support the power they dreaded: accustomed as they were to the influence of a family in which the Empire had so long been in a manner hereditary; and overawed by the appearances of a confederacy, the most formidable the world had ever yet seen. Accordingly the King of Prussia was condemned for contumacy, and the Fiscal had orders to notify to him that he was put under the ban of the Empire, and adjudged fallen from all the dignities and possessions which he held under it. The circles of the Empire were ordered to furnish their contingents of men and money to put this sentence in execution; but the contingents were collected slowly, the troops were badly composed, and probably this army had never been able to act if it had not been for the assistance afforded under the Prince de Soubise.
The Austrians, who were principals in this quarrel, were not behind their auxiliaries in the greatness of their preparations; they made the most strenuous efforts, by which they assembled a body of upwards of 100,000 men in Bohemia, and committed the command to Prince Charles of Lorrain, assisted by M. Brown. In the North all things threatened the King of Prussia. The Czarina, true to her resentments and her engagements, had sent a body of 60,000 men, commanded by M. Apraxin, who were in full march to invade the ducal Prussia, whilst a strong fleet was equipped in the Baltic, to co-operate with that army. Although the King of Sweden was allied in blood and inclinations to his Prussian majesty, yet the jealousy which the Senate entertained of their sovereign; the hope of recovering their ancient possessions in Pomerania by means of the prefent troubles, and in fine their old attachment to France, newly cemented by intrigues and subsidies, made their ill inclinations to the cause of Prussia more than suspicious. Hitherto indeed nothing more than the tendency of their councils were fully known. The Duke of Mecklenbourg took the same party, and agreed to join the Swedish army, when it should be assembled, with 6000 men; a proceeding which he has since had reason to repent bitterly. Thus were the forces of five mighty states[1], each of which had in their turn been a terror to all Europe, united to reduce the heir of the Marquisses of Brandenbourg; and in such a point of danger and glory had the great and formidable abilities of his Prussian majesty placed him, with little, in comparison, that could enable him to sustain the violence of so many shocks, except what those abilities applied. But his astonishing oeconomy, the incomparable order of the finances, the discipline of his armies beyond all praise, a sagacity that foresaw every thing, a vigilance that attended every thing, a constancy that no labour could subdue, a courage that no danger could dismay, an intuitive glance that catches the decisive moment, all these seemed to form a sort of balance to the vast weight against him, turned the wishes of his friends into hopes, and made them depend upon resources that are not within the power of calculation.
The only army that appeared in his favour was a body of between 30 and 40,000 Hanoverians and Hessians, who with some reinforcements of his own troops, formed an army of observation, commanded
- ↑ Austria, Russia, France, Sweden, the Empire.
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