Looking to get our content ad-free all while helping out the show? Then why not check out Curiosity Stream & Nebula here CuriosityStream.com/ExtraCredits You can get a full years subscription for under $15. That's 26% off the regular price!
@@walli6388 He's incredibly obscure and underrated - in the Anglosphere. So obscure it almost feels deliberate. Austria on the other hand even got a song for him.
@@maxkogler1830 He is, in eugenes case because it takes the spotlight out of malborough, but there are plenty of great generals and incredible figures coimpletely uknown by the anglos sphere, largely because its noit conviniernt for national narratives, for example, blaz de Leso.
Ikr He is a french noble who got rejected by the french because he was to short only to fight for the Austrians, Frances main rival in europe. He then goes on to win against the Ottomans for the Austrians and becomes one of the richest person in europe at the time.
Even though Frederick published his work as the "Anti-Machiavel," ironically enough I'd argue that whole bit about preemptive "wars of interest" is the type of pragmatic rulership that Machiavelli would actually endorse
Yeah, the original book is really just basic common knowledge about how to run your life/house but set with flowery language and hypotheticals that make it seem like it’s arcane royal knowledge. Most of The Prince is stuff like “hey, think about what they could do to you in secret if you can move in secret.” It’s good advice, but not super groundbreaking. Frederick being an actual prince talking about how he wants to rule is as anti-Machiavelli as you can get. Rather than common sense, he wants to have his own way.
Frederick did himself recognize that he was adopting political strategies that Machiavelli would agree with. He later wrote in his political testament: "I sadly have to concede that Machiavelli is right."
@@toprope_ At the time the Prince and the Discourses were written, there was a lot of advice about how leaders (both princes and republics) should be Christian and give freely and none of it was very good. It looks like common sense to us because we live in a post Renaisance and more importantly a post Enlightenment world where you gain knowledge about the world from the world, not religion. At the time The Prince was so radical, it was on the Vatican's list of thoroughly naughty books*. *I know that's not what it was called, I don't remember and and it's too late at night to want to find out.
This wasn't lost on contemporaries, who immediately jumped to shouting hypocrite. The prince is an odd work to be sure. Even after reading it, I can't help but to think it was partially satire, using the trappings of a "mirror for princes" (a popular genre of book about how rulers should act, typically endorsing Christian virtues, pacifism, respect for the law, etc.) to point out how far removed this ideal princely behavior was from actual princely behavior, at least in Italy in Machiavelli's time.
WELL ACTUALLY there's a belief that Machiavelli wouldn't really endorse it, that he wrote The Prince more like a clever way of criticizing monarchies, "If a Prince has to govern like this to be a good government, it isn't a very good government." You can see his real views, which favours a Republic in Discourses.
You gotta feel for Elisabeth Christine. She was treated more as a secretary by Frederick for most of her life as his queen, though at least he did try his best to make sure she at least got treated as well as he could arrange despite detesting her as someone he felt he was saddled with.
Honestly, she had it good - she got private palace complex, absolutely no oversight from her husband (very rare at the time) and don't forget, she was also in an arranged marriage, so I wouldn't be surprised if she saw Frederic disinterest as liberation.
@@Noric.Morava But she was pretty much neglected. Though overall, she was loved by the Prussian people, and also ran the Prussian Royal Court in the Berlin Palace.
@@wayner396 dunno if she even wanted kids to be happy but honestly an arranged marriage probs just never rlly sparked much in her to fall that badly for him in the first place so at least she gets to sit a easier life at the time(for a woman)
Frederick did not detest her. He simply did not love her as a wife. He always took care of her material needs and always made sure that Elisabeth Christine was treated like a queen during his entire reign.
It's ironic that Charles loved Maria Theresa and gave her a great childhood but when he died he left her a broken empire,while Frederick the great's dad hated him and tried to have him killed and yet when he died he left him one of the most powerful armies in Europe
Fredrick: “My time has come to conquer, and unify my scattered territory into an empire, but first… WE DANCE!” *cue montage of culture and science funding*
Makes me think of one of the Zhang He endings in one of the Dynasty Warrior games where he gets his army to do a syncronized dance as the beginning of a beautiful empire.
The way that Fredrick became a milltary enthusiast is legit every pre-teen who thought history was the dumb subject and then saw how cool HOI4 is and when they do buy the game they get like 231232132131 hours on it in the first day
@@alejandroojeda1572 that as well. The only way he could have made this experience more traumatic would have been to either swing the axe himself or being the one who pins Fredrick's head against the cell bars in order to not "miss the show"
An alternate timeline where Maria Theresa and Frederick the Great marry would be a fascinating idea to explore honestly, it would completely change the eventual unification of Germany
Plus, it's possible that their union would affect other countries. Depending on whether they had kids, they might not have a daughter to marry off to the French which would probably have some effect on the path of the French Revolution. It would probably still happen, but Marie Antoinette was a great unifying factor for a lot of the disparate revolutionary factions. Without her, who knows what path it could go?
I REALLY hope we get a series on Peter the Great. Seriously, his history is insane, from setting up armies of children at the age of 10 for war games (while killing them using real life canons) to what was essentially a frat house trip around Europe (one time, he forced his crew to take a bite out of a dead body). This man had an amazing life and did so much within his lifetime that without him, Russia wouldn't exist today.
