Great or little, magnificent or insignificant, from Richelieu to the Duke of Choiseul, France had managed to preserve her territorial acquisitions; in America and in Asia, Louis XV.

had shamefully lost Canada and the Indies; in Europe, the diplomacy of his ministers had given to the kingdom Lorraine and Corsica.

The day of insensate conquests ending in a diminution of territory had not yet come.

In the great and iniquitous dismemberment which was coming, France was to have no share.
Profound disquietude was beginning to agitate Europe: the King of Poland, Augustus III., had died in 1763, leaving the unhappy country over which he had reigned a prey to internal anarchy ever increasing and systematically fanned by the avidity or jealousy of the great powers, its neighbors.

"As it is to the interest of the two monarchs of Russia and Prussia that the Polish commonwealth should preserve its right to free election of a king," said the secret treaty concluded in 1764 between Frederick II.