Thus by its nature Prussia was a revolutionary power.
Russia, to whom nature had assigned a sterile yet immense place on the globe, the ninth part of the habitable world, and a population of forty millions of men, all compelled by the savage genius of Peter the Great to unite themselves into one nation, seemed yet to waver between two roads, one of which led to Germany, the other to the Ottoman empire.
Catherine II.

governed it: a woman endowed with wondrous beauty, passion, genius, and crime,--such are necessary in the ruler of a barbarous nation, in order to add the _prestige_ of adoration to the terror inspired by the sceptre.

Each step she took in Asia awakened an echo of surprise and admiration in Europe, and for her was revived the name of Semiramis.

Russia, Prussia, and France, intimidated by her fame, applauded her victories over the Turks, and her conquests in the Black Sea, without apparently comprehending that she weighed down the European power, and that once mistress of Poland and Constantinople, nothing then would prevent her from carrying out her designs on Germany, and extending her arm over all the West.
IV.
England, humiliated in her maritime pride by the brilliant rivalry of the French fleet in the Indian Seas, irritated by the assistance given by France to aid America in her struggle for independence, had secretly allied herself in 1788 with Prussia and Holland, to counterbalance the effect of the alliance of France with Austria, and to intimidate Russia in her invasion of Turkey.

England at this moment relied on the genius of one man, Mr.Pitt, the greatest statesman of the age, son of Lord Chatham, the only political orator of modern ages who equalled (if he did not surpass) Demosthenes.