Not to mention his personal life, love to drink and had two wives- one out of responsibility and had a son but promptly abandoned and the other out of love and had two daughter with only to be cheated on.
I'd love to see a series dedicated to Peter the Great as well. After all, without him we wouldn't get to see Catherine the Great, who practically continued, refined and even expanded his work in some aspects
After the battle of Möllwitz when Frederick heard that his army triumphed in his absence he swore never again to abandon the battlefield even in the face of certain defeat. Also, in the aftermath of this battle, practically the entire Duchy of Silesia, which was comprised of semi-autonomous cities, estates and minor counties which belonged to the Habsburg inheritance as part of the Crown of Bohemia (one of their many titles which they held) was subsequently stripped from the Bohemian realm and incorporated into Prussian domains. Which was a pity as it had been part of Bohemian lands for 400 years, since medieval times.
A so well disciplined army that they were capable of still putting a fight and winning a battle without orders from their King, they knew exactly what they had to do.
@@cryopex9976 my dude, General can make masterpiece strategies, but individual decition making of every single soldier as an individual is what wins the battles.
I hope we get a series of Prince Eugene of Savoy in the future. He was a brilliant military genius in his time and his life story is so interesting. The whole late 17th and early 18th century is full of amazing personalities and events.
Frederick is my favorite historical figure. He was brilliant as a militar, statesman and philosopher. Plato would be proud of the true philosopher king.
War philosophy is something to always be taken with a grain of salt. It's famously said, "The only just war is a merciful war, The only merciful war is a swift war, The only swift war is to crush your enemies as quickly and as cruelly as possible so that they never dane rise up against you again, So the only merciful war is a cruel war" See what I mean?
The closest Europe got to an actual enlightened monarch. What sets him apart from Joseph of Austria, or Catherine from Russia, is that he knew how to adapt enlightened ideas to his times and country, aside from being cunning. And he did get involved in politics and governing, unlike the french and English monarchs of the XVIII Century.
Enlightened absolutist monarchs are a myth. You can't be enlightened with the belief that you deserve a station by birthright. Frederick fled the battle because he was merely a mortal man. If you cut him, he'd bleed.
@@jaydenvancanne9981u want to sound really cool but you didn’t say anything really. Yes of course he’s a mortal great discovery there my boy, the idea of an enlightened monarch isn’t that he’s immortal and absolute but that he’s a monarch with absolute or close to absolute power which governs respecting the Enlightenment principles and with a philosophe ( different from modern philosophers) besides him.
Okay, so on Frederick refuting Machiavelli's _The Prince_ : Why do I feel like he didn't get the joke? Then again, he advocated a way to justify preemptive strikes, soooo....
The reason Charles the 6th died was because he went hunting in Hungary and ate a bowl of wild mushrooms. He then had food poisoning for a month and died. Voltaire called it “the bowl of mushrooms that changed history”.
At the end of Charles VI reign , the Habsburgs losing the martitime posesions of Naples and Sicily to Spain and also losing Northern territories of Serbia & Bosnia to the Ottoman Empire while Oltenia were reincorporated to Principality of Wallachia, the ottoman vasal .
For anyone wondering, Saxony and Bavaria intervened in the War of the Austrian Succession because the Elector of Bavaria was married to Joseph I’s (Charles VI’s predecessor) younger daughter Maria Amalia while the Elector of Saxony (who was also King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania) was married to his elder daughter, Maria Josepha.
The history of Prussia is laced with a few very interesting characters. It's exciting to see Frederick getting a series, and I am looking forward to getting to learn more about him! Thank you for all the videos you do! God be with you out there everybody! ✝️ :)
I'm pretty sure the prevailing view of the Prince at the time was that it was satire,which makes it even funnier. That is, unless Frederick did understand Machiavelli's republicanism and refuted that in favor of enlightened despotism. Then he just sucks.
I have been learning more about the history of Europe and it's so interesting and just seems so sophisticated. Europeans just weren't really on the same page the same way the people of the Middle East for example were. It feels like they were constantly at war.
I wouldn't claim that people in the ME were on the same page. The only uniting influence would be the supremacy of the Caliph, but often peoples there only gave lip service to it when it suited them.
And people wonder why a lot of people in Europe love the EU. We haven't had so much peace in thousands of years, even with the war in Ukraine we are still in a relatively peaceful time in Europe
I want to clarify I am not trying to judge Europeans. A lot of the wars they had to fight weren't their fault such as the invasions by Turks, Mongols, Arabs, Berbers and Africans. A lot of Europeans feel like historians try to paint them as inherently violent and warlike and obvisouly dislike this. I had no intention of doing this.
@@doomdimensiondweller5627 Lol but they were! I don't even think it's insulting it just is. Western Europe and its tiny local armies became this intense cultural pressure cooker that eventually produced global empires. It was like a thousand year long anime montage
@@billcipherproductions1789 No, i am also Austrian and there were good ones and bad ones. But it is really nostalgic and are generally well liked. It is a nice throwback to being a major power for 500ish years (they ruled austria for 600).
That's kinda messed up him not even INVITING his wife to his coronation. Even if he didn't have romantic feelings for her, he should've at least been a bit platonic with her in caring for her.
When you’re forced to marry someone you don’t actually love and its to please your father you didn’t actually like really who had your actual love killed… Cant say I blame him.
