title: Frederick the Great

text: Prince Frederick was twenty-eight years old when his father Frederick William I died and he ascended to the throne of Prussia. Before his accession, Frederick was told by D'Alembert, "The philosophers and the men of letters in every land have long looked upon you, Sire, as their leader and model." Such devotion, consequently, had to be tempered by political realities. When Frederick ascended the throne as the third "King in Prussia" in 1740, his realm consisted of scattered territories, including Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg in the west of the Holy Roman Empire; Brandenburg, Hither Pomerania, and Farther Pomerania in the east of the Empire; and the Kingdom of Prussia, the former Duchy of Prussia, outside of the Empire bordering the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was titled "King in Prussia" because his kingdom included only part of historic Prussia; he was to declare himself "King of Prussia" after the First Partition of Poland in 1772.


title: Frederick the Great

text: When Frederick became king, he was faced with the challenge of overcoming Prussia's weaknesses, vulnerably disconnected holdings with a weak economic base. To strengthen Prussia's position, he fought wars mainly against Austria, whose Habsburg dynasty had reigned as Holy Roman Emperors continuously since the 15th century. Thus, upon succeeding to the throne on 31 May 1740, Frederick declined to endorse the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, a legal mechanism to ensure the inheritance of the Habsburg domains by Maria Theresa of Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. Upon the death of Charles VI on 29 October 1740, Frederick disputed the 23-year-old Maria Theresa's right of succession to the Habsburg lands, while simultaneously asserting his own right to the Austrian province of Silesia based on a number of old, though ambiguous, Hohenzollern claims to parts of Silesia.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Accordingly, the First Silesian War (1740–1742, part of the War of the Austrian Succession) began on 16 December 1740 when Frederick invaded and quickly occupied almost all of Silesia within seven weeks. Though Frederick justified his occupation on dynastic grounds, the invasion of this militarily and politically vulnerable part of the Habsburg empire also had the potential to provide substantial long-term economic and strategic benefits. The occupation of Silesia added one of the most densely industrialised German regions to Frederick's kingdom and gave it control over the navigable Oder River. It nearly doubled Prussia's population and increased its territory by a third. It also prevented Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, from seeking to connect his own disparate lands through Silesia.


title: Frederick the Great

text: In late March 1741, Frederick set out on campaign again to capture the few remaining fortresses within the province that were still holding out. He was surprised by the arrival of an Austrian army, which he fought at the Battle of Mollwitz on 10 April 1741. Though Frederick had served under Prince Eugene of Savoy, this was his first major battle in command of an army. In the course of the fighting, Frederick's cavalry was disorganised by a charge of the Austrian horse. Believing his forces had been defeated, Frederick galloped away to avoid capture, leaving Field Marshal Kurt Schwerin in command to lead the disciplined Prussian infantry to victory. Frederick would later admit to humiliation at his abdication of command and would state that Mollwitz was his school. Disappointed with the performance of his cavalry, whose training his father had neglected in favour of the infantry, Frederick spent much of his time in Silesia establishing a new doctrine for them.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Encouraged by Frederick's victory at Mollwitz, the French and their ally, the Electorate of Bavaria, entered the war against Austria in early September 1741 and marched on Prague. Meanwhile, Frederick, as well as other members of the League of Nymphenburg, sponsored the candidacy of his ally Charles of Bavaria to be elected Holy Roman Emperor. In late November, the Franco-Bavarian forces took Prague and Charles was crowned King of Bohemia. Subsequently, he was elected as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII on 24 January 1742. After the Austrians pulled their army out of Silesia to defend Bohemia, Frederick pursued them and blocked their path to Prague. The Austrians counter-attacked on 17 May 1742, initiating the Battle of Chotusitz. In this battle, Frederick's retrained cavalry proved more effective than at Mollwitz, but once more it was the discipline of the Prussian infantry that won the field and allowed Frederick to claim a major victory. This victory, along with the Franco-Bavarian forces capturing Prague, forced the Austrians to seek peace. The terms of the Treaty of Breslau between Austria and Prussia, negotiated in June 1742, gave Prussia all of Silesia and Glatz County, with the Austrians retaining only the portion called Austrian or Czech Silesia.


title: Frederick the Great

text: By 1743, the Austrians had subdued Bavaria and driven the French out of Bohemia. Frederick strongly suspected Maria Theresa would resume war in an attempt to recover Silesia. Accordingly, he renewed his alliance with France and preemptively invaded Bohemia in August 1744, beginning the Second Silesian War. In late August 1744, Frederick's army had crossed the Bohemian frontier, marched directly to Prague, and laid siege to the city, which surrendered on 16 September 1744 after a three-day bombardment. Frederick's troops immediately continued marching into the heart of central Bohemia, but Saxony had now joined the war against Prussia. Although the combined Austrian and Saxon armies outnumbered Frederick's forces, they refused to directly engage with Frederick's army, harassing his supply lines instead. Eventually, Frederick was forced to withdraw to Silesia as winter approached. In the interim, Frederick also successfully claimed his inheritance to the minor territory of East Frisia on the North Sea coast of Germany, occupying the territory after its last ruler died without issue in 1744.


title: Frederick the Great

text: In January 1745, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII of Bavaria died, taking Bavaria out of the war and allowing Maria Theresa's husband Francis of Lorraine to be eventually elected Holy Roman Emperor. Now able to focus solely on Frederick's army, the Austrians, who were reinforced by the Saxons, crossed the mountains to invade Silesia. After allowing them across, Frederick pinned them down and decisively defeated them at the Battle of Hohenfriedberg on 4 June 1745. Frederick subsequently advanced into Bohemia and defeated a counterattack by the Austrians at the Battle of Soor. Frederick then turned towards Dresden when he learned the Saxons were preparing to march on Berlin. However, on 15 December 1745, Prussian forces under the command of Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau soundly defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Kesselsdorf. After linking up his army with Leopold's, Frederick occupied the Saxon capitol of Dresden, forcing the Saxon elector, Augustus III, to capitulate.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Once again, Frederick's victories on the battlefield compelled his enemies to sue for peace. Under the terms of the Treaty of Dresden, signed on 25 December 1745, Austria was forced to adhere to the terms of the Treaty of Breslau giving Silesia to Prussia. It was after the signing of the treaty that Frederick, then 33 years old, first became known as "the Great".


