FREDERICK AND PRUSSIA AFTER THE WAR
The monarch who had borne the burden of seven campaigns—a burden of
which his ten great battles formed but a trifling fraction—might well
have been pardoned for appropriating to himself some share in the
repose which his labours had won for Prussia. Even if it is difficult
to couple the thought of Frederick with that of repose, it might at
least be expected that after a triumph of defence hardly surpassed in
human history he would delight his army by praising their achievements
and his people by accepting their plaudits. Relaxation for himself
and courtesy towards others were, however, equally distasteful to the
King. He slunk into his capital by back streets and thus frustrated
the preparations of the citizens to express their loyalty and joy. Yet
in the darkest moments of the war he had been devising plans for the
improvement of Prussia and he hardly waited for the peace to be signed
before plunging into a rapid career of reform. After Kunersdorf, while
his despair was gradually giving place to hope and hope to confidence,
he was not too absorbed in strategy to lay to heart the defects which
he observed in the schooling of the peasants near the Spree. The weeks
which passed while his envoy at Hubertusburg was harvesting the fruits
of the war were spent by Frederick in planning reforms for the army
which had proved its matchless quality through all the seven campaigns.
His first desire was to get rid of those helpers whose services he had
accepted only because of pressing need. Twenty-one free battalions had
been raised and had proved immensely serviceable. Now the King bade
two-thirds of them go their ways without reward. His learned friend and
servant, Colonel Guichard, upon whom in consequence of a dispute about
the battle of Pharsalia he had inflicted the name Quintus Icilius,
appealed to him to repay to his officers part at least of the money
which they had spent from their own pockets in enlisting their men.
“Thy officers have stolen like ravens,” replied the King; “they shall
not have a farthing.” Still more ungenerous was his treatment of a
section of his army whose only fault was their lack of noble birth.
During the long war many students and schoolboys of the citizen class
entered the army as volunteers and received commissions. In the hour of
triumph they were ruthlessly sacrificed to Frederick’s principle that
his officers, save perhaps among the garrison regiments, must belong to
the caste of nobles. Prussians who had served him in his extremity must
submit to be cashiered, while foreigners of rank were enlisted to atone
for the dearth of natives whose pedigrees satisfied his requirements.
At the same time the army as a whole was wounded by harsh criticism
and harsh reforms. This, like much of Frederick’s conduct, may be
ascribed to the contempt for mankind which experience only increased,
and to the almost inevitable effect upon himself of the unbridled
absolutism described in the sixth chapter of this book. “Dogs, would
ye live for ever?” he shrieked at his men in the crisis of one of his
fights. He was forced to confess that, as his strength became less and
the number of his subjects greater, he could not hope to look into all
affairs of government with his own eyes. Yet he shrank more and more
from creating an official or a system in anywise independent of his own
immediate control. In 1763 he therefore appointed inspectors of cavalry
and of infantry in every province and endowed them with wide powers of
supervision of the officers and all that they did. This measure, it
need hardly be said, roused the utmost bitterness among the regimental
staff, which had hitherto enjoyed a great measure of independence on
the sole condition that the King was satisfied with the results of
its work. It was the more distasteful for the very reason which made
it acceptable to Frederick—that the new inspectors were appointed at
the royal pleasure without regard to seniority. The chief officer of
a regiment, who had been wont to rule it like a patriarch, was now
subjected to the control of a rival, perhaps his junior, who did not
resign his own command and could favour it as he pleased.
The captains, too, suffered in pocket from another unpopular reform.
They had hitherto received from the treasury the full wages of every
man on the muster-roll of their company. In time of peace, however,
the native-born soldiers spent nine or ten months of the year on
furlough without pay. Each captain defrayed the cost of recruiting
foreigners for his company out of what he received and pocketed the
balance. Now, at the moment when war ceased, Frederick cut off this
source of income. By retaining regiments of special merit on the old
footing he insulted the rest, and by graduating according to his
opinion of the regiment’s efficiency the trifling allowances paid by
way of compensation he cast a slur upon the professional honour of
officers and men alike. The King paid his officers ten thalers a month
and their pensions depended entirely upon his caprice. Many captains
were thenceforward unable to resist the temptation to falsify the
muster-rolls so as to receive pay for soldiers who did not exist.
