<637> no answer to that question, till he shall have received letters from his ministers in England in answer to the dispatch of the 3d instant . . .“

Nach der Ausfertigung im Public Record Office zu London.


13190. UNTERREDUNG DES KÖNIGS MIT DEM GROSSBRITANNISCHEN GESANDTEN MITCHELL.

[Meissen, April 1761.]

Mitchell berichtet an Bute, Meissen 13. April 1761 (most secret): „Immediately upon my arrival here, I had the honour of communicating to the King of Prussia the copy of the Duke of Choiseul's letter to Mr. Secretary Pitt of the 26th of March 1761, together with the mémoire inclosed in the same, transmitted to me in Your Lordship's most secret letter of the 1st of April. His Prussian Majesty seemed extremely sensible of this mark of the King's friendship and confidence, and, as I have since had several conversations with him, I propose to give Your Lordship an account of everything that has passed upon this important affair.

The King of Prussia took notice that the declaration delivered by Prince Galizin at London, proposing a congress to be held at Augsburg, was very different from that made by the court of France to the court of Sweden, in which a general armistice was mentioned for all the belligerant powers, whereas in that delivered by Prince Galizin an armistice was proposed only between England and France, and he observed that France, to avoid the inconveniency of a congress, had, in her declaration to the court of Stockholm, offered to charge herself with the interests of her allies, as England would do with regard to hers. From those remarks His Prussian Majesty concluded, first, that France had not been able to persuade her allies to trust their affairs in her hands; secondly, that the Queen of Hungary yielded unwillngly to the pacific views of France, unless perhaps she flattered herself that, by the means of this negotiation, England might be detached and separated from Prussia; and, thirdly, that the Empress Queen, having complied with the views of France for à separate negotiation with England, would hearken to no proposals for a general peace but by the means of a congress, trusting to the slowness of negotiations of that soft, and resolving to hazard another campaign in hopes of a favourable event which may give her the ascendant in the negotiations begun.

Upon the King of Prussia's asking me what I thought of his conjectures, I replied they deserved another name, and might more properly be called demonstrations. I then insinuated that in all his reasonings he had supposed France sincere, as well in the proposal for a general peace as in that for a separate one with England, but that I