The central mass of the Hohenzollern dominions touched along almost the whole of its eastern frontier a Power whose decline was even more visible than that of Sweden. The Polish Republic, which almost encircled Ost-Preussen, formed perhaps the strangest spectacle that Europe has ever seen. A vaster country than any of the Western Powers, Poland remained in the Middle Ages. Her constitution, indeed, seemed to have no other end than to make progress impossible. There were only two classes, nobles and serfs, the free and the unfree. But where every freeman was noble, many nobles were poor. These served for hire, and were distinguished, it is said, from men of lower birth by the privilege of being flogged upon a Turkey carpet. The direction of this vast country rested with a few thousand feudal chiefs who elected a nominal King from within their own body or outside it. They made the laws themselves, but a single dissentient voice could wreck the work of a whole Diet, as the annual session of Parliament was termed, and of late years this right had commonly been exercised. What trade there was, was left to the despised class of German burghers. The fighting force grew every year more feeble. While Austria could boast a Eugene and Russia a Peter, while the parade-ground at Potsdam was trodden by ever-growing masses of men who handled modern weapons with the precision given by daily practice, the Poles were blindly trusting in feudal levies generalled by a puppet King. At Frederick’s accession, however, Poland still possessed two elements of strength besides her vast bulk and the knightly courage of her sons. These were the Saxon connexion and the port of Danzig. Two years earlier, at the price of war with France (1733–1738) and loss of lands in Italy, Charles VI. had secured the Polish crown for the son of the late King, Augustus III., the Elector of Saxony. The Emperor made this sacrifice to win support for the Pragmatic Sanction and to propitiate Russia, who looked upon Poland as her own if the French candidate were expelled. And, as the road from Dresden to Warsaw passed through the Hapsburg province of Silesia, Augustus had good reason to be faithful to the daughter of Charles VI. Poland none the less promised much to a king of Prussia who could wait. Her artificial connexion with Saxony, established by foreign Powers against the will of a majority of the Poles, could only weaken the frail bonds which bound the State together. Poland, all the world had long known, would one day fall in pieces, and who should hinder Prussia from gathering some of them? For the moment, however, Augustus could defend his new dominions. A king of Prussia in a fever to act at once could not assail Poland without laying bare his flank to Saxony and to her Imperial ally.