The misfortune was that after I had resolved to repel the impact of Prussia’s unjust force with just counter-force, dissidence and faction at once struck root among my Ministers, due exclusively to my own excessive goodness of heart and wish to do the best for all and to believe the best. And would to God I had been alone with Sinzendorff and Starhemberg, with Bartenstein; then much would have been avoided and averted. I must put this rather more fully. Sinzendorff was a great statesman, far superior to Starhemberg, but not always without arrières pensées, prejudices, and passions; I was never able to prove anything against him so long as he was serving me, yet his conduct with regard to Prussia was not always regular, and warnings against him which I received were the reason why I put my whole confidence in Starhemberg, who was a great man and a straightforward German. But he could never forget that under my father Sinzendorff had edged him out, and he tried to recover his old place under me, although never in a way that was dishonest or smacked of intrigue. He and Herberstein, who was at that time the Comptroller of my Household, and a thoroughly honest and capable man, introduced Bartenstein to me, against whom I had been strongly prejudiced when I came to the throne, but must in justice acknowledge that I owe to him alone the preservation of the Monarchy. Without him everything would have been lost, for Starhemberg was no longer active enough by himself, and I learned only long after that it was Bartenstein alone who prevented my Spanish marriage, which Sinzendorff favored; he alone devised and championed the co-Regency, advised my sister’s marriage, and sought to procure everything conducive to the unity and consolidation of this dynasty, which was the foundation stone of all its being. I will not say that he had no faults: these arose out of his temperament, certainly not out of any lack of loyalty and zeal, nor out of ambition; for that I can vouch, and it is my duty toward him and his for all time to do so, as a duty, not a grace. I have had to set this down for my own satisfaction, to do these three Ministers justice, seeing that all evil arose solely out of their dissensions.
In the first, difficult years of my reign it was quite impossible for me personally to investigate the conditions and resources of the Provinces, so that I was obliged to follow my Ministers’ advice not to ask any more help from the Provinces, either in money or men, especially since the Ministers constantly pretended that any such demands would make my reign deeply detested at its very outset. Consequently, there was no money to mobilize the few regiments earmarked for use against Prussia. And when I found myself forced to ask for this purpose for some hundreds of thousands as loans or urgent grants in aid from private persons, I could not but see that the big men, and even the Ministers themselves, were plainly trying to spare their own pockets.
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