Kaiser Karl meanwhile was rather short of heirs; which formed
another of his real troubles, and involved him in much
shadow-hunting. His Wife, the Serene Brunswick Empress whom we
spoke of above, did at length bring him children, brought him a
boy even; but the boy died within the year; and, on the whole,
there remained nothing but two Daughters; Maria Theresa the elder
of them, born 1717,--the prettiest little maiden in the world;--
no son to inherit Kaiser Karl. Under which circumstances Kaiser
Karl produced now, in the Year 1724, a Document which he had
executed privately as long ago as 1713, only his Privy Councillors
and other Official witnesses knowing of it then; [19th April, 1713
(Stenzel, iii. 5222).] and solemnly publishes it to the world, as
a thing all men are to take notice of. All men had notice enough
of this Imperial bit of Sheepskin, before they got done with it,
five-and-twenty years hence. [Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748.]
A very famous Pragmatic Sanction; now published for the
world's comfort!

By which Document, Kaiser Karl had formally settled, and fixed
according to the power he has, in the shape of what they call a
Pragmatic Sanction, or unalterable Ordinance in his Imperial
House, "That, failing Heirs-male, his Daughters, his Eldest
Daughter, should succeed him; failing Daughters, his Nieces;
and in short, that Heirs-female ranking from their kinship to
Kaiser Karl, and not to any prior Kaiser, should be as good as
Heirs-male of Karl's body would have been." A Pragmatic Sanction
is the high name he gives this document, or the Act it represents;
"Pragmatic Sanction" being, in the Imperial Chancery and some
others, the received title for Ordinances of a very irrevocable
nature, which a sovereign makes, in affairs that belong wholly to