t in ten
days after the convention of Closter-Seven, he had concluded a treaty
with the courts of Vienna and Versailles; so that the negotiation must
have been begun before that convention took place. On the twentieth day
of September, his minister at Vienna, by virtue of full powers from the
duke of Brunswick, accepted and signed the conditions which the French
king and his Austrian ally thought proper to impose. These imported,
that his most christian majesty should keep possession of the cities
of Brunswick and Wolfenbuttel during the war, and make use of the
artillery, arms, and military stores deposited in their arsenals:
that the duke's forces, on their return from the camp of the duke of
Cumberland, should be disbanded and disarmed; and take an oath that
they should not, during the present war, serve against the king or his
allies: that the duke should be permitted to maintain a battalion
of foot, and two squadrons of horse, for the guard of his person
and castles; but the regulations made by mareschal Richelieu and the
intendant of his army, should subsist on their present footing: that the
duke should furnish his contingent in money and troops, agreeably to the
laws of the empire: that his forces should immediately join those which
the Germanic body had assembled; and that he should order his minister
at Ratisbon to vote conformably to the resolutions of the diet, approved
and confirmed by the emperor. In consideration of all these concessions,
the duke was restored to the favour of the French king, who graciously
promised that neither his revenues nor his treasure should be touched,
nor the administration of justice invaded; and that nothing further
should be demanded, but winter-quarters for the regiments which should
pass that season in the country of Brunswick. How scrupulously soever
the duke might have intended to observe the articles of this treaty,
his intentions were frustrated by the conduct of his brother prince
Ferdinand, who, being invested with the command of the Hanoverian army,
and ordered to resume the operations of war against the enemy, detained
the troops of Brunswick, as well as his nephew the hereditary prince,
notwithstanding the treaty which his brother had signed, and the
injunctions which he had laid upon his son to quit the army, and make
a tour to Holland, The duke wrote an expostulatory letter to prince
Ferdinand, pathetically complaining that he had seduced his troops,
decoyed his s