Greatly elated by this unequivocal tender of aid, King George wrote to the empress in his own hand, thanking her for the proffer; and Gunning at the same time was instructed to ask for twenty thousand Russians, and enter into a treaty formally engaging their services. If he could not secure twenty thousand, he was to get all he could. But Gunning's negotiations were to fail completely. To his surprise and chagrin, when he opened the subject of hiring Russian troops, the empress and Panin answered with dignity that it was impossible to accommodate him; that Russia's relations with Sweden, Poland, and Turkey were unsettled, and that it was beneath her station to interfere in a domestic rebellion which no foreign Power had recognized. This sudden change in Catherine's attitude, which without doubt was the result of court intrigue,[7] filled the English king with mortification and disappointment, and compelled him to seek assistance where he finally obtained it--in the petty states of the "Hessian" princes. [Footnote 7: Two views have been expressed in regard to this. The English historian Adolphus charges Frederick of Prussia and secret French agents with having changed Catherine's mind, and he gives apparently good authority for the statement. The secret seems to have been known in English circles very soon after Catherine's refusal. On November 10th Shelburne said in the House of Lords: "There are Powers in Europe who will not suffer such a body of Russians to be transported to America. I speak from information. The Ministers know what I mean. Some power has already interfered to stop the success of the Russian negotiation." Mr. Bancroft, on the other hand, concludes (Vol. V., Chap. L., Rev. Ed.) that "no foreign influence whatever, not even that of the King of Prussia, had any share in determining the empress;" and Vergennes is quoted as saying that he could not reconcile Catherine's "elevation of soul with the dishonorable idea of trafficking in the blood of her subjects." But since Catherine, four years later, in 1779, proposed to offer to give England effective assistance in America in order to be assured of her aid in return against the Turks, it may be questioned how far "elevation of soul" prompted the decision in 1775. (See Eaton's "Turkish Empire," p. 409.) In view of England's relations with most of the Continental Powers at that time, Shelburne and Adolphus have probably given the correct explanation of the matter.]