That Frederick could have had any real confidence in these measures, it is difficult to believe. It is true that in England the Hanoverian party was no longer in power; but George II. was bent upon the war, and Carteret's influence was still supreme; moreover, popular feeling, while demanding a change in the direction of the war, was by no means in favour of its abandonment. Whatever the dispositions of the English ministry, from Maria Theresa there was nothing to hope. Indeed the whole plan was a counsel of despair. Frederick had everything to gain and absolutely nothing to offer; he had incensed the whole of the Austrian party; and if there were no motives of interest to aid him, he could scarcely trust to motives of charity. Indeed the whole situation is summed up in some words of Chesterfield to the Prussian minister at the Hague: "I understand," he said, "the truth is you ask everything and you offer nothing, for Silesia is no longer yours, since you have yourselves torn up the treaty which gave it you."[307] It is easy to see the very natural motives which actuated Frederick in the adoption of his policy.[308] On the 31st of January, before the measures contemplated by the French Government had yet been communicated to him, he wrote to Louis XV. describing the position of their cause in Germany in terms of very real concern. He spoke of the utter dejection into which their allies had been plunged by the death of the Emperor, and of the favourable positions secured by the Austrian party; and he declared that only by the immediate reinforcement of the French army in Bavaria could the young Elector be prevented from "throwing himself into the arms of the Queen of Hungary." It was probably with some surprise and not a little relief that he received the news of the French determination to continue the war.[309] He was already, as we have seen, in communication with London and the Hague; but he could not help feeling how slender was his hope in the intervention of the maritime powers; and he was wise enough to know that peace, when it came, would be the less precarious for being secured by a successful campaign. That this was his feeling in the matter is clear from the attitude he maintained towards France during the next two months. While hoping desperately for the intervention of England, he neglected no opportunity of concerting measures for the future of the war. Until the re-opening of the campaign in Flanders, Louis XV. was besieged with letters, memoirs, requisitions of all sorts, demonstrating with unfaltering precision the critical positions which had to be maintained, and insisting upon the only measures by which the French policy could be carried to success, and the French allies preserved from ruin. He made it clear[310] that a majority in the Electoral Diet could only be secured, and the influence of the Austrian party destroyed, by the most vigorous action on the part of the two French armies in Bavaria and on the Main.