ABSTRACT
Mirabeau once observed: ‘La guerre est l'industrie nationale de la Prusse.’ 1 Prussia's close connection with militarism was deliberately fostered by her rulers to compensate for her vulnerability in Europe. She was badly fitted by nature to be a major European power, in contrast to other states like England, Sweden, Spain, France and Russia, all of which possessed certain advantages. Prussia had no major resources until she acquired Silesia in 1740 and Rhineland–Westphalia in 1815, and her soil was of average to poor quality. It would have come as little surprise, therefore, if this artificial state had suffered the same fate as Poland and had been torn apart. That this did not happen was because, in Mirabeau's phrase, Prussia was not a state which possessed an army but an army which possessed a state.
