Re: FW and starting wars, in the first of his last wills, written 1722, he even explicitly wrote, addressing his sucessors (not just Fritz but any subsequent Prussian Kings). "I beg you not to start any wars of agression, for God has forbidden unjust wars, and you all must always justify yourself before God, for every single life taken in an unjust war."
(This is why I can't make up my mind about what FW would actually have thought of Frederick the Great. On the one hand: far from becoming a reborn F1, Fritz turns Prussia into a European power on a level with France, England, Russia and Austria. Yay! And he's as hard a worker on the throne as FW could ever have asked for. On the other hand: he's influencing his younger siblings to be anti-Church as well, freethinkers aren't just encouraged but invited into the country, and good lord, but do a lot of people die in wars he's mostly started: damnation surely is to follow.)
The two principalities FW thought he had a claim on were Berg and Jülich; if Fritz had started a war about them, it would not completely have surprised people. Whereas Silesia...
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Re: More Book Reports: AW bio, Fritz and Heinrich double portrait/lengthy essay
Date: 2019-11-29 11:40 am (UTC)(This is why I can't make up my mind about what FW would actually have thought of Frederick the Great. On the one hand: far from becoming a reborn F1, Fritz turns Prussia into a European power on a level with France, England, Russia and Austria. Yay! And he's as hard a worker on the throne as FW could ever have asked for. On the other hand: he's influencing his younger siblings to be anti-Church as well, freethinkers aren't just encouraged but invited into the country, and good lord, but do a lot of people die in wars he's mostly started: damnation surely is to follow.)
The two principalities FW thought he had a claim on were Berg and Jülich; if Fritz had started a war about them, it would not completely have surprised people. Whereas Silesia...