Circumstances, too, were favourable to Frederick’s liberty. The very existence of the Pragmatic Sanction, a violent remedy against dissolution, was a guarantee that Austria would be harmless for years to come. If Charles VI. and his heir were loath to uphold Prussia on the Rhine, they would be very unlikely to risk their own existence by taking up arms against her. In other quarters Prussia had little to fear. Hanover, the parvenu electorate which lay like a broad barrier across the direct road from Berlin to the West, had become a dependency of England in 1714, and therefore was not dangerous. Whatever might be the wishes of George II., it was certain that Walpole would not spend blood and treasure to maintain the House of Pfalz-Sulzbach, Prussia’s rival in Jülich-Berg, at Düsseldorf. The Dutch, it is true, felt themselves menaced by a Prussian garrison in Cleves, but their course had by this time become that of a mere cock-boat in the wake of Great Britain. France alone remained to be considered, and France, with a frontier fifty leagues from Berg, was guided by a Walpole of her own, Cardinal Fleury, now nearing the close of his eighty-seventh year. If then Frederick elected to make Prussia more considerable among the Powers of the West by pressing his claims to Berg he could fling his sword into the scales of justice without great fear that a stronger hand would turn the balance against him. Adventure in the Rhine countries had much to commend it to the young King. His House undoubtedly possessed some title to Berg, and it had been the secular policy of the Hohenzollerns to forego no claim without arguing to the death. The busy and fertile Rhineland was a gold-mine in comparison with the sterile Mark. Frederick, as an enthusiast for the higher civilisation of the West, might well feel drawn towards a duchy which lay more than half-way along the direct line from his capital to Paris. And, greatest merit of all in the eyes of a dynasty of merchants, Berg was eminently salable. The Rhenish duchies were like good accommodation-lands in the midst of thriving farms. Many rulers would always be glad of them and their price would therefore be high.