The loss of property had undoubtedly been very great. The conscience of the age forbade massacre, but was lenient towards pillage and devastation. But the King surpassed himself by what Carlyle terms “the instantaneous practical alacrity with which he set about repairing that immense miscellany of ruin.” So far as the material losses sustained by individual Prussians could be ascertained, they were set down by the careful hands of royal commissioners and mitigated by royal gifts. The King had at his disposal depreciated coin to the amount of nearly 30,000,000 thalers, the sum which had been accumulated to pay for the eighth and ninth campaigns. This more than sufficed for the needs of the army and the repayment of the trifling loans, less than five and a half million thalers in all, that Frederick had contracted during the war. With the residue and with the surplus revenues of the State the King set to work to prevent a single one of his subjects from falling into absolute ruin. His doles were graduated not by any standard of abstract justice, but by the rule that the minimum amount of help should be given that would serve the purpose of the State. Many towns had paid ransoms to the enemy to avoid being sacked. That of Berlin, two million thalers, was repaid out of the treasury, but Halle received less than one-sixth of what it claimed, and in the majority of cases the burghers were left to bear the loss themselves. In the country districts, however, there was less power of recuperation than among the comparatively wealthy towns. According to Frederick’s opinion, it was therefore necessary that the State should make it possible for nobles and peasants alike to resume their normal duties. The spare horses from the army, to the number of 35,000, and many rations for man and beast from the magazines were at once distributed to the most needy. Officials allotted to the peasants wood to rebuild their houses and sums of money to assist the work. Their rents were remitted for a time, and oxen, cows, sheep, meal, and seed-corn were supplied to them free of charge. The State reaped its reward in the rents and taxes which speedily flowed into the royal coffers, as well as in the rapid growth of population. While the King was thus doling out relief to a great part of his subjects, he indulged in a singular extravagance which has been the subject of much criticism and conjecture. Though he inequitably threw upon the people the expense of restoring the coinage, though his subjects were sending him sheaves of petitions for aid, though he was of all monarchs the least addicted to pomp, none the less, three months after peace had been signed he began to build a third palace at Potsdam. The astonished Prussians believed that the cost was 22,000,000 thalers. If no more than one-tenth of this was actually expended, the King lavished on a superfluity more than one-third of the sum that he assigned to the restoration of the land.