Lord Hyndford, however, had witnessed all that passed at Klein Schnellendorf, and would not allow England to be duped by lies. Frederick therefore told him frankly that he intended to set the convention at defiance. The allies, he showed, had 150,000 men against Austria’s 70,000 and could do with her what they would. If she published the convention she would only expose her own folly, and perhaps she would not be believed. Then, besides treating Upper Silesia as his own and laying hands on the adjoining county of Glatz, he ordered the conquest of Moravia. Ere the year was out Schwerin was in Olmütz, the chief town of the North, and it seemed as though the allies would filch yet another province from the Queen. “Alas!” wrote the philosopher-king on one occasion to Voltaire, “trickery, bad faith and double-dealing are the leading feature of most of the men who are at the head of the nations and who ought to set them an example.” Never was the fortitude of Maria Theresa more needed or more illustrious than in these winter months. The earlier gleams of light—Vienna spared and Frederick bought off—only made yet more black the clouds which now gathered over her throne. Her father had flattered himself that he bequeathed to her the support of united Europe. Within a year of his death the greater part of Europe was leagued to despoil her. France, Spain, Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony, the Elector Palatine, the Elector of Cologne formed the coalition, and the accession of Sardinia was the prelude to a severe struggle on the side of Italy. The loss of Bohemia almost without a blow made the Queen well-nigh forgetful of Silesia until the perfidy of Frederick opened the former wound anew. At the same time a revolution at St. Petersburg extinguished for the time being the Austrian influence in Russia and thereby increased the King’s security. Then came the attack upon Moravia, and before the end of January, 1742, the Imperial crown passed from the Hapsburg family by the election of the head of a rival House—Charles Albert of Bavaria. Amid all these disasters, however, the courage of the young Queen, rooted as it was in her belief that right must triumph, remained unshaken. She organised new armies and inspired them with her own spirit. Before the resurgent might of Austria the new-made Emperor sank into impotence. Within a month of his election the Queen recovered her cities on the Danube and overran the hereditary lands of the Bavarian. _Et Cæsar et nihil_ laughed the wags. What would his allies, France, Prussia, and Saxony, do to relieve him?