292 FREDERICK AND WAR
But the myth of Frederick as philosopher-king had been
destroyed and the intellectuals who followed the lead of
Voltaire would come, step by step, to reject the concept of
enlightened autocracy... Frederick earned their admiration
for his patronage of the arts and sciences and for his religious
toleration. But the grim side of the king's personality and
accomplishments, particularly his military record, prevented a
further theoretical development of the concept of the
philosopher-king. (Johnson, 1982, 15)The notion of Frederick as an 'Enlightened Absolutist' does not
survive a close examination. Should we extend more charity towards
another concept, also much used in connection with Frederick and
his times, namely that of 'Limited War'?
By 'Limited War', we understand a kind of warfare which is
waged within a framework of deliberate or enforced restraints. This
idea has become part of the currency of modern strategy, where the
constraint is exercised by the fear of nuclear incineration. Historians
have received all the greater encouragement to explore the workings
of checks in past ages, and the eighteenth century appears to most of
them as a classic age of such 'Limited War', delineated clearly from
the more full-blooded style of warfare waged in the Revolutionary
and Napoleonic periods.
Almost certainly the dividing line has been too sharply drawn. If,
however, we do not equate a measure of restraint with something
that is totally devoid of importance, interest and energy, then the
wars of the middle of the eighteenth century do measure up well to
most of the definitions of such 'Limited War'.
We must first consider one of the most fundamental limitations
of all, that of objectives. Something of consequence began to brew in
Europe in the middle 1750s. Indeed, just before the outbreak of the
Seven Years War the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 worked as great a
shock on the optimistic complacency of society as did the sinking of
the Titanic in 1912. The aims of the hostile alliance, if they had been
accomplished in that war, would have reversed the progress which
the new Prussian monarchy had made in Europe (see p. 242), and
exercised the most profound effects on the history of the continent.
It is therefore easy to ignore the restraints that were still being
observed. Most important, the allies never intended to overset the
regime in Prussia, let alone impose a new form of government or a
new ideology. It was significant that in 1761, when victory appeared
to lie within her grasp, Maria Theresa wrote to Daun that her purpose
was just 'the reduction of the house of Brandenburg to its former state
as a rather secondary power... comparable to the other lay elec-
torates' (Ingrao, 1982, 59).