title: Frederick the Great

text: Though Frederick had withdrawn from the War of the Austrian Succession once Austria guaranteed his possession of Silesia, Austria remained embroiled in the war until the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Less than a year after the treaty was signed, Maria Theresa was once more seeking allies, particularly Russia and France, to eventually renew the war with Prussia to regain Silesia. In preparation for a new confrontation with Frederick, the Empress reformed Austria's tax system and military. During the ten years of peace that followed the signing of the Treaty of Dresden, Frederick also prepared to defend his claim on Silesia by further fortifying the province and expanding his army, as well as reorganising his finances.


title: Frederick the Great

text: In 1756, Frederick attempted to forestall Britain's financing of a Russian army on Prussia's border by negotiating an alliance with Britain at the Convention of Westminster, in which Prussia would protect Hanover against French attack and Britain would no longer subsidise Russia. This treaty triggered the Diplomatic Revolution in which Habsburg Austria and Bourbon France, who had been traditional enemies, allied together with Russia to defeat the Anglo-Prussian coalition. To strengthen his strategic position against this coalition, on 29 August 1756, Frederick's well-prepared army preemptively invaded Saxony. His invasion triggered the Third Silesian War and the larger Seven Years' War, both of which lasted until 1763. He quickly captured Dresden, besieged the trapped Saxon army in Pirna, and continued marching the remainder of his army toward North Bohemia, intending to winter there. At the Battle of Lobositz he claimed a close victory against an Austrian army that was aiming to relieve Pirna, but afterward withdrew his forces back to Saxony for the winter. When the Saxon forces in Pirna finally capitulated in October 1756, Frederick forcibly incorporated them into his own army. This action, along with his initial invasion of neutral Saxony brought him widespread international criticism; but the conquest of Saxony also provided him with significant financial, military, and strategic assets that helped him sustain the war.


title: Frederick the Great

text: In the early spring of 1757, Frederick once more invaded Bohemia. He was victorious against the Austrian army at the Battle of Prague on 6 May 1757, but his losses were so great he was unable to take the city itself, and settled for besieging it instead. A month later on 18 June 1757, Frederick suffered his first major defeat at the Battle of Kolín, which forced him to abandon his invasion of Bohemia. When the French and the Austrians pursued him into Saxony and Silesia in the fall of 1757, Frederick defeated and repulsed a much larger Franco-Austrian army at the Battle of Rossbach and another Austrian army at the Battle of Leuthen. Frederick hoped these two victories would force Austria to negotiate, but Maria Theresa was determined not to make peace until she had recovered Silesia, and the war continued. Despite its strong performance, the losses suffered from combat, disease and desertion had severely reduced the quality of the Prussian army.


title: Frederick the Great

text: In the remaining years of the war, Frederick faced a coalition of enemies including Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and the Holy Roman Empire, supported only by Great Britain and its allies Hesse, Brunswick, and Hanover. In 1758 Frederick once more took the initiative by invading Moravia. By May, he had laid siege to Olomouc; but, the Austrians were able to hold the town and destroyed Frederick's supply train, forcing him to retreat into Silesia. In the meantime, the Russian army had advanced within east of Berlin. In August, he fought the Russian forces to a draw at the Battle of Zorndorf, in which nearly a third of Frederick's soldiers were casualties. He then headed south to face the Austrian army in Saxony. There, he was defeated at the Battle of Hochkirch on 14 October, although the Austrian forces were not able to exploit their victory.


title: Frederick the Great

text: During the 1759 campaign, the Austrian and Russian forces took the initiative, which they kept for the remainder of the war. They joined and once more advanced on Berlin. Frederick's army, which consisted of a substantial number of quickly recruited, half-trained soldiers, attempted to check them at the Battle of Kunersdorf on 12 August, where he was defeated and his troops were routed. Almost half his army was destroyed, and Frederick almost became a casualty when a bullet smashed a snuffbox he was carrying. Nevertheless, the Austro-Russian forces hesitated and stopped their advance for the year, an event Frederick later called the "Miracle of the House of Brandenburg". Frederick spent the remainder of the year in a futile attempt to manoeuvre the Austrians out of Saxony, where they had recaptured Dresden. His effort cost him further losses when his general Friedrich August von Finck capitulated at Maxen on 20 November.


title: Frederick the Great

text: At the beginning of 1760, the Austrians moved to retake Silesia, where Frederick defeated them at the Battle of Liegnitz on 15 August. The victory did not allow Frederick to regain the initiative or prevent Russian and Austrian troops from raiding Berlin in October to extort a ransom from the city. At the end of the campaign season, Frederick fought his last major engagement of the war. He won a marginal victory at the Battle of Torgau on 3 November, which secured Berlin from further raids. In this battle, Frederick became a casualty when he was hit in the chest by a spent bullet.


title: Frederick the Great

text: By 1761, both the Austrian and Prussian military forces were so exhausted that no major battles were fought between them. Frederick's position became even more desperate in 1761 when Britain, having achieved victory in the American and Indian theatres of the war, ended its financial support for Prussia after the death of King George II, Frederick's uncle. The Russian forces also continued their advance, occupying Pomerania and parts of Brandenburg. With the Russians slowly advancing towards Berlin, it looked as though Prussia was about to collapse. On 6 January 1762, Frederick wrote to Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein, "We ought now to think of preserving for my nephew, by way of negotiation, whatever fragments of my territory we can save from the avidity of my enemies".