@@NaokisRC But would you hold HER accountable for that? It wasn't her fault that his original lover was executed. If anything, she shouldn't be taking the blame for his father's actions.
@@ldsgermanshepherdboy9272 Well, she was basically the stand in/scape goat for his terrible relationship with his father and the issues in his love life. He really wasn't a fan of women in general, but this was personal.
While I can’t be sure of her feelings in that situation, I think we need to remember that everything could have gone so, so much worse for this relationship. Political marriages are rarely happy or healthy, even when one partner wasn’t horrifically abused growing up, and the woman’s safety and happiness was not the priority by any means. Again I have no clue what her feeling was, but it’s not too much of a stretch (I think) to say she may have been relieved to be left to her own devices when pretty much any other man might well have made her life a nightmare.
At 6:28. Wait, Silesia produced ONE THIRD of Austrian revenues? That's crazy! What the hell did they have in Silesia that was so valuable? Iron ore? Salt? Something else? Why was this small slice of the Hapsburg domains so economically productive? I can't think of a single city in this region that is as beautiful and large as Prague or Bratislava. I always figured that Bohemia was by far and away the most economically productive bit of the Hapsburg lands in the 1700s if I go by how gorgeous Prague looks. Beauty doesn't come cheap.
The chess board at 3:25 is set up incorrectly, the knights should be over near the castles on the edge of the board and Frederic should be, as king, swapped places with the queen piece.
Isn't this the same Eugene who jumped off a bridge, head first, to escape an ambush? The fashionable dandy in tattered clothes? It's kinda heartbreaking to see him like this. Loved him in the "Siege of Vienna" series.
Without his father's strict religious and millitary enforced training, Frederick wouldn't of been the man he was. If his father was light hearted and allowed his son to pursue whatever he wanted, then his son probably would've become millitarially incompetant and an unpragmatic man. But his father's efforts made Frederick realize that pragmatism and practicality comes before his own interests. That he'd be a controversial figure for his people if he'd openly admitted his irreligiousness and homosexuality. So we see that he put up a perfect guise for his people, while being militarily competant. All thanks to his father
@@bakrahabibi5471 How am I going to put this politely... you can raise your son well without executing his boyfriend in front of him, that this has to be explained to you is frankly astonishing and makes me weep for your current and/or future children.
@jorenvanderark3567 let me put this to you politely back in that time period if Frederick was not raised that way he would've been a weak king and likely executed in a revolt or have his land taken over by foreign invaders
Hey! This series is how I found your channel. And let me say this was the best way. Getting bite sized content to look forward to every week is amazing. I hope you do more content like this!
I'm a Pole and today I learned that there was a war of Polish succession. We either weren't thought that back in school or it was under a different name I can't remember.
Almost none of it took place in Poland. The Poles elected a king the Russians didn't like, the Russians invaded and forced through the election of a king they did approve of. There was a short siege of Gdansk where the deposed king had fled - and that was it for the war in Poland. But the various powers of Europe supported one king or the other, and that caused it to spread throughout the rest of the continent, mostly in Italy and the Rhineland.
I always say that every good historical tale has a good amount of irony, and the irony of this tale is that the father, obsessed with war to point of tormenting his son over it, avoided war at all costs, and the son who refused to study war in favor or art and music was a bloody conqueror.
@3:00 Machiavelli was also in favor of rule-by-people (i.e., the rest of his back-catalog), but all we remember is the practical-secular tyrant kind of rule-book he wrote in "The Prince".
Frederick’s Father: “My Son…please…maintain your father’s legacy…do not allow the time to weaken you.” Frederick: “of course father….” *waits until he’s dead* “2…3…4…5…WELP! He ain’t getting any deader.” *proceeds to build an Opera House*
It was weirdly heartwarming to see Frederick and his father reconciling in the end. They disagree in a lot of things, but both loved Prussia with a burning passion.
He literally chopped off his best friend/lover's head off and forced him to watch, I'm sure it was just for the optics. Either that or it's just Stockholm syndrome kicking in imo.
Yes. And they even loved eachother. Frederick himself admits that while he was watching his father dying, he came to realise how much he loved him. And I am sure that for everything he said and did to his son throughout the years, Fredrick-Wilhelm did love little Fritz. Even with his inability to properly express it. He just did what he thought was best for him and Prussia. He was terrified of the idea that the kingdom he had built all these years ago would go to a person who reminds him of his father: a soft pushover who was more willing to self-indulgence rather than the buisness of ruling
@@ritheshofficial No, he himself said that as his father was dying he realized how much he loved him. Also I think his homosexuality is overplayed in modern discussions
@@ritheshofficial Nahhh, his father was doing what he thought was best for his son and prussia, his father had quite an experience with his rather indulgent father
@@ritheshofficial Stockholm Syndrome is the human way to handle stressful situations. We label it as a horrid thing, but it's something our ancestors depended on to stay sane in a cruel world. If our modern societies are faced with immense hardships, we will likely depend on it as well. In many ways, it's human. Like it or not, it's there for a reason.
@@kaltaron1284 The most infamous examples are actually from the Spanish Habsburg branch. The rest was just... regular inbred, by European monarchy standards.
@@GanyuSimpingDegenerate That's true. I'm in Canada and noone here even knows that Austria exists. When I ever try to talk to anyone about it they say "Do you mean Australia?"
