One of Friedrich's most important affairs, at present,--vitally connected with his Army and its furnishings, which is the all-important,--was his Subsidy Treaty with England. It is the third treaty he has signed with England in regard to this War; the second in regard to subsidy for it; and it is the first that takes real practical effect. It had cost difficulty in adjusting, not a little correspondence and management from Mitchell; for the King is very shy about subsidy, though grim necessity prescribes it as inevitable; and his pride, and his reflections on the last Subsidy Treaty, "One Million sterling, Army of Observation, and Fleet in the Baltic," instead of which came Zero and Kloster-Zeven, have made him very sensitive. However, all difficulties are got over; Plenipotentiary Knyphausen, Pitt, Britannic Majesty and everybody striving to be rational and practical; and at London, 11th April, 1758, Subsidy Treaty, admirably brief and to the point, is finished: [In four short Articles; given in _ Helden-Geschichte,_ v. 16, 17.] "That Friedrich shall have Four Million Thalers, that is, 670,000 pounds; payable in London to his order, in October, this Year; which sum Friedrich engages to spend wholly in maintenance and increase of his Army for behoof of the common object;--neither party to dream of making the least shadow of peace or truce without the other." Of Baltic Fleet, there is nothing said; nor, in regard to that, was anything done, this year or afterwards; highly important as it would have been to Friedrich, with the Navies so called of both Sweden and Russia doing their worst upon him. "Why not spare me a small English squadron, and blow these away?" Nor was the why ever made clear to him; the private why being, that Czarish Majesty had, last year, intimated to Britannic, "Any such step on your part will annihilate the now old friendship of Russia and England, and be taken as a direct declaration of War!"--which Britannic Majesty, for commercial and miscellaneous reasons, hoped always might be avoided. Be silent, therefore, on that of Baltic Fleet.