a population of twenty millions, was anxious to unite the Bourbon' branches of France and Spain in more intimate alliance.After his death, as the Burgundian provinces and the Netherlands passed under the dominion of Spain, the Spanish monarchs exercised the office of grand master, and conferred the dignity, which was now regarded the highest order of knighthood in Europe, according to birmingham home tour virtual their pleasure.
