Germany at large, though it lay so silent, in its bedrid condition, was in great anxiety. Never had the Holy Romish Reich such a shock before: "Meaning to partition us like Poland?" thought the Reich, with a shudder. "They can, by degrees, if they think good; these Two Great Sovereigns!" Courage, your Durchlauchts: one of the Two great ones has not that in his thoughts; has, and will have, the reverse of that; which will be your anchorages in the storms of fate for a long time to come! Nor was it--as will shortly appear to readers--Kaunitz's immediate intention at all: enough if poor we can begin it, set it fairly under way; let some unborn happier Kaunitz, the last of a series, complete such blessed consummation; in a happier time, far over the practical horizon at present. This we do gather to have been Kaunitz's real view; and it throws a light on the vexed Partition-of-Poland question, and gives weight to Dohm's assertion, That Kaunitz was the actual beginner there.
Weeks before Friedrich heard of this remarkable Memorial, and ten days before it was brought to paper, there came to Friedrich another unexpected remarkable Document: a LETTER from Kaiser Joseph himself, who is personally running about in these parts, over in Bohemia, endeavoring to bring Army matters to a footing; and is no doubt shocked to find them still in such backwardness, with a Friedrich at hand. The Kaiser's Letter, we perceive, is pilot-balloon to the Kaunitz episcopal Document, and to an actual meeting of Prussian and Austrian Ministers on the Bavarian point; and had been seen to be a salutary measure by an Austria in alarm. It asks, as the Kaunitz Memorial will, though in another style, "Must there be war, then? Is there no possibility left in negotiation and mutual concession? I am your Majesty's friend and admirer; let us try." This was an unexpected and doubtless a welcome thing to Friedrich; who answers eagerly, and in a noble style both of courtesy and of business sense: upon which there followed two other Imperial Letters with their two Royal answers; [In _OEuvres de Frederic,_ (vi. 183-193), Three successive Letters from the Kaiser (of dates, "Olmutz," "Litau," "Konigsgratz," 13th-19th April, 1778), with King's Answers ("Schonwalde," all of them, and 14th-20th April),--totally without interest to the general reader.] and directly afterwards the small Austrian-Prussian Congress we spoke of, Finkenstein and Hertzberg on the Prussian part, Cobenzl on the Austrian (Congress sitting at Berlin), which tried to agree, but could not; and to which Kaunitz's Memorial of April 24th was meant as some helpful sprinkling of presidential quasi-episcopal oil.