He would do as his uncle did. He would laugh at us. He would call us a trafficking, commercial nation, who thought by a quantity of guineas to engage him to overlook the true interests of his people, and he would spurn the bribe. In the renewal then of this bloody lease, it surely became us to look back to the last campaigns, and see where the fatal errors lay by which our efforts had been ineffectual. One obvious cause of the failures was the difference that subsisted between the Austrians and Prussians. They hated each other. Did they not now hate each other? Did this treaty reconcile them? Austria was not even mentioned in it.[1] What greater prospects, then, did this subsidy treaty open? Were the allies more firmly united? He could take upon himself to say, that the Austrians and the Prussians were at a greater distance than ever, not merely the armies, but the Courts. The Empress of Russia too, with her promised inundation of Cossacks, where was she? In plain English, she was off, she had stolen a march. Men were not ignorant of the diabolical transactions that were passing at the other end of Europe."[2]
The King of Prussia, it is needless to say, accepted the English subsidy, but before the end of the year, emulating the example of the penurious German prelate immortalized by Dryden, who accepted a large sum from Charles II. for sending his troops to attack the Dutch, and a still larger sum from the States-General for keeping them at home, Frederic William entered into negotiations with France, signed the Treaty of Basel, and then, with unblushing effrontery, poured his troops, armed and equipped by English money, into Poland. Spain shortly after followed the example set by Prussia and made peace; while Holland, under the title of the Batavian Republic, found herself transferred from the number of the allies to that of the enemies of England. The conduct of the Court of Vienna, the remaining ally of England, for Russia could not be relied upon for any real support, was little better than that of the Court of Berlin. The operations
