The policy of England had encouraged the rise of these two infant powers, in order to form the elements of political combinations that would admit of her interests obtaining a firm footing.
III.
A hundred years had hardly elapsed since an emperor of Austria had conferred the title of king on a margrave of Prussia, a subordinate sovereign of two millions of men, and yet Prussia already balanced in Germany the influence of the house of Austria.

The Machiavelian genius of Frederic the Great had become the genius of Prussia.

His monarchy, composed of territories acquired by victory, required war to strengthen itself, still more of agitation and intrigue to legitimise itself.
Prussia was in a ferment of dissolution amidst the German states.
Scarcely had it risen into existence than it abdicated all German feeling by leaguing with England and Russia; and England, always on the watch to widen these breaches, had used Prussia as her lever in Germany.
Russia, whose two-fold ambition already had designs on Asia on the one hand, on Europe on the other, had made it an advanced guard on the west, and used it as an advanced camp on the borders of the Rhine.

Thus Prussia was the point of the Russian sword in the very heart of France.
Military power was every thing; its government was only discipline, its people only an army.

As for its ideas, its policy was to place itself at the head of the Protestant states, and offer protection, assistance, and revenge to all those whose interest or whose ambition was threatened by the house of Austria.