ch her acts had belied,
ostentatiously released a British frigate captured by her cruisers. She
in her turn declared war on the ninth of June: and now began the most
terrible conflict of the eighteenth century; one that convulsed Europe
and shook America, India, the coasts of Africa, and the islands of the
sea.

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 al