ARCHDUKE JOSEPH ELECTED KING.

By this time the emperor’s son Joseph was by the electoral college chosen king of the Romans; but his interest sustained a rude shock in the death of the gallant duke of Lorraine, who was suddenly seized with a quin-sey at a small village near Lintz, and expired, not without suspicion of having fallen a sacrifice to the fears of the French king, against whom he had formerly declared war as a sovereign prince unjustly expelled from his territories. He possessed great military talents, and had threatened to enter Lorraine at the head of forty thousand men, in the course of the ensuing summer. The court of France, alarmed at this declaration, is said to have had recourse to poison, for preventing the execution of the duke’s design. At his death the command of the imperial army was conferred upon the elector of Bavaria. This prince having joined the elector of Saxony, advanced against the Dauphin, who had passed the Rhine at Fort-Louis with a considerable army, and intended to penetrate into Wirtemberg; but the duke of Bavaria checked his progress, and he acted on the defensive during the remaining part of the campaign. The emperor was less fortunate in his efforts against the Turks, who rejected the conditions of peace he had offered, and took the field under a new vizier. In the month of August, count Tekeli defeated a body of imperialists near Cronstadt, in Transylvania; then convoking the states of that province at Albajulia, he compelled them to elect him their sovereign; but his reign was of short duration. Prince Louis of Baden, having taken the command of the Austrian army, detached four regiments into Belgrade, and advanced against Tekeli, who retired into Valachia at his approach. Meanwhile the grand vizier invested Belgrade, and carried on his attacks with surprising resolution. At length a bomb falling upon a great tower in which the powder magazine of the besieged was contained, the place blew up with a dreadful explosion. Seventeen hundred soldiers of the garrison were destroyed; the walls and ramparts were overthrown; the ditch was filled up, and so large a breach was opened that the Turks entered by squadrons and battalions, cutting in pieces all that fell in their way. The fire spread from magazine to magazine until eleven were destroyed; and in the confusion the remaining part of the garrison escaped to Peterwaradin. By this time the imperialists were in possession of Transylvania, and cantoned at Cronstadt and Clausinburgh. Tekeli undertook to attack the province on one side, while a body of Turks should invade it on the other: these last were totally dispersed by prince Louis of Baden; but prince Augustus of Hanover, whom he had detached against the count, was slain in a narrow defile, and his troops were obliged to retreat with precipitation. Tekeli however did not improve this advantage: being apprized of the fate of his allies, and afraid of seeing his retreat cut off by the snow that frequently chokes up the passes of the mountains, he retreated again to Valachia, and prince Louis returned to Vienna.