Kaunitz had not only the strength to see this vision, but also the fortune to realise it in fact. The circumstance that favoured him the most was that the Pompadour was now at the height of her influence in France. The mistress of Louis XV. furthered the plan of Kaunitz for selfish reasons, but in the expectation that its result would be the exact reverse of what it was. She desired to keep the peace in Europe in order that she might continue to live quietly at Versailles. The Minister of Marine, moreover, was her friend; the minister who might profit by a land-war was her enemy. She therefore favoured a covenant of neutrality with Austria in the hope that the two wars would thus be kept apart. The Convention of Westminster, however, made it impossible that the affair should rest here. The fact that Prussia had bound herself to resist a French invasion of Hanover frustrated all Frederick’s efforts to propitiate the Pompadour and to throw dust in the eyes of the French. “If the ministry of France will consider it well,” wrote Frederick on January 24th, “... it should find nothing to say in reason if I undertake such a convention, by which, moreover, I flatter myself that I render an essential service to France, seeing that I shall certainly arrest 50,000 Russians by it, and shall hold in check another 50,000 Austrians at least, who but for that would all have acted against France.” He further endeavoured to discount his alliance with George II. by turning a sympathetic ear to the French plans for assisting the Young Pretender, and by advising her to strike in Ireland and on the south coast of England at the same time. It was beyond his art, however, to disguise what he had done, and Kaunitz knew how to profit by it. The labours of the diplomatists were immense, but at last they were successful. On May 1, 1756, by the Treaty of Versailles, both France and Austria undertook for the future to defend the European possessions of the other with 24,000 men. In the war with England, Austria was to remain neutral, but if in the course of it any province of France in Europe were to be attacked by any ally or auxiliary of England, Austria promised by a secret article to provide the stipulated assistance and France offered a similar guarantee. This might be interpreted as binding Austria to join in the war if the French were masters of Hanover and the Prussians marched against them. It thus deprived the Convention of Westminster of half its value, and at the same time threatened to connect the war against England, which France had begun brilliantly at Minorca, with the war against Prussia, for which Elizabeth was clamouring. Negotiations for a still closer union between Austria and France were pressed on, and Kaunitz hoped that in 1757 all would be ready.