In her dissevered rags
of territory lay the destinies of Germany. It was the late King, that
honest, thrifty, dogged, headstrong despot, Frederic William, who had
made his kingdom what it was, trained it to the perfection of drill, and
left it to his son, Frederic II. the best engine of war in Europe.
Frederic himself had passed between the upper and nether millstones of
paternal discipline. Never did prince undergo such an apprenticeship.
His father set him to the work of an overseer, or steward, flung plates
at his head in the family circle, thrashed him with his rattan in
public, bullied him for submitting to such treatment, and imprisoned him
for trying to run away from it. He came at last out of purgatory; and
Europe felt him to her farthest bounds. This bookish, philosophizing,
verse-making cynic and profligate was soon to approve himself the first
warrior of his time, and one of the first of all time.
Another power had lately risen on the European world. Peter the Great,
half hero, half savage, had roused the inert barbarism of Russia into a
titanic life. His daughter Elizabeth had succeeded to his
throne,--heiress of his sensuality, if not of his talents.
Over all the Continent the aspect of the times was the same. Power had
everywhere left the plains and the lower slopes, and gathered at the
summits. Popular life was at a stand. No great idea stirred the nations
to their depths.
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