The plan of dismembering Poland because the Turks were defeated was, as Frederick knew full well, distasteful to both of the Powers whose complicity he desired. Russia was strongly opposed to any aggrandisement of Prussia to the eastward. Austria, besides being averse to the aggrandisement of her rival in any quarter, preferred any lands to the Polish and any method to that of naked force. Yet the King, while professing that he was an old man whose brain was worn out, secured the co-operation of Russia within a year (15th January, 1772), and of Austria less than eight months later. The triumph of his diplomacy was enhanced by the fact that he would have been completely foiled if Austria had consented to join Russia in dismembering the Turk. As it was, he was permitted to enjoy the spectacle of the Queen struggling with her conscience and upbraiding herself, her Chancellor, and her son. She complained that they had aimed at two incompatible objects at once, “to act in the Prussian fashion and at the same time to preserve the semblance of honesty.” The prospective additions to her domains were to her odious, since they were “bought at the price of honour, at the price of the glory of the monarchy, at the price of the good faith and religion, which are our peculiar possession.” “She is always weeping, but always annexing,” sneered the triumphant King. On August 5, 1772, Austria signed the Treaty of Partition. By agreeing upon their demands the three Powers had accomplished the hardest part of their enterprise. The strength of Poland had been wasted by the anarchy which Russia and Prussia had studiously conserved. Since 1768, Romanists and Dissidents had been engaged in a bloody and desolating war in which Russia, the protector of the Greek Church, played the decisive part. No party among the Poles still retained sufficient energy to oppose in arms the claims to Polish provinces which, in order to save appearances, were formulated by the Powers. Frederick even put forward a double title to Pomerellen, alleging that it had been wrongfully alienated by the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1311, and that if he as suzerain consented to overlook this irregularity, he would still be entitled to the province as heir, since 1637, to the elder branch of the House of Pomerania. He claimed Great Poland as heir of the Emperor Sigismund, who had pawned it to the Teutonic Order, from which the Poles had wrested it by force. The remainder of his share was due to him as compensation for the loss of the revenues of these two provinces for so many centuries.