Frederick the Great

Template:Short description Template:Featured article Template:Use dmy dates Template:EngvarB

* King in/of Prussia
 Reign
 Burial
 House

Template:House of Hohenzollern (Prussia)

**Frederick II** (Template:Lang-de; 24 January 1712Template:Spnd17 August 1786) was King in Prussia from 1740 until 1772, and King of Prussia from 1772 until his death in 1786. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Silesian wars, his reorganisation of the Prussian Army, the First Partition of Poland, and his patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment. Frederick was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled King in Prussia, declaring himself King of Prussia after annexing Royal Prussia from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772. Prussia greatly increased its territories and became a major military power in Europe under his rule. He became known as **Frederick the Great** (Template:Lang-de) and was nicknamed "**Old Fritz**" (Template:Lang-de).

In his youth, Frederick was more interested in music and philosophy than in the art of war, which led to clashes with his authoritarian father, Frederick William I of Prussia. However, upon ascending to the Prussian throne, he attacked and annexed the rich Austrian province of Silesia in 1742, winning military acclaim for himself and Prussia. He became an influential military theorist whose analyses emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy, tactics, mobility and logistics.

Frederick was a supporter of enlightened absolutism, stating that the ruler should be the first servant of the state. He modernised the Prussian bureaucracy and civil service, and pursued religious policies throughout his realm that ranged from tolerance to segregation. He reformed the judicial system and made it possible for men of lower status to become judges and senior bureaucrats. Frederick also encouraged immigrants of various nationalities and faiths to come to Prussia, although he enacted oppressive measures against Catholics in Silesia and Polish Prussia. He supported the arts and philosophers he favoured, and allowed freedom of the press and literature. Frederick was almost certainly homosexual, and his sexuality has been the subject of much study. Because he died childless, he was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick William II. He is buried at his favourite residence, Sanssouci in Potsdam.

Nearly all 19th-century German historians made Frederick into a romantic model of a glorified warrior, praising his leadership, administrative efficiency, devotion to duty and success in building Prussia into a great power in Europe. Frederick remained an admired historical figure through Germany's defeat in World War I, and the Nazis glorified him as a great German leader prefiguring Adolf Hitler, who personally idolised him. His reputation became less favourable in Germany after World War II, partly due to his status as a Nazi symbol. Historians in the 21st century tend to view Frederick as an outstanding military leader and capable monarch, whose commitment to enlightenment culture and administrative reform built the foundation that allowed the Kingdom of Prussia to contest the Austrian Habsburgs for leadership among the German states.

## Early life

Frederick was the son of then-Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia and his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Hanover.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He was born sometime between 11 and 12 p.m. on 24 January 1712 in the Berlin Palace and was baptised with the single name *Friedrich* by Benjamin Ursinus von Bär on 31 January.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** The birth was welcomed by his grandfather, Frederick I, as his two previous grandsons had both died in infancy. With the death of Frederick I in 1713, his son Frederick William I became King in Prussia, thus making young Frederick the crown prince. Frederick had nine siblings who lived to adulthood. He had six sisters. The eldest was Wilhelmine, who became his closest sibling.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He also had three younger brothers, including Augustus William and Henry.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** The new king wished for his children to be educated not as royalty, but as simple folk. They were tutored by a French woman, Madame de Montbail, who had also educated Frederick William.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick William I, popularly dubbed the "Soldier King", had created a large and powerful army that included a regiment of his famous "Potsdam Giants"; he carefully managed the kingdom's wealth and developed a strong centralised government. He also had a violent temper and ruled Brandenburg-Prussia with absolute authority.Template:Sfnm In contrast, Frederick's mother Sophia, whose father, George Louis of Brunswick-Lüneburg, had succeeded to the British throne as King George I in 1714, was polite, charismatic and learned.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** The political and personal differences between Frederick's parents created tensions,Template:Sfnm which affected Frederick's attitude toward his role as a ruler, his attitude toward culture, and his relationship with his father.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

During his early youth, Frederick lived with his mother and sister Wilhelmine,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** although they regularly visited their father's hunting lodge at Königs Wusterhausen.Template:Sfnm Frederick and his older sister formed a close relationship,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** which lasted until her death in 1758.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick and his sisters were brought up by a Huguenot governess and tutor and learned French and German simultaneously. Undeterred by his father's desire that his education be entirely religious and pragmatic, the young Frederick developed a preference for music, literature, and French culture. Frederick Wilhelm thought these interests were effeminate,Template:Sfnm as they clashed with his militarism, resulting in his frequent beating and humiliation of Frederick.Template:Sfnm Nevertheless, Frederick, with the help of his tutor in Latin, Jacques Duhan, procured for himself a 3,000 volume secret library of poetry, Greek and Roman classics, and philosophy to supplement his official lessons.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Although his father, Frederick William I, had been raised a Calvinist in spite of the Lutheran state faith in Prussia, he feared he was not one of God's elect. To avoid the possibility of his son Frederick being motivated by the same concerns, the king ordered that his heir not be taught about predestination. Despite his father's intention, Frederick appeared to have adopted a sense of predestination for himself.Template:Sfnm

## Crown Prince

See also: Sexuality of Frederick the Great
 File:Crown prince Friedrich II, by Antoine Pesne.jpg  At age 16, Frederick formed an attachment to the king's 17-year-old page, Peter Karl Christoph von Keith. Wilhelmine recorded that the two "soon became inseparable. Keith was intelligent, but without education. He served my brother from feelings of real devotion, and kept him informed of all the king's actions."**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Wilhelmine would further record that "Though I had noticed that he was on more familiar terms with this page than was proper in his position, I did not know how intimate the friendship was." As Frederick was almost certainly homosexual,Template:Sfnm his relationship with Keith may have been homoerotic, although the extent of their intimacy remains ambiguous.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** When Frederick William heard rumours of their relationship, Keith was sent away to an unpopular regiment near the Dutch frontier.Template:Sfnm

In the mid-1720s, Queen Sophia Dorothea attempted to arrange the marriage of Frederick and his sister Wilhelmine to her brother King George II's children Amelia and Frederick, who was the heir apparent.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Fearing an alliance between Prussia and Great Britain, Field Marshal von Seckendorff, the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, bribed the Prussian Minister of War, Field Marshal von Grumbkow, and the Prussian ambassador in London, Benjamin Reichenbach. The pair undermined the relationship between the British and Prussian courts using bribery and slander.Template:Sfnm Eventually Frederick William became angered by the idea of the effete Frederick being married to an English wife and under the influence of the British court.Template:Sfnm Instead, he signed a treaty with Austria, which vaguely promised to acknowledge Prussia's rights to the principalities of Jülich-Berg, which led to the collapse of the marriage proposal.Template:Sfnm

### Katte affair

Soon after his relationship with Keith ended, Frederick became close friends with Hans Hermann von Katte, a Prussian officer several years older than Frederick who became one of his boon companions and may have been his lover.Template:Sfnm After the English marriages became impossible, Frederick plotted to flee to England with Katte and other junior army officers.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** While the royal retinue was near Mannheim in the Electorate of the Palatinate, Robert Keith, who was Peter Keith's brother and also one of Frederick's companions, had an attack of conscience when the conspirators were preparing to escape and begged Frederick William for forgiveness on 5 August 1730.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick and Katte were subsequently arrested and imprisoned in Küstrin. Because they were army officers who had tried to flee Prussia for Great Britain, Frederick William levelled an accusation of treason against the pair. The king briefly threatened the crown prince with execution, then considered forcing Frederick to renounce the succession in favour of his brother, Augustus William, although either option would have been difficult to justify to the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** The king condemned Katte to death and forced Frederick to watch his beheading at Küstrin on 6 November, leading the crown prince to faint just before the fatal blow.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick was granted a royal pardon and released from his cell on 18 November 1730, although he remained stripped of his military rank.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Rather than being permitted to return to Berlin, he was forced to remain in Küstrin and began rigorous schooling in statecraft and administration for the War and Estates Departments. Tensions eased slightly when Frederick William visited Küstrin a year later, and Frederick was allowed to visit Berlin on the occasion of his sister Wilhelmine's marriage to Margrave Frederick of Bayreuth on 20 November 1731.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** The crown prince returned to Berlin after finally being released from his tutelage at Küstrin on 26 February 1732 on condition that he marry Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern.Template:Sfnm

