urance, that she had no
intention to attack him either this year or the next; but he should look
upon an ambiguous answer as a declaration of war; and he called heaven
to witness, that the empress alone would be guilty of the innocent blood
that should be spilt, and all the dismal consequences that would attend
the commission of hostilities.

A declaration of this nature might have provoked a less haughty court
than that of Vienna, and, indeed, seems to have been calculated on
purpose to exasperate the pride of her imperial majesty, whose answer he
soon received to this effect: that his majesty the king of Prussia
had already been employed, for some time, in all kinds of the most
considerable preparations of war, and the most disquieting with regard
to the public tranquillity, when he thought fit to demand explanations
of her majesty, touching the military dispositions that were making in
her dominions; dispositions on which she had not resolved till after
the preparations of his Prussian majesty had been made; that though her
majesty might have declined explaining herself on those subjects, which
required no explanation, she had been pleased to declare, with her own
mouth, to M. de Klingraafe, that the critical state of public affairs
rendered the measures she was taking absolutely necessary for her own
safety, and that of her allies; but that, in other respects, they tended
to the prejudice of no person whatsoever; that her imperial majesty
had undoubtedly a right to form what judgment she pleased on the
circumstances of the times; and likewise that it belonged to none but
herself to estimate her own danger; that her declaration was so clear,
she never imagined it could be thought otherwise; that being accustomed
to receive, as well as to practise, the decorums which sovereigns owe to
each other, she could not hear without astonishment and sensibility
the contents of the memorial now presented by M. de Klingraafe; so
extraordinary, both in the matter and expressions, that she would find
herself under a necessity of transgressing the bounds of that moderation
which she had prescribed to herself, were she to answer the whole of
its contents; nevertheless, she thought proper to declare, that the
information communicated to his Prussian majesty, of an offensive
alliance against him, subsisting between herself and the empress of
Russia, together with the circumstances and pretended stipulations of
that alliance, were absol