Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/343

OF THE TWO GERMAN POWERS. 311 themselves taking up arms, had still solemnly chap. blessed the good cause of the Western belliger- 1_ ents, were less and less under motives for going to war with the Czar, and also less and less sure that, if once committed against him, they would have all the help they might need from their French and their English allies. Under stress of the reasons thus tending to make them hang back, the two German Powers were put to the proof of their loyalty, and one of them soon fell away. Prussia — destined in later years to become a Thedefeo- , „ Hon of great, conquering Power, and the basis or a new, Pmsaia. mighty empire — was then under the rule of a king — they called him Frederick William — who, although not endowed with the qualities for any such task, still kept in his very own hands the whole conduct of foreign affairs. His policy, if so one may call it, appeared to be in no degree shaped by any sense that he had of the duty attaching on Prussia as one of the five great Powers, and what he seemed to take for a guide was the mere composition of forces brought to bear on his mind by many and conflicting fears. Amongst these of course might be reckoned — for think of the ruin that followed on Jena and Auerstadt !— his lively fear of the French, with also his fear that, if tamely enduring the Czar's occupation of the Danubian Principalities, he would find himself deserted by Germany, and accordingly, as we have seen, he allied himself to the Western Powers and to Austria by the