### Marriage and War of the Polish Succession

 File:Arolsen Klebeband 15 259.jpg  Initially, Frederick William considered marrying Frederick to Elisabeth of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the niece of Empress Anna of Russia, but this plan was ardently opposed by Prince Eugene of Savoy. Frederick himself also proposed marrying Maria Theresa of Austria in return for renouncing the succession.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Instead, Eugene persuaded Frederick William, through Seckendorff, that the crown prince should marry Elisabeth Christine, who was a Protestant relative of the Austrian Habsburgs.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick wrote to his sister that, "There can be neither love nor friendship between us",**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and he threatened suicide,Template:Sfnm but he went along with the wedding on 12 June 1733. He had little in common with his bride, and the marriage was resented as an example of the Austrian political interference that had plagued Prussia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Nevertheless, during their early married life, the royal couple resided at the Crown Prince's Palace in Berlin. Later, Elisabeth Christine accompanied Frederick to Schloss Rheinsberg, where at this time she played an active role in his social life.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** After his father died and he had secured the throne, Frederick separated from Elisabeth. He granted her the Schönhausen Palace and apartments at the Berliner Stadtschloss, but he prohibited Elisabeth Christine from visiting his court in Potsdam. Frederick and Elisabeth Christine had no children, and Frederick bestowed the title of the heir to the throne, "Prince of Prussia", on his brother Augustus William. Nevertheless, Elisabeth Christine remained devoted to him. Frederick gave her all the honours befitting her station, but never displayed any affection. After their separation, he would only see her on state occasions.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** These included visits to her on her birthday and were some of the rare occasions when Frederick did not wear military uniform.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

 File:Rheinsberg Castle.jpg  In 1732, Frederick was restored to the Prussian Army as Colonel of the Regiment von der Goltz, stationed near Nauen and Neuruppin.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** When Prussia provided a contingent of troops to aid the Army of the Holy Roman Empire during the War of the Polish Succession, Frederick studied under Prince Eugene of Savoy during the campaign against France on the Rhine;**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** he noted the weakness of the Imperial Army under Eugene's command, something that he would capitalise on at Austria's expense when he later took the throne.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick William, weakened by gout and seeking to reconcile with his heir, granted Frederick Schloss Rheinsberg in Rheinsberg, north of Neuruppin. At Rheinsberg, Frederick assembled a small number of musicians, actors and other artists. He spent his time reading, watching and acting in dramatic plays, as well as composing and playing music.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick formed the Bayard Order to discuss warfare with his friends; Heinrich August de la Motte Fouqué was made the grand master of the gatherings.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Later, Frederick regarded this time as one of the happiest of his life.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Reading and studying the works of Niccolò Machiavelli, such as *The Prince*, was considered necessary for any king in Europe to rule effectively. In 1739, Frederick finished his *Anti-Machiavel*, an idealistic rebuttal of Machiavelli. It was written in French—as were all of Frederick's works—and published anonymously in 1740, but Voltaire distributed it in Amsterdam to great popularity.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick's years dedicated to the arts instead of politics ended upon the 1740 death of Frederick William and his inheritance of the Kingdom of Prussia. Frederick and his father were more or less reconciled at the latter's death, and Frederick later admitted, despite their constant conflict, that Frederick William had been an effective ruler: "What a terrible man he was. But he was just, intelligent, and skilled in the management of affairs... it was through his efforts, through his tireless labour, that I have been able to accomplish everything that I have done since."**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

## Inheritance

 File:Europe 1740 en.png   File:Europe 1783-1792 en.png  In one defining respect Frederick would come to the throne with an exceptional inheritance. Frederick William I had left him with a highly militarised state. Prussia was the twelfth largest country in Europe in terms of population, but its army was the fourth largest: only the armies of France, Russia and Austria were larger.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Prussia had one soldier for every 28 citizens, whereas Great Britain only had one for every 310, and the military absorbed 86% of Prussia's state budget.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Moreover, the Prussian infantry trained by Frederick William I were, at the time of Frederick's accession, arguably unrivalled in discipline and firepower. By 1770, after two decades of punishing war alternating with intervals of peace, Frederick had doubled the size of the huge army he had inherited. The situation is summed up in a widely translated and quoted aphorism attributed to Mirabeau, who asserted in 1786 that "Template:Lang"**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** ("Prussia was not a state in possession of an army, but an army in possession of a state").**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** By using the resources his frugal father had cultivated, Frederick was eventually able to establish Prussia as the fifth and smallest European great power.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Prince Frederick was twenty-eight years old when his father Frederick William I died and he ascended to the throne of Prussia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Before his accession, Frederick was told by D'Alembert, "The philosophers and the men of letters in every land have long looked upon you, Sire, as their leader and model."**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Such devotion, consequently, had to be tempered by political realities. When Frederick ascended the throne as the third "King in Prussia" in 1740, his realm consisted of scattered territories, including Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg in the west of the Holy Roman Empire; Brandenburg, Hither Pomerania, and Farther Pomerania in the east of the Empire; and the Kingdom of Prussia, the former Duchy of Prussia, outside of the Empire bordering the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was titled *King in Prussia* because his kingdom included only part of historic Prussia; he was to declare himself *King of Prussia* after the First Partition of Poland in 1772.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

### War of the Austrian Succession

Main articles: First Silesian War and Second Silesian War
When Frederick became king, he was faced with the challenge of overcoming Prussia's weaknesses, vulnerably disconnected holdings with a weak economic base.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** To strengthen Prussia's position, he fought wars mainly against Austria, whose Habsburg dynasty had reigned as Holy Roman Emperors continuously since the 15th century.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Thus, upon succeeding to the throne on 31 May 1740,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick declined to endorse the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, a legal mechanism to ensure the inheritance of the Habsburg domains by Maria Theresa of Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. Upon the death of Charles VI on 29 October 1740,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick disputed the 23-year-old Maria Theresa's right of succession to the Habsburg lands, while simultaneously asserting his own right to the Austrian province of Silesia based on a number of old, though ambiguous, Hohenzollern claims to parts of Silesia.Template:Sfnm

Accordingly, the First Silesian War (1740–1742, part of the War of the Austrian Succession) began on 16 December 1740 when Frederick invaded and quickly occupied almost all of Silesia within seven weeks.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Though Frederick justified his occupation on dynastic grounds,Template:Sfnm the invasion of this militarily and politically vulnerable part of the Habsburg empire also had the potential to provide substantial long-term economic and strategic benefits.Template:Sfnm The occupation of Silesia added one of the most densely industrialised German regions to Frederick's kingdom and gave it control over the navigable Oder River.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** It nearly doubled Prussia's population and increased its territory by a third.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** It also prevented Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, from seeking to connect his own disparate lands through Silesia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

