In an
insecure desert this shrewd and tricky prince established his state,
with a craft and disregard of his neighbors' rights which, even in
that unscrupulous age, aroused criticism, but at the same time, with a
heroism and greatness of mind which more than once showed higher
conceptions of German honor than were held by the Emperor himself or
any other prince of the realm. Nevertheless, when, in 1688, this
adroit statesman died, he left behind him only an unimportant State,
in no way to be reckoned among the powers of Europe. For while his
sovereignty extended over about forty-four thousand square miles,
these contained only one million three hundred thousand inhabitants;
and when Frederick II., a hundred years after his great-grandfather,
succeeded to the crown, he inherited only two million two hundred and
forty thousand subjects, not so many as the single province of Silesia
contains today. What was it then that, immediately after the battles
of the Thirty Years' War, aroused the jealousy of all the governments,
and especially of the Imperial house, and which since then has made
such warm friends and such bitter enemies for the Brandenburg
government? For two centuries neither Germans nor foreigners ceased to
set their hopes on this new State, and for an equally long time
neither Germans nor foreigners ceased to call it--at first with
ridicule, and then with spite--"an artificial structure which cannot
endure heavy storms, which has intruded without justification among
the powers of Europe.
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