In these larger transactions the first great Hohenzollern does not seem to have been given to listening to the still small voice. Incidentally, he was later to turn against Sigismund. The assumption, therefore, that he left his southern home for the mark out of heed for a divine call, as Emperor William in his speech of February 3, 1899, tells us that he did, is historically, like Laplace's God, a useless hypothesis. Self-interest, for which he seems to have had a fairly keen sense, would have impelled him to do no less. Yet it is upon the _faits et gestes_ of Frederick of Hohenzollern that Emperor William II bases his claims to rule Germany by divine right. As we have seen, the mortgage was not discharged, and Frederick had been formally invested with the margraviate and electorship in 1417. He lifted the mark out of the deplorable condition in which he found it, compelled obedience, and during the period of his rule--he died in 1440--its lot was much improved and the power of the house of Hohenzollern much strengthened. History must give him credit for his ability and his difficult achievement if not for his motives. In the process of establishing himself, his rule, like that of his successors was the rule of the sword and his policy the _Machtpolitik_, or policy of force. In spite of her comparative poverty, therefore, Prussia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries maintained an army larger than that of Austria or France. The connection between the ruler and the army in a state which was founded and maintained by force of arms was, therefore, and remains in modern Prussia so close that the Emperor is from the standpoint of tradition justified in repeating that "the only pillar on which the empire rests is the army." It was literally _ein Volk in Waffen_, a people in arms. The first really outstanding ruler of the province was the Great Elector (1620-88), who has always been cited by William II as his model and of whom he speaks with a respect that amounts to veneration. He was born in Berlin and, after passing part of his youth in the Netherlands, became ruler of Brandenburg and Prussia in 1640, before the close of the Thirty Years' War. He restored the prestige of the army and centralized the government and, we are informed by recognized authorities, by a clever but unscrupulous use of his intermediate position between Sweden and Poland, procured his recognition as an independent Duke of Prussia by both powers and eventually succeeded in crushing the stubborn and protracted opposition which was offered to his authority by the estates of the duchy. His success in organizing the army was proved by his great victory over the Swedes at Fehrbellin, 1675.