His infernal cunning often defeated its own aims, checkmating him at the point of achievement by suggestions of duplicity or terror.
Austria undertook to guard the Adriatic on land and sea, and to help Germany by checkmating Russia on land.
Russia's advance westward raised indirectly the Eastern Question, because it threatened two of France's traditional allies, Sweden and Poland, and Choiseul considered that the best means of checkmating Catherine's 7l aryl, aggressive schemes was to incite France's third traditional ally, Turkey, to attack her.
He quite agreed that self-will was the enemy; The was there no quicker way of checkmating it than T an interminable course of ecstasies and austerities?
Besides checkmating Barbarossa, he had humbled Henry II.