Buy this book on Amazon: A Short History of the World
West of Russia, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 had divided the Holy Roman Empire into 300 different principalities. One of these, Prussia, became its own kingdom in 1701 and grew in power under its first king, Frederick I. When his son, Frederick II (Frederick the Great), inherited the crown in 1740, he also inherited the most advanced army in Europe. Wishing his Hohenzollern Dynasty to become as great as that of the French Bourbons and the Austrian Habsburgs, whose rivalry dominated European politics in the 18th century, he took the opportunity to put his army to the test in two major conflicts. One was over the succession of the Austrian Habsburg emperor, Charles VI, and turned into an expensive stalemate. Another came in 1756 after he occupied land that lay between Austria and Prussia.
The result of these wars was that Prussia and Russia now overtook Spain and the Netherlands as great powers. Poland had the misfortune of being sandwiched between them and was eventually partitioned by them both, ceasing to exist as an independent country and only re-emerging after the First World War.
Little did Frederick II know, however, that his land grab would instigate a major war that would involve all the leading European powers and spill over into America. The consequences of the war in America between the French and the British that followed would, thanks to its huge costs, ultimately lead to the American War of Independence and to the French Revolution.