156 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [chap. Meanwhile the face of affairs was changed by the death of Charles VII. After some months Francis of Tuscany, the husband of the Queen of Hungary, was chosen Emperor. Henceforth Maria Theresa, a queen in her own right and the wife of the Emperor, was known as the E7npress-Qneen. Lewis went himself to Flanders with his son, the Dauphin, to join the army with his marshal, Count Maurice of Saxc. He was a natural son of the late Elector of Saxony and King of Poland Auoustus the Strong, and was the best general in the French service. He was now acting against George II. and his son, the Duke of Cumberland, ^nd a terrible battle was fought at Fontcnoy, in which the victory was with the French, and enabled them to take Toiirnai. To call off the English the French assisted Charles Edivard Stewart in his attempt upon the throne in 1745, and thus caused the Duke of Cumberland to return to England. In 1746 the imperial troops invaded Provence, as those of Charles the Fifth had done, but they were called back by one of the most remarkable events of the war, when the people of Genoa, without any help, either from France or from their own aristocratic government, drove out the Austrian garrison that held them dov/n. In 1747 Marshal Saxe again defeated the Duke of Cumberland and the Prince of Orange at Lawfelt, on the borders of Holland, forcing several of the best fortified Dutch cities to surrender. The next year he was on the point of taking Maestricht, when George II. and Lewis XV. succeeded in coming to an understanding and persuading the Empress-Queen to agree to a general peace. 29. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748. — The peace was signed at Aix-la-Chapelle, at the close of the year 1748, by which the Empress-Queen was confirmed in her possessions, except that King Frederick II. of Prussia still kept Silesia, which he had seized at the beginning of the war. Her husband Francis was acknowledged as Em- peror by all the powers. Peace however could do little for France. The system of Lewis XIV., scarcely bearable in his able and vigorous hands, was utterly intolerable under a helpless, selfish being like his great-grandson. The nobles still thronged the court, and received pensions for all sorts of menial or imaginary offices about the king's person, spending however far more than they received, and raising their means from their tenants. These unhappy peasants, together with the burghers,
