em of bureaucratic
administration, where not actually created, was placed on a firm
foundation. But in external affairs Prussia continued to earn its
character as the robber State of Europe _par excellence_.

In 1772 Friedrich joined with Austria in the first partition of
Poland, acquiring the whole of West Prussia as his share. A few years
later Friedrich formed an anti-Austrian league of German princes,
under Prussian leadership, which was the first overt sign of the
conflict for supremacy in Germany between Prussia and Austria, which
lasted for wellnigh a century. By the time of his death--August 7,
1786--Friedrich had increased Prussian territory to nearly 75,000
square miles and between five and six millions of population.

Under Friedrich's nephew, Friedrich Wilhelm II, while the rigour of
bureaucratic administration, controlled by a monarchical absolutism,
continued and was even accentuated, the absence of the able hand of
Friedrich the Great soon made itself apparent. As regards external
policy, however, Prussia, while allowing territories on the left bank
of the Rhine to go to France, eagerly saw to the increase of her own
dominions in the east to the extent of nearly doubling her superficial
area by her participation in the second and third partitions of
Poland, which took place in 1783 and 1795 respectively. These external
successes, or rather acts of spoliation, were, notwithstanding,
counter-balanced at home by a degeneracy alike of the civil
bureaucracy and of the army. The country internally, both as regards
morale and effectiveness, had sunk far below its level under Friedrich
the Great. This showed itself during the great Napoleonic wars, when
Prussia had to undergo more than one humiliation at the hands of
Buonaparte, culminating in October 1806 with the collapse of the
Prussian armies at Jena and Auerstaedt. The entry of Napoleon in
triumph into Berlin followed. At the Peace of Tilsit, in 1807,
Friedrich-Wilhelm had to sign away half his kingdom and to consent to
the payment of a heavy war indemnity, pending which the French troops
occupied the most important fortresses in the country.

Following upon this moment of deepest national humiliation comes the
period of the Ministers Stein and Hardenberg, of the enthusiastic
adjurations to patriotism of Fischer and others, and of the activity
of the "League of Virtue" (_Tugendbund_). It is difficult to
understand the enthusiasm that could be aroused for