A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

by G.J. Meyer

Frederick the Great is too big a subject to be dealt with in a few paragraphs. Suffice it to say that he was a writer, a composer of music that is still performed today, and a “philosopher king” according to no less a judge than Voltaire (who became his house guest and stayed so long that the two ended up despising each other). He was the first monarch in all of Europe to abolish religious discrimination, press censorship, and judicial torture. He was also a ruthless adventurer all too eager for glory, and he and his kingdom would have been destroyed except for the lucky fact that, in addition to all his other gifts, Frederick happened to be a military genius. In the course of his long life he teetered more than once on the brink of total failure—at one point he was at war with Austria, France, Russia, and Sweden simultaneously—but after any number of hair-raising escapes he raised Prussia to the ranks of Europe’s leading powers. He made the Hohenzollerns one of the leading dynasties of Europe despite never having—and giving no evidence of ever wanting—children of his own. When he died in 1786, just before the French Revolution, the crown passed to an untalented nephew.