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Similarities Between Frederick And Catherine The Great

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Frederick and Catherine the Greats Squared This essay about “the Greats squared” or better known as Frederick and Catherine. I wondered why they were given the title of “Great”, so I began researching both of them. My objective with this essay is to show their greatest achievements and their worst blunders. Starting with Frederick the Great, he was born on January 24, 1712 in Berlin, Prussia. His father King Frederick Wilhelm I was a very strict no nonsense kind of guy. When he exhibited a flair for languages and music, his father sent him to military training. Frederick tried to escape to England at age 18 to get away from his father, however, he was caught, court-martialed, and had to watch his best friend be decapitated (Frederick …show more content…

Followed by the Enlightenment ideas/values that he put into use by rewriting laws and creating new governmental policies like the Hohenzollern policy that strengthened/modernized his country. Furthermore, he endorsed religious tolerance and promoted by merit not birthright which gave a person a chance to obtain better employment and or status (Kagan 539-540). Which brings me to one of his lesser known achievements, the musical score that he wrote and gave to Johann Sebastian Bach, who later used it (Frederick II, 2015). Frederick the Great has left a legacy for the leaders of today to emulate. One of his blunders would have to be he had used the power of the state to boost the economy but this in turn caused disproportionate taxes to fall upon the towns people and peasants instead of those who could afford to pay more (Kagan, 540). The worst blunder was he attacked Saxony too early and started the Seven Years War. This stalemate of a war ended in 1762 because Russia withdrew and Peter III was on the throne (Frederick II …show more content…

Eventually Peter III was killed, however it was never proven that she took part in it. In order to keep herself from being ousted from the throne, she returned land/property to the church while claiming she was following in Peter the Great’s footsteps (Catherine II, 2015). This could be where the “Great” in her name came to be. Like Frederick, she too believed in the Enlightenment ideals and looked to reform the Russian educational system, even writing some of the materials herself. In addition, she lobbied for governmental reforms, created a Legislative Commission, expanded Russia’s borders with the use of the military, as well as amassing a most impressive art collection (Maranzani,

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