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hort broadsiding, made prizes of them. And now, on this Braddock Disaster, orders went, "To seize and detain all French Ships whatsoever, till satisfaction were had." And, before the end of this Year, about "800 French ships (value, say, 700,000 pounds)" were seized accordingly, where seizable on their watery ways. Which the French ("our own conduct in America being so undeniably proper") characterized as utter piracy and robbery;--and getting no redress upon it, by demand in that style, had to take it as no better than meaning Open War Declared. [Paris, December 21st, 1755, Minister Rouille's Remonstrance, with menace "UNLESS--:" London, January 13th, 1756, Secretary Fox's reply, "WELL THEN, NO!" Due official "Declaration of War" followed: on the English part, "17th May, 1756;" "9th June," on the French part.] Chapter XV.--ANTI-PRUSSIAN WAR-SYMPTOMS: FRIEDRICH VISIBLE FOR A MOMENT. The Burning of AKAKIA, and those foolish Maupertuis-Voltaire Duellings (by syringe and pistol) had by no means been Friedrich's one concern, at the time Voltaire went off. Precisely in those same months, Carnival 1752-1753, King Friedrich had, in a profoundly private manner, come upon certain extensive Anti-Prussian Symptoms, Austrian, Russian, Saxon, of a most dangerous, abstruse, but at length indubitable sort; and is, ever since, prosecuting his investigation of them, as a thing of life and death to him! Symptoms that there may well be a THIRD Silesian War ripening forward, inevitable, and of weightier and fiercer quality than ever. So the Symptoms indicate to Friedrich, with a fatally increasing clearness. And, of late, he has to reflect withal: "If these French-English troubles bring War, our Symptoms will be ripe!" As, in fact, they proved to be. King Friedrich's investigations and decisions on this matter will be touched upon, farther on: but readers can take, in the mean time, the following small Documentary Piece as Note of Preparation. The facts shadowed forth are of these Years now current (1752-1755), though this judicial Deposition to the Facts is of ulterior date (1757). In the course of 1756, as will well appear farther on, it became manifest to the Saxon Court and to all the world that somebody had been playing traitor in the Dresden Archives. Somebody, especially in the Foreign Department; copying furtively, and imparting to Prussia, Despatches of the most secret, thrice-secret and thrice-dangerous nature, whic
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