Hanover, argued George II., will certainly be attacked by the French. It must be defended at all costs. The only possible defenders are Austria, Russia, and Prussia. Austria, the old patron of Hanover, would be preferable. But the Queen has grievances against England and is bent on attacking Prussia. Alliance with her would therefore expose Hanover to the Prussians as well as to the French, and must therefore be regarded as out of the question. Russia and Prussia remained to be considered. Russia actually made a convention to hire out troops for the defence of Hanover. But Russia, the King found, also desired to attack Prussia, and was therefore as ineligible an ally as Austria. Only the Prussian alliance remained possible. In January, 1756, by the Convention of Westminster, it was secured. The Convention of Westminster, by which Frederick bound himself to defend Hanover against attack, helped on the far more difficult task of Kaunitz. This was no less than to reverse the secular policy of France and Austria and to bring Bourbon and Hapsburg into alliance. Kaunitz based his calculations on the assumption that France might help Austria to recover Silesia, but that England never would. This view of the political situation was urged for seven years with great ability by a statesman in whom the Queen reposed a confidence greater than that with which our own Elizabeth honoured Burleigh, and who treated her in return with a haughtiness such as Essex would never have dared to show. Kaunitz, whose life was spent in the endeavour to exalt the power of his mistress, forced her to shut her windows to humour his prejudice against fresh air, and stalked out of her Council when she interrupted him with a question. At another meeting, it is said, she remonstrated with him on his riotous living. He replied that he had come there to discuss her affairs, not his own. But the great, it is said, are known to the great, and Maria Theresa’s confidence in Kaunitz seemed to be justified when his visionary scheme proved feasible. It was easy to form a league to despoil Prussia. Kaunitz tempted Russia with parts of Poland, Poland with an indemnity in Ost-Preussen, Saxony with Magdeburg, Sweden with Prussian Pomerania, the princes of the Empire with the favours which the Emperor alone could bestow. But it required great powers of imagination to conceive that France might quit the beaten track of history, which was at the same time plainly the path of self-interest, in order to assist her hereditary foe in a great land-war at a time when she needed all her strength to meet England upon the seas.