Frederick the Great: King of Prussia - Softcover

Fraser, David

3.89

171 ratings by Goodreads

9780140285901: Frederick the Great: King of Prussia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140285903 ISBN 13: 9780140285901

Publisher: Penguin, 2000

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Frederick the Great - one of the few rulers in history to be granted the epithet - was, in David Fraser's description 'one of the most extraordinary men ever to sit on the throne or command an army'. He was an artistic patron and himself an artist of whose attributes of mind and taste were recognised throughout Europe. He was made famous at the age of 33 by his military capacities, and he lived the rest of his long life acknowledged as the greatest soldier of his age. David Fraser's biography, which aims to be definitive, explores every aspect of Frederick's career with complete thoroughness. As readers of his lives of Alanbrooke and Rommel will know, Fraser writes with lucidity, elegance and penetration.

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Review:

Sir David Fraser is an experienced military biographer: in his earlier days he was one of the most senior generals in the British army, so he knows a thing or two about military leadership. He has now turned his attentions to the Prussian military dictator Frederick the Great. There have been other, more analytically acute portraits of the contradictions and the negativities of Frederick's character: the most recent being Giles MacDonogh's superb Frederick the Great, which saw Fred as a deeply divided man. Fraser isn't interested in that: his Frederick is unambiguously "a genius", "one of the most extraordinary men ever to sit on a throne or command an army". Any contrary view is "prejudice", for instance the "prejudice" which "regards Frederick as some sort of spiritual progenitor of Adolf Hitler", a view Fraser calls "ignorant".

From its opening fairy-tale-esque sentences ("There once lived a prince, an eldest son inheriting from a father, whose attributes of mind and taste were recognized throughout Europe") this biography gives us a glittering, shining, marvellous Frederick the Great. When he achieves military success Fraser praises his genius; but even when he endures terrible military failures Fraser praises his genius. "The second Silesian war was now going badly for Frederick", we are told; nonetheless he "showed greatness of mind, however, in recognizing that his 'grand design' had failed". Throughout, though, the verve and the bright colours of Fraser's narrative energetically carries the reader along. This book is best, as we might expect, in its cinematic descriptions of military engagements; and if sometimes Fraser's prose style errs on the side of the overly brisk ("Frederick, with wars to run and a kingdom to rule, had been very busy"), his enthusiasm for his subject is extraordinarily infectious. --Adam Roberts

Synopsis:

The military genius of his age, Frederick the Great has always aroused extreme opinions. Some saw him as "the greatest man who has ever lived", while others have accused him of creating the Prussio ultra-nationalism which culminated in Hitler. But this paternalistic ruler, who once said he wanted nothign more than to be remembered as "Le Rois des greux", the king of the beggars, was also a polymath whose artistic and intellectual abilities amazed 18th-century Europe. David Fraser's biography presents a rounded portrait of this extraordinary man.

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