With such views he enters upon a memorable career.  His first important public act as king is the seizure of part of the territory of the Bishop of Liege, which he claims as belonging to Prussia.  The old bishop is indignant and amazed, but is obliged to submit to a robbery which disgusts Christendom, but is not of sufficient consequence to set it in a blaze.

The next thing he does, of historical importance, is to seize Silesia, a province which belongs to Austria, and contains about twenty thousand square miles,—­a fertile and beautiful province, nearly as large as his own kingdom; it is the highest table-land of Germany, girt around with mountains, hard to attack and easy to defend.  So rapid and secret are his movements, that this unsuspecting and undefended country is overrun by his veteran soldiers as easily as Louis XIV. overran Flanders and Holland, and with no better excuse than the French king had.  This outrage was an open insult to Europe, as well as a great wrong to Maria Theresa,—­supposed by him to be a feeble woman who could not resent the injury.  But in this woman he found the great enemy of his life,—­a lioness deprived of her whelps, whose wailing was so piteous and so savage that she aroused Europe from lethargy, and made coalitions which shook it to its centre.  At first she simply rallied her own troops, and fought single-handed to recover her lost and most valued province.  But Frederic, with marvellous celerity and ability, got possession of the Silesian fortresses; the bloody battle of Mollwitz (1741) secured his prey, and he returned in triumph to his capital, to abide the issue of events.

It is not easy to determine whether this atrocious crime, which astonished Europe, was the result of his early passion for military glory, or the inauguration of a policy of aggression and aggrandizement.  But it was the signal of an explosion of European politics which ended in one of the most bloody wars of modern times.  “It was,” says Carlyle, “the little stone broken loose from the mountain, hitting others, big and little, which again hit others with their leaping and rolling, till the whole mountain-side was in motion under law of gravity.”

Maria Theresa appeals to her Hungarian nobles, with her infant in her arms, at a diet of the nation, and sends her envoys to every friendly court.  She offers her unscrupulous enemy the Duchy of Limberg and two hundred thousand pounds to relinquish his grasp on Silesia.  It is like the offer of Darius to Alexander, and is spurned by the Prussian robber.  It is not Limberg he wants, nor money, but Silesia, which he resolves to keep because he wants it, and at any hazard, even were he to jeopardize his own hereditary dominions.  The peace of Breslau gives him a temporary leisure, and he takes the waters of Aachen, and discusses philosophy.  He is uneasy, but jubilant, for he has nearly doubled the territory and population of Prussia.  His subjects proclaim him a hero, with immense paeans.  Doubtless, too, he now desires peace,—­just as Louis XIV. did after he had conquered Holland, and as Napoleon did when he had seated his brothers on the old thrones of Europe.