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.

The strategies of Louis XIV were shaped both by France’s position as one of the largest powers in Europe and by the Sun King’s domineering personality. After his succession to the French throne in 1661, Louis XIV gradually asserted control over his state, to launch a series of wars against his neighbours, particularly the disconnected Spanish Habsburg territories which encircled France. Commanding one of the largest standing armies in Europe, he used diplomatic and military intimidation to effect rapid conquests of smaller neighbouring states (1660s–1680s). His initial successes led to opposing coalitions which further blunted French advances. By the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1679), his hopes for short wars were dashed, and the rest of his reign would see attritional struggles on land and at sea. Each time Louis sought to expand his frontiers through force, more belligerents joined the anti-French coalition, expanding the number of contested theatres, and increasing the duration of each conflict. Louis’s early victories in the War of Devolution (1667–1668) and the Franco-Dutch War benefited from French numerical superiority, from strategic surprise, and from the capacity of great captains such as the marshals Turenne and Condé. By 1701 Louis’s strategy aimed defensively to retain Spanish territories he had seized in the name of his grandson. His wars were costly, but France provided Louis the resources to pass a larger kingdom on to his successor.