ween the empress-queen and the czarina. Accordingly, these
two powers did, in fact, conclude a defensive alliance at Petersburgh in
the course of the ensuing year; but the body, or ostensible part of this
treaty, was composed merely with a view to conceal from the knowledge of
the public six secret articles, the fourth of which was levelled singly
against Prussia, according to the exact copy of it which appeared among
the documents. In this article, the empress-queen of Hungary and Bohemia
sets out with a protestation, that she will religiously observe the
treaty of Dresden; but explains her real way of thinking upon the
subject, a little lower, in the following terms: "If the king of
Prussia should be the first to depart from this peace, by attacking
either her majesty the empress-queen of Hungary and Bohemia, or her
majesty the empress of Russia, or even the republic of Poland; in all
these cases, the rights of the empress-queen to Silesia and the county
of Glatz would again take place, and recover their full effect; the
two contracting parties should mutually assist each other with sixty
thousand men to achieve these conquests." The king observes upon this
article, that every war which can arise between him and Russia, or the
republic of Poland, would be looked upon as a manifest infraction of the
peace of Dresden, and a revival of the rights of the house of Austria
to Silesia; though neither Russia nor the republic of Poland is at all
concerned in the treaty of Dresden; and though the latter, with which
the king lived in the most intimate friendship, was not even in alliance
with the court of Vienna; that, according to the principles of the law
of nature, received among all civilized nations, the most the court of
Vienna could be authorized to do in such cases, would be to send those
succours to her allies which are due to them by treaties, without her
having the least pretence on that account, to free herself from the
particular engagements subsisting between her and the king: he appealed,
therefore, to the judgment of the impartial world, whether in this
secret article the contracting powers had kept within the bounds of a
defensive alliance; or whether this article did not rather contain a
plan of an offensive alliance against the king of Prussia. He affirmed
it was obvious, from this article, that the court of Vienna had prepared
three pretences for the recovery of Silesia; and that she thought to
attain her end,