- [Narrator] Berlin, December 28th, 1746.
The newspapers, the banners, and the choirs of children
all have a new name for their monarch,
Frederick the Great.
And the reasons are obvious to everyone who greets him
as he returns victorious from the Second Silesian War.
Not only had the Prussian Army won every battle,
Frederick had personally led his forces.
At the Battle of Soor,
Charles of Lorraine had ambushed Frederick's camp,
the Austrians outnumbering his army nearly two to one,
but Frederick fought his way free.
Then, when Prussia was under its greatest threat,
when Austria and Saxony planned a two-pronged invasion
to take Berlin,
Frederick and his general had defeated both forces.
Taking Saxony's great city of Dresden
and negotiating and end to the war.
That's why the newspapers call him, The Great.
That and the fact that he'd probably written ahead
to inform them all of his new title.
But if you've been watching this show
for any extended period of time,
you are probably going to be familiar
with the next precedent.
A great monarch cannot know peace for long.
(bright music)
Do you wanna see the next episode of this series
immediately after watching this one,
instead of having to wait a full week?
Well, now with the new Nebula First, you totally can.
Learn how after the episode.
Victory in the First and Second Silesian Wars,
secured Prussia's reputation as a rising power,
and Frederick as a man to be reckoned with.
It also bought him a decade of peace and splendor
that could be attributed
to not only his battlefield skill,
but also two of his tenets when it came to warfare.
The first, was that Frederick believed over all else,
in the power of military speed.
He who got his army out and able to act first, won.
And the best way to lose a conflict was to draw it out.
He knew the Prussian Army
couldn't remain effective indefinitely,
so his wars needed a quick conclusion.
And the second reason was,
that while Frederick was good at war,
he didn't like it.
Even his mentor, Eugene of Savoy,
had commented on this when Frederick was a young officer,
and he meant it as a compliment.
Frederick wasn't bloodthirsty.
Frankly, he'd rather be at the new summer home
he'd built in Potsdam,
which he'd given the French name of Sanssouci,
or "Without worries."
There, in an environment of his own design,
he was free to write poetry, play the flute,
display his porcelain collection,
dote over his beloved greyhounds,
and gather about him an inner circle of philosophers
and military officers,
all of them male as women were banned.
Oh yeah, just a quick FYI here.
Frederick was also a huge misogynist,
which at least partway explains his antagonism
towards both Maria Teresa and Empress Elizabeth of Russia.
Also, if a guy in his inner circle ever got married,
he often kicked them out.
Said circle he developed,
included some of the most prominent minds in Europe,
including his old editor, Voltaire,
who came to live in Prussia
after stirring the pot a little too much in France.
He also provided safe harbor to Julien Offray de La Mettrie,
a scandalous philosopher whose work argued
that humans were just organic machines
no better than animals,
and that the mind and soul were part of the body
rather than a spiritual entity.
In fact, he literally argued that humans were nothing more
than a digestive system.
Hot stuff at the time,
especially since he denied the existence of God
and advocated the pursuit of pleasure.
And you bet these ideas jived with Frederick,
who was privately an outspoken atheist.
In fact, he found pretending to be religious,
one of the hardest parts of the masquerade
he'd had to perform for his father.
He once wrote that Christianity was a fiction
invented in the fevered minds of Asia,
with its followers in Europe either being fanatics,
imbeciles, or those pretending belief
in order to gain power.
He also jokingly suggested Jesus and the Apostle John
were gay lovers.
So suffice to say, at the time,
Frederick was unconventional in his views.
But that also led to tolerant religious policies
that saw all Protestant groups given equality,
and Catholics allowed to practice,
though not allowed in civil service.
However, he was also extremely anti-Semitic.
Jews could live in Prussia
but had to pay a tax for security,
which honestly is just like Frederick.
Seriously, for everything you learn about him that you like,
he'll tend to have an equally awful quality.
And that's definitely a pattern
that's gonna come up again and again.
So watch out for that.
This decade also provided
his first really prolific period of writing.
Partly, these histories were meant to burnish his reputation
and iron out less complimentary episodes in his career.
He exaggerated enemy numbers at Mollwitz, for instance,
claiming that the Austrians had a much larger force
than they did,
and casting his flight from the battlefield
as a reluctant but daring escape.
In addition, he wrote his first book on military theory.
Primarily, to distribute to his generals.
He also drilled his troops.
Because Frederick wanted to be ready for the next war.
He innovated, adopting a new system of formation marching
that ensured troops could quickly reposition,
change direction,
and adopt new formations on the battlefield.
