Frederick is as little open to the charge of megalomania as to that of avarice. He was singularly free from foibles. He frankly admits that the adventure of 1740 was partly inspired by the desire to make himself a name. But before the Peace of Dresden his lust of mere conquest seems to have been extinguished. Thenceforward his armaments and acquisitions were strictly regulated by reasons of State, and in his conception of statecraft domestic policy stood on a par with foreign. He likened the Finances, Foreign Policy, and the Army to three steeds harnessed abreast to the car of State, and himself to the charioteer who directed them and urged them on. Frederick’s most striking innovations in the department of home affairs were made during his later years. It will therefore be necessary in a subsequent chapter to give further illustrations of the working of his principles and to calculate the results which he accomplished. All through his reign, however, the process of internal improvement and interference was carried on in conformity with these ideas. Agriculture, as the basis of all, had the first claim upon the King’s attention, and he made unceasing efforts to render every acre of the land productive and to provide it with a cultivator. If in the course of his innumerable journeys he observed a waste place that seemed capable of improvement he would commend it to the Provincial Chamber as a site for a certain number of new villages of a given size. If the suggestion proved feasible it was carried out at the expense of the State, which reaped its profit in course of time from the new taxpayers, producers, and recruits, who were thus included in the commonwealth. The most signal of these victories in time of peace was the reclaiming of huge swamps lying along the Oder below Frankfurt, In July, 1747, the King appointed commissioners, including the famous mathematician Euler, and placed troops at their disposal. The task demanded not only dams and drainage works, but also in parts excavation of a new bed for the great river. It was urged forward by Frederick with all speed. He often inspected the works and exacted a report of their progress week by week. Boats were commandeered by force from the reluctant villagers. Some of those whose fishing rights were done away conjured the King, “falling at his feet,” so ran their petition, “most submissively in deepest woe and dejection as a most terrified band fearing the fatal stroke,” that he would lay to heart the ruin which his measures would inevitably bring upon them. The King drily answered that they might let him know when they had suffered any actual harm and compensated them with reclaimed land.