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The campaigns of Frederick the Great were more than the apogee of eighteenth-century warfare: as Dennis Showalter argues in this stimulating book which sets them in their full context, they were a watershed in the history of Europe. They inaugurated a new pattern -- of total war for limited objectives -- that was to endure until 1916. Frederick's battles were designed to convince his adversaries of the wisdom not just of making peace but also of keeping it; for him, victory in the field was the means to the more enduring victory of a successful negotiation, and, as such, his wars prefigure those of Napoleon.
List of contents
Introduction.
1. Matrices and probabilities.
2. Wars for Silesia: 1740-45.
3. Breathing space and renewals.
4. Prussia ascendant.
5. Years of balance: 1758-59.
6. Prussia contra Europe: 1760-63.
7. Coda: 1763-86, Reflections.
Notes on sources
Index
Summary
The campaigns of Frederick the Great were more than the apogee of eighteenth-century warfare: as Dennis Showalter argues in this stimulating book which sets them in their full context, they were a watershed in the history of Europe. They inaugurated a new pattern -- of total war for limited objectives -- that was to endure until 1916. Frederick's battles were designed to convince his adversaries of the wisdom not just of making peace but also of keeping it; for him, victory in the field was the means to the more enduring victory of a successful negotiation, and, as such, his wars prefigure those of Napoleon.
