Gradually the prospect grew clearer. Almost beyond the hopes of the Queen her alliance with France survived the double shock of Rossbach and Leuthen. At the beginning of February Louis promised to send 24,000 men into Bohemia. Since his encounter with Soubise, Frederick regarded the French as brigands rather than warriors, but their onset compelled him to place a sturdy watch-dog in the West. This part was played by Ferdinand of Brunswick, who drove them across the Rhine before March was over. Another foe, the Swedes, were even less considerable. Frederick jeered at them as “cautious people who run away eighty miles so as not to be taken,” and assured his sister, the Queen of Sweden, of his willingness to grant them peace. So long as France was willing to pay subsidies, however, the Swedes were willing to provide 30,000 men. They still occupied their “bastion,” Pomerania, in force, and therefore Lehwaldt must still act as the Ferdinand of the North. The King himself proposed to astonish Europe by his dealings with the Austrians and Imperialists. From his ally he might look for the same assistance as in the previous year. He laboured in vain to persuade the Sea Powers that the Protestant cause and their own interests demanded that they should attack France with their own troops. But in April Pitt undertook to furnish an annual subsidy of £670,000, and for four years the money was punctually paid. [Illustration: Map for the SILESIAN AND SEVEN YEARS WARS _G. P. Putnam’s Sons, London & New York._] With Silesia at his back, the French and Swedes held in check, and England in close alliance, Frederick’s prospects for the campaign of 1758 might seem almost brilliant. He had some 206,000 men under arms. Ready money was not plentiful, but Frederick procured it in a thoroughly Prussian fashion—unscrupulous but practical. His own subjects he spared so far as possible. At times indeed he treated even them in the manner of his father. In January, 1758, the merchants of Breslau answered “Impossible” to a royal demand that they should advance 300,000 thalers to the Jews who had charge of the coinage. Frederick’s minister reported the fact, adding that the Jews enjoyed no credit in the mercantile world. The King’s annotation, scrawled in German on the back of the report, is still treasured in the archives pf the General Staff at Berlin, It runs as follows: “I will cook something for the President if he don’t get the money out of those merchants at once without arguing.”