The Chancellorship of General von Caprivi, who had been successively Minister of War and Marine, lasted from March, 1890, to October, 1894. He may have been a good commanding general, but he has left no reputation either as a man of marked character or as a statesman of exceptional ability. Nor was either character or ability much needed. He was, as every one knew, a man of immensely inferior ability to his great predecessor, but every one knew also that the Emperor intended to be his own Chancellor, pursue his own policy, and take responsibility for it. Taking responsibility is, naturally, easier for a Hohenzollern monarch than for most men, since he is responsible to no one but himself. With the appointment of Caprivi the Emperor's "personal regiment" may be said to have begun. During General von Caprivi's term of office some measures of importance have to be noted, among them the Quinquennat, which replaced Bismarck's Septennat and fixed the military budget for five years instead of seven; the reduction of the period of conscription for the infantry from three years to two; and the decision not to renew Bismarck's reinsurance treaty with Russia. The chief event, however, with which Chancellor Caprivi's name is usually associated, is the conclusion of commercial treaties between Germany and most other continental countries. Other countries had followed Germany's example and adopted a protective system, and with a view to the avoidance of tariff wars, Caprivi, strongly supported, it need hardly be said, by an Emperor who had just declared that "the world at the end of the nineteenth century stands under the star of commerce, which breaks down the barriers between nations," began a series of commercial treaty negotiations. The first agreements were made with Germany's allies in the Triplice, Austria and Italy. Treaties with Switzerland and Belgium, Servia and Rumania, followed. Russia held aloof for a time, but as a great grain-exporting country she too found it advisable to come to terms. With France there was no need of an agreement, since she was bound by the Treaty of Frankfurt, concluded after the war of 1870, to grant Germany her minimum duties. One of the regrettable results of the Empire's new commercial policy was an antagonism between agriculture and industry which now declared itself and has remained active to the present day. The political cause of Caprivi's fall from power, if power it can be called, was the twofold hostility of the Conservative and Liberal parties in Parliament, that of the Conservatives being due to the injury supposed to be done to landlord interests by the commercial treaties, and that of the Liberals by an Education Bill, which, it was alleged, would hand the Prussian school system completely over to the Church. Perhaps the main cause, however, was the general unpopularity he incurred by attacking, officially and through the press, his predecessor, Bismarck, the idol of the people.