Other difficulties beset the Prussian monarch. Want of work had driven the weavers of Silesia to a state of frenzy and tumult almost resembling a _Jacquerie_; and there and elsewhere serfs and peasants talked openly of casting off the restraints and burdens of Feudalism. In such a case the veriest autocrat must pause before he commits his country to the risks of a loan (that of 1792 had exhausted Prussia's credit), or to a campaign where the losses were certain and the gains doubtful. On this last topic various schemes had been bandied to and fro between Berlin and Vienna. The debt of honour certainly bade Frederick William help to secure to his rival a counterpart to Prussia's acquisitions in Poland; but, apart from this consideration and the need of stamping out the French pest in the Rhineland, the politicians of Berlin found few reasons for prolonging the war. What wonder, then, that they set on foot intrigues with the regicides of Paris? Marshal Moellendorf, the commander whom Frederick William substituted for the weary and disgusted Duke of Brunswick, proved to be a partisan of peace.[341] Royalist at heart, but beset by advisers and mistresses who fanned his jealousy of Austria and love of ease, Frederick William wavered under the whims of the hour or the counsels of the last comer. Malmesbury thus summed up the question now at issue in his letter to Pitt of 9th January 1794: "Can we do without the King of Prussia or can we not? If we can, he is not worth the giving of a guinea for. If we cannot, I am afraid we cannot give too many." Malmesbury saw no means of keeping Frederick William steady up to the end of the war. Pitt and Grenville, however, devised the following expedient. They offered the sum of L2,000,000 for bringing 100,000 Prussians into the field. Of this sum Great Britain would furnish two fifths (or L800,000), and Austria and Holland each one fifth, the last fifth being advanced by Prussia herself until she reimbursed herself from France at the general peace. The device was suggestive of that of the rustic who tempts his beast of burden onwards by dangling a choice vegetable before his nose.