THE KING RETURNS FROM HANOVER, AND CONCLUDES A TREATY WITH RUSSIA.

A war being thus in some measure begun, his majesty thought proper, perhaps for that reason, to return to his British dominions sooner than usual; for he left Hanover on the eighth of September, and arrived on the fifteenth at Kensington, where the treaty of alliance between him and the empress of Russia, which he had begun during his absence, was concluded on the thirtieth of the same month. By this treaty her Russian majesty engaged to hold in readiness in Livonia, upon the frontiers of Lithuania, a body of troops consisting of forty thousand infantry, with the necessary artillery, and fifteen thousand cavalry; and also on the coast of the same province, forty or fifty galleys, with the necessary crews; to be ready to act, upon the first order, in his majesty’s service, in case, said the fifth article, which was the most remarkable, that the dominions of his Britannic majesty in Germany should be invaded on account of the interests or disputes which regard his kingdoms; her imperial majesty declaring that she would look upon such an invasion as a case of the alliance of the year one thousand seven hundred and forty-two; and that the said dominions should be therein comprised in this respect; but neither these troops nor galleys were to be put in motion, unless his Britannic majesty, or his allies, should be somewhere attacked; in which case the Russian general should march as soon as possible after requisition, to make a diversion with thirty thousand infantry, and fifteen thousand cavalry; and should embark on board the galleys the other ten thousand infantry to make a descent according to the exigency of the affair. On the other side, his Britannic majesty engaged to pay to her Russian majesty an annual subsidy of an hundred thousand pounds sterling a year, each year to be paid in advance, and to be reckoned from the day of the exchange of the ratifications, to the day that these troops should upon requisition march out of Russia; from which day the annual subsidy to her imperial majesty was to be five hundred thousand pounds sterling, to be paid always four months in advance, until the troops should return into the Russian dominions, and for three months after their return. His Britannic majesty, who was to be at liberty to send once every year into the said province of Livonia a commissary, to see and examine the number and condition of the said troops, further engaged, that, in case her Russian majesty should be disturbed in this diversion, or attacked herself, he would famish immediately the succour stipulated in the treaty of one thousand seven hundred and forty-two, and that in case a war should break out, he should send, into the Baltic a squadron of his ships, of a force suitable to the circumstances. This was the chief substance of the treaty, which, by agreement of both parties, was to subsist for four years from the exchange of the ratifications; but in the seventh article these words were unluckily inserted: “Considering also the proximity of the countries wherein the diversion in question will probably be made, and the facility her troops will probably have of subsisting immediately in an enemy’s country, she takes upon herself alone, during such a diversion, the subsistence and treatment of the said troops by sea and land.” And in the eleventh article it was stipulated, that all the plunder the Russian army should take from the enemy should belong to them. That his Britannic majesty, who now knew enough of the court of Vienna to be sensible that he could expect no assistance from thence, in case his German dominions were invaded, should enter into this convention with the empress of Russia, in order to strengthen his defence upon the continent, was extremely natural; especially as he had lately lived in great friendship with her, and her transactions with the court of France had been so secret, by passing through only that of Vienna, that he had not yet been informed of them; neither had the project of the treaty of Versailles then come to his knowledge, or to that of the king of Prussia, nor had either of these princes yet made any formal advances to the other.