In answer to our two first questions it would therefore appear that the attack upon Silesia was not dictated to Frederick by hard necessity, and that, tried by the old standard of honour between princes, it was clearly wrong. The third question—Was it wise?—is of a different order, for it is far from certain that the wisdom or folly of Frederick’s act has been sufficiently tested by time. A safe step towards the truth, indeed, is to examine the international situation and calculate Frederick’s chances of success, as a statesman would compute them from the facts which lay before him in 1740. First of all, however, we must account for the fact that Frederick, who was only the third Hohenzollern to wear a crown, found himself in a position to assail the dynasty which had held for centuries the foremost place in Germany. The House of Hapsburg, perhaps to a greater extent than any other of the ruling families in Europe, lay under the spell of its own past. This was due in part to its native pride and sluggish blood, in part to its long association with the oldest and most dignified institution of the Christian world—the Holy Roman Empire. From 1438 onwards the descendants of Rudolf of Hapsburg had been chosen in unbroken sequence to fill the office which entitled its possessor to style himself Lord of the World. The radiance of old Rome had gilded Vienna for so long a time that it seemed to have transfigured the race that reigned there. Thus the Hapsburgs grew proud with a pride which no other House could rival, and no Hapsburg was prouder than Charles VI., the Anglo-Austrian candidate in the War of the Spanish Succession. His pride was fatal, for it banished him from the world of fact. He could never comprehend how Europe could leave off fighting to make him King of Spain, nor how the King of Prussia, who served him with towel and basin as Grand Chamberlain of the Empire, could cherish aims and aspirations which conflicted with his own. Pompous ceremonies and parchments made up so large a part of his own life that he came to believe that they expressed realities. Hence he made the cardinal error of his life. He committed the future of his House to the Pragmatic Sanction. Domestic economy was beneath his notice. While Frederick William was crying out because his son’s tutors permitted an item “for the housemaids at Wusterhausen,” to appear in the accounts, dishonest stewards were debiting the Emperor with twelve buckets of the best wine for the Emperor’s bath and two casks of old Tokay for Her Majesty’s parrots. When Charles VI. died the treasury was almost empty; the army seemed to have passed away with Prince Eugene; the ministers were blunderers of seventy and the sovereign a woman of twenty-three.