title: Frederick the Great

text: The sudden death of Empress Elizabeth of Russia in January 1762 led to the succession of the Prussophile Peter III, her German nephew, who was also the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. This led to the collapse of the anti-Prussian coalition; Peter immediately promised to end the Russian occupation of East Prussia and Pomerania, returning them to Frederick. One of Peter III's first diplomatic endeavours was to seek a Prussian title; Frederick obliged. Peter III was so enamoured of Frederick that he not only offered him the full use of a Russian corps for the remainder of the war against Austria, he also wrote to Frederick that he would rather have been a general in the Prussian army than Tsar of Russia. More significantly, Russia's about-face from an enemy of Prussia to its patron rattled the leadership of Sweden, who hastily made peace with Frederick as well. With the threat to his eastern borders over, and France also seeking peace after its defeats by Britain, Frederick was able to fight the Austrians to a stalemate and finally brought them to the peace table. While the ensuing Treaty of Hubertusburg simply returned the European borders to what they had been before the Seven Years' War, Frederick's ability to retain Silesia in spite of the odds earned Prussia admiration throughout the German-speaking territories. A year following the Treaty of Hubertusburg, Catherine the Great, Peter III's widow and usurper, signed an eight-year alliance with Prussia, albeit with conditions that favoured the Russians.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick's ultimate success in the Seven Years' War came at a heavy financial cost to Prussia. Part of the burden was covered by the Anglo-Prussian Convention, which gave Frederick an annual £670,000 in British subsidies from 1758 till 1762. These subsidies ceased when Frederick allied with Peter III, partly because of the changed political situation and also because of Great Britain's decreasing willingness to pay the sums Frederick wanted. Frederick also financed the war by devaluing the Prussian coin five times; debased coins were produced with the help of Leipzig mintmasters, Veitel Heine Ephraim, Daniel Itzig and Moses Isaacs. He also debased the coinage of Saxony and Poland. This debasement of the currency helped Frederick cover over 20 per cent of the cost of the war, but at the price of causing massive inflation and economic upheaval throughout the region. Saxony, occupied by Prussia for most of the conflict, was left nearly destitute as a result. While Prussia lost no territory, the population and army were severely depleted by constant combat and invasions by Austria, Russia and Sweden. The best of Frederick's officer corps were also killed in the conflict. Although Frederick managed to bring his army up to 190,000 men by the time the economy had largely recovered in 1772, which made it the third-largest army in Europe, almost none of the officers in this army were veterans of his generation and the King's attitude towards them was extremely harsh. During this time, Frederick also suffered a number of personal losses. Many of his closest friends and family members— including his brother Augustus William, his sister Wilhelmine, and his mother— had died while Frederick was engaged in the war.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick sought to acquire and economically exploit Polish Prussia as part of his wider aim of enriching his kingdom. As early as 1731 Frederick had suggested that his country would benefit from annexing Polish territory, and had described Poland as an "artichoke, ready to be consumed leaf by leaf". By 1752, he had prepared the ground for the partition of Poland–Lithuania, aiming to achieve his goal of building a territorial bridge between Pomerania, Brandenburg, and his East Prussian provinces. The new territories would also provide an increased tax base, additional populations for the Prussian military, and serve as a surrogate for the other overseas colonies of the other great powers.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Poland was vulnerable to partition due to poor governance, as well as the interference of foreign powers in its internal affairs. Frederick himself was partly responsible for this weakness by opposing attempts at financial and political reform in Poland, and undermining the Polish economy by inflating its currency by his use of Polish coin dies. The profits exceeded 25 million thalers, twice the peacetime national budget of Prussia. He also thwarted Polish efforts to create a stable economic system by building a customs fort at Marienwerder on the Vistula, Poland's major trade artery, and by bombarding Polish customs ports on the Vistula.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick also used Poland's religious dissension to keep the kingdom open to Prussian control. Poland was predominantly Roman Catholic, but approximately ten per cent of Poland's population, 600,000 Eastern Orthodox and 250,000 Protestants, were non-Catholic dissenters. During the 1760s, the dissenters' political importance was out of proportion to their numbers. Although dissenters still had substantial rights, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had increasingly been reducing their civic rights after a period of considerable religious and political freedom. Soon Protestants were barred from public offices and the (Polish Parliament). Frederick took advantage of this situation by becoming the protector of Protestant interests in Poland in the name of religious freedom. Frederick further opened Prussian control by signing an alliance with Catherine the Great who placed Stanisław August Poniatowski, a former lover and favourite, on the Polish throne.


title: Frederick the Great

text: After Russia occupied the Danubian Principalities in 1769–70, Frederick's representative in Saint Petersburg, his brother Prince Henry, convinced Frederick and Maria Theresa that the balance of power would be maintained by a tripartite division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth instead of Russia taking land from the Ottomans. They agreed to the First Partition of Poland in 1772, which took place without war. Frederick acquired most of Royal Prussia, annexing and 600,000 inhabitants. Although Frederick's share of the partition was the smallest of the partitioning powers, the lands he acquired had roughly the same economic value as the others and had great strategic value. The newly created province of West Prussia connected East Prussia and Farther Pomerania and granted Prussia control of the mouth of the Vistula River, as well as cutting off Poland's sea trade. Maria Theresa had only reluctantly agreed to the partition, to which Frederick sarcastically commented, "she cries, but she takes".


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick undertook the exploitation of Polish territory under the pretext of an enlightened civilising mission that emphasised the supposed cultural superiority of Prussian ways. He saw Polish Prussia as barbaric and uncivilised, describing the inhabitants as "slovenly Polish trash" and comparing them unfavourably with the Iroquois. His long-term goal was to remove the Poles through Germanisation, which included appropriating Polish Crown lands and monasteries, introducing a military draft, encouraging German settlement in the region, and implementing a tax policy that disproportionately impoverished Polish nobles.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Late in his life Frederick involved Prussia in the low-scale War of the Bavarian Succession in 1778, in which he stifled Austrian attempts to exchange the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria. For their part, the Austrians tried to pressure the French to participate in the War of Bavarian Succession since there were guarantees under consideration related to the Peace of Westphalia, clauses which linked the Bourbon dynasty of France and the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty of Austria. Unfortunately for the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, the French were unwilling to provide manpower and resources to the endeavour since they were already providing support to the American revolutionaries on the North American continent. Frederick ended up as a beneficiary of the American Revolutionary War, as Austria was left more or less isolated.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Moreover, Saxony and Russia, both of which had been Austria's allies in the Seven Years' War, were now allied with Prussia. Although Frederick was weary of war in his old age, he was determined not to allow Austrian dominance in German affairs. Frederick and Prince Henry marched the Prussian army into Bohemia to confront Joseph's army, but the two forces ultimately descended into a stalemate, largely living off the land and skirmishing rather than actively attacking each other. Frederick's longtime rival Maria Theresa, who was Joseph's mother and his co-ruler, did not want a new war with Prussia, and secretly sent messengers to Frederick to discuss peace negotiations. Finally, Catherine II of Russia threatened to enter the war on Frederick's side if peace was not negotiated, and Joseph reluctantly dropped his claim to Bavaria. When Joseph tried the scheme again in 1784, Frederick created the (League of Princes), allowing himself to be seen as a defender of German liberties, in contrast to his earlier role of attacking the imperial Habsburgs. To stop Joseph II's attempts to acquire Bavaria, Frederick enlisted the help of the Electors of Hanover and Saxony along with several other minor German princes. Perhaps even more significant, Frederick benefited from the defection of the senior prelate of the German Church, the Archbishop of Mainz, who was also the arch-chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, which further strengthened Frederick and Prussia's standing amid the German states.