 File:Fredrik II, 1712-1786, kung av Preussen (Antoine Pesne) - Nationalmuseum - 15767.tif  In late March 1741, Frederick set out on campaign again to capture the few remaining fortresses within the province that were still holding out. He was surprised by the arrival of an Austrian army, which he fought at the Battle of Mollwitz on 10 April 1741.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Though Frederick had served under Prince Eugene of Savoy, this was his first major battle in command of an army. In the course of the fighting, Frederick's cavalry was disorganised by a charge of the Austrian horse. Believing his forces had been defeated, Frederick galloped away to avoid capture,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** leaving Field Marshal Kurt Schwerin in command to lead the disciplined Prussian infantry to victory. Frederick would later admit to humiliation at his abdication of command**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and would state that Mollwitz was his school.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Disappointed with the performance of his cavalry, whose training his father had neglected in favour of the infantry, Frederick spent much of his time in Silesia establishing a new doctrine for them.Template:Sfnm
Encouraged by Frederick's victory at Mollwitz, the French and their ally, the Electorate of Bavaria, entered the war against Austria in early September 1741 and marched on Prague.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Meanwhile, Frederick, as well as other members of the League of Nymphenburg, sponsored the candidacy of his ally Charles of Bavaria to be elected Holy Roman Emperor. In late November, the Franco-Bavarian forces took Prague, and Charles was crowned King of Bohemia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Subsequently, he was elected as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII on 24 January 1742. After the Austrians pulled their army out of Silesia to defend Bohemia, Frederick pursued them and blocked their path to Prague.Template:Sfnm The Austrians counter-attacked on 17 May 1742, initiating the Battle of Chotusitz. In this battle, Frederick's retrained cavalry proved more effective than at Mollwitz,Template:Sfnm but once more it was the discipline of the Prussian infantry that won the fieldTemplate:Sfnm and allowed Frederick to claim a major victory.Template:Sfnm This victory, along with the Franco-Bavarian forces capturing Prague, forced the Austrians to seek peace. The terms of the Treaty of Breslau between Austria and Prussia, negotiated in June 1742, gave Prussia all of Silesia and Glatz County, with the Austrians retaining only the portion called Austrian or Czech Silesia.Template:Sfnm

 File:Hohenfriedeberg - Attack of Prussian Infantry - 1745.jpg  By 1743, the Austrians had subdued Bavaria and driven the French out of Bohemia. Frederick strongly suspected Maria Theresa would resume war in an attempt to recover Silesia. Accordingly, he renewed his alliance with France and preemptively invaded Bohemia in August 1744, beginning the Second Silesian War.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** In late August 1744, Frederick's army had crossed the Bohemian frontier, marched directly to Prague, and laid siege to the city, which surrendered on 16 September 1744 after a three-day bombardment.Template:Sfnm Frederick's troops immediately continued marching into the heart of central Bohemia,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** but Saxony had now joined the war against Prussia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Although the combined Austrian and Saxon armies outnumbered Frederick's forces, they refused to directly engage with Frederick's army, harassing his supply lines instead. Eventually, Frederick was forced to withdraw to Silesia as winter approached.Template:Sfnm In the interim, Frederick also successfully claimed his inheritance to the minor territory of East Frisia on the North Sea coast of Germany, occupying the territory after its last ruler died without issue in 1744.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

In January 1745, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII of Bavaria died,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** taking Bavaria out of the war and allowing Maria Theresa's husband Francis of Lorraine to be eventually elected Holy Roman Emperor.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Now able to focus solely on Frederick's army, the Austrians, who were reinforced by the Saxons, crossed the mountains to invade Silesia. After allowing them across,Template:Efn Frederick pinned them down and decisively defeated them at the Battle of Hohenfriedberg on 4 June 1745.Template:Sfnm Frederick subsequently advanced into Bohemia and defeated a counterattack by the Austrians at the Battle of Soor.Template:Sfnm Frederick then turned towards Dresden when he learned the Saxons were preparing to march on Berlin. However, on 15 December 1745, Prussian forces under the command of Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau soundly defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Kesselsdorf.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** After linking up his army with Leopold's, Frederick occupied the Saxon capitol of Dresden, forcing the Saxon elector, Augustus III, to capitulate.Template:Sfnm

Once again, Frederick's victories on the battlefield compelled his enemies to sue for peace. Under the terms of the Treaty of Dresden, signed on 25 December 1745, Austria was forced to adhere to the terms of the Treaty of Breslau giving Silesia to Prussia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** It was after the signing of the treaty that Frederick, then 33 years old, first became known as "the Great".**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

### Seven Years' War

Main article: Third Silesian War
Though Frederick had withdrawn from the War of the Austrian Succession once Austria guaranteed his possession of Silesia,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Austria remained embroiled in the war until the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Less than a year after the treaty was signed, Maria Theresa was once more seeking allies, particularly Russia and France, to eventually renew the war with Prussia to regain Silesia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** In preparation for a new confrontation with Frederick, the Empress reformed Austria's tax system and military.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** During the ten years of peace that followed the signing of the Treaty of Dresden, Frederick also prepared to defend his claim on Silesia by further fortifying the province and expanding his army,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** as well as reorganising his finances.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

In 1756, Frederick attempted to forestall Britain's financing of a Russian army on Prussia's border by negotiating an alliance with Britain at the Convention of Westminster, by which Prussia would protect Hanover against French attack, and Britain would no longer subsidise Russia. This treaty triggered the Diplomatic Revolution in which Habsburg Austria and Bourbon France, who had been traditional enemies, allied together with Russia to defeat the Anglo-Prussian coalition.Template:Sfnm To strengthen his strategic position against this coalition,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** on 29 August 1756, Frederick's well-prepared army preemptively invaded Saxony.Template:Sfnm His invasion triggered the Third Silesian War and the larger Seven Years' War, both of which lasted until 1763. He quickly captured Dresden, besieged the trapped Saxon army in Pirna, and continued marching the remainder of his army toward North Bohemia, intending to winter there.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** At the Battle of Lobositz he claimed a close victory against an Austrian army that was aiming to relieve Pirna,Template:Sfnm but afterward withdrew his forces back to Saxony for the winter.Template:Sfnm When the Saxon forces in Pirna finally capitulated in October 1756, Frederick forcibly incorporated them into his own army.Template:Sfnm This action, along with his initial invasion of neutral Saxony brought him widespread international criticism;**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** but the conquest of Saxony also provided him with significant financial, military, and strategic assets that helped him sustain the war.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

 File:Bataille de Zorndorf.jpg  In the early spring of 1757, Frederick once more invaded Bohemia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He was victorious against the Austrian army at the Battle of Prague on 6 May 1757, but his losses were so great he was unable to take the city itself, and settled for besieging it instead.Template:Sfnm A month later on 18 June 1757, Frederick suffered his first major defeat at the Battle of Kolín,Template:Sfnm which forced him to abandon his invasion of Bohemia. When the French and the Austrians pursued him into Saxony and Silesia in the fall of 1757, Frederick defeated and repulsed a much larger Franco-Austrian army at the Battle of RossbachTemplate:Sfnm and another Austrian army at the Battle of Leuthen.Template:Sfnm Frederick hoped these two victories would force Austria to negotiate, but Maria Theresa was determined not to make peace until she had recovered Silesia, and the war continued.Template:Sfnm Despite its strong performance, the losses suffered from combat, disease and desertion had severely reduced the quality of the Prussian army.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**
In the remaining years of the war, Frederick faced a coalition of enemies including Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and the Holy Roman Empire,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** supported only by Great Britain and its allies Hesse, Brunswick, and Hanover.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** In 1758 Frederick once more took the initiative by invading Moravia. By May, he had laid siege to Olomouc; but, the Austrians were able to hold the town and destroyed Frederick's supply train, forcing him to retreat into Silesia.Template:Sfnm In the meantime, the Russian army had advanced within Template:Convert east of Berlin. In August, he fought the Russian forces to a draw at the Battle of Zorndorf, in which nearly a third of Frederick's soldiers were casualties.Template:Sfnm He then headed south to face the Austrian army in Saxony. There, he was defeated at the Battle of Hochkirch on 14 October, although the Austrian forces were not able to exploit their victory.Template:Sfnm

