It was ironic that Prussia was basically a vassal state of Polish kingdom at one point.
...and not that Catherine II of Russia was an awful person. She didn’t want to be referred to as “The Great”, it was her subjects that conferred that title upon her. She was one of the earlier proponents of the enlightenment. She was a pen pal with Voltaire and others of his ilk.
“It was ironic that Prussia was basically a vassal state of Polish kingdom at one point.”
Prussia is an incredible study in bootstrapping a modest sized, resource poor backwater into a major power. The real empire builder was not Frederick the Great though, it was his tight fisted, nation building at all costs father, Frederick William I, and to a lesser extent his grandfather. Grandfather was adept at Imperial politics and advanced the status of Prussian rulers from ‘margrave’ to ‘king. Father made the nation solvent, secure, profitable and militarily strong. Son parleyed all of those achievements to make Prussia a major power, contributing military genius to the political and economic foundations of his forbears. Almost lost it all however in the Seven Years War, and was probably saved from utter ruin only by the timely death of the anti-Frederick Czarina Elizabeth, and the ascension of Prussophile Czar Peter III.
IMO, there are very interesting parallels between the relationship of Phillip of Macedon and Alexander, and Frederick William I and Frederick. In each case, the sober and diligent groundwork of the father is often overlooked for the flashier and more dramatic achievements of the son.
To get a feel for Prussia’s meteoric rise under these men, in teeth of Austrian, French and Saxon dominance, imagine the Republic of Mexico going from its present state to being the dominant military and political power in the Americas, all within the space of three generations.
the Teutonic knights, Krzyżacy, were invited by Konrad of Mazowia to help him battle the pagan Samogitans and other Baltic tribes in the 1200s. But by the 1300s they had their own state and were threatening Poland itself.
Then in 1410 the Poles, Lithuanians (now Christianized) and the Rusyns destroyed the knights at the battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg in German) and they were subdued, nearly destroyed. The Poles and Lithuanians recovered their territories.
Again do note that in the 19th and 20th centuries this was cast in an ethnic light of the evil Germans fighting against the noble Slavs and Baltics, but the truth was a lot more complex than that -- there were people of different ethnicities fighting on both sides and while the Teuotnic knights did slash and burn and kill, they also brought culture, city laws etc.
Anyway, then the Poles had a chance when the Teutonic knight leader converted to Calvinism -- they could have swallowed up the Teutonic state as it was no longer a monastry state. But the Poles were at that time ruled by a Swedish King who was the uncle to the Teutonic "prince"....
chances lost, chances lost....