“I have prescribed,” he said, “the conditions of peace to the Queen of Hungary. She accepts them. Having, therefore, all that I want, I make peace. All the world in my situation would do the same.” “Is it possible, sire,” Marshal Belleisle replied, “that you can dare to abandon the best of your allies, and to deceive so illustrious a monarch as the King of France?” “And you, sir,” responded the king, with an air of great disdain, at the same time placing in his hand the cardinal’s letter, “do you dare to talk to me in this manner?” The marshal glanced his eye over the document, and retired, overwhelmed with confusion. Thus ended the alliance between Prussia and France. “Each party,” writes Frederick, “wished to be more cunning than the other.”[69] In the following terms, Frederick correctly sums up the incidents of the two Silesian campaigns: “Thus was Silesia reunited to the dominions of Prussia. Two years of war sufficed for the conquest of this important province. The treasure which the late king had left was nearly exhausted. But it is a cheap purchase, where whole provinces are bought for seven or eight millions of crowns. The union of circumstances at the moment peculiarly favored this enterprise. It was necessary for it that France should allow itself to be drawn into the war; that Russia should be attacked by Sweden; that, from timidity, the Hanoverians and Saxons should remain inactive; that the successes of the Prussians should be uninterrupted; and that the King of England, the enemy of Prussia, should become, in spite of himself, the instrument of its aggrandizement. What, however, contributed the most to this conquest was an army which had been formed for twenty-two years, by means of a discipline admirable in itself, and superior to the troops of the rest of Europe. Generals, also, who were true patriots, wise and incorruptible ministers, and, finally, a certain good fortune which often accompanies youth, and often deserts a more advanced age.”[70] There was no end to the panegyrics which Voltaire, in his correspondence with Frederick, now lavished upon him. He greeted him with the title of Frederick the Great. “How glorious,” he exclaimed, “is my king, the youngest of kings, and the grandest! A king who carries in the one hand an all-conquering sword, but in the other a blessed olive-branch, and is the arbiter of Europe for peace or war.” Frederick, having obtained all that, for the present, he could hope to obtain, deemed it for his interest to attempt to promote the peace of Europe. His realms needed consolidating, his army recruiting, his treasury replenishing. But he found it much easier to stir up the elements of strife than to allay them.