It is said that Suess on this occasion foretold the future greatness of the Prince, and pretended to extract his prophecy from the Cabala. It is certain that Charles Alexander was very superstitious, and believed in astrology, and it is by no means improbable that Suess practised on his credulity. He had at his disposal plenty of means of learning whether the young Princess of Würtemberg was likely soon to become a mother--her husband had died in November--and he was very well aware that the old Duke was failing. The loan made by Suess came acceptably to Prince Charles Alexander just as a Jewish banker, Isaac Simon of Landau, with whom he had hitherto dealt, had declined to make further advances. When the Prince returned to Belgrade, where he resided as stadtholder of Servia, under the Emperor, he was fully convinced that he had discovered in Suess an able, intelligent, and devoted servant. His wife was a princess of Thurn and Taxis, and it is possible that Suess, who had been for some time about that court at Ratisbon, had used her influence, and his acquaintance with her family affairs, to push his interests with the Prince, her husband. On October 31, 1733, died the old Duke Eberhardt Louis, and Charles Alexander at once hastened from Belgrade to Vienna, where, in an interview with the Emperor, without any consultation with the Estates, or consideration for the treasury of Würtemberg, he promised Leopold a contingent of 12,000 men to aid in the war against France. Then he went on to Stuttgart. Poor Würtemberg groaned under the burdens that had been imposed on it; the favourites had been allowed to do with it what they liked; and Charles Alexander's first public declaration on entering his capital was: "From henceforth I will reign over you immediately, and myself see to the reform of every grievance, and put away from my people every burden which has galled its shoulders. If my people cry to me, my ears shall be open to hear their call. I will not endure the disorder which has penetrated everywhere, into every department of the State; my own hand shall sweep it away." And as a token of his sincerity he ordered every office-holder in Church and State to put on paper and present to him a schedule of every payment that had been made, by way of fee and bribe, to obtain his office. This was published on December 28, 1733. The older and wiser heads were shaken; the Duke, they said, was only heaping trouble on his shoulders; let the past be buried. He replied, "I must get to the bottom of all this iniquity. I must get inured to work." But the hero of Belgrade had all his life been more accustomed to the saddle than the desk, and to command in battle--a much simpler matter--than to rule in peace. The amount of grievances brought before him, the innumerable scandals, peculations, bewildered him. The people were wild with enthusiasm, but the entire bureaucracy was filled with sullen and dogged opposition.