Frederick the Great of Prussia was very fond of war. Throughout the course of a long reign he found numerous little wars to fight, in order to keep himself amused during the periods when he was not staying home at the Palace of Sans Souci playing the flute and seducing hussars.
At the San Francisco library where I work it was my job today to catalog a book written in 1789 (a few years after Frederick's death) by Graf von Schmettau, one of his officers during the War of the Bohemian Succession which Frederick and von Schmettau and many other Prussians had enjoyed very much during the fighting season of 1778-79.
The text of von Schmettau's book is in French, but the beautiful fold-out, hand-colored maps are gracefully engraved in German. Their delicate prettiness belies the fact that their subject is conquest and pillage.
It was all a game to Frederick. Less so for the trampled Bohemians.