The morning of the coronation found all Presburg awake. The streets were thronged before day with citizens; nobles hastening to the palace; troops moving to their various posts in the ceremony; peasants pouring in from all the provinces, in all the wild festivity and uncouth dialects of the land of the Huns. Then came the magnates, riding on their richly-caparisoned horses, and followed by their long train of armed attendants, a most brilliant and picturesque display. The equipages contained all that the kingdom could boast of female beauty and high birth, and the whole formed a singular and vivid contrast of the strange, the lovely, the bold, and the graceful, the rude and the magnificent, the Oriental and the Western--all that a feudal, half-barbarian people could exhibit of wild exultation--and all that an empire as old as Charlemagne could combine of antique dignity and civilised splendour.
The sun, which so seldom condescends to shine on regal processions, threw his most auspicious beams on the city of Presburg on this memorable day. But it was in the cathedral that all the opulence of the imperial and national pomp was displayed. The aisles were hung with tapestry and banners of the great feudal families, and crowded with the body-guards of the Emperor, and the richly-costumed heyducs and chasseurs of the Hungarian lords. The centre aisle was one canopy of scarlet tissue, covering, like an immense tent, the royal train, the great officers of the court, and the Emperor as he waited for the consecration. Farther on, surrounding the high altar, stood a circle of the Hungarian prelacy in their embroidered robes, surrounding the Archbishop of Presburg, and in their unmoving splendour looking like a vast circle of images of silver and gold. Above them all, glittering in jewels, looked down from clouds of every brilliant dye, and luminous with the full radiance of the morning, the Virgin Mother, in celestial beauty, the patroness of Presburg, a wonder-working Madonna, "whom Jews might kiss, and infidels adore."
At length, to the sound of unnumbered voices, and amid the flourish of trumpets, and the roar of cannon from all the bastions, Leopold entered the golden rails of the altar, ascended the steps, followed by the great officers of the kingdom, and laid his hand upon the crown. At that moment the Grand Chamberlain, Count Colvellino, had knelt before him to present the book of the oath by which he bound himself to maintain the rights and privileges of Hungary. In the act of pronouncing the oath the Emperor was seen to start back suddenly, and the book fell from his hand. At the same moment a wild scream of agony rang through the cathedral; there was a manifest confusion among the prelacy; the circle was broken, some rushed down the steps; some retreated to the pillars of the high altar; and some seemed stooping, as if round one who had fallen. Vases, flowers, censers, images--all the pompous ornaments which attend the Romish ritual on its great days--were trampled under foot in the tumult; and prelate, priest, and acolyte were flung together in the terror of the time. The first impression of all was, that the Emperor had been assassinated, and the startled flying nobles, and the populace at the gates, spread the report through the city, with the hundred additions of popular alarm. But the imperial body-guard instantly drawing their swords, and pressing their way through the nobles and multitude up to the altar, soon proved that the chief terror was unfounded, by bringing forward the Emperor in their midst, and showing him to the whole assemblage unhurt. He was received with an acclamation that shook the dome.