As with his dependents, so with states weaker than his own, Frederick always played the dictator. To grace his new opera he had engaged the famous dancer Barberina, who was then at Venice. Her English lover persuaded her to break the contract and remain there and the Doge and Senate professed themselves powerless to interfere. Frederick therefore seized a Venetian ambassador in Berlin and held him as a hostage, until the Venetians in their turn violated justice by sending Barberina a prisoner to Berlin. With an imperiousness equal to that of his father Frederick combined the traditional Hohenzollern willingness to buy and sell. He failed to buy Silesia, but he succeeded in buying Glatz. The county of Glatz belonged to Bohemia, and in 1741 Frederick recognised Charles Albert as King of Bohemia. From him he purchased territory which the Bavarian had never possessed and which he could never hope to possess without foreign aid. The Prussians conquered the country and in 1742 Maria Theresa offered to cede it. Thereupon the King accepted from Austria what he had declared to belong to Bavaria and announced that he was no longer bound to pay the purchase money agreed upon. Frederick seems to be still in all essentials the man whose development we have traced from his birth to his accession. He is tougher, as it were, in mind and body alike. He has thrown off the feeble health of his earlier years and the lust for mere adventure which possessed him in the twenties. But experience has only added to his trust in himself, to his belief that “negotiations without arms are music without instruments,” that war determines disputes, and that bravery and leadership determine war. His faith in prompt and decided action was never more conspicuous than in 1744, when on the death of its prince without lineal heirs, he seized Eastern Frisia. Hanover also had claims to the land, but nothing could withstand the speed with which the Prussians made this miniature Silesia their own and thus acquired in Emden an outlet on the North Sea. Frederick’s schemes are, indeed, so daring, and his acts so swift and decisive, that many have believed—as he himself seems to have believed at the time—that he was gifted with almost superhuman insight and rose superior to human weakness. It may, therefore, be well to cite the words in which Professor Koser of Bonn, the greatest living authority upon the subject, has set down his impression of the King as he was at the end of the First Silesian War.