University Library of Autobiography: Including All the Great Autobiographies and the Autobiographical Data Left by the World's Famous Men and Women (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

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Excerpt from University Library of Autobiography: Including All the Great Autobiographies and the Autobiographical Data Left by the World's Famous Men and Women

The historical event of main importance in the middle period of the eighteenth century was the rise of Prussia. Some such outbreak as that with which modern Russianized Germany has terrorized and agonized the world in our own day, took plaee upon a smaller seals almost two centuries ago.

King Frederick II, commonly called the Great, succeeded to the throne of Prussia in the year 1710, as a young man of twenty-eight. From the old king, his father, lie inherited a large and well-drilled army, and a prosperous well-filled treasury. He had been educated in the French school of Louis XIV. He desired to emulate the career of that monarch, to rise by military conquest to a supreme pinnacle of earthly "glory"; and he thought that in the result of his father's years of patient toil, in Prussia's vast accumulated treasure of men and money he saw the means to success.

Young King Frederick therefore immediately reached forward and snatched some territory from his nearest neighbor, Austria. To this territory lie had not. a shadow of moral right or of legal claim; he pretended none. In a spirit that was the apotheosis of the practical statesmanship of the time, he merely pointed out that the lands were his because he held possession of them. Of course there was war. Austria resisted him ; many thousands of soldiers, "powder-food," were slain on either side; and the chief murderer by his victories established himself in the seized territory. Tie had however aroused all Europe to a lively fear of him; each neighbor expected t.o be plundered next. lienee at length a coalition grew up against Frederick, and in the Seven Years' War from 1754 to 1761, Prussia had to battle against most, of Europe.

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