The King’s despotic power, however, enabled him to make light of
military discontent in time of peace. He resolved to keep up an army
of 150,000 men, to drill it as it had never been drilled before, to
educate the officers, to review all the troops every year, to build new
fortresses, and to establish stores of money and munitions sufficient
to enable Prussia to enter at a moment’s notice upon a war of eight
campaigns. It is a highly significant fact that in Frederick’s secret
estimates for the future struggle the annual contribution of Prussia
was set down at 4,700,000 thalers and the sum to be extorted from
Saxony at 5,000,000. The balance of the 12,000,000 thalers, which
was the price of a campaign, must come from the royal accumulations.
Frederick’s own expenses were only 220,000 thalers a year. At the
close of his reign, when the total revenue of the State was not quite
22,000,000 thalers, the treasure amounted to more than 51,000,000, a
sum fully five times as great as that which he had inherited from his
father.
Frederick was compelled by his past to stand to arms all his life
through. With advancing years he became more lonely and more subject
to disease. In 1765 he lost his sister, the Margravine of Schwedt,
and next year the aged Madame de Camas, whom he always called Mamma.
His old friends died one by one and the French wits had vanished. His
brothers, Henry and Ferdinand, were often estranged from him by his
bitter words. Yet to the end of his life he prided himself on his
cheerfulness between the attacks of gout and he permitted no disease to
interrupt his labours. These were devoted first, as we have seen, to
making the land secure from attack by means of the army, and also to
guarding it from famine by methods which may next be considered. Close
on the heels of these essential duties came tasks of fresh development
and reform, the acquisition of West-Preussen in 1772, and new
endeavours to uphold Prussian prestige against the House of Hapsburg.
It is of course impossible to calculate exactly the damage which a
country suffers in time of war. Moral gains and losses count in the
long run for more than material, and no statistics even of material
losses are truly satisfactory. As between one Prussian province and
another, however, a rough comparison may be made by means of the growth
or decline of the population. Silesia and the lands east of the Oder
had naturally suffered most, since, in addition to their quota of
soldiers slain, they had long endured the presence of invading armies.
In Silesia the numbers fell by 50,000, about one in twenty-three, but
further north, in the districts in which the Russians had encamped, the
proportion was nearly five times as heavy. Frederick’s own estimate was
that one-ninth of his subjects had perished.
The loss of property had undoubtedly been very great. The conscience
of the age forbade massacre, but was lenient towards pillage and
devastation. But the King surpassed himself by what Carlyle terms “the
instantaneous practical alacrity with which he set about repairing that
immense miscellany of ruin.” So far as the material losses sustained
by individual Prussians could be ascertained, they were set down by
the careful hands of royal commissioners and mitigated by royal gifts.
The King had at his disposal depreciated coin to the amount of nearly
30,000,000 thalers, the sum which had been accumulated to pay for the
eighth and ninth campaigns. This more than sufficed for the needs of
the army and the repayment of the trifling loans, less than five and a
half million thalers in all, that Frederick had contracted during the
war. With the residue and with the surplus revenues of the State the
King set to work to prevent a single one of his subjects from falling
into absolute ruin. His doles were graduated not by any standard of
abstract justice, but by the rule that the minimum amount of help
should be given that would serve the purpose of the State. Many towns
had paid ransoms to the enemy to avoid being sacked. That of Berlin,
two million thalers, was repaid out of the treasury, but Halle received
less than one-sixth of what it claimed, and in the majority of cases
the burghers were left to bear the loss themselves.
In the country districts, however, there was less power of recuperation
than among the comparatively wealthy towns. According to Frederick’s
opinion, it was therefore necessary that the State should make it
possible for nobles and peasants alike to resume their normal duties.
The spare horses from the army, to the number of 35,000, and many
rations for man and beast from the magazines were at once distributed
to the most needy. Officials allotted to the peasants wood to rebuild
their houses and sums of money to assist the work. Their rents were
remitted for a time, and oxen, cows, sheep, meal, and seed-corn were
supplied to them free of charge. The State reaped its reward in the
rents and taxes which speedily flowed into the royal coffers, as well
as in the rapid growth of population.
