reat had seen this to be the source of her
strength. His policy was not merely Prussian: in effect, if not in
aim, it was German. His victory at Rossbach over a great polyglot
force of French and Imperialists first awakened German nationality to
a thrill of conscious life; and the last success of his career was the
championship of the lesser German princes against the encroachments of
the Hapsburgs. In fact, it seems now a mere commonplace to assert that
Prussia has prospered most when, as under Frederick the Great and
William the Great, her policy has been truly German, and that she has
fallen back most in the years 1795-1806 and 1848-1852, when the
subservience of her Frederick Williams to France and Austria has lost
them the respect and support of the rest of the Fatherland. A State
that would attract other fragments of the same nation must be
attractive, and it must be broadly national if it is to attract. If
Stein and Bismarck had been merely Prussians, if Cavour's policy had
been narrowly Sardinian, would their States ever have served as the
rallying centres for the Germany and Italy of to-day?

The difficulties which beset Frederick William III. in 1805 were not
entirely of his own making. His predecessor of the same ill-omened
name, when nearing the close of his inglorious reign, made the Peace
of Basel (1795), which began to place the policy of Berlin at the beck
and call of the French revolutionists. But the present ruler had
assured Prussia's subservience to France at the time of the
Secularizations, when he gained Erfurt, Eichsfeld, Hildesheim,
Paderborn, and a great part of the straggling bishopric of Muenster.
Even at that time of shameless rapacity, there were those who saw that
the gain of half a million of subjects to Prussia was a poor return
for the loss of self-respect that befell all who shared in the
sacrilegious plunder bartered away by Bonaparte and Talleyrand.
Frederick William III. was even suspected of a leaning towards French
methods of Government; and a Prussian statesman said to the French
ambassador:

"You have only the nobles against you: the King and the people are
openly for France. The revolution which you have made from below
upwards will be slowly effected in Prussia from above downwards:
the King is a democrat after his fashion: he is always striving to
curtail the privileges of the nobles, but by slow means. In a few
years feudal rights will cease to exist