Among Frederick’s powers, then, energy alone is truly great, but his energy was such that to him few achievements were impossible. If we turn from his powers to his performance, we find his name associated with three great phenomena of history. Under his guidance Prussia rose at one step from the third to the highest grade among the Powers. He was, moreover, the pattern of the monarchs of his time, the type of the benevolent despots of the later eighteenth century. Finally, in the great series of events by which Germany has become a united military Empire his life-work fills a conspicuous place. How far, we may enquire, should his work in any of these three fields compel the admiration of succeeding ages? That part of the Hohenzollern legend which portrays Frederick as the conscious or semi-conscious architect of the modern German Empire finds little support in the record of his life. Sometimes, it is true, he used the language of Teutonic patriotism and posed as the indignant defender of German liberties against the Hapsburg. But he posed with equal indignation as the protector of Polish or Swedish “liberties” against a reforming king or as the champion of Protestantism against Powers who might be represented as its foes. The whole course of his life witnessed to his preference for French civilisation over German, and to his indifference as to the race of his subjects and assistants, if only they were serviceable to the State. His point of view was invariably and exclusively Prussian. It would never have occurred to him to refuse to barter his Rhenish provinces for parts of Bohemia or Poland because the former were inhabited by Germans and the latter by Slavs. He was far from being shocked at the suggestion that he might one day partition the Empire with the Hapsburgs. He struggled for equality with Austria, never dreaming of the time when his descendants should expel her from Germany and assume the Imperial crown. Thus, though his work was a step towards their triumph, it was unconscious. He must be judged by viewing his achievements in relation to his own designs.