of the son.
The son's love for French manners, literature, philosophy and music was
rejected by the father as a manifestation of sissy-ness. There followed
a terrible outbreak between these two strange temperaments. Frederick
tried to escape to England. He was caught and court-martialed and forced
to witness the decapitation of his best friend who had tried to help
him. Thereupon as part of his punishment, the young prince was sent to
a little fortress somewhere in the provinces to be taught the details of
his future business of being a king. It proved a blessing in disguise.
When Frederick came to the throne in 1740, he knew how his country was
managed from the birth certificate of a pauper's son to the minutest
detail of a complicated annual Budget.

As an author, especially in his book called the "Anti-Macchiavelli,"
Frederick had expressed his contempt for the political creed of the
ancient Florentine historian, who had advised his princely pupils to lie
and cheat whenever it was necessary to do so for the benefit of their
country. The ideal ruler in Frederick's volume was the first servant of
his people, the enlightened despot after the example of Louis XIV. In
practice, however, Frederick, while working for his people twenty hours
a day, tolerated no one to be near him as a counsellor. His ministers
were superior clerks. Prussia was his private possession, to be treated
according to his own wishes. And nothing was allowed to interfere with
the interest of the state.

In the year 1740 the Emperor Charles VI, of Austria, died. He had tried
to make the position of his only daughter, Maria Theresa, secure
through a solemn treaty, written black on white, upon a large piece
of parchment. But no sooner had the old emperor been deposited in the
ancestral crypt of the Habsburg family, than the armies of Frederick
were marching towards the Austrian frontier to occupy that part of
Silesia for which (together with almost everything else in central
Europe) Prussia clamored, on account of some ancient and very doubtful
rights of claim. In a number of wars, Frederick conquered all of
Silesia, and although he was often very near defeat, he maintained
himself in his newly acquired territories against all Austrian
counter-attacks.

Europe took due notice of this sudden appearance of a very powerful new
state. In the eighteenth century, the Germans were a people who had been
ruined by the great religious wars and who were not hel