Frederick’s fame, as was inevitable in the case of one who died on the eve of the French Revolution, has fluctuated with the current of subsequent events. The world that he quitted paid to his memory the homage due to one who had been for a generation the foremost among its princes. Among his poorer subjects traces of a warmer feeling may be discerned. The legend of the Prussian soldier who boasted all his life that Frederick had answered his challenge with the words, “Dog, hold thy peace,” is doubtless symbolic of the attitude of many of the rank and file. It would be idle to imagine that multitudes of humble serfs did not bewail the loss of the Father whose charity succoured them in time of need and whose equity they could always invoke against oppression. It would be no less idle to imagine that among his veteran servants no hearts beat in unison with the heart of General Lentulus, who craved the honour of following his great chief as rear-guard, since Zieten, who died earlier in the year, had secured the place of pride in the van. [Illustration: COFFINS OF FREDERICK THE GREAT (RIGHT) AND FREDERICK WILLIAM I. (LEFT) IN THE GARRISON CHURCH AT POTSDAM.] Berlin, however, rejoiced that Frederick was no more. The cry of the hour was, Back to Frederick William I! Led by a silly King (1786–1797) Prussia plunged into a Teutonic reaction. Good-humour, pomp, aggressive orthodoxy, the use of the German speech, and a grandiose foreign policy marked the royal condemnation of Frederick’s practices. Prussia was tempted by profits in Poland and in Germany to regard the convulsions of France with narrow selfishness. On the field of Jena, twenty years after Frederick’s death, she paid the price of all her errors (1806). Next year her Russian ally agreed with Napoleon that she should lose half her land, forego the right to arm, and submit for the future to be hemmed in by four hostile States. Prussia was rescued from this plight by forces which found no place in Frederick’s system. Great ministers now gained ascendancy over the King. The nation flung off the fetters of feudalism, all classes joined in the War of Liberation, and the final triumph in 1813–1815 was inspired by the spirit not of autocracy but of German nationality. The memory of Frederick faded into that of a ruler of that old despotic type which the sovereigns, in defiance of the claims of their people, were striving to restore.