At the same time another power, a Protestant power, that of Prussia, was becoming more and more formidable along the shores of the Baltic to the north of Poland, and the time is near at hand when we shall see these two, Russia and Prussia, playing a very leading part in the story. For the moment, however, the western nations are perhaps not considering them greatly. They are occupied with wars amongst themselves. France and Spain are in arms against each other within a very few years after the peace signed at Utrecht. In the Mediterranean, fighting is nearly perpetual. Venice takes part of Greece from the Turks, and the Turks regain it. Italy and the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily are the scenes of battles and exchanges of territory. But still we have to remember what we have seen reason to note before, that we should quite misunderstand the effect of the wars if we were to estimate them by anything like the scale which the last Great War has painfully made known to us. The fighting was all done by the professional soldiers, and the numbers engaged were what we should deem {117} very small, even in comparison with the far smaller population of the countries at that date. The area of the fighting was restricted, so that comparatively small tracts were laid waste; nor was the land so cultivated as it is now. There were not the same crops to be destroyed. [Sidenote: The Austrian Succession] After the war over the Spanish Succession, which terminated with the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, the most important of the wars of the same kind was that over the succession to the Austrian throne, which begun in 1740 on the accession of Maria Theresa, who was the daughter and heiress of the Emperor and Austrian Grand Duke, Charles VI. Frederick II., King of Prussia, known in history as Frederick the Great, appears to have thought the opportunity good for getting a slice of Austrian territory for himself. It was that land which was called Silesia, and he claimed it on the ground that it had at one time belonged to the Electors of Brandenburg. The Electors of Brandenburg, we shall remember, had become rulers of the kingdom of Prussia. Frederick was a great general, and two successive victories quickly induced Maria Theresa to make peace with him, ceding him a portion of that Silesia for which he had gone to war. Maria Theresa was married to Francis of Lorraine, who was Grand Duke of Tuscany. She was of the Habsburg house. Louis XIV. was a Bourbon--a younger branch of the Capet family--and in direct descent from the Henry IV., who was the first of the Bourbons to be King of France. And of the same Bourbon family was the King of Spain and of Southern Italy and Sicily--"the Two Sicilies," as they were called.