The method which Charles selected was to proclaim that his dominions were one and indivisible, and descended to a female heir if no male were forthcoming. This he did by the famous Pragmatic Sanction, a document which for fifteen years, from 1725 to 1740, was the pivot of European politics. From State after State Charles purchased a guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction, which amounted to an undertaking to recognise his daughter, Maria Theresa, as heir to the Hapsburg dominions. For this he yielded to Spain broad lands in Italy, for this he sacrificed commercial prospects to the sea-powers England and Holland, for this he consented that Lorraine should pass from Germany to France, for this he followed Russia into a Turkish war which cost him great tracts on either side the Danube. For this, too, he committed what was perhaps the most dangerous of all his blunders. He played fast and loose with a time-honoured ally, and estranged the King of Prussia. Ever since the Peace of Westphalia had given them freedom to make alliances where they would, the policy of the Hohenzollerns had been to maintain a good understanding with Austria. It might, indeed, happen, as after 1679, when Louis XIV. hired them, that some other course became so advantageous that for the moment they adopted it. In general however, the Emperor had most to give. To him the German princes still looked for investiture, for arbitration, and for promotion, and if a State desired to exercise its troops, who was so likely as the lord of the long Hapsburg frontiers to be at war? King Frederick William might reasonably hope that the Power which had given his father the crown, which had led Prussians to victory before Turin, and which had permitted him to keep conquests in Swedish Pomerania (1720), would reward his devoted service by favouring his pretensions to inheritance on the Rhine. Though a forceful squire, as a statesman the King lacked imagination. He was master of the finest soldiers in Europe, yet he dared not vindicate his claims to Jülich-Berg without the help of the Emperor, and he could not understand that the Emperor might be reluctant to help the master of the finest soldiers in Europe. Such was, however, the truth. The rise of the Hohenzollerns had long been watched at Vienna with not unnatural jealousy. Even against the Turk Prussians were but sparingly enlisted. The gift of the crown had been hotly opposed and bitterly regretted. When Frederick William cried, “The Emperor will have to spurn me from him with his feet: I am his unto death, faithful to the last drop of my blood,” it was already a Hapsburg maxim that a new Vandal kingdom must not arise on the shores of the Baltic.