The surprise and annoyance of Frederick William may be imagined.

On all sides difficulties were thickening around him.

Shortly before the return of Haugwitz to Berlin, the Russian troops campaigning in Hanover had been placed under the protection of Prussia; and the King himself had offered to our Minister, Lord Harrowby, to protect Cathcart's Anglo-Hanoverian corps which, _with the aid of Prussian troops_, was restoring the authority of George III.

in that Electorate.
Moreover, Frederick William could not complain of any shabby treatment from our Government.

Knowing that he was set on the acquisition of Hanover and could only be drawn into the Coalition by an equally attractive offer, the Pitt Ministry had proposed through Lord Harrowby the cession to Prussia at the general peace of the lands south-west of the Duchy of Cleves, "bounded by a frontier line drawn from Antwerp to Luxemburg," and connected with the rest of her territories.[55] This plan, which would have planted Prussia firmly at Antwerp, Liege, Luxemburg, and Cologne, also aimed at installing the Elector of Salzburg in the rest of the new Rhenish acquisitions of France; while the equipoise of the Powers was to be adjusted by the cession of Salzburg, the Papal Legations, and the line of the Mincio to Austria, she in her turn giving up part of her Dalmatian lands to Russia.
Prussia was to be the protectress of North Germany and regard any incursion of the French, "north of the Maine or at least of the Lahn," as an act of war.