of Wales. The Prince belonged to the Whig party; and Fox, who was
travelling in Italy, hurried home to support his claim in full belief
that the Prince's Regency would be followed by his own return to power.
Pitt successfully resisted the claim on the constitutional ground that
in such a case the right to choose a temporary Regent, under what
limitations it would, lay with Parliament; and a bill which conferred
the Regency on the Prince, in accordance with this view, was already
passing the Houses when the recovery of the king put an end to the long
dispute. Foreign difficulties, too, absorbed Pitt's attention. Russia
had risen into greatness under Catharine the Second; and Catharine had
resolved from the first on the annexation of Poland, the expulsion of
the Turks from Europe, and the setting up of a Russian throne at
Constantinople. In her first aim she was baffled for the moment by
Frederick the Great. She had already made herself virtually mistress of
the whole of Poland, her armies occupied the kingdom, and she had
seated a nominee of her own on its throne, when Frederick in union with
the Emperor Joseph the Second forced her to admit Germany to a share of
the spoil. If the Polish partition of 1773 brought the Russian frontier
westward to the upper waters of the Dwina and the Dnieper, it gave
Galicia to Maria Theresa, and West Prussia to Frederick himself. Foiled
in her first aim, she waited for the realization of her second till the
alliance between the two German powers was at an end through the
resistance of Prussia to Joseph's schemes for the annexation of Bavaria,
and till the death of Frederick removed her most watchful foe. Then in
1788 Joseph and the Empress joined hands for a partition of the Turkish
Empire. But Prussia was still watchful, and England was no longer
fettered as in 1773 by troubles with America. The friendship established
by Chatham between the two countries, which had been suspended by Bute's
treachery and all but destroyed during the Northern League of Neutral
Powers, had been restored by Pitt through his co-operation with the
successor of Frederick the Great in the restoration of the Dutch
Stadtholderate. Its political weight was now seen in an alliance of
England, Prussia, and Holland, in 1789, for the preservation of the
Turkish Empire. A great European struggle seemed at hand. In such a
struggle the sympathy and aid of France were of the highest importance;
and it was only as weakening