he court of Vienna against his majesty's dominions,
laid him under the necessity of taking proper measures for protecting
his territories and subjects; that for this purpose he could not
forbear taking the disagreeable resolution to enter with his troops
the hereditary dominions of his majesty the king of Poland, elector
of Saxony; but he protested before God and man, that on account of
his personal esteem, and friendship for that prince, he would not have
proceeded to this extremity, had he not been forced to it by the laws
of war, the fatality of the present conjuncture, and the necessity of
providing for the defence and security of his subjects. He reminded
the public of the tenderness with which he had treated the elector of
Saxony, during the campaign of the year one thousand seven hundred and
forty-four, and of the bad consequences resulting to that monarch
from his engagements with the enemies of Prussia. He declared that the
apprehensions of being exposed again to such enterprises, had obliged
him to take those precautions which prudence dictated; but he protested
in the most solemn manner, that he had no hostile views against his
Polish majesty, or his dominions; that his troops did not enter Saxony
as enemies, and he had taken care that they should observe the best
order, and the most exact discipline; that he desired nothing more
ardently than the happy minute that should procure him the satisfaction
of restoring to his Polish majesty his hereditary dominions, which he
had seized only as a sacred depositum. By his minister at Dresden, he
had demanded a free passage for his forces through the Saxon dominions;
and this the king of Poland was ready to grant, with reasonable
limitations, to be settled by commissaries appointed for that purpose.
But these were formalities which did not at all suit with his Prussian
majesty's disposition or design. Even before this requisition was made,
a body of his troops, amounting to fifteen thousand, under the command
of prince Ferdinand, brother to the duke of Brunswick, took possession
of Leipsic on the twentieth day of September. Here he published a
declaration, signifying that it was his Prussian majesty's intention to
consider and defend the inhabitants of that electorate as if they were
his own subjects; and that he had given precise orders to his troops to
observe the most exact discipline. As the first mark of his affection,
he ordered them to provide the army with all s