 File:Frederick the Great after the Battle of Hochkirch in 1758 by Carl Röchling.jpg  During the 1759 campaign, the Austrian and Russian forces took the initiative, which they kept for the remainder of the war.Template:Sfnm They joined and once more advanced on Berlin. Frederick's army, which consisted of a substantial number of quickly recruited, half-trained soldiers,Template:Sfnm attempted to check them at the Battle of Kunersdorf on 12 August, where he was defeated and his troops were routed.Template:Sfnm Almost half his army was destroyed, and Frederick almost became a casualty when a bullet smashed a snuffbox he was carrying.Template:Sfnm Nevertheless, the Austro-Russian forces hesitated and stopped their advance for the year, an event Frederick later called the "Miracle of the House of Brandenburg".Template:Sfnm Frederick spent the remainder of the year in a futile attempt to manoeuvre the Austrians out of Saxony, where they had recaptured Dresden. Template:Sfnm His effort cost him further losses when his general Friedrich August von Finck capitulated at Maxen on 20 November.Template:Sfnm

At the beginning of 1760, the Austrians moved to retake Silesia, where Frederick defeated them at the Battle of Liegnitz on 15 August.Template:Sfnm The victory did not allow Frederick to regain the initiative or prevent Russian and Austrian troops from raiding Berlin in October to extort a ransom from the city.Template:Sfnm At the end of the campaign season, Frederick fought his last major engagement of the war.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He won a marginal victory at the Battle of Torgau on 3 November,Template:Sfnm which secured Berlin from further raids.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** In this battle, Frederick became a casualty when he was hit in the chest by a spent bullet.Template:Sfnm

By 1761, both the Austrian and Prussian military forces were so exhausted that no major battles were fought between them. Frederick's position became even more desperate in 1761 when Britain, having achieved victory in the American and Indian theatres of the war, ended its financial support for Prussia after the death of King George II, Frederick's uncle.Template:Sfnm The Russian forces also continued their advance, occupying Pomerania and parts of Brandenburg. With the Russians slowly advancing towards Berlin, it looked as though Prussia was about to collapse.Template:Sfnm On 6 January 1762, Frederick wrote to Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein, "We ought now to think of preserving for my nephew, by way of negotiation, whatever fragments of my territory we can save from the avidity of my enemies".**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

 File:Friedrich ii campenhausen.jpg  The sudden death of Empress Elizabeth of Russia in January 1762 led to the succession of the Prussophile Peter III, her German nephew, who was also the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** This led to the collapse of the anti-Prussian coalition; Peter immediately promised to end the Russian occupation of East Prussia and Pomerania, returning them to Frederick. One of Peter III's first diplomatic endeavours was to seek a Prussian title; Frederick obliged. Peter III was so enamoured of Frederick that he not only offered him the full use of a Russian corps for the remainder of the war against Austria, he also wrote to Frederick that he would rather have been a general in the Prussian army than Tsar of Russia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** More significantly, Russia's about-face from an enemy of Prussia to its patron rattled the leadership of Sweden, who hastily made peace with Frederick as well.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** With the threat to his eastern borders over, and France also seeking peace after its defeats by Britain, Frederick was able to fight the Austrians to a stalemate and finally brought them to the peace table. While the ensuing Treaty of Hubertusburg simply returned the European borders to what they had been before the Seven Years' War, Frederick's ability to retain Silesia in spite of the odds earned Prussia admiration throughout the German-speaking territories. A year following the Treaty of Hubertusburg, Catherine the Great, Peter III's widow and usurper, signed an eight-year alliance with Prussia, albeit with conditions that favoured the Russians.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick's ultimate success in the Seven Years' War came at a heavy financial cost to Prussia. Part of the burden was covered by the Anglo-Prussian Convention, which gave Frederick an annual £670,000 in British subsidies from 1758 till 1762.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** These subsidies ceased when Frederick allied with Peter III,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** partly because of the changed political situation**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and also because of Great Britain's decreasing willingness to pay the sums Frederick wanted.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick also financed the war by devaluing the Prussian coin five times; debased coins were produced with the help of Leipzig mintmasters, Veitel Heine Ephraim, Daniel Itzig and Moses Isaacs.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He also debased the coinage of Saxony and Poland.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** This debasement of the currency helped Frederick cover over 20 per cent of the cost of the war, but at the price of causing massive inflation and economic upheaval throughout the region.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Saxony, occupied by Prussia for most of the conflict, was left nearly destitute as a result.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** While Prussia lost no territory, the population and army were severely depleted by constant combat and invasions by Austria, Russia and Sweden. The best of Frederick's officer corps were also killed in the conflict. Although Frederick managed to bring his army up to 190,000 men by the time the economy had largely recovered in 1772, which made it the third-largest army in Europe, almost none of the officers in this army were veterans of his generation and the King's attitude towards them was extremely harsh.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** During this time, Frederick also suffered a number of personal losses. Many of his closest friends and family members—including his brother Augustus William,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** his sister Wilhelmine, and his mother—had died while Frederick was engaged in the war.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

### First Partition of Poland

Main articles: First Partition of Poland and Prussian Partition
 File:Rzeczpospolita Rozbiory 1.png   File:Portraitoffrederickthegreat.jpg  Frederick sought to acquire and economically exploit Polish Prussia as part of his wider aim of enriching his kingdom.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** As early as 1731 Frederick had suggested that his country would benefit from annexing Polish territory,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and had described Poland as an "artichoke, ready to be consumed leaf by leaf".**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** By 1752, he had prepared the ground for the partition of Poland–Lithuania, aiming to achieve his goal of building a territorial bridge between Pomerania, Brandenburg, and his East Prussian provinces.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** The new territories would also provide an increased tax base, additional populations for the Prussian military, and serve as a surrogate for the other overseas colonies of the other great powers.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Poland was vulnerable to partition due to poor governance, as well as the interference of foreign powers in its internal affairs.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick himself was partly responsible for this weakness by opposing attempts at financial and political reform in Poland,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and undermining the Polish economy by inflating its currency by his use of Polish coin dies. The profits exceeded 25 million thalers, twice the peacetime national budget of Prussia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He also thwarted Polish efforts to create a stable economic system by building a customs fort at Marienwerder on the Vistula, Poland's major trade artery,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and by bombarding Polish customs ports on the Vistula.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick also used Poland's religious dissension to keep the kingdom open to Prussian control.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Poland was predominantly Roman Catholic, but approximately ten per cent of Poland's population, 600,000 Eastern Orthodox and 250,000 Protestants, were non-Catholic dissenters. During the 1760s, the dissenters' political importance was out of proportion to their numbers. Although dissenters still had substantial rights, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had increasingly been reducing their civic rights after a period of considerable religious and political freedom.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Soon Protestants were barred from public offices and the Template:Lang (Polish Parliament).**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick took advantage of this situation by becoming the protector of Protestant interests in Poland in the name of religious freedom.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick further opened Prussian control by signing an alliance with Catherine the Great who placed Stanisław August Poniatowski, a former lover and favourite, on the Polish throne.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

