ties which the Duke of Brunswick had
so haltingly fulfilled. The King seemed rather pleased than otherwise at
the Austrian reverses in the north of Alsace, but by no means indisposed
to renew the attack upon France, always provided that England paid him a
sufficient subsidy. He assured the envoy that his _chef-d'oeuvre_, the
Triple Alliance of 1788, was still a reality, but he declared, on the
faith of an honest man, that the state of Prussia's finances would not
enable him to face a third campaign. In point of fact, out of the
reserve fund of 80,000,000 crowns which Frederick the Great had handed
on, only 20,000,000 or perhaps only 14,000,000 remained in the early
days of 1794.[340]

Other difficulties beset the Prussian monarch. Want of work had driven
the weavers of Silesia to a state of frenzy and tumult almost resembling
a _Jacquerie_; and there and elsewhere serfs and peasants talked openly
of casting off the restraints and burdens of Feudalism. In such a case
the veriest autocrat must pause before he commits his country to the
risks of a loan (that of 1792 had exhausted Prussia's credit), or to a
campaign where the losses were certain and the gains doubtful. On this
last topic various schemes had been bandied to and fro between Berlin
and Vienna. The debt of honour certainly bade Frederick William help to
secure to his rival a counterpart to Prussia's acquisitions in Poland;
but, apart from this consideration and the need of stamping out the
French pest in the Rhineland, the politicians of Berlin found few
reasons for prolonging the war. What wonder, then, that they set on foot
intrigues with the regicides of Paris? Marshal Moellendorf, the commander
whom Frederick William substituted for the weary and disgusted Duke of
Brunswick, proved to be a partisan of peace.[341]

Royalist at heart, but beset by advisers and mistresses who fanned his
jealousy of Austria and love of ease, Frederick William wavered under
the whims of the hour or the counsels of the last comer. Malmesbury thus
summed up the question now at issue in his letter to Pitt of 9th January
1794: "Can we do without the King of Prussia or can we not? If we can,
he is not worth the giving of a guinea for. If we cannot, I am afraid we
cannot give too many." Malmesbury saw no means of keeping Frederick
William steady up to the end of the war. Pitt and Grenville, however,
devised the following expedient. They offered the sum of L2,000,000 for
bringing 100,