Wars of Frederick the Great, The

The campaigns of Frederick the Great were more than the apogee of eighteenth-century warfare: as Dennis Showalter argues in this major contribution to the Modern Wars in Perspectives series, they were a watershed in the history of Europe. They inaugurated a new pattern a military thinking - 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. As such, his wars prefigure those of Napoleon.