He figured out ways to go over broken ground or ditches
while maintaining order.
And adopted snare drums as a way of conveying orders,
since they were easier to hear amidst the battle
than a human voice.
He also promoted his younger brothers.
Wait, did we not mention he had brothers?
Well, he did, and they served as officers
in the Silesian Wars,
but now were made generals.
Of the two, his youngest brother, Prince Henry,
would become the most dependable.
Henry had many things in common with Frederick,
like his head for tactics
and a tendency towards affairs with fellow officers.
But he was also notably more measured.
And Frederick would need dependable generals,
because by 1756,
Europe was about to see its first World War.
Now, it would be far too much to describe in this series,
how the Seven Years' War started,
since the motivations are enormously complicated.
Like the War of Austrian Succession,
it was an umbrella conflict that encompassed
a lot of little wars.
But in Central Europe, it was all about Silesia again.
See, when Frederick took Silesia,
the Protestant state of Brandenburg, Prussia,
essentially announced itself
as a challenger to Catholic Austria,
which had held sway
over the Holy Roman Empire for centuries.
Worse, it gave Prussia a border right on Bohemia,
meaning Prussia could invade Austrian lands at will.
Austria needed Silesia back and Prussia crushed.
So through a series of both
public and secret diplomatic agreements,
Maria Teresa had entered defensive alliances
with both Russia and Saxony,
to support each other in case of Prussian aggression,
then decimate Brandenburg, Prussia,
and partition it amongst themselves.
Frederick, for his part,
had his eye on Saxony and Polish West Prussia,
the conquest of which could link up his broken territories.
But for all of his supposed genius,
he badly bungled his diplomacy.
What protected him from the Austro-Russian Alliance,
was the support of France.
But he also pursued and signed an alliance
with its rival Britain,
promising not to attack the British royal family's
German possessions of Hanover,
in exchange for Britain funding Frederick in case of war.
But that agreement
blew up the balance of diplomacy in Europe.
So much so, that it's now known
as The Diplomatic Revolution of 1756.
France became furious with Frederick
for allying with its enemy, Britain,
leaving France isolated without any allies in Europe.
And this wasn't the first time
he'd screwed them over diplomatically, either.
There had been that secret truce with Austria
during the First Silesian War,
then making a separate peace with Austria
and dropping out of the Second Silesian War.
So yeah, you could hardly blame France
when they dropped Frederick as an ally
and aligned with Austria.
And the Russians,
furious with the British having simultaneously negotiated
a peace with them and their enemy, Prussia,
also pledged troops to Austria.
This was a massive realignment of powers
and everyone started preparing for war.
Frederick, seeing this, true to form,
decided to strike first.
And on August 26th, 1756, he led his troops into Saxony.
But this would not be Silesia all over again.
Frederick blundered his way into an ambush in the fog,
his troops raked by fire of hidden artillery and infantry.
In a confused engagement,
his cavalry charged twice without orders
and he accidentally fired on his own troops.
While able to later spin it as a victory,
the Austrians left the battlefield,
since they only wanted to halt Frederick.
It was, in reality, a narrow defeat.
"These are not the same Austrians," his officers muttered.
Turns out the enemy had been training too.
Though he managed to capture Saxony, as was his plan,
and impressed their military into his own,
but he did have to wait until winter ended to attack Prague,
hoping to capture it, and then march on Vienna.
But then the Austrians met him at Prague.
He attacked their positions
across what appeared to be grassy hills,
but that were in reality fish ponds.
They took the Heights, but at a cost.
In five hours, Frederick lost 14,000 men
and two of his best generals,
including the one that had saved him at Mollwitz.
Depleted, he decided to take Prague
by starving them out in a siege rather than by assault.
But that was when the Austrian relief army
of 54,000 came for him,
and he was made to split his forces,
leaving a detachment at the siege
and facing the oncoming army with only 34,000 men.
Soon it would be Prussia against the world.
And actually, that could be sooner than you think,
because you can watch our fifth and final episode
of our "Frederick the Great" series,
a whole week early and ad free,
right now over on Nebula,
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As I'm sure you know by now,
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And in the case of our next "Frederick the Great" episode,
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a framing device that I am just super excited about
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Let's get ready to rumble!
(bell ringing)
Oh, my!
Frederick has smashed into the French Army double his size.
But wait, here comes Empress Catherine with a folding chair.
Peter III is deposed. What a slobberknocker!
Man, I wish they used professional wrestling
to teach history when I was in school, but I digress.
That is also not the only early awesomeness
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What if I told you that Ahmad Ziad Turk,
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(bright music)