Frederick William's claim to the title "Great," which was bestowed upon him by his own generation, has been contested, but may be allowed to pass. As military leader, diplomatist, organizer, and administrator, he certainly had unusual gifts. Above all, he excelled in duplicity and treachery. The most eminent living German historian has said of him that "both in internal and external politics he acted with an unscrupulousness so manifest that it cannot be palliated," and can find no better excuse for his many deeds of "faithlessness" and "double-dealing" than that, in this respect, he was merely "the master of the diplomatic art of his day." The Elector was actuated solely by his own personal and dynastic interests, and was utterly devoid of "German" patriotism, for in return for the liberal subsidies on which he prospered, he undertook, in a secret treaty, to support the candidature of the French King or Dauphin for the Imperial German throne, and he was mainly responsible for the truce which left Strasburg in French hands for nearly two centuries. During the incessant wars which filled up most of his reign he fought both with and against every other belligerent. His sword was always at the disposal of the highest bidder, either of hard cash or of territorial extension, and by adroit choice of the moment for changing sides he generally made a profitable bargain. True, he was obliged to restore the western portion of Pomerania which he had conquered from the Swedes, but he obtained a much more important acquisition--the recognition of his full sovereignty in what is now East Prussia. That region had been wrested from the Slavs by the German orders of chivalry, founded at the time of the Crusades, and had subsequently become an evangelical duchy, ruled by a junior branch of the house of Hohenzollern, as a fief of the Kingdom of Poland. On the extinction of the ducal line, it had reverted to the rulers of Brandenburg, and by a timely sale of his military assistance, first to the Swedes and then to the Poles, the Great Elector induced both to admit his unrestricted and unqualified rights of sovereignty in the duchy. His successor persuaded the Emperor to agree to his assumption of the kingly title for this territory, and it is an interesting fact--especially in view of the last development of the German Empire, which in its present constitutional form and in much else is dependent upon Catholic support--that this elevation was largely brought about by the intervention of two Jesuit fathers. It was from the Kingdom of Prussia which was thus established, and which was a completely independent State altogether outside the competencies of the Holy Roman Empire, that arose the Hohenzollern ascendency in Germany, and round it that the new German Empire crystallized. For this reason the episode is quite germane to our present purpose.