The statesmen at Vienna valued the Prussian alliance enough to employ Grumbkow and the Austrian ministers at Berlin to hoodwink Frederick William. As we have seen, they lavished pocket-money and sacrificed a bride in the hope of securing ascendancy over his son. But they blundered greatly when to please England and thereby to further the Pragmatic Sanction, they bade the King break off a marriage which all the world knew was fixed for the very next day, and they blundered still more when to please France and Holland with the same end in view they withdrew the promise of supporting him in Jülich-Berg. In 1732 Frederick William, for the only time in his life, met Charles VI. face to face and the truth with regard to the relations between Hapsburg and Hohenzollern began to dawn upon him. All his life he had been the vassal of an Emperor whom he had imagined as a German overlord, heir to the dignity of the Cæsars, who when the time was ripe would look with paternal complacency upon the Prussian claims. The vision faded and revealed a rival monarch, pompous, contemptuous, and shifty. The shock of disillusionment was terrible, but before his death he saw clearly. Once, it is said, he pointed to Frederick with the words, “There stands one who will avenge me.” It is certain that with failing breath he warned his son against the policy of Vienna. Thus, even supposing that Frederick’s view of politics had been no wider than his father’s, that he had come to the throne resolved merely to keep up a great army and to win Jülich-Berg, he would none the less have possessed remarkable freedom of action. In foreign politics he was fettered by only one great treaty, that of Berlin (December, 1728), by which Prussia undertook to maintain the Pragmatic Sanction. But it was possible to contend that this agreement, which was made in secret to secure the Emperor’s assistance in Jülich-Berg, became void in 1739, when Austria entered into conflicting engagements with France.