title: Frederick the Great

text: In his earliest published work, the "Anti-Machiavel", and his later ("Political Testament"), Frederick wrote that the sovereign was the first servant of the state.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Acting in this role, Frederick helped transform Prussia from a European backwater to an economically strong and politically reformed state. He protected his industries with high tariffs and minimal restrictions on domestic trade. He increased the freedom of speech in press and literature, abolished most uses of judicial torture, and reduced the number of crimes that could be punished by the death sentence. Working with his Grand Chancellor Samuel von Cocceji, he reformed the judicial system and made it more efficient, and he moved the courts toward greater legal equality of all citizens by removing special courts for special social classes. The reform was completed after Frederick's death, resulting in the Prussian Law Code of 1794, which balanced absolutism with human rights and corporate privilege with equality before the law. Reception to the law code was mixed as it was often viewed as contradictory.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick strove to put Prussia's fiscal system in order. In January 1750, Johann Philipp Graumann was appointed as Frederick's confidential adviser on finance, military affairs, and royal possessions, as well as the Director-General of all mint facilities. Graumann's currency reform slightly lowered the silver content of Prussian thaler from Cologne mark of silver to , which brought the metal content of the thaler into alignment with its face value, and it standardised the Prussian coinage system. As a result, Prussian coins, which had been leaving the country nearly as fast as they were minted, remained in circulation in Prussia. In addition, Frederick estimated that he earned about one million thalers in profits on the seignorage. The coin eventually became universally accepted beyond Prussia and helped increase industry and trade. A gold coin, the Friedrich d'or, was also minted to oust the Dutch ducat from the Baltic trade. However, the fixed ratio between gold and silver led to the gold coins being perceived as more valuable, which caused them to leave circulation in Prussia. Being unable to meet Frederick's expectations for profit, Graumann was removed in 1754.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Although Frederick's debasement of the coinage to fund the Seven Years' War left the Prussian monetary system in disarray, the Mint Edict of May 1763 brought it back to stability by fixing rates at which depreciated coins would be accepted and requiring tax payments in currency of prewar value. Many other rulers soon followed the steps of Frederick in reforming their own currencies – this resulted in a shortage of ready money, thus lowering prices.


title: Frederick the Great

text: The functionality and stability of the reform made the Prussian monetary system the standard in Northern Germany.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Around 1751 Frederick founded the Emden Company to promote trade with China. He introduced the lottery, fire insurance, and a giro discount and credit bank to stabilise the economy. One of Frederick's achievements after the Seven Years' War included the control of grain prices, whereby government storehouses would enable the civilian population to survive in needy regions, where the harvest was poor. He commissioned Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky to promote the trade and – to take on the competition with France – put a silk factory where soon 1,500 people found employment. Frederick followed Gotzkowsky's recommendations in the field of toll levies and import restrictions. When Gotzkowsky asked for a deferral during the Amsterdam banking crisis of 1763, Frederick took over his porcelain factory, now known as KPM.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick modernised the Prussian civil service and promoted religious tolerance throughout his realm to attract more settlers in East Prussia. With the help of French experts, he organised a system of indirect taxation, which provided the state with more revenue than direct taxation; though French officials administering it may have pocketed some of the profit. In 1781, Frederick made coffee a royal monopoly and employed disabled soldiers, the coffee sniffers, to spy on citizens illegally roasting coffee, much to the annoyance of the general population.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Though Frederick started many reforms during his reign, his ability to see them to fulfilment was not as disciplined or thorough as his military successes.


title: Frederick the Great

text: In contrast to his devoutly Calvinist father, Frederick was a religious sceptic, who has been described as a deist. Frederick was pragmatic about religious faith. Three times during his life, he presented his own confession of Christian faith: during his imprisonment after Katte's execution 1730, after his conquest of Silesia in 1741, and just before the start of the Seven Years' War in 1756; in each case, these confessions also served personal or political goals.


title: Frederick the Great

text: He tolerated all faiths in his realm, but Protestantism remained the favoured religion, and Catholics were not chosen for higher state positions. Frederick wanted development throughout the country, adapted to the needs of each region. He was interested in attracting a diversity of skills to his country, whether from Jesuit teachers, Huguenot citizens, or Jewish merchants and bankers. Frederick retained Jesuits as teachers in Silesia, Warmia, and the Netze District, recognising their educational activities as an asset for the nation. He continued to support them after their suppression by Pope Clement XIV. He befriended the Roman Catholic Prince-Bishop of Warmia, Ignacy Krasicki, whom he asked to consecrate St. Hedwig's Cathedral in 1773. He also accepted countless Protestant weavers from Bohemia, who were fleeing from the devoutly Catholic rule of Maria Theresa, granting them freedom from taxes and military service. Constantly looking for new colonists to settle his lands, he encouraged immigration by repeatedly emphasising that nationality and religion were of no concern to him. This policy allowed Prussia's population to recover very quickly from its considerable losses during Frederick's three wars.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Though Frederick was known to be more tolerant of Jews and Roman Catholics than many neighbouring German states, his practical-minded tolerance was not fully unprejudiced. Frederick wrote in his :


