This saved Vienna. The support of Hungary arrested the advance toward the capital, and the invading army moved instead on to Prague, where her rival was crowned King of Bohemia, and later at Frankfort was proclaimed Emperor Karl VII.
While these distracting combinations were engrossing the young sovereign, Frederick had invaded Silesia, and when the second Silesian war ended in 1742, Prussia held that province, and was enriched by 150 large and small cities, and about 5000 villages.
England, Holland, and Hanover now came to the support of Maria Theresa against Karl VII. and his French ally.
The wary Frederick saw that, with such a coalition, Austria's success was certain, and he also saw that, if victorious, her next step would be to try to recover Silesia. So he offered to join France in support of Karl VII., and threw himself into the war of the Austrian succession.
This lasted three years longer and was concluded by the Peace of Dresden (1745), which again confirmed Prussia in the possession of Silesia, left Maria Theresa's husband wearing the disputed Imperial title as Francis I., and to Frederick left the more unique and renowned title of "the Great," which was bestowed by acclamation on his return to Berlin.
Frederick's first care was to heal the wounds inflicted by the two Silesian wars.
It is interesting to speculate upon what this man might have been, had his childhood been spent in an atmosphere of kindness and love, and had his heart and intelligence been symmetrically nurtured and trained.
But he was trained as the tree is trained which is blasted in its youth by lightnings, then twisted and distorted by hands which defeat its natural tendency upward and sunward!
An eager and impressionable boy with warm affections, acute intelligence, and a strong sense of justice had been subjected to inhuman barbarities in his own home. In his heart-hunger he turned to pursuits for which he had a passionate love, and was nourished in secret upon a poisonous diet. A nature which in the fire of his youth had been full of generous enthusiasms was embittered by suffering, and then became cold and cynical under the teachings of Voltaire.
So fascinated had he become with this man that he regarded him as the most exalted of beings, and his friendship a treasure above all others. Faith, hope, love, and filial respect were, through this influence, destroyed in the germ before they had time to unfold; and in the place of everything sacred was a cynical cold-blooded search after what these philosophers of the eighteenth century were pleased to call—truth. And the way to discover this truth was to analyze, dissect, and then to demolish!