24 - Hohenzollern Strategy under Frederick II

Summary

King Frederick II (‘the Great’) of Prussia (r. 1740–1786) led his armies personally into a series of wars that doubled the size of his state during his reign. Frederick’s invasion of Silesia, and his subsequent attempts to hold onto it and expand his dominions further, reflected his risk-taking personality. Frederick enjoyed a much greater variety of strategic options than his predecessors because of the large army and well-stocked treasury bequeathed to him by his father, and this reflected the steady growth of states in this period and their increasing capacity to mobilise resources for war. The Hohenzollerns had for generations operated within a strategic context defined by the Holy Roman Empire, which covered all the German lands and within which a variety of princely dynasties competed for prominence under the overall hegemony of the Austrian Habsburgs. Successful Hohenzollern mobilisation of resources, however, made Frederick II the first German ruler in the early modern period to challenge the Habsburgs from a position of relative military parity. His successful gamble created a bipolar Germany, in which the two great powers of Austria and Prussia raised ever greater resources for their struggle against each other, far outstripping the other German states.