title: Frederick the Great

text: We have too many Jews in the towns. They are needed on the Polish border because in these areas Hebrews alone perform trade. As soon as you get away from the frontier, the Jews become a disadvantage, they form cliques, they deal in contraband and get up to all manner of rascally tricks which are detrimental to Christian burghers and merchants. I have never persecuted anyone from this or any other sect; I think, however, it would be prudent to pay attention, so that their numbers do not increase. The success in integrating the Jews into areas of society where Frederick encouraged them can be seen by Gerson von Bleichröder's role during the 19th century in financing Otto von Bismarck's efforts to unite Germany. Frederick was also less tolerant of Catholicism in his occupied territories. In Silesia, he disregarded canon law to install clergy who were loyal to him. In Polish Prussia, he confiscated the Roman Catholic Church's goods and property, making clergy dependent on the government for their pay and defining how they were to perform their duties.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Like many leading figures in the Age of Enlightenment, Frederick was a Freemason, having joined during a trip to Brunswick in 1738. His membership legitimised the group's presence in Prussia and protected it against charges of subversion.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick's religious views were sometimes criticised. His views resulted in his condemnation by the anti-revolutionary French Jesuit, Augustin Barruel. In his 1797 book, ("Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism"), Barruel described an influential conspiracy theory that accused King Frederick of taking part in a plot which led to the outbreak of the French Revolution and having been the secret "protector and adviser" of fellow-conspirators Voltaire, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and Denis Diderot, who all sought "to destroy Christianity" and foment "rebellion against Kings and Monarchs".


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick was keenly interested in land use, especially draining swamps and opening new farmland for colonisers who would increase the kingdom's food supply. He called it (peopling policy). About twelve hundred new villages were founded in his reign. He told Voltaire, "Whoever improves the soil, cultivates land lying waste and drains swamps, is making conquests from barbarism". Using improved technology enabled him to create new farmland through a massive drainage programme in the country's Oderbruch marshland. This programme created roughly of new farmland, but also eliminated vast swaths of natural habitat, destroyed the region's biodiversity, and displaced numerous native plant and animal communities. Frederick saw this project as the "taming" and "conquering" of nature, considering uncultivated land "useless", an attitude that reflected his enlightenment era, rationalist sensibilities. He presided over the construction of canals for bringing crops to market, and introduced new crops, especially the potato and the turnip, to the country. For this, he was sometimes called "Der Kartoffelkönig" (the Potato King).


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick's interest in land reclamation may have resulted from his upbringing. As a child, his father, Frederick William I, made young Frederick work in the region's provinces, teaching the boy about the area's agriculture and geography. This created an interest in cultivation and development that the boy retained when he became ruler.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick founded the first veterinary school in Prussia. Unusually for the time and his aristocratic background, he criticised hunting as cruel, rough and uneducated. When someone once asked Frederick why he did not wear spurs when riding his horse, he replied, "Try sticking a fork into your naked stomach, and you will soon see why." He loved dogs and his horse and wanted to be buried with his greyhounds. In 1752 he wrote to his sister Wilhelmine that people indifferent to loyal animals would not be devoted to their human comrades either, and that it was better to be too sensitive than too harsh. He was also close to nature and issued decrees to protect plants.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick was a patron of music, and the court musicians he supported included C. P. E. Bach, Carl Heinrich Graun and Franz Benda. A meeting with Johann Sebastian Bach in 1747 in Potsdam led to Bach's writing "The Musical Offering". He was also a talented musician and composer in his own right, playing the transverse flute, as well as composing 121 sonatas for flute and continuo, four concertos for flute and strings, four sinfonias, three military marches and seven arias. Additionally, the "Hohenfriedberger Marsch" was allegedly written by Frederick to commemorate his victory in the Battle of Hohenfriedberg during the Second Silesian War. His flute sonatas were often composed in collaboration with Johann Joachim Quantz, who was Frederick's occasional music tutor in his youth and joined his court as composer and flute maker in 1741. Frederick's flute sonatas are written in the Baroque style in which flute plays the melody, sometimes imitating operatic vocal styles like the aria and recitative, while the accompaniment was usually played by just one instrument per part to highlight the delicate sound of the flute.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick also wrote sketches, outlines and libretti for opera that were included as part of the repertoire for the Berlin Opera House. These works, which were often completed in collaboration with Graun, included the operas "Coriolano" (1749), "Silla" (1753), "Montezuma" (1755), and "Il tempio d'Amore" (1756). Frederick saw opera as playing an important role in imparting enlightenment philosophy, using it to critique superstition and the Pietism that still held sway in Prussia. He also attempted to broaden access to opera by making admission to it free.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick also wrote philosophical works, publishing some of his writings under the title of "The Works of a Sans-Souci Philosopher". Frederick corresponded with key French Enlightenment figures, including Voltaire, who at one point declared Frederick to be a philosopher-king, and the Marquis d'Argens, whom he appointed as Royal Chamberlain in 1742 and later as the Director of the Prussian Academy of Arts and Berlin State Opera. His openness to philosophy had its limits. He did not admire the "encyclopédistes" or the French intellectual avant-garde of his time, though he did shelter Rousseau from persecution for a number of years. Moreover, once he ascended the Prussian throne, he found it increasingly difficult to apply the philosophical ideas of his youth to his role as king.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Like many European rulers of the time who were influenced by the prestige of Louis XIV of France and his court, Frederick adopted French tastes and manners, though in Frederick's case, the extent of his Francophile tendencies might also have been a reaction to the austerity of the family environment created by his father, who had a deep aversion for France and promoted an austere culture for his state. He was educated by French tutors, and almost all the books in his library, which covered topics as diverse as mathematics, art, politics, the classics, and literary works by 17th century French authors, were written in French. French was Frederick's preferred language for speaking and writing, though he had to rely on proofreaders to correct his difficulties with its spelling.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Though Frederick used German as his working language with his administration and with the army, he claimed to have never learned it properly and never fully mastered speaking or writing it. He also disliked the German language, thinking it was inharmonious and awkward. He once commented that German authors "pile parenthesis upon parenthesis, and often you find only at the end of an entire page the verb on which depends the meaning of the whole sentence". He considered the German culture of his time, particularly literature and theatre, to be inferior to that of France; believing that it had been hindered by the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. He suggested that it could eventually equal its rivals, but this would require a complete codification of the German language, the emergence of talented German authors and extensive patronage of the arts by Germanic rulers. This was a project he believed would take a century or more. Frederick's love of French culture was not without limits either. He disapproved of the luxury and extravagance of the French royal court. He also ridiculed German princes, especially the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, Augustus III, who imitated French sumptuousness. His own court remained quite Spartan, frugal and small and restricted to a limited circle of close friends, a layout similar to his father's court, though Frederick and his friends were far more culturally inclined than Frederick William.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Despite his distaste for the German language, Frederick did sponsor the (Royal German Society), founded in Königsberg in 1741, the aim of which was to promote and develop the German language. He allowed the association to be titled "royal" and have its seat at the Königsberg Castle, but he does not seem to have taken much interest in the work of the society. Frederick also promoted the use of German instead of Latin in the field of law, as in the legal document ("Project of the Frederician Body of Laws"), which was written in German with the aim of being clear and easily understandable. Moreover, it was under his reign that Berlin became an important centre of German enlightenment.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick had many famous buildings constructed in his capital, Berlin, most of which still stand today, such as the Berlin State Opera, the Royal Library (today the State Library Berlin), St. Hedwig's Cathedral, and Prince Henry's Palace (now the site of Humboldt University). A number of the buildings, including the Berlin State Opera House, a wing of Schloss Charlottenburg, and the renovation of Rheinsburg during Frederick's residence were built in a unique Rococo style that Frederick developed in collaboration with Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff. This style became known as Frederician Rococo and is epitomised by Frederick's summer palace, Sanssouci (French for "carefree" or "without worry"), which served as his primary residence and private refuge.