While the King was thus doling out relief to a great part of his
subjects, he indulged in a singular extravagance which has been the
subject of much criticism and conjecture. Though he inequitably threw
upon the people the expense of restoring the coinage, though his
subjects were sending him sheaves of petitions for aid, though he
was of all monarchs the least addicted to pomp, none the less, three
months after peace had been signed he began to build a third palace at
Potsdam. The astonished Prussians believed that the cost was 22,000,000
thalers. If no more than one-tenth of this was actually expended, the
King lavished on a superfluity more than one-third of the sum that he
assigned to the restoration of the land.
Those who insist that he did nothing without a motive of State may find
it in his desire to convince foreign Powers that it was dangerous to
attack a nation which could afford luxuries while its enemies were deep
in debt. Other conjectures are possible. Frederick loved to indulge
the hope that the Sciences, which had visited Greece and Italy, France
and England, in turn, might settle for a while in Prussia, and the
new palace, like the salary paid to Voltaire, might be regarded as a
sacrifice at their altar. The claims of the new Prussian industries,
especially the manufacture of silk, which was largely used in adorning
the interior, may have induced the King to provide an artificial market
in this way. Frederick’s Versailles, however, remains to this day both
a monument to his absolutism and an enigma.
[Illustration: THE NEW PALACE AT POTSDAM.]
Absolutism and diligence are still the hall-marks of all his measures.
The military reforms, the work of restoration, and the attention paid
to the arts taxed him but lightly when compared with his labours for
the development of the agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and finance
of his dominions. No sooner was the war at an end and the work of
restoration set on foot than Frederick began to pour forth a flood of
edicts for the regulation and advance of every department of national
life, and to engage in incessant labours of inspection to see that
they were carried out.
In promoting agriculture he was guided by principles with which we
are already familiar. His prime rule was still to increase the number
of tillers of the soil and to make them safe against starvation.
He therefore continued to bring in colonists from far and near, to
drain marshes, to reclaim wastes, and to build new habitations. It is
computed that at the close of his reign one-fifth or one-sixth of his
subjects were immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. Besides a
knowledge of husbandry and handicraft which in many cases surpassed
that of the Prussians, the aliens brought with them substantial
additions to the material wealth of the land. The official inventory of
their belongings, though incomplete, shows that 6392 horses, 7875 head
of cattle, 20,548 sheep, 3227 pigs, and upwards of 2,000,000 thalers in
money were thus added to the capital of the nation.
To provide for the accommodation of the recruits to his army of
agriculture, the King applied every art of government to bring new
land under cultivation and to increase the fertility of the old. The
superior enlightenment of Prussia was attested by the curt refusal
of Brunswick and Hanover to co-operate in works of drainage. No site
for a farmstead was to be left vacant and in the forests—so ran the
decree—“no place where a tree can stand, unplanted.” The sterile
nature of the soil challenged the unwearied industry of the King. Many
centuries before blotting-paper came to be known, Brandenburg was
nicknamed “the sand-box of the Holy Roman Empire.” Thousands of acres
had to be set with bushes to prevent its surface from being blown over
the neighbouring fields.
“I confess,” wrote Frederick to Voltaire, “that with the
exception of Libya few states can boast that they equal us in
the matter of sand. Yet we are bringing 76,000 acres under
cultivation this year as pasture. This pasture feeds 7,000
cows, whose dung will manure and improve the land, and the
crops will be of more value.”
The spectacle of the royal philosopher writing to Voltaire about
manure and walking almost daily from Sans Souci to his turnip-field
is a visible proof of Frederick’s devotion to this branch of his
stewardship. He was wont to speak with authority as the leading
agriculturist of the realm. Here, as elsewhere, his breadth of view
often enabled him to discern the best product or practice in other
lands, and his command of resources to transport it to his own. Having
once attained his object by teaching his subjects to produce an article
at home, he imperatively forbade them to import it from abroad. The
full reward of his policy would be reaped when Prussia began to supply
it to other countries in exchange for gold and silver.
A single instance of the minuteness and imperiousness with which the
King applied this policy to agriculture may be cited from Professor
Koser’s history of the reign. The Berlin egg-market was still dependent
on foreign supply. In 1780 a royal hen-census showed that there were
324,175 hens in the Electoral Mark and that 36,300 more were required
to meet the demand for eggs. “What will it matter,” asked the King,
“if every peasant keep ten or twelve more hens? Their food does not
cost much; they can pick up most of it in the straw and dung of the
farmyard.” Prohibition of the import of foreign eggs followed. This
caused the market price to rise and the ministers expressed the fear
that the supply would not be sufficient. The King rejoined:
“It is all the fault of the farmers and peasants for not
setting about it. I have laboured forty years to introduce
things of this kind. If the ministers want to eat eggs, let
them take more trouble with the Chambers to carry it through.
