The civilities of the great are never thrown away.  The soldiers would naturally follow such a leader with alacrity; especially because they expected no opposition:  but human expectations are frequently deceived.

Entering thus suddenly into a country which he was supposed rather likely to protect than to invade, he acted for some time with absolute authority; but, supposing that this submission would not always last, he endeavoured to persuade the queen to a cession of Silesia, imagining that she would easily be persuaded to yield what was already lost.  He, therefore, ordered his minister to declare, at Vienna, “that he was ready to guarantee all the German dominions of the house of Austria; that he would conclude a treaty with Austria, Russia, and the maritime powers; that he would endeavour that the duke of Lorrain should be elected emperour, and believed that he could accomplish it; that he would immediately advance to the queen two millions of florins; that, in recompense for all this, he required Silesia to be yielded to him.”

These seem not to be the offers of a prince very much convinced of his own right.  He afterwards moderated his claim, and ordered his minister to hint at Vienna, that half of Silesia would content him.

The queen answered, that though the king alleged, as his reason for entering Silesia, the danger of the Austrian territories from other pretenders, and endeavoured to persuade her to give up part of her possessions for the preservation of the rest, it was evident that he was the first and only invader, and that, till he entered in a hostile manner, all her estates were unmolested.

To his promises of assistance she replied, “that she set a high value on the king of Prussia’s friendship; but that he was already obliged to assist her against her invaders, both by the golden bull, and the pragmatick sanction, of which he was a guarantee, and that, if these ties were of no force she knew not what to hope from other engagements.”

Of his offers of alliances with Russia and the maritime powers, she observed, that it could be never fit to alienate her dominions for the consolidation of an alliance formed only to keep them entire.

With regard to his interest in the election of an emperour, she expressed her gratitude in strong terms; but added, that the election ought to be free, and that it must be necessarily embarrassed by contentions thus raised in the heart of the empire.  Of the pecuniary assistance proposed, she remarks, that no prince ever made war to oblige another to take money, and that the contributions already levied in Silesia exceed the two millions, offered as its purchase.

She concluded, that as she values the king’s friendship, she was willing to purchase it by any compliance but the diminution of her dominions, and exhorted him to perform his part in support of the pragmatick sanction.

The king, finding negotiation thus ineffectual, pushed forward his inroads, and now began to show how secretly he could take his measures.  When he called a council of war, he proposed the question in a few words:  all his generals wrote their opinions in his presence upon separate papers, which he carried away, and, examining them in private, formed his resolution, without imparting it otherwise than by his orders.