In Europe the ground was trembling already with the coming earthquake.
Such smothered discords, such animosities, ambitions, jealousies,
possessed the rival governments; such entanglements of treaties and
alliances, offensive or defensive, open or secret,--that a blow at one
point shook the whole fabric. Hanover, like the heel of Achilles, was
the vulnerable part for which England was always trembling. Therefore
she made a defensive treaty with Prussia, by which each party bound
itself to aid the other, should its territory be invaded. England thus
sought a guaranty against France, and Prussia against Russia. She had
need. Her King, Frederic the Great, had drawn upon himself an avalanche.
Three women--two empresses and a concubine--controlled the forces of the
three great nations, Austria, Russia, and France; and they all hated
him: Elizabeth of Russia, by reason of a distrust fomented by secret
intrigue and turned into gall by the biting tongue of Frederic himself,
who had jibed at her amours, compared her to Messalina, and called her
"_infame catin du Nord_;" Maria Theresa of Austria, because she saw in
him a rebellious vassal of the Holy Roman Empire, and, above all,
because he had robbed her of Silesia; Madame de Pompadour, because when
she sent him a message of compliment, he answered, "_Je ne la connais
pas_," forbade his ambassador to visit her, and in his mocking wit
spared neither her nor her royal lover.
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