title: Frederick the Great

text: As a great patron of the arts, Frederick was a collector of paintings and ancient sculptures; his favourite artist was Jean-Antoine Watteau. His sense of aesthetics can be seen in the picture gallery at Sanssouci, which presents architecture, painting, sculpture and the decorative arts as a unified whole. The gilded stucco decorations of the ceilings were created by Johann Michael Merck (1714–1784) and Carl Joseph Sartori (1709–1770). Both the wall panelling of the galleries and the diamond shapes of the floor consist of white and yellow marble. Paintings by different schools were displayed strictly separately: 17th-century Flemish and Dutch paintings filled the western wing and the gallery's central building, while Italian paintings from the High Renaissance and Baroque were exhibited in the eastern wing. Sculptures were arranged symmetrically or in rows in relation to the architecture.


title: Frederick the Great

text: When Frederick ascended the throne in 1740, he reinstituted the Prussian Academy of Sciences (Berlin Academy), which his father had closed down as an economy measure. Frederick's goal was to make Berlin a European cultural centre that rivalled London and Paris in the arts and sciences. To accomplish this goal, he invited numerous intellectuals from across Europe to join the academy, made French the official language and made speculative philosophy the most important topic of study. The membership was strong in mathematics and philosophy and included Immanuel Kant, D'Alembert, Pierre Louis de Maupertuis, and Étienne de Condillac. However the Academy was in a crisis for two decades at mid-century, due in part to scandals and internal rivalries such as the debates between Newtonianism and Leibnizian views, and the personality conflict between Voltaire and Maupertuis. At a higher level Maupertuis, director of the Berlin Academy from 1746 to 1759 and a monarchist, argued that the action of individuals was shaped by the character of the institution that contained them, and they worked for the glory of the state. By contrast d' Alembert took a republican rather than monarchical approach and emphasised the international Republic of Letters as the vehicle for scientific advance. By 1789, the academy had gained an international repute while making major contributions to German culture and thought. For example, the mathematicians he recruited for the Berlin Academy – including Leonhard Euler, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Johann Heinrich Lambert, and Johann Castillon – made it a world-class centre for mathematical research. Other intellectuals attracted to the philosopher's kingdom were Francesco Algarotti, d'Argens, and Julien Offray de La Mettrie.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Contrary to his father's fears, Frederick became a capable military commander. With the exception of his first battlefield experience at the Battle of Mollwitz, Frederick proved himself courageous in battle. He frequently led his military forces personally and had a number of horses shot from under him during battle. During his reign he commanded the Prussian Army at sixteen major battles and various sieges, skirmishes and other actions, ultimately obtaining almost all his political objectives. He is often admired for his tactical skills, especially for his use of the oblique order of battle, an attack focused on one flank of the opposing line, allowing a local advantage even if his forces were outnumbered overall. Even more important were his operational successes, especially the use of interior lines to prevent the unification of numerically superior opposing armies and defend the Prussian core territory.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Napoleon Bonaparte saw the Prussian king as a military commander of the first rank; after Napoleon's victory over the Fourth Coalition in 1807, he visited Frederick's tomb in Potsdam and remarked to his officers, "Gentlemen, if this man were still alive I would not be here". Napoleon frequently "pored through Frederick's campaign narratives and had a statuette of him placed in his personal cabinet".


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick's most notable military victories on the battlefield were the Battle of Hohenfriedberg, a tactical victory, fought during the War of Austrian Succession in June 1745; the Battle of Rossbach, where Frederick defeated a combined Franco-Austrian army of 41,000 with only 21,000 soldiers (10,000 dead for the Franco-Austrian side with only 550 casualties for Prussia); and the Battle of Leuthen, a follow-up victory to Rossbach in which Frederick's 39,000 troops inflicted 22,000 casualties, including 12,000 prisoners, on Charles of Lorraine's Austrian force of 65,000.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick the Great believed that creating alliances was necessary, as Prussia did not have the resources of nations like France or Austria. Though his reign was regularly involved in war, he did not advocate for protracted warfare. He stated that for Prussia, wars should be short and quick: long wars would destroy the army's discipline, depopulate the country, and exhaust its resources.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick was an influential military theorist whose analysis emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy, tactics, mobility and logistics. Austrian co-ruler, Emperor Joseph II wrote, "When the King of Prussia speaks on problems connected with the art of war, which he has studied intensively and on which he has read every conceivable book, then everything is taut, solid and uncommonly instructive. There are no circumlocutions, he gives factual and historical proof of the assertions he makes, for he is well versed in history."


