In Europe the ground was trembling already with the coming earthquake.  Such smothered discords, such animosities, ambitions, jealousies, possessed the rival governments; such entanglements of treaties and alliances, offensive or defensive, open or secret,—­that a blow at one point shook the whole fabric.  Hanover, like the heel of Achilles, was the vulnerable part for which England was always trembling.  Therefore she made a defensive treaty with Prussia, by which each party bound itself to aid the other, should its territory be invaded.  England thus sought a guaranty against France, and Prussia against Russia.  She had need.  Her King, Frederic the Great, had drawn upon himself an avalanche.  Three women—­two empresses and a concubine—­controlled the forces of the three great nations, Austria, Russia, and France; and they all hated him:  Elizabeth of Russia, by reason of a distrust fomented by secret intrigue and turned into gall by the biting tongue of Frederic himself, who had jibed at her amours, compared her to Messalina, and called her “infame catin du Nord;” Maria Theresa of Austria, because she saw in him a rebellious vassal of the Holy Roman Empire, and, above all, because he had robbed her of Silesia; Madame de Pompadour, because when she sent him a message of compliment, he answered, “Je ne la connais pas,” forbade his ambassador to visit her, and in his mocking wit spared neither her nor her royal lover.  Feminine pique, revenge, or vanity had then at their service the mightiest armaments of Europe.

The recovery of Silesia and the punishment of Frederic for his audacity in seizing it, possessed the mind of Maria Theresa with the force of a ruling passion.  To these ends she had joined herself in secret league with Russia; and now at the prompting of her minister Kaunitz she courted the alliance of France.  It was a reversal of the hereditary policy of Austria; joining hands with an old and deadly foe, and spurning England, of late her most trusty ally.  But France could give powerful aid against Frederic; and hence Maria Theresa, virtuous as she was high-born and proud, stooped to make advances to the all-powerful mistress of Louis XV., wrote her flattering letters, and addressed her, it is said, as “Ma chere cousine.”  Pompadour was delighted, and could hardly do enough for her imperial friend.  She ruled the King, and could make and unmake ministers at will.  They hastened to do her pleasure, disguising their subserviency by dressing it out in specious reasons of state.  A conference at her summer-house, called Babiole, “Bawble,” prepared the way for a treaty which involved the nation in the anti-Prussian war, and made it the instrument of Austria in the attempt to humble Frederic,—­an attempt which if successful would give the hereditary enemy of France a predominance over Germany.  France engaged to aid the cause with twenty-four thousand men; but in the zeal of her rulers began with a hundred thousand.  Thus the three great Powers stood leagued against Prussia.  Sweden and Saxony joined them; and the Empire itself, of which Prussia was a part, took arms against its obnoxious member.