Where charity was to be looked for, Frederick William was not too proud to beg. But of all powers the least likely to be charitable was Sweden, whose armies had for nearly ten years been fighting solely for material compensation. To Sweden therefore the Elector offered money and was allowed to purchase that deliverance from the war which was essential to all his plans (1641). He could now begin the task of his life—to reduce all his provinces into dependence upon himself and to render Brandenburg, augmented and centralised, a formidable military power. During forty-eight years (1640–1688) he pursued the old Hohenzollern policy of family aggrandisement. His success has earned him the title of the Great Elector, and the place of the first hero of the Prussian state. Yet he is remarkable chiefly for his commercial instinct, imbibed perhaps during his education among the Dutch, the neighbours to whom he always looked for example and alliance. On occasion he could display the soldierly instinct of his race, but in time of peace he was hardly a heroic figure. With domestic virtues specially to be praised in a monarch of that time he combined a weakness for strong drink which damaged his health and temper. He took pride in being abreast of the times, reverenced London and Amsterdam, and was ready to haggle with foreigners for preferential rates. He wrote a good commercial hand, planted cabbages in his garden, and hammered out verses which with a little doctoring might have graced the poet’s corner of a provincial newspaper. He was a thrifty householder, save when he deemed it necessary to keep up his position by building a massive palace or giving a pompous feast. A convinced Protestant, he welcomed serviceable Huguenots to his capital with more good-will than serviceable papists. It is not impossible to believe that as a German patriot he took favours from the Emperor with more inward pleasure than from Louis XIV. In what Dr. Prothero terms “the ocean of recognised mendacity which we call diplomacy” he floundered without either repugnance or great success. He spent his life in unifying his dominions and made a will which if carried into effect would have dismembered them at his death. That a man of this stamp is designated Great suggests that he was not only diligent but that he was also fortunate in the conditions under which he lived and worked.