Frederick’s influence upon his contemporaries was enormous, and in many respects it cannot be overpraised. He found what has been styled “Sultan and harem economy” prevalent among his peers, together with a tendency to regard the income of the State as the pocket-money of the ruler. For this he substituted in Europe a great measure of his own ideal of royal duty. Fearing nothing and hoping little from any future state, he was yet too proud to flinch from an atom of the lifelong penance that he believed was prescribed for kings by some law of nature. Duty to his House and duty to his State were to him the same, and they dictated a life of incessant labour for his subjects’ good, and forbade the appropriation of more than a living wage. Other sovereigns followed the Prussian mode, and “benevolent despotism” came to be regarded as the panacea for the ills of Europe. Though it hardly survived the storm of the Revolution, it was instrumental in removing many abuses and in promoting during several decades the comfort of the common people. Thanks in great part to Frederick, irresponsible monarchy became impossible for ever. Frederick’s fame, none the less, finds its most solid basis in the achievement to which all else in his life was subordinate,—the successful aggrandisement of Prussia. Though it may be true that another and a better way lay open to him, that the path which he marked out led straight to Jena, that he owed much of his success to fortune, and that his work was rescued by forces which he had not prized, in spite of all it is to him that Prussia owes her place among the nations. By his single will he shaped the course of history. His rule completed the fusion of provinces into a State, his victories gave it prestige, and the success of his work of aggrandisement was great enough to consecrate the very arts by which it was accomplished. Two decades after his death a king of Prussia entered his tomb by night, seeking inspiration to confront Napoleon. The architects of modern Germany declare that all that they have built rests upon the foundations that he laid. As long as the German Empire flourishes and the world is swayed by the principles of its founders, so long will the fame of Frederick the Great remain secure. [Illustration] [Illustration] INDEX A Agriculture, Prussian, 309 _ff._ Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), 129; Peace of (1748), 156, 157, 194 Alembert, d’, 160, 337, 339, 352 Algarotti, 82, 160 Amelia, Princess, 31 Anhalt-Dessau, Leopold, Prince of (“the Old Dessauer”), 78, 82, 109, 116, 126, 140, 143, 150 _ff._ Anhalt-Dessau, Leopold, Prince of (“the Young Dessauer”), 104, 105, 109, 115, 262 Anne of Russia, 44, 91 Ansbach, Margravine of, 81 Anti-Machiavel, 53 Archenholtz, cited, 289 Armed Neutrality of 1780, 339