[p. 545]
|545| and through him against whom it was directed, also in that, through talented and altogether a multitude of writers on both sides, public opinion was very much engaged in it. The public voice seemed to have a kind of significance; if the splendour of his deeds enveloped Frederick the Second, they had been done, and their result, Silesia in Prussian hands, state administration, religious and civil laws in the Prussian lands, was already present; if nothing more was to be expected from there for the rest of Germany, just as nothing had been done for it from there, a hope at the dawn of a far-embracing new German century interested still more. More than the occupation of public opinion and the stirring up of many hopes or apprehensions is not, however, to be noted of the German League of Princes. Since it did not come to deed and expression, nothing is to be said of its essentiality either. The independence of Brandenburg from the German Empire had long before been founded, and whether it would have received an increase or suffered a diminution through the League of Princes put into operation are possibilities about which nothing is to be said.
As regards free associations against foreign powers, such, when Germany did not lacerate itself internally but protected itself against a foreign enemy, had taken the place of the proper wars of the Empire. ([Joh. v.] Müller, [Darstellung des Fürstenbundes, 1787,] p. 70. League with William of Orange against Louis XIV, League of Augsburg 1686.) What princes and estates did was rather the free will of individual associations of circles than a lawful resolution, generally binding, of a body of state. Brandenburg still appears in connection with the Empire – but not for the sake of the obligations towards it -, yet acting independently, [its] chief purpose the Prussian royal crown.
The wars of this century were internal wars.
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