Still the power of the emperor was in many respects apparent rather than real.  Each of these States had its own customs and laws.  The nobles were tumultuary, and ever ready, if their privileges were infringed, to rise in insurrection.  Military force alone could hold these turbulent realms in awe; and the old feudal servitude which crushed the millions, was but another name for anarchy.  The peace establishment of the emperor amounted to one hundred thousand men, and every one of these was necessary simply to garrison his fortresses.  The enormous expense of the support of such an army, with all the outlays for the materiel of war, the cavalry, and the structure of vast fortresses, exhausted the revenues of a kingdom in which the masses of the people were so miserably poor that they were scarcely elevated above the beasts of the field, and where the finances had long been in almost irreparable disorder.  The years of peace, however, were very few.  War, a maelstrom which ingulfs uncounted millions, seems to have been the normal state of Germany.  But the treasury of Charles was so constantly drained that he could never, even in his greatest straits, raise more than one hundred and sixty thousand men; and he was often compelled to call upon the aid of a foreign purse to meet the expense which that number involved.  Within a hundred years the nations have made vast strides in wealth, and in the consequent ability to throw away millions in war.

Charles VI. commenced his reign with intense devotion to business.  He resolved to be an illustrious emperor, vigorously superintending all the interests of the empire, legislative, judicial and executive.  For a few weeks he was busy night and day, buried in a hopeless mass of diplomatic papers.  But he soon became weary of this, and leaving all the ordinary affairs of the State in the hands of agents, amused himself with his violin and in chasing rabbits.  As more serious employment, he gave pompous receptions, and enveloped himself in imperial ceremony and the most approved courtly etiquette.  He still, however, insisted upon giving his approval to all measures adopted by his ministers, before they were carried into execution.  But as he was too busy with his entertainments, his music and the chase, to devote much time to the dry details of government, papers were accumulating in a mountainous heap in his cabinet, and the most important business was neglected.

Charles XII. was now King of Sweden; Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia; George I., King of England; and the shameful regency had succeeded, in France, the reign of Louis XIV.  For eighteen years a bloody war had been sweeping the plains of Poland, Russia and Sweden.  Thousands had been torn to pieces by the enginery of war, and trampled beneath iron hoofs.  Millions of women and children had been impoverished, beggared, and turned out houseless into the fields to moan and starve and die.  The claims of humanity must ever yield to the requisitions of war.  This fierce battle of eighteen years was fought to decide which of three men, Peter of Russia, Charles of Sweden, or Augustus of Poland, should have the right to exact tribute from Livonia.  This province was a vast pasture on the Baltic, containing about seventeen thousand square miles, and inhabited by about five hundred thousand poor herdsmen and tillers of the soil.