The prohibition of foreign eggs remains as before.”
Only a six months’ interval was allowed later to give the new
establishments time to develop.
All through his reign Frederick set his face firmly against any attempt
to bridge over the gulf which divided the country from the town. The
tobacco and sugar with which the peasant solaced himself, the clothes
he wore, the plough and hoe which served him to till the fields were
all made more costly in order that the towns might thrive. The vast
majority of handicrafts might be practised only within their walls. On
the other hand, the King’s ordinances against artisans who meddled with
farming were so severe that they could not be strictly carried out. He
also tried many measures with a view to conferring upon the peasant a
secure position on the soil. He was successful in preventing the nobles
from buying up the holdings of the class below them. He established
some three hundred new villages by breaking up outlying farms. But
in other directions even his autocratic power failed to overcome the
passive resistance of the rural population.
In theory, Frederick was a champion of human freedom. He condemned
slavery in strong terms and viewed askance the legal position of the
Prussian countryfolk whom their lords regarded as so many head of
labour. But he dared not shake the pillars of his army and of his
treasury by giving the peasant leave to quit the soil. He desired
to retain serfdom, but only in its mildest form. He set his heart
on making every serf a hereditary tenant at a money rent. This was,
however, repugnant both to the nobles, who feared that they would not
be able to secure labourers for hire, and to the peasants, who feared
that they would in future be obliged to bear the loss when their cattle
died and to pay their arrears of taxation themselves. The proposed
reform, as well as an attempt to assign limits to the labour that the
lords might lawfully exact, had therefore to be given up.
A change of still more unquestionable benefit, of which England
had enjoyed the fruits for fully two centuries, likewise proved
impracticable in Prussia, even on the domains of the Crown. Each
holder, whether noble or peasant, had a number of scattered strips of
land in huge fields which were unenclosed and were ploughed and sown
in common by the labour of the whole village. The abuses of such a
system were manifold. It stereotyped the succession of crops, checked
individual enterprise, prevented the high cultivation which depended on
the aid of walls or hedges, and exposed the strips of the industrious
to the spreading tares of his slothful neighbour. Frederick, once more
guided by his loftier outlook on affairs, ordered commissioners to
remedy this unprofitable system by a rearrangement of all the holdings.
Peasants, bailiffs, ministers, all protested in vain, but Frederick
in his turn commanded in vain. All that he could accomplish in his
lifetime was the severance of noble from peasant land. He was compelled
to content himself with abolishing practical slavery as distinguished
from serfdom, with codifying the services due from the peasants, and
with other minor reforms.
Whatever may have been its effect in the long run, however, there
can be little doubt that it was Frederick’s deeds rather than his
laws which conferred the greatest immediate benefit upon Prussian
agriculture. His subjects were assured, as were those of no other great
monarch in Europe, that there would be a market for their produce in
years of plenty, relief of their necessities in years of dearth, and
succour from the State where fire or flood or pest would otherwise have
ruined them. This sense of security against starvation, though now so
common that it is difficult to appreciate it, was then so rare that
thousands of freemen left their native lands for the despotism and
sterile soil of Prussia.
In the sphere of industry Frederick was less hampered than in that of
agriculture by the inertia of his people. He found Prussia making few
commodities save the simplest and exporting only three,—wool, linen,
and wood. Before he died his minister, Hertzberg, could boast that
every conceivable manufacture found a home in his dominions.
The record of the steps by which the transformation was effected is
simply a further series of illustrations of the autocracy and diligence
of the King. He strove with might and main to reanimate and develop
the old industries and to establish new ones. This involved incessant
contrivance and inspection on his part, the free use of subsidies by
the State, and the constant imposition of vexatious restrictions upon
every form of trade.
