The next business brought before Parliament furnished new evidence of the general confusion of affairs. As might have been foreseen, Frederick of Prussia had viewed with no friendly eye the treaty made by King George with Russia; and he now proposed, as an alternative, that Hanover and England should combine with Prussia to keep all troops whatsoever from entering the German Empire. Since Frederick had already announced his intention of attacking the Russians if they moved across the frontier, and since there was good reason to apprehend that, if driven to desperation, he might join with the French in overrunning Hanover, the Russian treaty was thrown over, and the new arrangement accepted by King George. The pecuniary conditions attached to the agreement were duly ratified by the House of Commons in May, with results that were to reach further than were yet dreamed of. Then at last, apparently as an after-thought, war was formally declared. The country being thus definitely committed to a struggle which might be for life or death, the Lords supported by Newcastle seized the opportunity to reject the Militia Bill, which was the one important military measure so far brought forward. The general helplessness of the moment, owing to the absence of a strong hand at the helm, is almost incredible. [Sidenote: April 8.] [Sidenote: April 18.] Meanwhile the French had struck their first blow, not on the shores of Britain, but at Minorca. As early as in January the Ministry had received good intelligence of the true destination of the enemy's armaments, but had made no sufficient preparation to meet the danger; nor was it until the 7th of April that it sent a fleet of ten ships, ill-manned and ill-found, under Admiral Byng to the Mediterranean. On the day following Byng's departure twelve ships of the line under M. de la Galissonière, with transports containing sixteen thousand troops under the Duke of Richelieu, weighed from Toulon, and on the 18th dropped anchor off the port of Ciudadella, at the north-western end of Minorca. General Blakeney, the governor, had received warning of the intended attack two days before, and had made such preparations as he could for defence; but the means at his disposal were but poor. He had four regiments, the Fourth, Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth, and Thirty-fourth of the Line; to which Commodore Edgcumbe, who was lying off Mahon with a squadron too weak to encounter the French, had added all the marines that he could spare before sailing away to Gibraltar. Even so, however, Blakeney could muster little more than twenty-eight hundred men. But his most serious difficulty was lack of officers. He himself had won his ensigncy under Cutts the Salamander at Venloo, and he had maintained his reputation for firmness and courage at Stirling in 1745, but he was now past eighty, crippled with gout and unfit to bear the incessant labours of a siege. Nevertheless he was obliged to take the burden upon him from