In attempting to sketch the career of Frederick the Great and to define its relation to the rise of Prussia, I have made free use of many printed works, especially of Frederick’s own Œuvres and of the elaborate Politische Correspondenz of his reign. With these great “primary” authorities may perhaps be ranked the face and voice of modern Germany, rich in evidence of Frederick’s work, which have doubtless influenced my opinions more than I am aware of. Among “secondary” authorities I owe most to the opulent treasure-house of Carlyle’s Frederick the Great and to the more systematic narrative of Professor Koser. His Friedrich der Grosse als Kronprinz, which largely inspired the work of Lavisse translated under the title The Youth of Frederick the Great, forms my chief source for much of Frederick’s early life, as does the last volume of the KÖnig Friedrich der Grosse (1903), for the domestic labours after 1763. Mr. Herbert Tuttle’s judicious History of Prussia gave me much assistance down to the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, and I have often referred to Mr. Lodge’s Modern Europe and Mr. Henderson’s Short History of Germany.

At critical points in the record of the years 1712 to 1786 I was influenced successively by the MÉmoires de la Margravine de Baireuth, the trenchant FrÉdÉric II et Marie-ThÉrÈse of the Duc de Broglie, the Politische Staatsschriften, SchÄfer’s Der SiebenjÄhrige Krieg, von Arneth’s Oesterreichische Geschichte, and Sorel’s The Eastern Question in the Eighteenth Century. Many of the battles in Saxony, Brandenburg, Bohemia, and Silesia form the subject of monographs which it was interesting to study on the field, sometimes with the aid of collections of maps and plans preserved in the neighbourhood.

It would be impossible without a false pretence of erudition to name more than a small portion of the books to which some reference must be made in writing of the rise of Prussia. Students will recognise the debt that I owe to such well-known works as those of Ranke, Droysen, Philippson, FÖrster, Seeley, Isaacsohn, Oncken, Vitzthum, Archenholtz, and many more, as well as to the Essays of Macaulay and Lord Mahon. My account of the early history of Brandenburg is in part based on my paper of April, 1901, in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.

I offer my grateful thanks to Mr. G.H. Putnam and to Mr. H.W.C. Davis for their counsel, to Mr. G.H.M. Gray for minute scrutiny of the proof-sheets, and to Messrs. Ernest and Harold Temperley, my indulgent comrades in Silesia. To the latter this book owes much at every stage.

W.F.R.

King’s College, Cambridge,
Jan. 9th, 1904.