The Great Elector

 In 1640 Frederick William, the 'Great Elector' of Brandenburg, inherited a minor territory devastated by the Thirty Years War. He would restore its fortunes, win its independence from Poland, and build a powerful, extended state, centred on Berlin, which by the 1670s was strong enough to be chief mover in the league of protestant and imperial forces against Louis XIV. At his death (1688), Brandenburg and his other lands xxx; shortly to be re-invented as the kingdom of Prussia xxx; was virtually an absolute monarchy, second only to Austria in the German lands. This long-awaited biography, the first in English for 50 years, avoids the limitation of seeing Frederick William primarily as precursor of the 'Enlightened' Frederick the Great. Instead, it roots him firmly in his own time xxx; a dynastic, protestant ruler like many another in Germany, but gifted with the toughness and opportunism to overcome the hostility of his local nobilities and of the surrounding great powers.