There so much interest in the fact that Fredrick the Great, Catherine the Great, and Maria Theresa would be the most enlighten rulers of their time, yet they had to fight back the wave of revolutions that shook Europe. These are the same rulers who would destroy Poland together.
I love your videos they are so entertaining and educational like I didn’t know about most of this stuff I also love the cartoonish style in your videos
On one side, I could watch next weeks episode right now on Nebula, but then, I'd have to wait for the episode of the week after. Wait, only $15 for an entire year?
Looking to get our content ad-free all while helping out the show? Then why not check out Curiosity Stream & Nebula here CuriosityStream.com/ExtraCredits You can get a full years subscription for under $15. That's 26% off the regular price!
I love ur history and "so you haven't read" series!
HOW WAS THIS 5 DAYS AGO?!
Please do Texas revolution
2:42 show how poorly he understood the prince :/
Wait a minute weren't the hats they wore (bircorne) I think worn sideways especially in the military
He's got creative talents and battle malice. Hard as steel on the field, gentile in the palace!
russia's fucked up, no wonder why
Gonna pound the Russians from here to Red Square
Ahhh, What a humiliating defeat! I know when Im beat... So of course take a seat!
@@ardlulucay3832 I'd keep ripping you to shreds but I'll take a break instead just too rest my little head
Was waiting for someone to reference to Epic Rap Battles of History
Eugene Von Savoy is a Great Underrated Commander. He deserves a Extra History in future
He isn't underrated. He even got his own song and museum in Vienna.
@@walli6388
He's incredibly obscure and underrated - in the Anglosphere. So obscure it almost feels deliberate. Austria on the other hand even got a song for him.
@@maxkogler1830 He is, in eugenes case because it takes the spotlight out of malborough, but there are plenty of great generals and incredible figures coimpletely uknown by the anglos sphere, largely because its noit conviniernt for national narratives, for example, blaz de Leso.
Ikr He is a french noble who got rejected by the french because he was to short only to fight for the Austrians, Frances main rival in europe. He then goes on to win against the Ottomans for the Austrians and becomes one of the richest person in europe at the time.
Outshined by Churchill due to pop culture and Savoy losing the last battle against France when Churchill was out of the game.
Even though Frederick published his work as the "Anti-Machiavel," ironically enough I'd argue that whole bit about preemptive "wars of interest" is the type of pragmatic rulership that Machiavelli would actually endorse
Yeah, the original book is really just basic common knowledge about how to run your life/house but set with flowery language and hypotheticals that make it seem like it’s arcane royal knowledge. Most of The Prince is stuff like “hey, think about what they could do to you in secret if you can move in secret.” It’s good advice, but not super groundbreaking.
Frederick being an actual prince talking about how he wants to rule is as anti-Machiavelli as you can get. Rather than common sense, he wants to have his own way.
Frederick did himself recognize that he was adopting political strategies that Machiavelli would agree with. He later wrote in his political testament: "I sadly have to concede that Machiavelli is right."
@@toprope_
At the time the Prince and the Discourses were written, there was a lot of advice about how leaders (both princes and republics) should be Christian and give freely and none of it was very good. It looks like common sense to us because we live in a post Renaisance and more importantly a post Enlightenment world where you gain knowledge about the world from the world, not religion. At the time The Prince was so radical, it was on the Vatican's list of thoroughly naughty books*.
*I know that's not what it was called, I don't remember and and it's too late at night to want to find out.
This wasn't lost on contemporaries, who immediately jumped to shouting hypocrite. The prince is an odd work to be sure. Even after reading it, I can't help but to think it was partially satire, using the trappings of a "mirror for princes" (a popular genre of book about how rulers should act, typically endorsing Christian virtues, pacifism, respect for the law, etc.) to point out how far removed this ideal princely behavior was from actual princely behavior, at least in Italy in Machiavelli's time.
WELL ACTUALLY there's a belief that Machiavelli wouldn't really endorse it, that he wrote The Prince more like a clever way of criticizing monarchies, "If a Prince has to govern like this to be a good government, it isn't a very good government." You can see his real views, which favours a Republic in Discourses.
You gotta feel for Elisabeth Christine. She was treated more as a secretary by Frederick for most of her life as his queen, though at least he did try his best to make sure she at least got treated as well as he could arrange despite detesting her as someone he felt he was saddled with.
Honestly, she had it good - she got private palace complex, absolutely no oversight from her husband (very rare at the time) and don't forget, she was also in an arranged marriage, so I wouldn't be surprised if she saw Frederic disinterest as liberation.
@@Noric.Morava But she was pretty much neglected. Though overall, she was loved by the Prussian people, and also ran the Prussian Royal Court in the Berlin Palace.
No kids, forgotten by her husband. I feel bad for her.
@@wayner396 dunno if she even wanted kids to be happy but honestly an arranged marriage probs just never rlly sparked much in her to fall that badly for him in the first place so at least she gets to sit a easier life at the time(for a woman)
Frederick did not detest her. He simply did not love her as a wife. He always took care of her material needs and always made sure that Elisabeth Christine was treated like a queen during his entire reign.
The bit about Fredrick William underfunding the Arts so bad they had to import singers from Saxony is so darkly funny.
