it definitely as a rival to Austria in
the leadership of Germany. Thenceforth Prussia grew in power and
influence, and became the nucleus of a new Germany. It would almost seem
that things could not well have been otherwise. Germany was seeking for
a new root from which to grow. Clerical and ultra-Catholic Austria was
of no use for this purpose. Bavaria was under the influence of France.
Lutheran Prussia attracted the best elements of the Teutonic mind. It
seems strange, perhaps, that the sandy wastes of the North-East, and its
rather arid, dour population, _should_ have become the centre of growth
for the new German nation, considering the latter's possession of its
own rich and vital characteristics, and its own fertile and beautiful
lands; but so it was. Perhaps the general German folk, with their
speculative, easygoing, almost sentimental tendencies, _needed_ this
hard nucleus of Prussianism--and its matter-of-fact, organizing type of
ability--to crystallize round.

The Napoleonic wars shattered the old order of society, and spread over
Europe the seeds of all sorts of new ideas, in the direction of
nationality, republicanism, and so forth. Fichte, stirred by Napoleon's
victory at Jena (Fichte's birthplace) and the consequent disaster to
his own people, wrote his _Addresses to the German Nation_, pleading
eloquently for a "national regeneration." He, like Vom Stein,
Treitschke, and many others in their time, came to Berlin and
established himself there as in the centre of a new national activity.
Vom Stein, about the same time, carried out the magnificent and
democratic work by which he established on Napoleonic lines (and much to
Napoleon's own chagrin) the outlines of a great and free and federated
Germany. Carl von Clausewitz did in the military world much what Stein
did in the civil world. He formulated the strategical methods and
teachings of Napoleon, and in his book _Vom Krieg_ (published 1832) not
only outlined a greater military Germany, but laid the basis, it has
been said, of all serious study in the art of war. Vom Stein and
Clausewitz died in the same year, 1831. In 1834 Heinrich von Treitschke
was born.

The three Hohenzollern kings, all named Frederick William, who reigned
from the death of Frederick the Great (1786) to the accession of William
I (1861) did not count much personally. The first and third of those
mentioned were decidedly weakminded, and the third towards the close of
his reign becam