Frederick the Great did not rise from a peaceful world. Prussia in the mid eighteenth century was a hungry state that lived by the sword, and Frederick pushed it harder than anyone before him. He took the throne in 1740 and spent the next forty six years fighting, rebuilding, and fighting again. People called him Old Fritz, sometimes with respect and sometimes with fear, because he had a habit of dragging his country into battles that looked impossible on paper. His troops marched through the Wa