Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great, ruled from 1740 to 1786. He read the French philosophes and even called himself "the first servant of the state." That phrase sums up his style: total personal power, used in the name of efficiency and reason, not tradition or divine right.
His most lasting domestic achievement was legal reform. Frederick began a project to replace Prussia's patchwork of local customary laws with one uniform, rational code. It was not finished in his lifetime, but it became the Allgemeines Landrecht (General Law Code) of 1794, a landmark of Enlightenment legal thinking.
Justice, not just order: Frederick reduced the use of judicial torture almost as soon as he took the throne in 1740, and ended it completely by the 1750s. He also insisted judges follow the law rather than his own personal whims — a huge shift from pure absolutism.
Administratively, Frederick built one of Europe's most efficient bureaucracies. He appointed officials by merit and hard work rather than birth alone, and he personally read mountains of reports, earning a reputation as a workaholic king who inspected everything himself.
- Religious toleration — Frederick allowed Catholics, Protestants and Jews to practise (with restrictions on Jews' rights) in Prussia, famously saying everyone could "seek salvation in his own way."
- Attracting settlers — toleration was also practical: it drew skilled Huguenot and other refugees into Prussia, boosting the population and economy after the devastation of earlier wars.
- Limits of toleration — Frederick still kept the Lutheran church closely tied to the state and used religion to reinforce loyalty and social order, not because he personally cared for faith.
The Sanssouci circle: Frederick built the palace of Sanssouci at Potsdam as a retreat for music, philosophy and conversation. He invited Voltaire to live there in the 1750s, played the flute himself, and composed music — proof he genuinely absorbed Enlightenment culture, not just its politics.
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Prussia was a poor, scattered kingdom with few natural resources, so Frederick treated economic growth as a matter of survival. He followed mercantilism, protecting Prussian industry with tariffs and subsidising manufacturing, especially textiles and porcelain.
Agriculture mattered even more, since most Prussians were farmers. Frederick pushed hard for the introduction of the potato as a reliable famine-proof crop, and he sponsored large drainage and land-reclamation projects, most famously turning swampy ground along the Oder river into farmland.
| Reform area | What Frederick did | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | Potato promotion; Oder marshland drainage (from 1747) | New farmland, fewer famines, population growth |
| Industry | State subsidies for textiles, silk, porcelain (KPM factory) | Prussia less dependent on imports |
| Population | Recruited foreign settlers (Huguenots, Palatines) to resettle land won or reclaimed | Filled labour gaps after wartime losses |
| Serfdom | Abolished serfdom on his own royal estates; left it mostly intact on nobles' land | Limited, uneven improvement for peasants |
Reform had a ceiling: Frederick depended on the Junker nobility to fill his army's officer corps, so he never seriously challenged their control over serfs on private estates. His "reforms" for ordinary peasants were real but partial — a pattern historians point to when questioning how deep enlightened despotism really went.
In the arts, Frederick modelled Prussia's court on French taste. He built the Berlin Opera House, funded orchestras, wrote poetry and prose in French, and corresponded with Voltaire for decades. Prussia under Frederick became a genuine cultural centre, even while its king spent most of his reign at war.
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If Frederick's domestic policy showed his enlightened side, his foreign policy showed something much older: raw territorial ambition. Within months of becoming king in 1740, he invaded the Austrian province of Silesia, starting the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748).
Silesia seized, 1740-42
Frederick exploited a succession crisis (a woman, Maria Theresa, inheriting the Habsburg throne) to grab Europe's richest textile-and-mining province by force.
Diplomatic Revolution, 1756
Austria and France, old enemies, allied against Prussia; Frederick pre-empted the threat by striking first, launching the Seven Years' War.
Seven Years' War, 1756-63
Prussia fought Austria, France, Russia and Sweden almost single-handedly (with British subsidies), nearly collapsing before Russia's Tsarina died and its new Tsar made peace.
First Partition of Poland, 1772
Frederick negotiated with Austria and Russia to carve up Polish territory, gaining West Prussia and linking his separated lands without a single shot fired.
Grab it (1740) → defend it (1756) → link it (1772): Frederick's whole foreign policy in three moves.
The Seven Years' War nearly destroyed Prussia. Frederick lost battles, saw his treasury drained, and by 1762 was close to defeat. His survival — helped by the sudden death of Russia's Empress Elizabeth — became a legend of his generalship, but it also shows how dangerous his own aggression had made his kingdom's position.
Diplomacy over war, after 1763: After the exhausting Seven Years' War, Frederick shifted strategy. Instead of more fighting, he used alliances and negotiation — most clearly in the 1772 Partition of Poland, achieved entirely through diplomacy with Austria and Russia rather than combat.
Prussia's colonial and trade policy stayed modest compared to Britain or France. Frederick chartered small trading companies (such as the Emden-based Asiatic Company) and tried to expand Prussian trade through the Baltic and North Sea, but Prussia never built a significant overseas empire — his ambitions and resources were focused on Europe itself.