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 tion, it grew, nevertheless, into a power influential out of all proportion to the size of its population and area, thanks to the high efficiency of the administration, to the utilization of all resources for the benefit of the state, and to the unflagging energy of the king himself. Shortly after 1740 Prussia was able to maintain a standing army of more than 100,000 men ready for war, and with this army it could turn the scale in a conflict between the equally balanced forces of the great countries.

In 1740 Frederick II, the Great, succeeded to the throne of Prussia. In the period just passed Austria and France had exhausted themselves in a war begun in 1733 over issues that had not been settled in 1713, namely, the Polish Succession, and the right of France to Lorraine. By the Peace of Vienna in 1738 France obtained Lorraine; Austria, moreover in 1739 lost Belgrad to the Turks. Soon after Frederick's accession in Prussia, the Emperor Charles VI died, leaving a daughter, Maria Theresa (1740-80). France and Bavaria took up arms to prevent her coming to the throne of Austria; this was in direct violation of the promises made to Charles when these countries recognized the Pragmatic Sanction. At the instigation of France the electors chose Charles Albert of Bavaria emperor under the title of Charles VII (1742-45). Frederick the Great took full advantage of Maria Theresa's difficulties; he occupied Silesia and, upon her refusal to surrender it, concluded an alliance with France and Bavaria; the wars that followed upon this were the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48), the First Silesian War (1740-42), and the Second Silesian War (1744-45). Impaired in strength during the weak government of Charles VI, Austria seemed ready to fall to pieces under the force of the shock. But the hesitation of Frederick the Great, the aid of England, Austria's ally after 1742, and above all Maria Theresa's political energy and inspiriting personality helped Austria to withstand the shock. Silesia, it is true, was not recovered, but Maria Theresa kept all the other provinces and in 1745 her husband, Francis I, was elected emperor. She found in Kaunitz a most valuable guide in matters of foreign policy and a wise assistant in the direction of home affairs. The internal administration was steadily perfected in imitation of Prussia, the army was reorganized by Daun, Laudon, and Lacy. Further, by the new alliance between the three great European powers, Austria, France and Russia, Austria was once more established in a commanding position in Europe. However, Frederick, with the aid of England as ally, prevented the consequences of these measures from becoming immediately apparent. In 1756 he made a fresh attack on Austria while England simultaneously went to war with France for the purpose of acquiring the latter's colonies. The ensuing struggle was the Seven Years War, which exposed the weak points of the schemes of Kaunitz and especially the decline in the military strength of France before their excellences could be turned to use. Moreover Maria Theresa, by summoning as empress the French to enter the country, stifled in the princes all feeling of obligation to the empire, while Frederick by his victory over the French at Rossbach (1757) became a national hero despite the unpopularity of Prussia. In addition, the sturdy resistance that the Prussian king offered to the three powers, even though he failed of victory, made an impression on the political world in Prussia's favour no less great in results than were the consequences in northern Germany of his alliance with England.

(2) 1761 to 1815.—After the Treaty of Hubertusburg (1763) Prussia was not only an independent state, it had as well an independent policy. From this time on the rest of northern Germany also became alienated from Austria and southern Germany. These states now received an impulse from England such as they had never had from the empire and Central Europe, for England in this period was rapidly advancing in commerce, industries, and intellectual life, and exhibited an energetic and far-seeing political policy. The mining of the coal and ore deposits in the Rhenish-Westphalian district and in Silesia was undertaken on a large scale, the number of factories increased, the Hanseatic towns took advantage of the American Declaration of Independence to establish transoceanic trade relations that were pregnant with rich results for the future of German commerce, while agriculture east of the Elbe adopted larger methods involving the use of capital in order to develop export trade in grain with England. In addition to Halle other universities in northern Germany became noted as centres of intellectual life; among these were Göttingen, founded in 1737, which had the historians and writers on political science, Schlözer and Spittler, as professors, and Königsberg, where Kant and Kraus taught. Most of the precursors of the classical age of German poetry, as Klopstock and Lessing, were North Germans, so were many of the writers of the Storm and Stress (Sturm und Drang) period. And although Goethe and Schiller, the great poets of the classic era, were South Germans, yet they made their homes in the

north, the centre from which their influence was exerted being the Court of Weimar. Herder and the two Humboldts were Prussians. The Romantic School also under the leadership of North Germans, the Schlegels, Hardenberg, Tieck, Schleiermacher, developed around two northern cities, Berlin and Jena. It was through the intellectual ascendancy exerted by northern Germany that Denmark and Holland were brought almost completely within the sphere of German culture. From north-western Germany proceeded the chief influences that in a periodical press created German public opinion (Schlözer's criticisms on contemporary politics in his "Staatsanzeigen," the political writings of Gentz), and encouraged the sense of nationality (Möser, Count Stolberg). It was in this part of Germany that Freiherr vom Stein received his early education and his training in official life. The relatively large area of the states of northern Germany, the result of the last two hundred and fifty years of political evolution, encouraged intellectual progress and was in turn promoted thereby. For the first time northern Germany undertook to outstrip southern Germany in development; along with this, however, the Protestant states once more took the lead of the Catholic states.

It is true that southern Germany immediately strove to compete with northern Germany, but the division of the former section into so many small principalities paralyzed commerce and retarded intellectual progress and the development of industries. Joseph II, joint-ruler with Maria Theresa from 1760 and sole ruler of Austria from 1780 to 1790, desired to remedy this disintegration by annexing Bavaria to