Through the process of mobilization just described, the Prussian state between 1713 and 1740 broke through the limits that had prevented any German territorial princedom from acquiring sufficient military and financial strength to challenge the post-1648 supremacy of the Habsburgs within the Empire. By the end of Frederick William I's reign, the Prussian army numbered 83,000 troops in peacetime, approximately double the peak size of the Hohenzollern force that had fought during the War of Spanish Succession with half of its budget funded by foreign subsidies. Frederick William I also left his son meticulously maintained fortresses, well-stocked grain magazines, and a war chest of nearly ten million Taler, which obviated the need for outside assistance for at least the early stages of any prospective war.

This remarkable increase in state power was the result of the establishment by Frederick William I of what a contemporary observer called “a form of government, which was probably ‘till then without example, and perhaps had not existed ‘till then.” What was revolutionary about the Prussian state in the context of the early eighteenth century was, of course, the sudden replacement of the customary system of princely rule through the court by a recognizably modern bureaucratic structure.