of the yoke and the severity of the discipline were
conditions necessary to the duration of the work. The mercantile
protective system, which had built up industry; the administration of
taxes, which poured money into the State coffers; the economy, which
immobilized this money in the treasury, hampered and irritated all who
wished to work and trade, all who reflected on the natural conditions
of commerce and industry; but it was these things alone that enabled
the poorest Government in Europe to be better armed than the richest,
and to keep in the van. In a word, people wanted the spring to relax,
and failed to see that to slacken the spring meant annihilating the
State.

IV.

To reform Frederick's monarchy would have required no less genius than
it took to create it. Reform, however, was indispensable, since
Frederick alone was capable of holding up the composite edifice he had
built. Hence a threatening and wellnigh inevitable catastrophe. "All
will go on almost of its own accord, so long as foreign affairs are
quiet and unbroken," wrote Mirabeau after Frederick's death. "But at
the first gunshot or at the first stormy situation the whole of this
little scaffolding of mediocrity will topple to the ground. How all
these underling Ministers would crumple up! How everyone, from the
distracted chief to the convict-gang, would shout for a pilot! Who
would that pilot be?"

V.

Frederick's nephew, who was called upon to succeed him, was not made
for so great a role. In every respect he offered a complete contrast
to the Prince whose weighty heritage he took up. Frederick in person
was infirm and sober; all his prestige lay in the gaze of his great
eyes, which, as Mirabeau put it, "at the will of his heroic soul,
carried fascination or terror." Frederick William II. was a _bel
homme_, highly sanguine, very robust, fond of violent exercise and
coarse pleasures. "The build and strength of a Royal Guardsman," wrote
the French Minister d'Esterno, who had no liking for him. "An enormous
machine of flesh," said an Austrian diplomat who saw him at Pillnitz
in 1791. "The true type of a King," according to Metternich, who was
presented to him in 1792 at Coblenz, at the time of the German crusade
against France and the Revolution. "His stature," he added, "was
gigantic, and his corpulence in keeping. In every company he stood a
head higher than the surrounding crowd. His manners were noble and
engaging." He expressed himself