He frankly and coolly flaunted his selfishness.

"In a previous war with France," he says in his memoirs, "I abandoned the French at Prague, because I gained Silesia by that step.
If I had escorted them to Vienna, they would never have given me so much." In turn the successes of the Queen of Hungary were beginning to disquiet him; on the 5th of June, 1744, he signed a new treaty with France; for the first time Louis XV.

was about to quit Versailles and place himself at the head of an army.

"If my country is to be devoured," said the king, with a levity far different from the solemn tone of Louis XIV., "it will be very hard on me to see it swallowed without personally doing my best to prevent it." He had, however, hesitated a long while before he started.

There was a shortness of money.