After Russia occupied the Danubian Principalities in 1769–70, Frederick's representative in Saint Petersburg, his brother Prince Henry, convinced Frederick and Maria Theresa that the balance of power would be maintained by a tripartite division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth instead of Russia taking land from the Ottomans. They agreed to the First Partition of Poland in 1772, which took place without war. Frederick acquired most of Royal Prussia, annexing Template:Convert and 600,000 inhabitants. Although Frederick's share of the partition was the smallest of the partitioning powers, the lands he acquired had roughly the same economic value as the others and had great strategic value.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** The newly created province of West Prussia connected East Prussia and Farther Pomerania and granted Prussia control of the mouth of the Vistula River, as well as cutting off Poland's sea trade. Maria Theresa had only reluctantly agreed to the partition, to which Frederick sarcastically commented, "she cries, but she takes".**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick undertook the exploitation of Polish territory under the pretext of an enlightened civilising mission that emphasised the supposed cultural superiority of Prussian ways.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He saw Polish Prussia as barbaric and uncivilised,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** describing the inhabitants as "slovenly Polish trash"**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and comparing them unfavourably with the Iroquois.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** His long-term goal was to remove the Poles through Germanisation, which included appropriating Polish Crown lands and monasteries,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** introducing a military draft, encouraging German settlement in the region, and implementing a tax policy that disproportionately impoverished Polish nobles.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

### War of the Bavarian Succession

Main article: War of the Bavarian Succession
 File:Frederick II of Prussia Coloured drawing.png  Late in his life Frederick involved Prussia in the low-scale War of the Bavarian Succession in 1778, in which he stifled Austrian attempts to exchange the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** For their part, the Austrians tried to pressure the French to participate in the War of Bavarian Succession since there were guarantees under consideration related to the Peace of Westphalia, clauses which linked the Bourbon dynasty of France and the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty of Austria. Unfortunately for the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, the French court was unwilling to support him because they were already supporting the American revolutionaries on the North American continent and the idea of an alliance with Austria had been unpopular in France since the end of the Seven Years' War.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick ended up as a beneficiary of the American Revolutionary War, as Austria was left more or less isolated.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Moreover, Saxony and Russia, both of which had been Austria's allies in the Seven Years' War, were now allied with Prussia.Template:Sfnm Although Frederick was weary of war in his old age, he was determined not to allow Austrian dominance in German affairs.Template:Sfnm Frederick and Prince Henry marched the Prussian army into Bohemia to confront Joseph's army, but the two forces ultimately descended into a stalemate, largely living off the land and skirmishing rather than actively attacking each other.Template:Sfnm Frederick's longtime rival Maria Theresa, who was Joseph's mother and his co-ruler, did not want a new war with Prussia, and secretly sent messengers to Frederick to discuss peace negotiations.Template:Sfnm Finally, Catherine II of Russia threatened to enter the war on Frederick's side if peace was not negotiated, and Joseph reluctantly dropped his claim to Bavaria.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** When Joseph tried the scheme again in 1784, Frederick created the Template:Lang (League of Princes), allowing himself to be seen as a defender of German liberties, in contrast to his earlier role of attacking the imperial Habsburgs. To stop Joseph II's attempts to acquire Bavaria, Frederick enlisted the help of the Electors of Hanover and Saxony along with several other minor German princes. Perhaps even more significant, Frederick benefited from the defection of the senior prelate of the German Church, the Archbishop of Mainz, who was also the arch-chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, which further strengthened Frederick and Prussia's standing amid the German states.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

## Policies

### Administrative modernisation

 File:Friedrich Zweite Alt.jpg  In his earliest published work, the *Anti-Machiavel*,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and his later Template:Lang (*Political Testament*),**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick wrote that the sovereign was the first servant of the state.Template:Efn Acting in this role, Frederick helped transform Prussia from a European backwater to an economically strong and politically reformed state.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He protected his industries with high tariffs and minimal restrictions on domestic trade. He increased the freedom of speech in press and literature,Template:Sfnm abolished most uses of judicial torture,Template:Sfnm and reduced the number of crimes that could be punished by the death sentence.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Working with his Grand Chancellor Samuel von Cocceji, he reformed the judicial system and made it more efficient, and he moved the courts toward greater legal equality of all citizens by removing special courts for special social classes.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** The reform was completed after Frederick's death, resulting in the Prussian Law Code of 1794, which balanced absolutism with human rights and corporate privilege with equality before the law. Reception to the law code was mixed as it was often viewed as contradictory.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick strove to put Prussia's fiscal system in order. In January 1750, Johann Philipp Graumann was appointed as Frederick's confidential adviser on finance, military affairs, and royal possessions, as well as the Director-General of all mint facilities.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Graumann's currency reform slightly lowered the silver content of Prussian thaler from Template:Frac Cologne mark of silver to Template:Frac,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** which brought the metal content of the thaler into alignment with its face value,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and it standardised the Prussian coinage system.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** As a result, Prussian coins, which had been leaving the country nearly as fast as they were minted,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** remained in circulation in Prussia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** In addition, Frederick estimated that he earned about one million thalers in profits on the seignorage.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** The coin eventually became universally accepted beyond Prussia and helped increase industry and trade.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** A gold coin, the Friedrich d'or, was also minted to oust the Dutch ducat from the Baltic trade.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** However, the fixed ratio between gold and silver led to the gold coins being perceived as more valuable, which caused them to leave circulation in Prussia. Being unable to meet Frederick's expectations for profit, Graumann was removed in 1754.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Although Frederick's debasement of the coinage to fund the Seven Years' War left the Prussian monetary system in disarray,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** the Mint Edict of May 1763 brought it back to stability by fixing rates at which depreciated coins would be accepted and requiring tax payments in currency of prewar value. This resulted in a shortage of ready money, but Frederick controlled prices by releasing the grain stocks he held in reserve for military campaigns. Many other rulers soon followed the steps of Frederick in reforming their own currencies.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** The functionality and stability of the reform made the Prussian monetary system the standard in Northern Germany.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Around 1751 Frederick founded the Emden Company to promote trade with China. He introduced the lottery, fire insurance, and a giro discount and credit bank to stabilise the economy.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** One of Frederick's achievements after the Seven Years' War included the control of grain prices, whereby government storehouses would enable the civilian population to survive in needy regions, where the harvest was poor.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He commissioned Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky to promote the trade and – to take on the competition with France – put a silk factory where soon 1,500 people found employment. Frederick followed Gotzkowsky's recommendations in the field of toll levies and import restrictions. When Gotzkowsky asked for a deferral during the Amsterdam banking crisis of 1763, Frederick took over his porcelain factory, now known as KPM.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick modernised the Prussian civil service and promoted religious tolerance throughout his realm to attract more settlers in East Prussia. With the help of French experts, he organised a system of indirect taxation, which provided the state with more revenue than direct taxation; though French officials administering it may have pocketed some of the profit.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He established new regulations for tax officials to reduce graft.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** In 1781, Frederick made coffee a royal monopoly and employed disabled soldiers, the coffee sniffers, to spy on citizens illegally roasting coffee, much to the annoyance of the general population.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Though Frederick started many reforms during his reign, his ability to see them to fulfillment was not as disciplined or thorough as his military successes.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

### Religion

 File:Berlin, Mitte, Bebelplatz, Hedwigskathedrale 02.jpg  In contrast to his devoutly Calvinist father, Frederick was a religious sceptic, who has been described as a deist.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn Frederick was pragmatic about religious faith. Three times during his life, he presented his own confession of Christian faith: during his imprisonment after Katte's execution in 1730, after his conquest of Silesia in 1741, and just before the start of the Seven Years' War in 1756; in each case, these confessions also served personal or political goals.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