title: Frederick the Great

text: The historian Dennis Showalter argues: "The King was also more consistently willing than any of his contemporaries to seek decision through offensive operations." Yet, these offensive operations were not acts of blind aggression; Frederick considered foresight to be among the most important attributes when fighting an enemy, stating that the discriminating commander must see everything before it takes place, so nothing will be new to him.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Much of the structure of the more modern German General Staff owed its existence and extensive structure to Frederick, along with the accompanying power of autonomy given to commanders in the field. According to Citino, "When later generations of Prussian-German staff officers looked back to the age of Frederick, they saw a commander who repeatedly, even joyfully, risked everything on a single day's battle – his army, his kingdom, often his very life." As far as Frederick was concerned, there were two major battlefield considerations – speed of march and speed of fire. So confident in the performance of men he selected for command when compared to those of his enemy, Frederick once quipped that a general considered audacious in another country would be ordinary in Prussia because Prussian generals will dare and undertake anything that is possible for men to execute.


title: Frederick the Great

text: After the Seven Years' War, the Prussian military acquired a formidable reputation across Europe. Esteemed for their efficiency and success in battle, the Prussian army of Frederick became a model emulated by other European powers, most notably by Russia and France. To this day, Frederick continues to be held in high regard as a military theorist and has been described as representing the embodiment of the art of war.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Near the end of his life, Frederick grew increasingly solitary. His circle of close friends at Sanssouci gradually died off with few replacements, and Frederick became increasingly critical and arbitrary, to the frustration of the civil service and officer corps. Frederick was immensely popular among the Prussian people because of his enlightened reforms and military glory; the citizens of Berlin always cheered him when he returned from administrative or military reviews. Over time, he was nicknamed (The Old Fritz) by the Prussian people, and this name became part of his legacy. Frederick derived little pleasure from his popularity with the common people, preferring instead the company of his pet Italian greyhounds, whom he referred to as his "marquises de Pompadour" as a jibe at the French royal mistress. Even in his late 60s and early 70s when he was increasingly crippled by asthma, gout and other ailments, he rose before dawn, drank six to eight cups of coffee a day, "laced with mustard and peppercorns", and attended to state business with characteristic tenacity.


title: Frederick the Great

text: On the morning of 17 August 1786, Frederick died in an armchair in his study at Sanssouci, aged 74. He left instructions that he should be buried next to his greyhounds on the vineyard terrace, on the side of the "corps de logis" of Sanssouci. His nephew and successor Frederick William II instead ordered Frederick's body to be entombed next to his father, Frederick William I, in the Potsdam Garrison Church. Near the end of World War II, German dictator Adolf Hitler ordered Frederick's coffin to be hidden in a salt mine as protection from destruction. The United States Army relocated the remains to Marburg in 1946; in 1953, the coffins of Frederick and his father were moved to Burg Hohenzollern.


title: Frederick the Great

text: On the 205th anniversary of his death, on 17 August 1991, Frederick's coffin lay in state in the court of honour at Sanssouci, covered by a Prussian flag and escorted by a Bundeswehr guard of honour. After nightfall, Frederick's body was finally laid to rest in the terrace of the vineyard of Sanssouci—in the still existing crypt he had built there—without pomp, in accordance with his will.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Visitors to his grave often place potatoes on his gravestone in honour of his role in promoting the use of the potato in Prussia.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Frederick's legacy has been subject to a wide variety of interpretations. For instance, Thomas Carlyle's "History of Frederick the Great" (8 vol. 1858–1865) emphasised the power of one great "hero", in this case Frederick, to shape history. In German memory, Frederick became a great national icon and many Germans said he was the greatest monarch in modern history. These claims particularly were popular in the 19th century. For example, German historians often made him the romantic model of a glorified warrior, praising his leadership, administrative efficiency, devotion to duty and success in building up Prussia to a leading role in Europe. Frederick's popularity as a heroic figure remained high in Germany even after World War I.


title: Frederick the Great

text: Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis glorified Frederick as a precursor to Adolf Hitler and presented Frederick as holding out hope that another miracle would again save Germany at the last moment. In an attempt to legitimise the Nazi regime, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels commissioned artists to render fanciful images of Frederick, Bismarck, and Hitler together in order to create a sense of a historical continuum amongst them. Throughout World War II, Hitler often compared himself to Frederick the Great, and he kept a copy of Anton Graff's portrait of Frederick with him to the end in the "Führerbunker" in Berlin.


title: Frederick the Great

text: After the defeat of Germany after 1945, the role of Prussia in German history was minimised. Compared to the pre-1945 period, Frederick's reputation was downgraded in both East and West Germany, partly due to the Nazis' fascination with him and his supposed connection with Prussian militarism. During the second half of the 20th century, political attitudes towards Frederick's image were ambivalent, particularly in communist East Germany. For example, immediately after World War II images of Prussia were removed from public spaces, including Frederick's equestrian statue on the Unter den Linden, but in 1980 his statue was once more re-erected on its original location. Since the end of the Cold War, Frederick's reputation has continued to grow in the now reunified Germany.


title: Frederick the Great

text: In the 21st century the view of Frederick as a capable and effective leader also remains strong among military historians; though, the originality of his achievements remains a topic of debate, as many were based on developments already under way. He has also been studied as a model of servant leadership in management research and is held in high regard for his patronage of the arts. He has been seen as an exemplar of enlightened absolutism, though this label has been questioned in the 21st century as many enlightenment principles directly contrast with his military reputation.


title: Cameron Monaghan

text: Cameron Riley Monaghan is an American actor and model. He is known for his role as Ian Gallagher on the Showtime comedy-drama series "Shameless" and as twins Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska, who serve as origins for the Joker, on the DC Comics-based TV series "Gotham." He also portrayed Cal Kestis in the action-adventure game "". Monaghan began his career as a child model at the age of three and as a child actor at the age of seven.


