Voltaire, in his late history, has asserted, that a large sum was raised for her succour, by voluntary subscriptions of the English ladies.  It is the great failing of a strong imagination to catch greedily at wonders.  He was misinformed, and was, perhaps, unwilling to learn, by a second inquiry, a truth less splendid and amusing.  A contribution was, by news-writers, upon their own authority, fruitlessly, and, I think, illegally proposed.  It ended in nothing.  The parliament voted a supply, and five hundred thousand pounds were remitted to her.

It has been always the weakness of the Austrian family to spend in the magnificence of empire, those revenues which should be kept for its defence.  The court is splendid, but the treasury is empty; and, at the beginning of every war, advantages are gained against them, before their armies can be assembled and equipped.

The English money was to the Austrians, as a shower to a field, where all the vegetative powers are kept unactive by a long continuance of drought.  The armies, which had hitherto been hid in mountains and forests, started out of their retreats; and, wherever the queen’s standard was erected, nations scarcely known by their names, swarmed immediately about it.  An army, especially a defensive army, multiplies itself.  The contagion of enterprise spreads from one heart to another.  Zeal for a native, or detestation of a foreign sovereign, hope of sudden greatness or riches, friendship or emulation between particular men, or, what are perhaps more general and powerful, desire of novelty and impatience of inactivity, fill a camp with adventurers, add rank to rank, and squadron to squadron.

The queen had still enemies on every part, but she now, on every part, had armies ready to oppose them.  Austria was immediately recovered; the plains of Bohemia were filled with her troops, though the fortresses were garrisoned by the French.  The Bavarians were recalled to the defence of their own country, now wasted by the incursions of troops that were called barbarians, greedy enough of plunder, and daring, perhaps, beyond the rules of war, but otherwise not more cruel than those whom they attacked.  Prince Lobkowitz, with one army, observed the motions of Broglio, the French general, in Bohemia; and prince Charles with another, put a stop to the advances of the king of Prussia.

It was now the turn of the Prussians to retire.  They abandoned Olmutz, and left behind them part of their cannon and their magazines.  And the king, finding that Broglio could not long oppose prince Lobkowitz, hastened into Bohemia to his assistance; and having received a reinforcement of twenty-three thousand men, and taken the castle of Glatz, which, being built upon a rock scarcely accessible, would have defied all his power, had the garrison been furnished with provisions, he purposed to join his allies, and prosecute his conquests.

Prince Charles, seeing Moravia thus evacuated by the Prussians, determined to garrison the towns which he had just recovered, and pursue the enemy, who, by the assistance of the French, would have been too powerful for prince Lobkowitz.