He tolerated all faiths in his realm, but Protestantism remained the favoured religion, and Catholics were not chosen for higher state positions.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick wanted development throughout the country, adapted to the needs of each region. He was interested in attracting a diversity of skills to his country, whether from Jesuit teachers, Huguenot citizens, or Jewish merchants and bankers. Frederick retained Jesuits as teachers in Silesia, Warmia, and the Netze District, recognising their educational activities as an asset for the nation.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He continued to support them after their suppression by Pope Clement XIV.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He befriended the Roman Catholic Prince-Bishop of Warmia, Ignacy Krasicki, whom he asked to consecrate St. Hedwig's Cathedral in 1773.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He also accepted countless Protestant weavers from Bohemia, who were fleeing from the devoutly Catholic rule of Maria Theresa, granting them freedom from taxes and military service.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Constantly looking for new colonists to settle his lands, he encouraged immigration by repeatedly emphasising that nationality and religion were of no concern to him. This policy allowed Prussia's population to recover very quickly from its considerable losses during Frederick's three wars.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Though Frederick was known to be more tolerant of Jews and Roman Catholics than many neighbouring German states, his practical-minded tolerance was not fully unprejudiced. Frederick wrote in his Template:Lang:

> We have too many Jews in the towns. They are needed on the Polish border because in these areas Hebrews alone perform trade. As soon as you get away from the frontier, the Jews become a disadvantage, they form cliques, they deal in contraband and get up to all manner of rascally tricks which are detrimental to Christian burghers and merchants. I have never persecuted anyone from this or any other sect; I think, however, it would be prudent to pay attention, so that their numbers do not increase.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**
>
>

The success in integrating the Jews into areas of society where Frederick encouraged them can be seen by Gerson von Bleichröder's role during the 19th century in financing Otto von Bismarck's efforts to unite Germany.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick was also less tolerant of Catholicism in his occupied territories. In Silesia, he disregarded canon law to install clergy who were loyal to him.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** In Polish Prussia, he confiscated the Roman Catholic Church's goods and property,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** making clergy dependent on the government for their pay and defining how they were to perform their duties.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Like many leading figures in the Age of Enlightenment, Frederick was a Freemason,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** having joined during a trip to Brunswick in 1738.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** His membership legitimised the group's presence in Prussia and protected it against charges of subversion.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** In 1786, he became the First Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree, his double-headed eagle emblem was also used for 32nd and 33rd degree Masons following the adoption of seven additional degrees to the Masonic Rite.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick's religious views were sometimes criticised. His views resulted in his condemnation by the anti-revolutionary French Jesuit, Augustin Barruel. In his 1797 book, Template:Lang (*Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism*), Barruel described an influential conspiracy theory that accused King Frederick of taking part in a plot which led to the outbreak of the French Revolution and having been the secret "protector and adviser" of fellow-conspirators Voltaire, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and Denis Diderot, who all sought "to destroy Christianity" and foment "rebellion against Kings and Monarchs".**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

### Environment and agriculture

 File:Der König überall2.JPG  Frederick was keenly interested in land use, especially draining swamps and opening new farmland for colonisers who would increase the kingdom's food supply. He called it Template:Lang (peopling policy). About 1,200 new villages were founded in his reign.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He told Voltaire, "Whoever improves the soil, cultivates land lying waste and drains swamps, is making conquests from barbarism".**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Using improved technology enabled him to create new farmland through a massive drainage programme in the country's Oderbruch marshland. This programme created roughly Template:Convert of new farmland, but also eliminated vast swaths of natural habitat, destroyed the region's biodiversity, and displaced numerous native plant and animal communities. Frederick saw this project as the "taming" and "conquering" of nature,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** considering uncultivated land "useless",**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** an attitude that reflected his enlightenment era, rationalist sensibilities.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He presided over the construction of canals for bringing crops to market, and introduced new crops, especially the potato and the turnip, to the country. For this, he was sometimes called *Der Kartoffelkönig* (the Potato King).**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick's interest in land reclamation may have resulted from his upbringing. As a child, his father, Frederick William I, made young Frederick work in the region's provinces, teaching the boy about the area's agriculture and geography. This created an interest in cultivation and development that the boy retained when he became ruler.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick founded the first veterinary school in Prussia. Unusually for the time and his aristocratic background, he criticised hunting as cruel, rough and uneducated. When someone once asked Frederick why he did not wear spurs when riding his horse, he replied, "Try sticking a fork into your naked stomach, and you will soon see why."**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He loved dogs and his horse and wanted to be buried with his greyhounds. In 1752 he wrote to his sister Wilhelmine that people indifferent to loyal animals would not be devoted to their human comrades either, and that it was better to be too sensitive than too harsh. He was also close to nature and issued decrees to protect plants.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

### Arts and education

 File:Adolph Menzel - Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci - Google Art Project.jpg  Frederick was a patron of music,Template:Sfnm and the court musicians he supported included C. P. E. Bach, Carl Heinrich Graun and Franz Benda.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** A meeting with Johann Sebastian Bach in 1747 in Potsdam led to Bach's writing *The Musical Offering*.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He was also a talented musician and composer in his own right, playing the transverse flute,Template:Sfnm as well as composing 121 sonatas for flute and continuo, four concertos for flute and strings, four sinfonias,Template:Sfnm three military marches and seven arias.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Additionally, the *Hohenfriedberger Marsch* was allegedly written by Frederick to commemorate his victory in the Battle of Hohenfriedberg during the Second Silesian War.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** His flute sonatas were often composed in collaboration with Johann Joachim Quantz,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** who was Frederick's occasional music tutor in his youthTemplate:Sfnm and joined his court as composer and flute maker in 1741.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick's flute sonatas are written in the Baroque style in which flute plays the melody, sometimes imitating operatic vocal styles like the aria and recitative, while the accompaniment was usually played by just one instrument per part to highlight the delicate sound of the flute.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick also wrote sketches, outlines and libretti for opera that were included as part of the repertoire for the Berlin Opera House. These works, which were often completed in collaboration with Graun,Template:Efn included the operas *Coriolano* (1749), *Silla* (1753), *Montezuma* (1755), and *Il tempio d'Amore* (1756).**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick saw opera as playing an important role in imparting enlightenment philosophy, using it to critique superstition and the Pietism that still held sway in Prussia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He also attempted to broaden access to opera by making admission to it free.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick also wrote philosophical works,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** publishing some of his writings under the title of *The Works of a Sans-Souci Philosopher*.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick corresponded with key French Enlightenment figures, including Voltaire, who at one point declared Frederick to be a philosopher-king,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and the Marquis d'Argens, whom he appointed as Royal Chamberlain in 1742 and later as the Director of the Prussian Academy of Arts and Berlin State Opera.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** His openness to philosophy had its limits. He did not admire the *encyclopédistes* or the French intellectual avant-garde of his time,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** though he did shelter Rousseau from persecution for a number of years. Moreover, once he ascended the Prussian throne, he found it increasingly difficult to apply the philosophical ideas of his youth to his role as king.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Like many European rulers of the time who were influenced by the prestige of Louis XIV of France and his court,Template:Sfnm Frederick adopted French tastes and manners,Template:Sfnm though in Frederick's case, the extent of his Francophile tendencies might also have been a reaction to the austerity of the family environment created by his father, who had a deep aversion for France and promoted an austere culture for his state.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He was educated by French tutors,Template:Sfnm and almost all the books in his library, which covered topics as diverse as mathematics, art, politics, the classics, and literary works by 17th century French authors, were written in French.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** French was Frederick's preferred language for speaking and writing, though he had to rely on proofreaders to correct his difficulties with its spelling.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Though Frederick used German as his working language with his administration and with the army, he claimed to have never learned it properlyTemplate:Sfnm and never fully mastered speaking or writing it.Template:Sfnm He also disliked the German language,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** thinking it was inharmonious and awkward.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He once commented that German authors "pile parenthesis upon parenthesis, and often you find only at the end of an entire page the verb on which depends the meaning of the whole sentence".**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He considered the German culture of his time, particularly literature and theatre, to be inferior to that of France; believing that it had been hindered by the devastation of the Thirty Years' War.Template:Sfnm He suggested that it could eventually equal its rivals, but this would require a complete codification of the German language, the emergence of talented German authors and extensive patronage of the arts by Germanic rulers. This was a project he believed would take a century or more.Template:Sfnm Frederick's love of French culture was not without limits either. He disapproved of the luxury and extravagance of the French royal court. He also ridiculed German princes, especially the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, Augustus III, who imitated French sumptuousness.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** His own court remained quite Spartan, frugal and small and restricted to a limited circle of close friends,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** a layout similar to his father's court, though Frederick and his friends were far more culturally inclined than Frederick William.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Despite his distaste for the German language, Frederick did sponsor the Template:Lang (Royal German Society), founded in Königsberg in 1741, the aim of which was to promote and develop the German language. He allowed the association to be titled "royal" and have its seat at the Königsberg Castle, but he does not seem to have taken much interest in the work of the society. Frederick also promoted the use of German instead of Latin in the field of law, as in the legal document Template:Lang (*Project of the Frederician Body of Laws*), which was written in German with the aim of being clear and easily understandable.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Moreover, it was under his reign that Berlin became an important centre of German enlightenment.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

