Royalist at heart, but beset by advisers and mistresses who fanned his jealousy of Austria and love of ease, Frederick William wavered under the whims of the hour or the counsels of the last comer. Malmesbury thus summed up the question now at issue in his letter to Pitt of 9th January 1794: "Can we do without the King of Prussia or can we not? If we can, he is not worth the giving of a guinea for. If we cannot, I am afraid we cannot give too many." Malmesbury saw no means of keeping Frederick William steady up to the end of the war. Pitt and Grenville, however, devised the following expedient. They offered the sum of £2,000,000 for bringing 100,000 Prussians into the field. Of this sum Great Britain would furnish two fifths (or £800,000), and Austria and Holland each one fifth, the last fifth being advanced by Prussia herself until she reimbursed herself from France at the general peace. The device was suggestive of that of the rustic who tempts his beast of burden onwards by dangling a choice vegetable before his nose.
Frederick William alone might have been attracted by the offer; but his advisers haggled long and obstinately over details. Chief among the objectors was a Councillor of State, Haugwitz, an oily, plausible creature, whose Gallophil leanings were destined finally to place his country under the heel of Napoleon and deal a death-blow to Pitt. For the present, he treated Malmesbury with a moderation and courtesy that deftly veiled a determined opposition. The British envoy was fully his match. Finding that Haugwitz ascribed all difficulties and delays to the Austrian embassy, he advised him to propose the transfer of the negotiations to The Hague, where these annoyances would cease. Vain and always prone to take the easiest course, Haugwitz swallowed the bait and succeeded in carrying a point which was all in Malmesbury's favour, especially as it saved time in communicating with Downing Street. After annoying delays they set out on 23rd March; and with the aid of twenty-two horses at each post traversed the 326 (English) miles to The Hague in 120 hours during the days, 23rd-30th March, when the campaign ought to have opened.
The prospects at Vienna were equally gloomy. Morton Eden's reports to Grenville form an unrelieved jeremiad. Even amidst the alarms caused by the disasters at Toulon and in the Palatinate, jealousy of Prussia was the dominant feeling. The utmost efforts of our ambassador failed to convince Francis II and Thugut of the need of humouring Prussia by meeting her demand for an additional subsidy and by guaranteeing bread and forage for the 20,000 men who formed her contingent in the Austrian service. Into these wearisome quarrels we need not enter, further than to note that they were envenomed by the acerbity of the Prussian ambassador at Vienna. The Marquis Lucchesini, born at Lucca in 1752, early entered the service of Frederick the Great, to whom he acted as reader. He advanced rapidly under his successor. His commanding demeanour and vivacity of speech, added to great powers of work, and acuteness in detecting the foibles of others, made him a formidable opponent. Further, his marriage with the sister of Bischoffswerder, until lately the King's favourite adviser, added to his influence, which, as was natural with a foreigner, inclined towards the attractive and gainful course. Long afterwards the saviour of Prussia, Baron vom Stein, classed him among the narrow, selfish, insincere men who had been the ruin of nations.[342] Certainly he helped to ruin Poland; and now his conduct at Vienna clogged the efforts of Morton Eden and Malmesbury to strengthen the Coalition against France. Eden complained that he behaved as an intriguing subaltern rather than as an ambassador; and rumour credibly ascribed his tortuous and exasperating conduct to French gold.