She therefore threw herself into the quarrel with as much earnestness as if it had been her own.
Indeed, since Joseph had as yet no authority over her hereditary possessions, it was only by her armies that it could be maintained; and in her letters to her daughter she declared that Marie Antoinette had her happiness, the welfare of her house, and of the whole Austrian nation in her hands; that all depended on her activity and affection.

She knew that the French ministers were inclined to favor the views of Frederick, but if the alliance should be dissolved it would kill her.[7] Marie Antoinette grew pale at reading so ominous a denunciation.

It required no art to inflame her against Frederick.

The Seven Years' War had begun when she was but a year old; and all her life she had heard of nothing more frequently than of the rapacity and dishonesty of that unprincipled aggressor.

She now entered with eagerness into her mother's views, and pressed them on Louis with unremitting diligence and considerable fertility of argument, though she was greatly dismayed at finding that not only his ministers, but he himself, regarded Austria as actuated by an aggressive ambition, and compared her claim to a portion of Bavaria to the partition of Poland, which, six years before, had drawn forth unwonted expressions of honorable indignation from even his unworthy grandfather.