Prussia was in many ways an anomaly among eighteenth-century European states. Though in 1740 it ranked only tenth in land area and thirteenth in population, its army was the fourth largest in Europe and was qualitatively the best. The Prussian state's ability to assemble, drill, and maintain this disproportionately large force was all the more remarkable in view of the backwardness of the economy compared to those of most of its political rivals. Prussia's surprising military prowess was, moreover, only the most obvious manifestation of its unusually effective state institutions. No other polity of the ancien régime had the internal cohesion needed to survive the type of ordeal that Prussia endured during the Seven Years' War (1756–63), when it withstood assaults from the Austrian, French, and Russian armies. This feat shows the extraordinary strength of the Prussian state with particular clarity, since the combined populations of the coalition members fighting Prussia in that war outnumbered the Prussian total by more than fifteen to one.

As Frederick the Great (1740–86) himself observed, during the reign of his father Frederick William I (1713–40) Prussia “became the Sparta [of the North] … our customs no longer resembled those of our ancestors or our neighbors.”