Between them, the Habsburg and Hohenzollern dynasties controlled the fortunes of central Europe through most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Habsburgs had fallen heir to what was left of the Holy Roman Empire. They were a long-established house and ruled in Austria, the Tirol, Hungary, Bohemia (not to become Czechoslovakia until modern times), and parts of Germany. The Hohenzollerns in 1600 were far less august, their lands little more than a medium-sized principality that had started as the Mark of Brandenburg. Yet, within two hundred years, they were challenging the leadership pf the Habsburgs, expanding their territories and organizing the military Prussian state while the rival house. in a sense, squandered its heritage through division of authority and indifferent government.These were troubled centuries, filled with turmoil and dramatic events. Religion was a divisive force in the Habsburg lands, where the rulers were Roman Catholic and the Estates representing the privileged classes were Protestant. The Thirty Years' War, arising from religious tensions, was won at horrendous cost by the Habsburgs, who then instituted repressive policies. The war with the Turks brought forth the heroic figures of the Pole Sobieski, who delivered besieged Vienna, and Eugene of Savoy, whose generalship proved decisive. In 1740 the bloody heritage passes on to the young Maria Theresa. The spirited empress brought her lands many economic, cultural, and social reforms despite more wars, including the onslaught of the Hohenzollern Frederick the Great. The extraordinary Fredrick was the culmination of the dynasty of Hohenzollerns. Almost every one of them added to the house's lands, enlarged the army, and helped to construct an imposing bureaucracy. Frederick was the prototype of the enlightened-century France. No mere dilettante, by the end of his reign he had fully doubted the wealth of his dominions and doubled their size. An ample selection in this very useful volume of documentary materials is devoted to Frederick, balancing in the deserved emphasis in the first half of his Habsburg contemporary, Maria Theresa.