Seems like Frederick W would've hated having singers at his funeral, so I don't see why they wasted the money on getting people from Saxony.
@@cometmoon4485BECAUSE he would have hated it looks like a wonderful reason in his case...
@@edisonlima4647 So, having singers was done to spite Frederick William's hatred of the arts?
@@nathanseper8738 Yep
It's ironic that Charles loved Maria Theresa and gave her a great childhood but when he died he left her a broken empire,while Frederick the great's dad hated him and tried to have him killed and yet when he died he left him one of the most powerful armies in Europe
Yeah, without Frederick William there is no Frederick the Great
Fredrick: “My time has come to conquer, and unify my scattered territory into an empire, but first… WE DANCE!”
*cue montage of culture and science funding*
Now I’ve got the image of Fritz pulling off Saturday Night Fever
Makes me think of one of the Zhang He endings in one of the Dynasty Warrior games where he gets his army to do a syncronized dance as the beginning of a beautiful empire.
@@lemmingradexactly h😂
As he should!
The way that Fredrick became a milltary enthusiast is legit every pre-teen who thought history was the dumb subject and then saw how cool HOI4 is and when they do buy the game they get like 231232132131 hours on it in the first day
he just like me fr
"A response to trauma" - Shows Frederick William screaming in a full on fit of rage
Do you blame them. Everyone would have been traumatized by having his dad screaming at him, berating him and beating him up over the slightest thing
@@ΧΡΗΣΤΟΣΑΜΑΝΑΤΙΔΗΣ-β7μ you forgot to mention he executed his lover and forced him to watch.
@@alejandroojeda1572 that as well. The only way he could have made this experience more traumatic would have been to either swing the axe himself or being the one who pins Fredrick's head against the cell bars in order to not "miss the show"
@stay mad waltuh
An alternate timeline where Maria Theresa and Frederick the Great marry would be a fascinating idea to explore honestly, it would completely change the eventual unification of Germany
Plus, it's possible that their union would affect other countries. Depending on whether they had kids, they might not have a daughter to marry off to the French which would probably have some effect on the path of the French Revolution. It would probably still happen, but Marie Antoinette was a great unifying factor for a lot of the disparate revolutionary factions. Without her, who knows what path it could go?
Something tells me that man wouldn't have fathered 16 children.
That sounds really interesting
@@maxkogler1830 He only needed one.
@@georgegreen711really? Is the homophobia necessary?
I REALLY hope we get a series on Peter the Great. Seriously, his history is insane, from setting up armies of children at the age of 10 for war games (while killing them using real life canons) to what was essentially a frat house trip around Europe (one time, he forced his crew to take a bite out of a dead body). This man had an amazing life and did so much within his lifetime that without him, Russia wouldn't exist today.
Not to mention his personal life, love to drink and had two wives- one out of responsibility and had a son but promptly abandoned and the other out of love and had two daughter with only to be cheated on.
I'd love to see a series dedicated to Peter the Great as well. After all, without him we wouldn't get to see Catherine the Great, who practically continued, refined and even expanded his work in some aspects
Слава царю Петру Великому! Слава первому императору и отцу Российской Империи!
After the battle of Möllwitz when Frederick heard that his army triumphed in his absence he swore never again to abandon the battlefield even in the face of certain defeat.
Also, in the aftermath of this battle, practically the entire Duchy of Silesia, which was comprised of semi-autonomous cities, estates and minor counties which belonged to the Habsburg inheritance as part of the Crown of Bohemia (one of their many titles which they held) was subsequently stripped from the Bohemian realm and incorporated into Prussian domains. Which was a pity as it had been part of Bohemian lands for 400 years, since medieval times.
A so well disciplined army that they were capable of still putting a fight and winning a battle without orders from their King, they knew exactly what they had to do.
Its because they got orders from their general
@@cryopex9976 my dude, General can make masterpiece strategies, but individual decition making of every single soldier as an individual is what wins the battles.
I love how: "that's another man in his live that was likely his lover"
Historians: they were just good friends and roommates
I hope we get a series of Prince Eugene of Savoy in the future. He was a brilliant military genius in his time and his life story is so interesting. The whole late 17th and early 18th century is full of amazing personalities and events.
Honestly it’s great that I know understand thanks to this series he was
*OUT THE GATE FIRST SERVANT OF STATE-*
Oblique attack tactics ain't exactly straight
He had creative talents and battle malice!
Hard as steel on field, genteel in the palace.
Frederick is my favorite historical figure. He was brilliant as a militar, statesman and philosopher. Plato would be proud of the true philosopher king.
Well......there is someone named Aurelius......
I'm named after Prince Eugene of Savoy! I always get super stoked whenever someone mentions him, he isn't one of the most known historical characters.
War philosophy is something to always be taken with a grain of salt.
It's famously said,
"The only just war is a merciful war,
The only merciful war is a swift war,
The only swift war is to crush your enemies as quickly and as cruelly as possible so that they never dane rise up against you again,
So the only merciful war is a cruel war"
See what I mean?
war is never merciful
It makes sense tho
I feel like Fredrick was born in the wrong time because it seems like he would get really into grand strategy games
I mean, as ruler he'd hardly need games, his men are his pawns lol
Wargaming was invented by his officers during his rule. Frederick the Great is the great-grandfather of grand strategy games!
