“The Empress abandoned England and Holland to the resentment of France, and the court of Versailles sacrificed Prussia to the ambition of the Empress. The latter proposes to imitate the conduct of Augustus, who used the power of his colleagues to aggrandise himself and then overthrew them one by one. The court of Vienna has three designs towards which her present steps are tending—to establish her despotism in the Empire, to ruin the Protestant cause, and to reconquer Silesia. She regards the King of Prussia as the great obstacle to her vast designs.” Thus Frederick claimed to be the champion of the balance of power and of Protestantism, and proposed to solicit not only Denmark and Holland, but even the Turk and the Empire for aid. His appeal to England concluded with the assurance that Prussia was not cast down. “Three things can restore the equilibrium of Europe—a close and intimate connexion between our two courts, earnest efforts to form new alliances and to foil the schemes of the enemy, and boldness to face the greatest dangers.” A paper of this kind, brilliant, concise, astute, and even eloquent, is worth many thousand lines of the rhymed platitudes by which the author set greater store. We might expect to hear that it was followed at once by a spring at the throat of the enemy. It is true that Kaunitz, who was not yet ready for war, and who wished that if war must come Frederick should be the aggressor, held the Russians back. But he was pressing forward warlike preparations in Bohemia and Moravia, and Frederick was not likely to ignore the advantage of striking swiftly and of waging war outside his own borders. The military men, when they saw the evidence in the King’s hands, were all for action. “Schwerin,” says Carlyle, “much a Cincinnatus since we last saw him, has laid down his plough again, a fervid ‘little Marlborough’ of seventy-two.” He urged the immediate seizure of Saxony, as a base of operations against Bohemia. Cooler heads, indeed, counselled Frederick to have patience. On behalf of England, a Power always singularly dispassionate when the interests of a German ally were at stake, Mitchell urged that many chances of war and politics might swiftly change the face of affairs, and that to attack Austria would give unnecessary provocation to France. The faithful Podewils ventured to spend a summer afternoon at Potsdam in labouring to turn the King from his purpose. In his letter of July 22, 1756, to Eichel, he speaks of the “respectful freedom” with which he begged the King not to drive France and Russia to do what they had no desire to do that year if Austria were not attacked. Let him rather use the ten months’ grace before the next campaign in securing allies within and without the Empire, in trying to reconcile France and England, and in preparing an imposing defence.