[p. 567]
|567| of other powers against them; but against the agreement of several powers a union would be able to do nothing, both because of its lesser war-power and because of its scattered geographical situation. This situation has been formed according to a plan, like the extent of great empires. In military respect it is in itself utterly weak, and since the union would be something new, these states would also not be rich enough to gird themselves with rows of fortresses.
Their policy must, according to circumstances, attach them now to this, now to that greater power, and their fate must be the common fate of a weaker ally or of a weak enemy.
The fate of the German estates stands immediately between the policy of two great powers. Both are now alike in this, that the relation to Germany is chiefly a political one, and [indeed] the relation of Prussia even more than the relation of Austria, because this power at the same time bears the imperial crown and is thereby, from ancient times, restricted by the weight of infinitely many rights.
The remaining interests in which the powers were different have been equalised. Through the difference of these interests Prussia has become great, in that it attached itself to those opposed to the House of Austria or placed itself at their head; but time by itself has in part abolished the separateness of the interest of a large part of Germany from the Austrian interest, and in part separated Prussia’s interest from the interest of the German estates.
A principal interest, at the head of whose defence [Prussia] appeared, was religion.
The German estates themselves, in older times chiefly Saxony and Hesse, and foreign powers, Sweden and France, had formerly championed this interest against the Emperor, and Prussia at that time played no part, or as Brandenburg only a subordinate one. In the Seven Years’
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