This book deals with the crucial relationship between war and state formation in early modern Europe by considering the role of the Duchy of Savoy and the rise of this hitherto weak state into one of the regular members of the anti-French coalitions of the eighteenth century. Through his participation in the Nine Years War (1688–97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), Victor Amadeus II, duke of Savoy, acquired a reputation for unrivalled ‘Machiavellian’ diplomacy on the international stage. The book puts this diplomacy in context, and considers how the duke raised men and money (at home and abroad), the administrative changes forced by war, the resulting domestic pressures, and how these were dealt with.

Erich Kästner wäre am 23.2.1999 hundert Jahre alt geworden. Und jeder glaubt, ihn zu kennen. Franz Josef Görtz und Hans Sarkowicz, beide Herausgeber seiner Werke, legen zum Jubiläum eine reich bebilderte Biographie vor, in der ein Mann gezeigt wird, der wahrhaftiger, sympathischer ist, als der, den wir bisher kannten.