From this two consequences followed, vital in that day, almost incomprehensible in ours. It was, in the first place, a maxim universally accepted among the rulers of the Continent that the inhabitants of a province had little or no share in choosing their overlord. They might possess rights, even the right not to be divided between several lords, but they could be sold or exchanged or given away by one overlord to another without their own desire or even consent. This maxim was accepted to the full by both Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, whose fortunes had been made by the union of family estates, and who never hesitated to barter those estates to advance their own fortunes. Thus the fact that a province would be happier under an overlord who professed the same religion with itself would, according to the ideas prevalent in 1740, afford no good reason for change. Religious oppression by a ruler, it was universally admitted, entitled other rulers to interfere. But religious differences between ruler and ruled gave no such right. In so far, then, as States still resembled estates, the relations between them varied according to the personal character of their kings and princes. The nation ruled by an honourable king observed its engagement strictly, at whatever inconvenience to itself. If a State evaded its engagements the king’s honour was held to have been tarnished. Unfortunately for Europe, this theory had been shaken, if not shattered, by the reign of Louis XIV. The Apollo of France, the cynosure of the Christian world, the king who was the very fount of honour and in person the very pattern of chivalry, had in his dealings with the Dutch and the Germans shown himself a kinsman of Machiavelli and of Bismarck. His conspicuous severance of political from personal morality shook the faith of the world, and in the corrupt generation which followed Louis XIV. and nurtured Frederick even the standard of personal morality sank low. At the death of Charles VI., therefore, men were perplexed about the source of law as between State and State. It seemed no longer sufficient to trust in princes, and yet what new code could be set up? Frederick’s attack upon Silesia struck a deadly blow at the remnant of the old system. His whole career was to influence the new profoundly.