Frederic the Great and Kaiser Joseph

Excerpt from Frederic the Great and Kaiser Joseph: An Episode of War Diplomacy in the Eighteenth Century

The View taken by English diplomatists of the events of 1776 - 79 was, on the whole, a detached and impartial one, for it was to the interest of England to be neutral. In previous years she had been very hostile to Frederic, but now she became reconciled. Hence in these few years the English diplomatic despatches have something of the value which Ranke has claimed for those of Venice at an earlier date. They seize the central line of diplomatic tend ency and show the direction in which Europe as a whole was moving. Every other source - French, German, Russian, Austrian, Saxon, Bavarian - has been explored by one foreign historian or another, but the English comment still remained practically unknown to them. It seems to me that these despatches complete the picture and place the episodes of the time in their true relation to one another.

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