The climax of his reign was reached in 1701, when he prevailed upon the Emperor to make him King of Prussia. In a double sense it may be said with truth that he owed his crown to his weakness. It is generally believed that the chief motive which prompted him to sue for it was vanity. For months he could think and speak of nothing else. When at last the imperial license came, the enraptured Elector quitted Berlin in midwinter and spent twelve days in moving with a pompous train to Königsberg. There, with every detail of ceremony that his imagination could suggest, he placed the crown upon his head. It is doubtful whether a more sober ruler would have prized a throne as he did, and doubtful too whether the Emperor would have consented to the elevation of a prince less obviously feeble. But Frederick had carried on without reserve the old Hohenzollern tradition of standing well with the head of the German world. He had even given back to Austria the territory of Schwiebus, which the Emperor had assigned to the Great Elector in settlement of whatever claim the Hohenzollerns possessed to portions of Silesia. Now he was prepared to uphold the Hapsburg cause in the War of the Spanish Succession. What harm could there be, the Emperor may well have asked himself, in promoting a vassal so devoted as this? Forty years later, Austria had bitter cause to rue the error of her chief. From the very first the crown aggrandised the Hohenzollern dynasty. It consecrated their ambition, enlarged their horizon, and gave them, as the Lord’s anointed, a new claim upon the devotion of their subjects. The Order of the Black Eagle, which for two centuries has been the coveted prize of service to their state, signalised the coronation of Frederick I. The Great Elector and the first king of Prussia have this in common—that whatever may be thought of their achievements it is difficult to mistake the men themselves. Of the second king, Frederick William I. (1713–1740), the father of Frederick the Great, the exact opposite is true. His life-work, the establishment of the royal power “like a rock of bronze,” is patent to all. He himself, on the other hand, was a mystery to his own children. His most gifted admirer, Carlyle, sets out to paint a prophet and ends by portraying something very like a madman. His theory of his own sovereign office was as mystical as his practice of ruling was simple. He regarded himself, it has been said, as the servant of an imaginary master—the King of Prussia—under whose eye he lived and worked. Baser princes looked on their royalty as a privilege to be enjoyed. To Frederick William it was a duty calling for endless toil. He struggled to check every detail of government with his own hand, as though Prussia were a single manor and he the squire. A French critic (Lavisse) thus portrays him wrestling with his ever-multiplying tasks: