From about the end of 1743 (as I strive to compute), there was in Friedrich himself no doubt left of it; though his Ministers, when he consulted them a good while afterwards, were quite incredulous, and spent all their strength in dissuading a new War; now when the only question was, How to do said War?
"How to do it, to make ready for doing it?
We must silently select the ways, the methods: silent, wary,--then at last swift; and the more like a lion-spring, like a bolt from the blue, it will be the better!" That is Friedrich's fixed thought.
The Problem was complicated, almost beyond example.

The Reich, with a Kaiser reduced to such a pass, has its potentialities of help or of hindrance,--its thousand-fold formulas, inane mostly, yet not inane wholly, which interlace this matter everywhere, as with real threads, and with gossamer or apparent threads,--which it is essential to attend to.

Wise head, that could discriminate the dead Formulas of such an imbroglio, from the not-dead; and plant himself upon the Living Facts that do lie in the centre there! "We cannot have a Reichs Mediation-Army, then?
Nor a Swabian-Franconian Army, to defend their own frontier ?" No; it is evident, none.

"And there is no Union of Princes possible; no Party, anywhere, that will rise to support the Kaiser whom all Germany elected; whom Austria and foreign England have insulted, ruined and officially designated as non-extant ?" Well, not quite No, none; YES perhaps, in some small degree,--if Prussia will step out, with drawn sword, and give signal.

The Reich has its potentialities, its formulas not quite dead; but is a sad imbroglio.
Definite facts again are mainly twofold, and of a much more central nature.