@@Tomwithnonumbers queer people and military strategy games, name a more iconic duo
@@alejandrorivas4585 there are so many femboys on hoi4
He didn’t need a game, he just did it in real life
Me: What was Fredrick the Greats most infamous battle?
EC: School
Me: Oh well mine is- wait huh?
I thought that applies to everyone.
Fredrick to his likely lovers: You like flute~?
The closest Europe got to an actual enlightened monarch. What sets him apart from Joseph of Austria, or Catherine from Russia, is that he knew how to adapt enlightened ideas to his times and country, aside from being cunning. And he did get involved in politics and governing, unlike the french and English monarchs of the XVIII Century.
Enlightened absolutist monarchs are a myth. You can't be enlightened with the belief that you deserve a station by birthright. Frederick fled the battle because he was merely a mortal man. If you cut him, he'd bleed.
@@jaydenvancanne9981 Frederick the great was a monarch who did enlightened policies
@@jaydenvancanne9981u want to sound really cool but you didn’t say anything really. Yes of course he’s a mortal great discovery there my boy, the idea of an enlightened monarch isn’t that he’s immortal and absolute but that he’s a monarch with absolute or close to absolute power which governs respecting the Enlightenment principles and with a philosophe ( different from modern philosophers) besides him.
Europe had an actual enlightened monarch way back in 13th century. He was Frederick II of HRE.
Catherine the oppressor wasent from Russia. She ruled Russia but she was from Germany.
Really looking forward to the rest. Frederick is someone you really want to cheer for.
Soldat! Wake up! New episode about Fredrick the Great dropped
"I'm still paying off that trip to West Point for eggnog." That was a beautiful reference!
"still paying off that trip to westpoint for eggnog" That got me rolling. Well played.
Okay, so on Frederick refuting Machiavelli's _The Prince_ : Why do I feel like he didn't get the joke? Then again, he advocated a way to justify preemptive strikes, soooo....
The joke is called Italian mafia and it's more funny, where it is absent.
Or he got it perfectly. Machiavelli would have preferred a republic to an "enlightened monarch" which probably would not even have seen as possible.
The Prince isn't a joke or satire that's a myth.
@@tyrant-den884 Yeah, that's true, now I imagine his book as being a "See, I told you so!" moment to Machiavelli, you know?
Very Roman of him if you ask me ;)
The reason Charles the 6th died was because he went hunting in Hungary and ate a bowl of wild mushrooms. He then had food poisoning for a month and died. Voltaire called it “the bowl of mushrooms that changed history”.
At the end of Charles VI reign , the Habsburgs losing the martitime posesions of Naples and Sicily to Spain and also losing Northern territories of Serbia & Bosnia to the Ottoman Empire while Oltenia were reincorporated to Principality of Wallachia, the ottoman vasal .
For anyone wondering, Saxony and Bavaria intervened in the War of the Austrian Succession because the Elector of Bavaria was married to Joseph I’s (Charles VI’s predecessor) younger daughter Maria Amalia while the Elector of Saxony (who was also King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania) was married to his elder daughter, Maria Josepha.
Fun fact that Prince Eugene of Savoy is actually the who the Prinz Eugen is named after
The history of Prussia is laced with a few very interesting characters. It's exciting to see Frederick getting a series, and I am looking forward to getting to learn more about him! Thank you for all the videos you do!
God be with you out there everybody! ✝️ :)
I love how you put Fredrick refuting The Prince, but The Prince was SATIRE, therefore refuting it means he didnt even get it.
I'm pretty sure the prevailing view of the Prince at the time was that it was satire,which makes it even funnier.
That is, unless Frederick did understand Machiavelli's republicanism and refuted that in favor of enlightened despotism. Then he just sucks.
I have been learning more about the history of Europe and it's so interesting and just seems so sophisticated. Europeans just weren't really on the same page the same way the people of the Middle East for example were. It feels like they were constantly at war.
I wouldn't claim that people in the ME were on the same page. The only uniting influence would be the supremacy of the Caliph, but often peoples there only gave lip service to it when it suited them.
And people wonder why a lot of people in Europe love the EU.
We haven't had so much peace in thousands of years, even with the war in Ukraine we are still in a relatively peaceful time in Europe
I want to clarify I am not trying to judge Europeans. A lot of the wars they had to fight weren't their fault such as the invasions by Turks, Mongols, Arabs, Berbers and Africans. A lot of Europeans feel like historians try to paint them as inherently violent and warlike and obvisouly dislike this. I had no intention of doing this.
@@doomdimensiondweller5627 Lol but they were! I don't even think it's insulting it just is. Western Europe and its tiny local armies became this intense cultural pressure cooker that eventually produced global empires. It was like a thousand year long anime montage
@@doomdimensiondweller5627 Trust me. We were. Always have been.
Prussia: "Congrats on the great victory in battle, my King!"
Frederick: "...The... The what now..?"
Anybody else notice how chill of a dude Voltaire was?
I am Austrian myself and Theresa is here still remember as a reformer. Interesting to see her on the "other" side
II have a question. How are the Habsburg Monarchs viewed in Austria? Are they viewed as malicious tyrants?
@@billcipherproductions1789 No, i am also Austrian and there were good ones and bad ones. But it is really nostalgic and are generally well liked. It is a nice throwback to being a major power for 500ish years (they ruled austria for 600).
