<99> Vienna have stipulated with the court of France not to assist him, in case he should be attacked, and that the like stipulation has been agreed to by France with regard to the Port; if this last should be true, he says great use may be made of it at Constantinople, to excite the jealousy and even the resentment of the Turks against the courts of Vienna and France …
The King will wait the return of the express (from Vienna),1 which he expects by the 28th current, before he takes any farther Step, and regulate his conduct according to the answer he shall receive from that court.
When I urged that perhaps the motions of his troops here2 and the reports that had been spread in consequence of them, might so have alarmed the court of Vienna as to make them send these extraordinary succours into Bohemia and Moravia to prevent his invading of them, the King of Prussia said they knew well enough that he had3 no such intention, that he desired peace and was his interest so to do, that, all that he had yet done, was to march 11 or 12 battalions into Pomerania,4 which he thought could give no more uneasiness to the Empress-Queen than her marching of troops into the dukedom of Florence should give to him, that hitherto not a single man has been sent into Silesia, and all he had yet done, was to order the palisades to be placed and the canons to be mounted in the fortified places in that country.5 — All this, I believe, is strictly true, yet he has made such a disposition as in fourteen days to be able to send 40,000 men into Silesia, which will make upwards of 90,000 with the troops already there.
The King of Prussia approves highly of the step the King has lately taken to restore the Dutch ships etc.6 He thinks it a very just and wise measure that will conduce more than any weight and vigour to the King's friends in that country, and which cannot fail to raise and fortify the Stadtholder's party and interest. He is likewise much pleased with colonel Yorke's behaviour to his minister at the Hague,7 who has some time ago received Orders to second and support all His Majesty's measures in that country.8
The minister of the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt9 lately said to the Prussian minister at Ratisbon10 that his master had 6000 men which he would willingly give to His Majesty,11 it he has occasion for them, but that, if the Landgrave was not spoken to soon, he believed he intended to dismiss part of them. The King of Prussia desired me to mention this, and he says they are very good troops, well disciplined and worth His Majesty's having.
1 Vergl. S. 90.
10 Bericht Plotho's, Regensburg 12. Juli.
11 Georg II.
2 Vergl. S. 5.
3 Letter-Book: „he knew well enough that they had.“
4 Vergl. S. 5.
5 vergl. S. 16—23. 119.
6 Vergl. S. 71.
7 Vergl. Nr. 7730.
8 Vergl. Bd. XII, 458.
9 Schwartzenau.