Of these, the chief was Count Bruhl, the favourite of the King of Poland. This man, whom no merit, or no merit that is known, had recommended to Augustus the Third, governed absolutely, I may say, reigned in Saxony, for the Prince, who hated pomp, and divided his time between his priests and his forests, chose that Bruhl should be his proxy to display that grandeur, which Germans take for empire--and he could not have made a properer choice. As Elector, Bruhl[67] was magnificent, expensive, tawdry, vain;--as Minister, weak and false. He had two or three suits of clothes for every day in the year:--strangers were even carried to see his magazine of shoes! This man, who had mortgaged the revenues of Saxony to support his profusion, and who had prepared nothing but baubles against a Prince that lived in a camp, with the frugality of a common soldier,--this daring trifler aspired to form a league with two mighty Empires, to overturn the throne of Prussia, and pretended to a share in the spoils. At the same time the Councils of Vienna were directed by Count Kaunitz, a man lately returned from an Embassy to Paris, where he had pushed all the luxurious effeminacy of dress and affectation to an excess common to imitators, and of all imitators most common to Germans. I will mention but one instance: it was fashionable to wear little powder: every morning when he dressed, he had the whole air of a room put in agitation with powder, and when announced to be properly impregnated, he just presented himself in it, and received the atoms in equal dispersion over his hair. These were the politicians that took upon them to annihilate the House of Brandenburg at the very period that it was headed by Frederic the Third. I mention them only to show what pismires roused that lion. Yet Kaunitz had parts--Bruhl had no more than just served to govern his master’s none. The tools associated to their plot were such as recommended themselves by activity, cunning, or inveteracy: yet one they had, sensible enough to negotiate a conspiracy, and cool enough to conduct it: his name Count Fleming, a haughty and sullen Saxon, who had been employed in England, and was now at Vienna.