Excerpt from Hanover and Prussia, 1795-1803: A Study in Neutrality I can not refrain from expressing the modest hope that this monograph will help in a small way to call attention to a field of Prussian history which deserves, and will repay, more study than it has hitherto received. Prussian historians, after the style of Treitschke, have too often condemned the period of neutrality as one of unrelieved weakness and disgrace. Thus having wiped out what their modern and somewhat intense nationalism leads them to consider as one of the dark pages in Prus sian history, they hasten on from the reign of Frederick the Great to the reforms of Stein, Hardenberg and Scharnhorst and the more glorious years of the Wars for Liberation. Throughout the preparation of this study the writer has felt the need of an unprejudiced history of the reign of Frederick William II. And of the earlier years of his son's reign. Men like Hertzberg, Haugwitz, Hardenberg and the Duke of Brunswick would repay, in a lesser degree, perhaps, such treatment as Professor Lehmann has given Scharnhorst and Stein, and there is a place for briefer but equally conscientious studies of such men as Lombard, Struensee and von Dohm. Such investigations might help to give us that profounder knowledge of the political, military and social conditions in unreformed Prussia after Frederick the Great - the critical period in Prussia's history - without which we cannot understand the era of reform or the Greater Prussia of the nineteenth century. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.