The Prussians, on the contrary, divided the country
into small districts, appraised every acre of land, and in a few years
abolished almost all exemptions. The outlying country now paid its
land taxes and the cities their excise duties. So the province bore
the double burden with greater ease, and no one but the privileged
classes grumbled; and with all this, it could maintain forty thousand
soldiers, whereas formerly there had been in the province only about
two thousand. Before 1740 the nobility had lived _en grand seigneur_.
All who were Catholic and rich lived in Vienna. Everybody else who
could raise enough money betook himself to Breslau. Now the majority
of landholders lived on their estates, the poverty-stricken nobles
disappeared, the nobility knew that the King honored them if they
looked after the cultivation of the land, and that the new master
showed cold contempt to those who neither managed their estates nor
filled civil or military positions. Formerly lawsuits had been endless
and expensive, hardly to be carried through without bribery and
sacrifice of money. Now it was observed that the number of lawyers
decreased, so quickly came the decisions. Under the Austrians, to be
sure, the caravan trade with the East had been greater; the people of
the Bukowina and Hungary, and also the Poles, turned elsewhere and
were already looking toward Trieste; but in place of this, new
manufacturing industries arose; wool and textiles, and in the mountain
valleys a flourishing linen industry.
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