#### Architecture and the fine arts

 File:Potsdam - Schloss Sanssouci.jpg  Frederick had many famous buildings constructed in his capital, Berlin, most of which still stand today, such as the Berlin State Opera, the Royal Library (today the State Library Berlin), St. Hedwig's Cathedral, and Prince Henry's Palace (now the site of Humboldt University).**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** A number of the buildings, including the Berlin State Opera House, a wing of Schloss Charlottenburg,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and the renovation of Rheinsburg during Frederick's residence were built in a unique Rococo style that Frederick developed in collaboration with Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** This style became known as Frederician Rococo and is epitomised by Frederick's summer palace, Sanssouci (French for "carefree" or "without worry"),**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** which served as his primary residence and private refuge.Template:Sfnm

As a great patron of the arts, Frederick was a collector of paintings and ancient sculptures; his favourite artist was Jean-Antoine Watteau. His sense of aesthetics can be seen in the picture gallery at Sanssouci, which presents architecture, painting, sculpture and the decorative arts as a unified whole. The gilded stucco decorations of the ceilings were created by Johann Michael Merck (1714–1784) and Carl Joseph Sartori (1709–1770). Both the wall panelling of the galleries and the diamond shapes of the floor consist of white and yellow marble. Paintings by different schools were displayed strictly separately: 17th-century Flemish and Dutch paintings filled the western wing and the gallery's central building, while Italian paintings from the High Renaissance and Baroque were exhibited in the eastern wing. Sculptures were arranged symmetrically or in rows in relation to the architecture.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

#### Science and the Berlin Academy

 File:Adolph-von-Menzel-Tafelrunde2 (cropped).jpg  When Frederick ascended the throne in 1740, he reinstituted the Prussian Academy of Sciences (Berlin Academy), which his father had closed down as an economy measure. Frederick's goal was to make Berlin a European cultural centre that rivalled London and Paris in the arts and sciences.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** To accomplish this goal, he invited numerous intellectuals from across Europe to join the academy, made French the official language and made speculative philosophy the most important topic of study.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** The membership was strong in mathematics and philosophy and included Immanuel Kant, D'Alembert, Pierre Louis de Maupertuis, and Étienne de Condillac. However the academy was in a crisis for two decades at mid-century,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** due in part to scandals and internal rivalries such as the debates between Newtonianism and Leibnizian views, and the personality conflict between Voltaire and Maupertuis. At a higher level Maupertuis, director of the Berlin Academy from 1746 to 1759 and a monarchist, argued that the action of individuals was shaped by the character of the institution that contained them, and they worked for the glory of the state. By contrast d' Alembert took a republican rather than monarchical approach and emphasised the international Republic of Letters as the vehicle for scientific advance.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** By 1789, the academy had gained an international repute while making major contributions to German culture and thought. For example, the mathematicians he recruited for the Berlin Academy – including Leonhard Euler, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Johann Heinrich Lambert, and Johann Castillon – made it a world-class centre for mathematical research.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Other intellectuals attracted to the philosopher's kingdom were Francesco Algarotti, d'Argens, and Julien Offray de La Mettrie.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

## Military theory

 File:Frederick the Great and his staff at the Battle of Leuthen by Hugo Ungewitter.jpg  Contrary to his father's fears, Frederick became a capable military commander. With the exception of his first battlefield experience at the Battle of Mollwitz, Frederick proved himself courageous in battle.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He frequently led his military forces personally and had a number of horses shot from under him during battle.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** During his reign he commanded the Prussian Army at sixteen major battles and various sieges, skirmishes and other actions, ultimately obtaining almost all his political objectives. He is often admired for his tactical skills, especially for his use of the oblique order of battle,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** an attack focused on one flank of the opposing line, allowing a local advantage even if his forces were outnumbered overall.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Even more important were his operational successes, especially the use of interior lines to prevent the unification of numerically superior opposing armies and defend the Prussian core territory.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Napoleon Bonaparte saw the Prussian king as a military commander of the first rank;**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** after Napoleon's victory over the Fourth Coalition in 1807, he visited Frederick's tomb in Potsdam and remarked to his officers, "Gentlemen, if this man were still alive I would not be here".**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Napoleon frequently "pored through Frederick's campaign narratives and had a statuette of him placed in his personal cabinet".**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick's most notable military victories on the battlefield were the Battle of Hohenfriedberg, a tactical victory, fought during the War of Austrian Succession in June 1745;**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** the Battle of Rossbach, where Frederick defeated a combined Franco-Austrian army of 41,000 with only 21,000 soldiers (10,000 dead for the Franco-Austrian side with only 550 casualties for Prussia);**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and the Battle of Leuthen, a follow-up victory to Rossbach**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** in which Frederick's 39,000 troops inflicted 22,000 casualties, including 12,000 prisoners, on Charles of Lorraine's Austrian force of 65,000.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick the Great believed that creating alliances was necessary, as Prussia did not have the resources of nations like France or Austria. Though his reign was regularly involved in war, he did not advocate for protracted warfare. He stated that for Prussia, wars should be short and quick: long wars would destroy the army's discipline, depopulate the country, and exhaust its resources.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Frederick was an influential military theorist whose analysis emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy, tactics, mobility and logistics.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Austrian co-ruler, Emperor Joseph II wrote, "When the King of Prussia speaks on problems connected with the art of war, which he has studied intensively and on which he has read every conceivable book, then everything is taut, solid and uncommonly instructive. There are no circumlocutions, he gives factual and historical proof of the assertions he makes, for he is well versed in history."**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Robert Citino describes Frederick's strategic approach:

> In war ... he usually saw one path to victory, and that was fixing the enemy army in place, maneuvering near or even around it to give himself a favorable position for the attack, and then smashing it with an overwhelming blow from an unexpected direction. He was the most aggressive field commander of the century, perhaps of all time, and one who constantly pushed the limits of the possible.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**
>
>

