dgrave of Hesse-Cassel,
and the elector palatine. They engaged to preserve the constitution of
the empire, according to the treaty of Westphalia, and to support
the emperor in his rank and dignity. They agreed to employ their
good offices with the queen of Hungary, that she might be induced to
acknowledge the emperor, to restore his hereditary dominions, and
give up the archives of the empire that were in her possession. They
guaranteed to each other their respective territories; the disputes
about the succession of the late emperor they referred to the decision
of the states of the empire; they promised to assist one another in case
of being attacked; and they invited the king of Poland, the elector of
Cologn, and the bishop of Liege, to accede to this treaty. Such was the
confederacy that broke all the measures which had been concerted between
the king of Great Britain and her Hungarian majesty, for the operations
of the campaign. In the meantime, the French king declared war against
this princess, on pretence that she was obstinately deaf to all terms of
accommodation, and determined to carry the war into the territories
of France. In her counter-declaration, she taxed Louis with having
infringed the most solemn engagement, with respect to the pragmatic
sanction; with having spirited up different pretenders to lay claim to
the succession of the late emperor; with having endeavoured to instigate
the common enemy of Christendom against her; and with having acted the
incendiary in the north of Europe, that the czarina might be prevented
from assisting the house of Austria, while his numerous armies
overspread the empire and desolated her hereditary countries. These
recriminations were literally true. The houses of Bourbon and Austria
have, for many centuries, been the common disturbers and plagues of
Europe.

PROGRESS OF THE FRENCH KING IN THE NETHERLANDS

The king of France, though in himself pacific and unenterprising,
was stimulated by his ministry to taste the glory of conquest in the
Netherlands, where he had assembled an army of one hundred and twenty
thousand men, provided with a very formidable train of artillery. The
chief command was vested in the mareschal count de Saxe, who possessed
great military talents, and proved to be one of the most fortunate
generals of the age in which he lived. The allied forces, consisting
of English, Hanoverians, Dutch, and Austrians, to the number of seventy
thousand eff