If the King’s claims to Silesia had been doubtful, all the acumen of his officials was now needed to make a show of some uncertain right to portions of the new acquisition.  About this the King himself was little concerned.  He had defended before the world with almost superhuman heroism the occupation of Silesia.  This province was united to Prussia by streams of blood.  In the case of West Prussia the craft of the politician did the work almost alone, and for a long time the conqueror lacked in public opinion that justification for his action which, as it seems, is given by the horrors of war and the capricious fortune of the battlefield.  But this last acquisition of the King’s, though wanting in the thunder of guns and the trumpets of victory, was yet, of all the great gifts which the German people owe to Frederick II., the greatest and most abounding in fortunate consequences.  Through several hundred years the Germans had been divided and hemmed in and encroached upon by neighbors greedy for conquest; the great King was the first conqueror who again pushed the German boundaries toward the east.  A hundred years after his great ancestor had in vain defended the fortresses of the Rhine against Louis XIV., Frederick gave the Germans again the explicit admonition that it was their duty to carry law, education, liberty, culture, and industry into the east of Europe.  His whole territory, with the exception of a few Old Saxon districts, had been originally German, then Slavic, then again won from the Slavs by fierce wars or colonization; never since the migrations of the Middle Ages had the struggle ceased for the broad plains east of the Oder; never since the conquest of Brandenburg had this house forgotten that it was the warden of the German border.  Whenever wars ceased the politicians were busy.  The Elector Frederick William had freed Prussia, the territory of the Teutonic Knights, from feudal allegiance to Poland.  Frederick I. had boldly raised this isolated colony to a kingdom.  But the possession of East Prussia was insecure.  It was not the corrupt republic of Poland which threatened danger, but the rising power of Russia.  Frederick had learned to respect the Russians as enemies; he knew the soaring ambition of Empress Catherine, and as a prudent prince seized the right moment.  The new territory—­Pomerelia, the voivodeship (administrative province) of Kulm and Marienburg, the bishopric of Ermeland, the city of Elbing, a portion of Cujavia, a portion of Posen—­united East Prussia with Pomerania and Brandenburg.  It had always been a border land.  Since the early times people of different races had crowded into the coasts of the Baltic:  Germans, Slavs, Lithuanians, and Finns.  From the thirteenth century the Germans had made their way into this Vistula country as founders of cities and agriculturists:  Teutonic Knights, merchants, pious monks, German noblemen and peasants.  On both sides of the Vistula arose the towers and boundary stones of German colonies—­supreme