But this last acquisition of the King's,
though wanting in the thunder of guns and the trumpets of victory, was
yet, of all the great gifts which the German people owe to Frederick
II., the greatest and most abounding in fortunate consequences.
Through several hundred years the Germans had been divided and hemmed
in and encroached upon by neighbors greedy for conquest; the great
King was the first conqueror who again pushed the German boundaries
toward the east. A hundred years after his great ancestor had in vain
defended the fortresses of the Rhine against Louis XIV., Frederick
gave the Germans again the explicit admonition that it was their duty
to carry law, education, liberty, culture, and industry into the east
of Europe. His whole territory, with the exception of a few Old Saxon
districts, had been originally German, then Slavic, then again won
from the Slavs by fierce wars or colonization; never since the
migrations of the Middle Ages had the struggle ceased for the broad
plains east of the Oder; never since the conquest of Brandenburg had
this house forgotten that it was the warden of the German border.
Whenever wars ceased the politicians were busy. The Elector Frederick
William had freed Prussia, the territory of the Teutonic Knights, from
feudal allegiance to Poland. Frederick I. had boldly raised this
isolated colony to a kingdom. But the possession of East Prussia was
insecure. It was not the corrupt republic of Poland which threatened
danger, but the rising power of Russia.
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