@@simonbrandstetter9693 Oh. Okay.
I like the part when he rap battled Ivan.
Dude im still pissed Pompey died before he could rap in that, he looked so happy too!
Out of the gate, First servant of state
this was the first ep. I watched its been 6 months and I still love this series!
Love the channel! Keep up the great work! Everyone does a kick ass job. Thanx.
Thank you!
I always read that 'Frederick fled the field, and his General later lectured him; to never retreat early.
honestly happy to see frederick and his dad reconciliation for some reason
That's kinda messed up him not even INVITING his wife to his coronation. Even if he didn't have romantic feelings for her, he should've at least been a bit platonic with her in caring for her.
When you’re forced to marry someone you don’t actually love and its to please your father you didn’t actually like really who had your actual love killed… Cant say I blame him.
@@NaokisRC But would you hold HER accountable for that? It wasn't her fault that his original lover was executed. If anything, she shouldn't be taking the blame for his father's actions.
@@ldsgermanshepherdboy9272
Well, she was basically the stand in/scape goat for his terrible relationship with his father and the issues in his love life.
He really wasn't a fan of women in general, but this was personal.
While I can’t be sure of her feelings in that situation, I think we need to remember that everything could have gone so, so much worse for this relationship. Political marriages are rarely happy or healthy, even when one partner wasn’t horrifically abused growing up, and the woman’s safety and happiness was not the priority by any means. Again I have no clue what her feeling was, but it’s not too much of a stretch (I think) to say she may have been relieved to be left to her own devices when pretty much any other man might well have made her life a nightmare.
When you're friends with someone like Voltaire, it means you're probably an asshole.
My AP History taught me about fruity kings, and tragic romances, I’d pay attention.. 😂
2:16 thought you were going to say "men"
This made me think of like 3 really great alternate history scenarios. One being what if Fritz died in that battle he fled.
man what openers, so far i have gotten goosebumbs at the start of both episodes!
I don't know if I should say this but I think I adore war.
Paddy was the one who kept talking about war in my class and made me obsessed with war.
Finally. Cant wait for more episodes in this series
At 6:28. Wait, Silesia produced ONE THIRD of Austrian revenues? That's crazy! What the hell did they have in Silesia that was so valuable? Iron ore? Salt? Something else? Why was this small slice of the Hapsburg domains so economically productive? I can't think of a single city in this region that is as beautiful and large as Prague or Bratislava. I always figured that Bohemia was by far and away the most economically productive bit of the Hapsburg lands in the 1700s if I go by how gorgeous Prague looks. Beauty doesn't come cheap.
Rich in coal and iron. And this is a time of nations buying lots of cannon and muskets, coal and iron were big.
The chess board at 3:25 is set up incorrectly, the knights should be over near the castles on the edge of the board and Frederic should be, as king, swapped places with the queen piece.
Good catch!
Isn't this the same Eugene who jumped off a bridge, head first, to escape an ambush? The fashionable dandy in tattered clothes? It's kinda heartbreaking to see him like this. Loved him in the "Siege of Vienna" series.
Pretty sure that was Charles of Lorraine, or whatever his name was.
This man is the king we need
Forgive the father because of that 10/10 infantry
No. Philip of Macedon left a similar legacy to his son Alexander, but did not brutalized him as much. No excuse holds.
Without his father's strict religious and millitary enforced training, Frederick wouldn't of been the man he was. If his father was light hearted and allowed his son to pursue whatever he wanted, then his son probably would've become millitarially incompetant and an unpragmatic man. But his father's efforts made Frederick realize that pragmatism and practicality comes before his own interests. That he'd be a controversial figure for his people if he'd openly admitted his irreligiousness and homosexuality. So we see that he put up a perfect guise for his people, while being militarily competant. All thanks to his father
@@bakrahabibi5471
How am I going to put this politely... you can raise your son well without executing his boyfriend in front of him, that this has to be explained to you is frankly astonishing and makes me weep for your current and/or future children.
@@jorenvanderark3567 calm down man Fredrick isn’t gonna kiss you 😂
@jorenvanderark3567 let me put this to you politely back in that time period if Frederick was not raised that way he would've been a weak king and likely executed in a revolt or have his land taken over by foreign invaders
That looks like a strange game of chess. The rooks and biships are interchanged.
I know of this battle, simply because when I was studying Fredrick, it was said this battle taught him not to run.
Hey! This series is how I found your channel. And let me say this was the best way. Getting bite sized content to look forward to every week is amazing. I hope you do more content like this!
I'm a Pole and today I learned that there was a war of Polish succession. We either weren't thought that back in school or it was under a different name I can't remember.
Almost none of it took place in Poland. The Poles elected a king the Russians didn't like, the Russians invaded and forced through the election of a king they did approve of. There was a short siege of Gdansk where the deposed king had fled - and that was it for the war in Poland. But the various powers of Europe supported one king or the other, and that caused it to spread throughout the rest of the continent, mostly in Italy and the Rhineland.
3:45 you have not unlocked this traumatized person yet
"Only the most broken people become the greatest leaders"- Namor
I always say that every good historical tale has a good amount of irony, and the irony of this tale is that the father, obsessed with war to point of tormenting his son over it, avoided war at all costs, and the son who refused to study war in favor or art and music was a bloody conqueror.
