Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/600

 592 REVIEWS OF BOOKS October for his loyalty to their cause. He only obtained fragments of the Orange inheritance, to the whole of which he considered himself entitled through his mother under the will of Frederick Henry. And in the Utrecht settle- ment Prussia gained nothing more than a portion of Spanish Gelderland, which is represented as an inadequate recompense for his sacrifices. But this view, which is the adopted creed of Prussian historians, overlooks the patent fact that Frederick I hired out his troops as mercenaries to be employed at the discretion of the paymaster, a practice which Frederick the Great resolutely abandoned. Services which were paid for in money and also in advance by the royal title have no right to claim in addition lavish grants of territory. It is true that Prussian sacrifices were not limited to the loss of troops. Prussian absorption in the war of the Spanish Succession diverted her attention down to 1713 from the war waged by the northern league against Sweden, in which Prussian interests were far more directly involved. J. G. Droysen said that in the western war Frederick I had an army but no policy, whereas in the northern war he had a policy and no army. M. Waddington declares this to be an exaggeration, although his whole narrative proves its substantial accuracy. But this sacrifice was not really very great. When the treaty of Utrecht set the Prussian forces at freedom, the northern struggle was still unsettled, and, in spite of his late entry into the arena, Frederick William I obtained, at practically no cost at all, the valuable acquisition of Stettin and the mouth of the Oder, and he might have obtained Stralsund and the rest of Pomerania if he had been an abler diplomatist. When it is said that the book is dull, it may be replied with some truth that it deals with a dull period. Of the two kings, one is a nonentity ; the other is repulsive. Frederick I was an amiable automaton in the hands of successive ministers and favourites. Frederick William, in spite of his admitted merits as an honest and economic administrator, had so little control over his temper as to be at times almost insane. The two queens, Sophia Charlotte and Sophia Dorothea, although both came from Hanover, are the most attractive figures in the court of Berlin, and each found her husband a trial. It is impossible for a foreigner, and must be difficult for a Prussian, to feel much interest in the ministers who filled the chief posts, Danckelmann, Wartenberg, Ilgen, and Grumbkow. In the fifty years which M. Waddington treats in such detail, Prussia played the part of a third-rate power in Europe, and only its future importance compels us to pay such close attention to its annals. It would require more literary skill than the author possesses to have produced a fascinating volume on Prussia in these two reigns. His opportunity will come when he deals with Frederick the Great, whose youthful training under his obnoxious father is apparently reserved as a bonne bouche for the forthcoming volume. In one small point M. Waddington is kinder than most French historians. He has supplied an index, but it is not a good one, as it only deals with proper names. The four portraits in the volume of the two kings, Queen Sophia Charlotte, and Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau are interesting in themselves, but their reproduction leaves much to be desired. KlCHARD LODOE.