One of the most conspicuous examples of Frederick’s methods is the
development of the porcelain industry of Berlin. During the Prussian
occupation of Saxony the secret of the far-famed Dresden ware was
extorted from the employees of Augustus. The King spared no effort to
make the most of his prize. He bought up the manufactory at Berlin,
forbade all purchase of rival goods from abroad, installed porcelain
at his own table in place of the gold and silver associated with royal
state, used porcelain snuffboxes, and bestowed samples of the finest
products when convention prescribed a regal gift. To promote the
welfare of Prussia, Jews who wished to marry were compelled to purchase
a service of porcelain and to dispose of it abroad.
With the same unflinching resolution the King pursued his design of
making Berlin a great industrial centre, of establishing manufactures
in all his towns, and of forcing Prussia to provide for all her own
needs and for many of the needs of foreign lands. Every industry, silk
and satin, cloth and linen, shipbuilding and mining, alike received the
royal stimulus and was compelled to submit to the royal interference.
Frederick’s success varied, for in some cases it was more apparent
than in others that precepts, prohibitions, and subsidies could not
make good deficiencies of climate, skill, and enterprise. While the
production of porcelain was firmly established, that of tobacco by
no means fulfilled the expectations of the King. He commissioned a
Prussian chemist to find out a sauce which would make the home-grown
leaf at least comparable with the Virginian. The experiment, which
occupied more than two and a half years, was furthered by all the
resources of Government. No less than 1180 samples were tested. The
report of the General Tobacco Administration, however, stated that only
34 of these were in any way better for the treatment, and that these
34, “notwithstanding they made a brave show to outward seeming,” were
too unsavoury even to be mixed with the products of Virginia.
Twice a year the King with the aid of his ministers was wont to
take stock of his kingdom, and to measure the progress of all his
schemes. In the interval he travelled through his provinces and issued
instructions for the amendment of all that he found amiss. “Schweidnitz
and Neisse are still very short of tiled roofs, N. B., someone will
have to look to it” is one of fourteen points that he noted down in
the course of a visit to Silesia. No detail was too trifling for his
attention. At the time when a paper manufactory was determined on,
doubt was expressed whether sufficient raw material in the shape of
fine rags would be forthcoming.
“The ill custom prevails among us,” rejoined the King, “that
both in town and country the servant-girls make the best rags
into tinder to light the fire. We must try to break people of
it, and therefore the rag-collectors must be provided with
touch-wood, which is just as good as tinder for lighting a
fire, to give to the girls in exchange for rags.”
A king who took upon his own shoulders so vast a share as did Frederick
in regulating the agriculture and industry of his subjects could not
avoid concerning himself also with their foreign trade. The general
principles of commercial policy which he followed were simple. He was
determined to see that Prussian subjects sold as much as possible to
foreigners and bought as little as possible from them in return. The
latter part of his task could be, and was, accomplished by prohibiting
the importation of certain commodities, such as salt, porcelain,
and steel, and by appointing a host of customs-officers to make the
prohibition effective. But to sell to foreigners goods which were
produced in Prussia chiefly because the King willed that his subjects
should forego the convenience of buying them from foreigners was a feat
which taxed Frederick’s statecraft to the utmost.
In general it may be said that Prussian commerce did not thrive. Thanks
to the strenuous efforts of King and ministers, who imported foreign
artisans, endowed them with implements and homes, compelled natives to
learn crafts, bought sheep in Spain, forbade the export of raw material
or the import of finished goods, forced the monasteries to support
unprofitable industries, vetoed profitable industries that threatened
in any way to prejudice their favourites, in short, exhausted the arts
of government to foster production,—thanks to all this the Silesian
export of cloth and linen rose to between five and six million thalers
a year.
This result was not achieved by domestic interference only. The King
did not shrink from tariff wars with Austria and Saxony, nor from
much toil to procure commercial treaties. It often appeared, however,
that there were spheres in which statecraft, even when practised by a
Frederick, could accomplish little.
“When at that time a new republic arose across the ocean,”
writes Professor Koser, “King Frederick made haste to enter
into commercial relations with it, in order to exchange
cloth, woollen stuffs, and linen, iron goods and porcelain,
for rice, indigo, and Virginian tobacco. The ‘most favoured
nation’ treaty of 10 September, 1785, between Prussia and the
United States of America fulfilled, it is true, few of the
expectations which both parties formed of it, for the English,
who from a seafaring and capitalist point of view were more
competent, long continued to be the commercial intermediaries
between those renegade colonies and the Old World.”