It’s like they say, hard times make strong men.
@3:00 Machiavelli was also in favor of rule-by-people (i.e., the rest of his back-catalog), but all we remember is the practical-secular tyrant kind of rule-book he wrote in "The Prince".
The Italian peninsula was a weird and interesting place at that time
Yes, that book was slander to the reigning Medicis.
@@billcipherproductions1789 Historian theory: "The Prince" is basically a review of Italian war and instructions to do it right.
War of Polish succession... at the Rhine... Middle Europe's history is just The Best
I just realized Fredrick is wearing a bow like thing on his hat
"No, Father. Please don't make me.." *shots a man*
"Nevermind. I'm suddenly super okay with this."
Fredrick came up with the idea of First Strike!?
Technically it was the Romans
@@GanyuSimpingDegenerate technically it's an idea that a bunch of different cultures/peoples/civilisations discovered at various times separately.
Frederick’s Father: “My Son…please…maintain your father’s legacy…do not allow the time to weaken you.”
Frederick: “of course father….” *waits until he’s dead* “2…3…4…5…WELP! He ain’t getting any deader.” *proceeds to build an Opera House*
very nice this series is only going to get better
Mollwitz tho a enlightened king, it was this he learned and shaped him in the coming battle/war.
It was weirdly heartwarming to see Frederick and his father reconciling in the end. They disagree in a lot of things, but both loved Prussia with a burning passion.
He literally chopped off his best friend/lover's head off and forced him to watch, I'm sure it was just for the optics. Either that or it's just Stockholm syndrome kicking in imo.
Yes. And they even loved eachother. Frederick himself admits that while he was watching his father dying, he came to realise how much he loved him.
And I am sure that for everything he said and did to his son throughout the years, Fredrick-Wilhelm did love little Fritz. Even with his inability to properly express it. He just did what he thought was best for him and Prussia. He was terrified of the idea that the kingdom he had built all these years ago would go to a person who reminds him of his father: a soft pushover who was more willing to self-indulgence rather than the buisness of ruling
@@ritheshofficial
No, he himself said that as his father was dying he realized how much he loved him.
Also I think his homosexuality is overplayed in modern discussions
@@ritheshofficial Nahhh, his father was doing what he thought was best for his son and prussia, his father had quite an experience with his rather indulgent father
@@ritheshofficial Stockholm Syndrome is the human way to handle stressful situations. We label it as a horrid thing, but it's something our ancestors depended on to stay sane in a cruel world. If our modern societies are faced with immense hardships, we will likely depend on it as well. In many ways, it's human.
Like it or not, it's there for a reason.
WHAT a cliffhanger. You delicious bastards!
ive been waiting years for this series , seriously thank you for this !
The irony is that he is was more Machiavellian than he realized
He actually did realize that later in his life
@@wingracer1614 Poetic. I'm glad he was at least aware before he died.
@@wingracer1614 He apparently realized that just a few months into his rain, and tried to get the book off the market. 😂
I did the curiosity and nebula bundle, I honestly only use the nebula part. I like the creator stuff more. Also it needs a Playlist feature.
Thank so much for supporting the show!
And Frederick The Great would prove to his father once and for all
I love this channel.
First and onky battle where he ran away. Curious what he is going to do about that heir bit, because I seem to remember a bunch or later fredricks
He was a true stoic, Blessed Be.
Okay, so hear me out. Stolas from Helluva Boss is somewhat inspired by Frederick the Great. I can't be the only one who sees it.
I could see it both of them have a wife they don’t even love, both are high in status, and both have secret lovers
Extra credits,please make a series about the (bengal sultanate).It is a very underrated empire.
EARLY!!!! Thank you for this series and all your hard work extra credits!!!
I always felt like Austria was cool I don't know why. I like history about them.
Is it the inbreeding and funny chins?
@@kaltaron1284
The most infamous examples are actually from the Spanish Habsburg branch. The rest was just... regular inbred, by European monarchy standards.
They were a great power since the late medieval period. Now people confuse them with a prison colony.
@@maxkogler1830 That's true.
@@GanyuSimpingDegenerate That's true. I'm in Canada and noone here even knows that Austria exists. When I ever try to talk to anyone about it they say "Do you mean Australia?"
You should make a video on Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria.
please release the next video on 24 january, the birthday of frederick the great!
Love your videos 😀😀😀
Absolutely wild to hear Foreign mentioned on here
There so much interest in the fact that Fredrick the Great, Catherine the Great, and Maria Theresa would be the most enlighten rulers of their time, yet they had to fight back the wave of revolutions that shook Europe.
These are the same rulers who would destroy Poland together.
3:35 I hate how relatable that is
I was waiting for this one
I love your videos they are so entertaining and educational like I didn’t know about most of this stuff I also love the cartoonish style in your videos
Been waiting on this 🙏
can we get a full video at the end of the series, containing all the videos of the series?
3:22 the Bishop and Knight swapped places
And the queens are on the wrong tile.
10:27
Happy 40th birthday ET! :D
Yes! Frederick is free!
As they say: "That escalated quickly".
On one side, I could watch next weeks episode right now on Nebula, but then, I'd have to wait for the episode of the week after.
Wait, only $15 for an entire year?
Oh snap, it's Freddie. Love me some Freddie.