ands had
strengthened, though it had not inspired, his love of the sea. The best
proof how painful this cession was to the Elector is the fact that he
shortly afterward offered to the crown of Sweden, not alone the three
sees of Halberstadt, Minden, and Magdeburg, but a sum of two millions of
thalers in addition, for the possession of Pomerania." The same writer
says of the Great Elector elsewhere, that "his mind had a wide grasp; to
us it may seem almost too wide, when we call to mind that he brought the
coast of Guinea into direct communication with Brandenburg, and ventured
to compete with Spain on the ocean." When he died, the population of his
dominions amounted to one million five hundred thousand.

His successor was his son Frederick, who added to the territory of
Prussia, and who, as before stated, became king in November, 1700, a few
days after the extinction, in the person of Charles II., of the Spanish
branch of the house of Austria. One royal house had gone out, and
another came in. Prince Eugene of Savoy, the ablest man that ever served
the house of Austria, plainly told the German Emperor that his ministers
deserved the gallows for advising him to consent to the creation of the
new kingdom, and all subsequent German history seems to show that he was
right. But that house needed all the aid it could beg, buy, or borrow,
to press its claim to the Spanish crowns; and, thanks to the exertions
of the Great Elector, Brandenburg had an army, the aid of which was well
worth purchasing at what Leopold may have thought to be a nominal price,
after all. So well balanced were the parties to the war of the Spanish
Succession, at least in its earlier years, that the mere absence of the
Prussian contingent from the armies of the Grand Alliance might have
thrown victory into the French scale. What would have been the effect
had the army and the influence of Brandenburg been placed at the
disposal of Louis XIV.? What would have been the fate of the house of
Austria, had the Elector been actively employed on the French side,
like the Elector of Bavaria, in the campaign of Blenheim, instead of
being one of the stoutest supporters of the Austrians? Even Eugene
himself might never have won most of those victories which have made his
name immortal, had his policy prevailed at Vienna in 1700, and the
Emperor refused to convert the Elector of Brandenburg into King of
Prussia. At Blenheim, the Prussians behaved in the noblest manne