“He who defends everything, defends nothing.”

Frederick the Great (1712 to 1786)

Frederick II, byname Frederick the Great, was the King of Prussia (1740-86), and a brilliant military campaigner who, in a series of diplomatic stratagems and wars against Austria and other powers, greatly enlarged Prussia’s territories and made Prussia the foremost military power in Europe.

An enlightened absolute monarch, he favoured French language and art and built a French Rococo palace, Sanssouci, near Berlin.