In the course of his efforts the King endeavoured at different times to
supplant Hamburg, to ruin Danzig, and to make Silesia an impenetrable
barrier between Polish wool-growers and their customers in Saxony.
It was a peculiar feature of Prussia that her straggling frontiers
were crossed by many roads and rivers which connected foreign states.
The Hohenzollern laboured to turn this fact to account and to favour
Prussian merchants by hampering foreigners with enormous tolls. The
result was that commerce was compelled to avoid the borders of his
dominions.
Frederick was indefatigable in inciting his subjects to take up new
enterprises as well as in striving to procure for them advantages
abroad. As a rule, however, the commercial companies which he formed
either decayed or relapsed into the position of State undertakings. It
may be surmised that what might have been possible to the Frederick
and the Prussia of 1740 had been rendered well-nigh impossible by the
changes in both which a generation of militarism had produced. The
system of despotic command and automatic obedience was fatal to the
growth of a class of self-reliant merchants, and the King complained
bitterly that neither individuals nor corporations would act with
enlightened patriotism in developing the commerce of Prussia. Able
advisers of the Crown, indeed, did something to atone for this lack
of initiative. Thanks to the talent of Hagen, the Bank, which was
established in 1765, survived its early perils and became serviceable
to Prussian trade. The Marine Commercial Company also outlived many of
Frederick’s semi-official creations.
It is perhaps in the sphere of taxation that Frederick’s unflinching
autocracy is most remarkably displayed. He claimed not only to
regulate the consumption of his people according to his own standard
of propriety, but also to select agents to enforce his rules without
the smallest consideration for their feelings. Frederick wished to
make existence easier for the poor, especially for the soldier. He
therefore abolished the tax on grain, but subjected meat, beer, and
wine to progressive imposts. Every Prussian was forced to buy from the
State a fixed quantity of inferior salt at a price equal to four times
its cost of production. The King’s delight in coffee did not make him
blind to the fact that the State would gain more profit if his subjects
were forced to abandon it in favour of Prussian beer. Accordingly in
1781 coffee became, like salt and tobacco, a monopoly of State and a
tax of 250 per cent. upon its value was imposed. Frederick strove to
refute the remonstrances of the Pomeranian gentry with the words: “His
Majesty’s high person was reared in youth on beer-soup, therefore the
people in that part can equally well be reared on beer-soup; it is
much more wholesome than coffee.” The people, however, seem to have
mitigated the inconvenience to which they were put by their King in
part by brewing decoctions of herbs, but chiefly by smuggling. It has
been estimated that no less than two-thirds of the coffee which they
used was contraband. It boded ill for the State when to knock one of
the King’s spies on the head excited none of the odium of murder.
The measure which most of all estranged the hearts of the Prussians
from their King dates, however, from the year 1766, when Frederick
resolved to introduce the French system of farming out the indirect
taxes, or Regie. Not the system alone, but also the chief agents who
carried it into effect, were brought from France. The lessee-in-chief,
de Launay, exercised great influence over the King, who accepted his
opinion as to the possibilities of taxation in preference to that of
his Prussian commissioners.
The people, as was natural, detested an innovation which both wounded
their Teutonic sensibilities and raised the price of food. De Launay
and his assistants were caricatured as marching behind beasts laden
with rackets, foils, and fiddles, to avenge the shame of Rossbach on
the inhabitants of Berlin. Patriots might well chafe at the thought
that a new and foreign department was introduced into the General
Directory itself, and that whereas a Prussian minister was paid only
4000 thalers a year, each of the four chief Frenchmen received 15,000.
Less than ten per cent. of the 2000 tax-gatherers were foreigners, but
the Germans were insulted at being deemed fit for the lower grades
alone.
Their murmurs, however, were powerless to alter the purpose of the
King. The innovation, indeed, was not recommended by conspicuous
success. Though it simplified the fiscal administration, a large
proportion of the returns was still swallowed up by expenses of
collection. On a review of the twenty years, 1766–1786, the proceeds
of the Regie seem to have been in no wise augmented by de Launay’s
hated invasion. Yet Frederick adhered to his plan, kept the taxes high,
administered the funds of the State in secret, and crowned all by
bringing coffee under the control of the French. To his fiscal measures
more than to all else was it due that the State which he had exalted
drew a deep breath of relief when he died.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]