But there was still greater difficulty involved, for all these princes, except the Czar, were then leagued against Louis XIV, whose power had for some time been as formidable to the Empire as that of Charles himself. At the beginning of the century Germany found herself hard pressed between the French on the south and the Swedes on the north. The French had crossed the Danube, and the Swedes the Oder; if their victorious forces had united, the Empire would have been lost. But the same fatality that had ruined Sweden had also humbled France; yet some resources still remained to Sweden, and Louis carried on the war with vigour, though unsuccessfully. If Pomerania and the Duchy of Bremen became the seat of war, it was to be feared that the Empire would suffer, and being weakened on that side would be the less able to withstand Louis. To prevent this, the Princes of Germany, Queen Anne of England, and the States of Holland, concluded at the Hague, in 1709, one of the most extraordinary treaties ever signed. It was stipulated by these powers that the seat of the war should not be in Pomerania, nor any other German State, but that Charles might be attacked by his enemies anywhere else. The King of Poland and the Czar themselves agreed to this treaty, and had a clause inserted which was as strange as the treaty itself, to the effect that the 12,000 Swedes in Pomerania should not leave it to defend their other provinces. To safeguard the treaty it was proposed to raise an army, which was to encamp on the Oder, to maintain this imaginary neutrality. It was an unheard-of thing, to levy an army to prevent war! Those who were paying the forces were, for the most part, very much concerned to bring about the war they were pretending to prevent. The army was, by the treaty, to consist of the troops of the Emperor, the King of Prussia, the Elector of Hanover, the Landgrave of Hesse, and the Bishop of Munster. This project was, as might be expected, not carried through. The princes who were to furnish their quota for the army contributed nothing; not two regiments were formed. There was much talk of neutrality, but no one observed it; and all the Northern princes who had any controversy with the King of Sweden were left at full liberty to dispute who should have his spoils.