Though the provinces of Prussia, in the Seven Years' War, were compelled to do homage to the Empress Elizabeth, and remained for some time incorporated in the Russian Empire, yet the officials of the districts under the foreign army and government ventured secretly to raise money and provisions for their King, and great art was required for the passage of the transports. Many were in the secret, but there was not one traitor; they stole in disguise through the Russian camp in danger of their lives. They discovered afterwards that they earned little thanks by it, for the King did not like his East Prussians; he spoke depreciatingly of them; seldom showed them the same favour as the other provinces; he looked like stone whenever he learnt that one of his young officers was born between the Vistula and Memel, and never entered his East Prussian province after the war. But the East Prussians were not shaken in their veneration for him: they clung with true love to their ungracious master, and his best and most intellectual panegyrist was Emmanuel Kant.
The life in the King's service was undoubtedly a rough one: incessant were the work and deprivations; it was difficult for the best to do enough for so strict a master, and the greatest devotion received but curt thanks; if a man was worn out he was probably coldly thrown aside; the labour was without end everywhere,--new undertakings--scaffoldings of an unfinished building. To any one who came into the country this life did not appear cheerful, it was so austere, monotonous, and rough; there was little of beauty or pleasure in it; and as the bachelor household of the King, with his obedient servants and his submissive intimates taking the air under the trees of a quiet garden, gave the impression of a monastery to a foreign guest; so he found in the whole Prussian regime, something of the self-denial and obedience of a large industrious monastic brotherhood.
Somewhat of this spirit had passed into the people themselves. But we honour in this an enduring service of Frederic II.: still is this spirit of self-denial the secret of the greatness of the Prussian State, the last and best guarantee for its duration. The excellent machine which the King had erected with so much intelligence and energy could not eternally last; it was shattered twenty years after his death; but that the State did not at the same time sink,--that the intelligence and patriotism of the citizen were in a condition to create a new life on new foundations under his successors,--is the secret of Frederic's greatness.