While these ministerial changes had been going on in England, our dispute with France as to the limits of our American colonies had become blended with a quarrel of quite a different origin, which was to plunge Europe into a general war for several years. As early as 1745, before the signature of the Treaty of Dresden, the Courts of Berlin and Dresden had entered into some sort of arrangement for curtailing what they regarded as the undue pre-eminence of Prussia. After that treaty the Empress Queen seems to have been still more anxious for some similar plan, and almost immediately after the termination of the War of Succession, had entered into relations with the Czarina Elizabeth of Russia; a treaty had been agreed to, to which there were added secret clauses, providing that any movement on the part of Prussia against either Russia, Austria, or Poland, should be held wholly to invalidate the Treaty of Dresden; and in the result of a success of their arms, it was arranged that Prussia should be divided between the three countries. These arrangements are sometimes spoken of as the Treaties of Warsaw and of St. Petersburg. To this treaty the Elector of Saxony, who was also King of Poland, was a party, though without signing. In 1754, magazines and armies were prepared in Bohemia and Moravia; the Saxon army was collected at Pirna; and finally, in 1756, adroit flattery addressed to Madame de Pampadour, the reigning mistress at the French Court, induced France to join in the alliance. Louis and his ministry, ignoring the really vital question which was then at issue with England, reversed the traditional policy of France, rejected the proffered alliance with Prussia, and threw the country headlong into a European war, in close alliance with its old enemy the Austrian House. [Sidenote: Alliance between England and Prussia.] In accordance with the traditions of European policy it was England, not France, who should have appeared as the ally of Austria. But a coldness had been gradually springing up between the Courts. The Barrier Treaty of Utrecht, by which the Austrian Netherlands were debarred from the Indian trade, was a constant cause of uneasiness. The part which England had taken in mediating the Treaties of Breslau and Dresden, which ceded Silesia to Prussia, had been mistaken by the Austrian Court; although in fact both wise and friendly, it had excited deep displeasure. Thus, when an alliance was mentioned, the terms proposed by Austria were so high that the English Government had no choice but to refuse them. Under these circumstances, as Hanover could not be left exposed wholly without friends, England turned to the opposite party and allied itself with Prussia. [Sidenote: Frederick's first campaign.] [Sidenote: Supported by Pitt.] [Sidenote: Foreign policy of the various parties in England.]