Many rulers were called “great” in this era: Louis Le Grand, Frederick the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great. These leaders were no more able than many of the failed monarchs who preceded them in the seventeenth century. The enlightened despots of Europe were consumed by vanity and greed. They quarreled incessantly with other princes, and squandered both the wealth of their nations and lives of their subjects on petty and destructive rivalries. But an age of equilibrium is kind to reigning kings. A reputation for greatness in a monarch often owes more to
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