The historian Dennis Showalter argues: "The King was also more consistently willing than any of his contemporaries to seek decision through offensive operations."**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Yet, these offensive operations were not acts of blind aggression; Frederick considered foresight to be among the most important attributes when fighting an enemy, stating that the discriminating commander must see everything before it takes place, so nothing will be new to him.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Much of the structure of the more modern German General Staff owed its existence and extensive structure to Frederick, along with the accompanying power of autonomy given to commanders in the field.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** According to Citino, "When later generations of Prussian-German staff officers looked back to the age of Frederick, they saw a commander who repeatedly, even joyfully, risked everything on a single day's battle – his army, his kingdom, often his very life."**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** As far as Frederick was concerned, there were two major battlefield considerations – speed of march and speed of fire.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** So confident in the performance of men he selected for command when compared to those of his enemy, Frederick once quipped that a general considered audacious in another country would be ordinary in Prussia because Prussian generals will dare and undertake anything that is possible for men to execute.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

After the Seven Years' War, the Prussian military acquired a formidable reputation across Europe.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Esteemed for their efficiency and success in battle, the Prussian army of Frederick became a model emulated by other European powers, most notably by Russia and France.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** To this day, Frederick continues to be held in high regard as a military theorist and has been described as representing the embodiment of the art of war.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

## Later years and death

 File:Friedrich der grosse grab hg.jpg  Near the end of his life, Frederick grew increasingly solitary. His circle of close friends at Sanssouci gradually died off with few replacements, and Frederick became increasingly critical and arbitrary, to the frustration of the civil service and officer corps. Frederick was immensely popular among the Prussian people because of his enlightened reforms and military glory; the citizens of Berlin always cheered him when he returned from administrative or military reviews. Over time, he was nicknamed Template:Lang (The Old Fritz) by the Prussian people, and this name became part of his legacy.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick derived little pleasure from his popularity with the common people, preferring instead the company of his pet Italian greyhounds,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** whom he referred to as his "marquises de Pompadour" as a jibe at the French royal mistress.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Even in his late 60s and early 70s when he was increasingly crippled by asthma, gout and other ailments, he rose before dawn, drank six to eight cups of coffee a day, "laced with mustard and peppercorns", and attended to state business with characteristic tenacity.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

On the morning of 17 August 1786, Frederick died in an armchair in his study at Sanssouci, aged 74. He left instructions that he should be buried next to his greyhounds on the vineyard terrace, on the side of the *corps de logis* of Sanssouci. His nephew and successor Frederick William II instead ordered Frederick's body to be entombed next to his father, Frederick William I, in the Potsdam Garrison Church. Near the end of World War II, German dictator Adolf Hitler ordered Frederick's coffin to be hidden in a salt mine to protect it from destruction. The United States Army relocated the remains to Marburg in 1946; in 1953, the coffins of Frederick and his father were moved to Burg Hohenzollern.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

On the 205th anniversary of his death, on 17 August 1991, Frederick's coffin lay in state in the court of honour at Sanssouci, covered by a Prussian flag and escorted by a Template:Lang guard of honour. After nightfall, Frederick's body was interred in the terrace of the vineyard of Sanssouci—in the still existing crypt he had built there—without pomp, in accordance with his will.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**Template:Efn Visitors to his grave often place potatoes on the gravestone in honour of his role in promoting the use of the potato in Prussia.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

## Historiography and legacy

See also: Portraits of Frederick the Great
 File:Wochenspruch der NSDAP 24 August 1941.jpg  Frederick's legacy has been subject to a wide variety of interpretations.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** For instance, Thomas Carlyle's *History of Frederick the Great* (8 vol. 1858–1865) emphasised the power of one great "hero", in this case Frederick, to shape history.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** In German memory, Frederick became a great national icon and many Germans said he was the greatest monarch in modern history. These claims particularly were popular in the 19th century.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** For example, German historians often made him the romantic model of a glorified warrior, praising his leadership, administrative efficiency, devotion to duty and success in building up Prussia to a leading role in Europe.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Frederick's popularity as a heroic figure remained high in Germany even after World War I.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis glorified Frederick as a precursor to Adolf Hitler and presented Frederick as holding out hope that another miracle would again save Germany at the last moment.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** In an attempt to legitimise the Nazi regime, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels commissioned artists to render fanciful images of Frederick, Bismarck, and Hitler together in order to create a sense of a historical continuum amongst them.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** Throughout World War II, Hitler often compared himself to Frederick the Great,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and he kept a copy of Anton Graff's portrait of Frederick with him to the end in the *Führerbunker* in Berlin.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

After the defeat of Germany after 1945, the role of Prussia in German history was minimised. Compared to the pre-1945 period, Frederick's reputation was downgraded in both East**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** and West Germany,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** partly due to the Nazis' fascination with him and his supposed connection with Prussian militarism.Template:Sfnm During the second half of the 20th century, political attitudes towards Frederick's image were ambivalent, particularly in communist East Germany.Template:Sfnm For example, immediately after World War II images of Prussia were removed from public spaces,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** including Frederick's equestrian statue on the Unter den Linden, but in 1980 his statue was once more re-erected on its original location.Template:Sfnm Since the end of the Cold War, Frederick's reputation has continued to grow in the now reunified Germany.Template:Sfnm

In the 21st century, the view of Frederick as a capable and effective leader also remains strong among military historians.Template:Sfnm However, the originality of his achievements remains a topic of debate,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** as many were based on developments already under way.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He has also been studied as a model of servant leadership in management researchTemplate:Sfnm and is held in high regard for his patronage of the arts.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** He has been seen as an exemplar of enlightened absolutism,**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".** though this label has been questioned in the 21st century as many enlightenment principles directly contrast with his military reputation.**Script error: No such module "Footnotes".**

## Works by Frederick the Great

**Selected works in English**

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**Collections**

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**Editions of music**

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## References

### Sources

#### Books

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* Alings, Reinhard (2022). Don't ask – don't tell' – War Friedrich schwul? (de).
* Picture Gallery at Sanssouci Park in Potsdam celebrates 250th anniversary with exhibition (2013).
* Baron, Clémentine V. (2015). La Prusse n'est pas un pays qui a une armée, c'est une armée qui a un pays. (fr). *Les citations historiques : Mirabeau et la Prusse*.
* Citino, Robert M. (2010). Ask MHQ: Robert Citino's Top 10 German Military Commanders.
* A Prussian King and His Money (2013).
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* Donoghue, Steve (2016). 'Frederick the Great' Occasionally Rises to Greatness.
* Gaffney, Thomas L. (15 June 2020). The Double Headed Eagle and Scottish Rite Masonry. *Colorado Council of Kadosh Oration*.
* Geschichte der St. Hedwigs-Kathedrale (de).
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* Category: Federick II (2018).
* Krysmanski, Bernd (2022). Does Hogarth Depict Old Fritz Truthfully with a Crooked Beak?—The Pictures Familiar to Us from Pesne to Menzel Don't Show This 24–30.
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* Lau, Karlheinz (2012). Friedrich II. – Friedrich der Große: Die DDR und der Preußenkönig (de).
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* Sgard, Jean. Boyer D'argens (fr).
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## External links

Template:Commons category Template:Wikisource author Template:Wikiquote **Writings of Frederick the Great**

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* *Digital edition of Frederick the Great's Works* at the University of Trier Template:In lang

**Music of Frederick the Great**

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* Free scores at the Mutopia Project

**Writings about Frederick the Great**

* *History of Frederick II of Prussia* by Thomas Carlyle at Project Gutenberg
* *Voltaire and Frederick the Great* by Lytton Strachey at the Internet Archive
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