title: Cameron Monaghan

text: Monaghan was born in Santa Monica, California, the only child of Diane Monaghan, an insurance claims specialist and single mother. He and his mother relocated to Boca Raton, Florida, shortly after his birth. Recognizing that Monaghan was an exceptionally outgoing child, his mother sent his picture to modeling agencies when he was three. He appeared on the cover of his first catalogue at the age of five and appeared in his first regional commercial at seven.


title: Cameron Monaghan

text: He attended Addison Mizner Elementary School and began to develop his acting skills by appearing in the Little Palm Children's Theatre's productions of "Stuart Little", "Winnie-the-Pooh", and "The Pumpkin King" (a theatrical adaptation of "The Nightmare Before Christmas"), as well as appearing as Alex in the small independent film "The Wishing Stone", which was filmed in the Lake Worth, Florida area.


title: Cameron Monaghan

text: Monaghan first came to national attention in 2003 for his role as Winthrop Paroo in the ABC television adaptation of "The Music Man". When recounting the decision to cast the 9-year-old Monaghan, director and executive producer Jeff Bleckner explained, "There are some people, when you put them up on film, they sort of pop off the screen at you. That's how it was with Cameron. From the second we saw him, he was it. We were looking for anybody who had that wonderful appeal. And Cameron had it."


title: Cameron Monaghan

text: In 2004, Monaghan began a recurring role as Chad, one of Dewey's classmates on the Fox comedy series "Malcolm in the Middle", which earned him the Young Artist Award as Best Young Television Actor in a Recurring Role. The following year, he began a recurring role as Palmer Noid on the Nickelodeon situation comedy "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide". Subsequent guest-starring television roles followed, including appearances on "Criminal Minds", "Numbers", "The Mentalist", "Monk", "Three Rivers", "Fringe", "The Glades", and "Terriers".


title: Cameron Monaghan

text: In 2005, Monaghan transitioned to theatrical film roles, appearing as Timmy in the independent western "Brothers in Arms". The following year, he appeared as Kevin O'Doyle, the bothersome next-door neighbor in the fantasy comedy "Click". A series of subsequent feature film roles followed, including appearances in "", "Dog Gone", "Safe Harbor" and "Another Harvest Moon", as well as portraying the boy detective Bob Andrews in the "Three Investigators" film series.


title: Cameron Monaghan

text: In April 2010, Monaghan was cast as an ensemble cast member on the Showtime comedy-drama series "Shameless". On the series, which premiered in January 2011, Monaghan portrays Ian Gallagher, the gay bipolar teenage son of a large dysfunctional Chicago family. Sarah Hughes of "The Independent" commended Monaghan's portrayal for providing "one of the more nuanced depictions of a gay teenager to be seen on US TV." Matthew Gilbert of "The Boston Globe" described Monaghan's performance as "extraordinary." And the gay-interest media outlet AfterElton.com cited Monaghan's portrayal of Ian in naming him to its list of "2011's Break-Out TV Actors". In February 2014, Showtime announced it had renewed the series for a fifth season, scheduled to begin airing in 2015. For his work in the fifth season, Monaghan received a Critic's Choice Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. The seventh season began airing in October 2016. The eighth season, consisting of 12 episodes, went into production in May 2017; it premiered on November 5, 2017. The series was renewed for a ninth season which premiered on September 9, 2018. Monaghan announced via Instagram that he would be leaving the series following the sixth episode of the ninth season. However, Cameron returned for the tenth season which premiered in late 2019.


title: Cameron Monaghan

text: Monaghan appears in a variety of episodic television roles. In 2011, he guest-starred as Nick Peyton, a teenage boy accused of murdering his Marine father, on the CBS crime series "NCIS". That same year he appeared as Jonathan McKenna on the TNT mystery series "Rizzoli & Isles". In 2012, he guest-starred as Eddie Sandow, a 19-year-old who creates a hostage situation after his father is accused of sexual assault, on the NBC crime series "".


title: Cameron Monaghan

text: Monaghan also appears in a variety of feature film roles. In 2011, he co-starred as high school sophomore Corey Doyle in the Disney teen drama "Prom". In 2012, he portrayed Jake, the son of an attractive YMCA director in the sports themed comedy "2nd Serve". In 2014, Monaghan starred as Adam McCormick, a small-town high school athlete who becomes consumed by the death of one of his classmates in the independent drama "Jamie Marks Is Dead". That same year, he appeared as Mason Ashford, the best friend and romantic interest to Rose in the fantasy adventure film "Vampire Academy". He also starred as Asher in the dystopian movie "The Giver".


title: Cameron Monaghan

text: From 2015 to 2019, Monaghan was featured as a recurring guest star in all five seasons of Fox's DC Comics-based television series "Gotham". He plays the antagonistic twin brothers Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska, who both serve origin stories for the famous Batman villain The Joker.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Jadon Malik Sancho (born 25 March 2000) is an English professional footballer who plays as a winger for club Manchester United and the England national team. Widely regarded as one of the best young players in the world, he is known for his trickery, game intelligence, pace and use of feints in one-on-one situations.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Previously a youth player with Watford and Manchester City, Sancho signed his first senior contract with Borussia Dortmund in 2017. In his second season, he established himself as a first-team regular and was named in the 2018–19 Bundesliga Team of the Season. Ahead of the 2019–20 season, Sancho won his first trophy following the DFL-Supercup victory over Bayern Munich. He was named runner-up in both the Golden Boy and Kopa Trophy awards in 2019. Sancho returned to England to sign for Manchester United in 2021.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Sancho was part of the England youth team that won the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup and made his debut for the senior team in 2018.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Sancho was born in Camberwell, Greater London to parents from Trinidad and Tobago. He was raised in Kennington, in South London. He became friends with fellow aspiring footballer Reiss Nelson, who lived nearby, after they played together in youth tournaments. Growing up, he was a Chelsea fan, and idolised Ronaldinho and Frank Lampard.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Sancho joined Watford at the age of seven. Due to issues with commuting across London to the club's academy, he moved into accommodation provided by Watford and began attending their partner school Harefield Academy as a boarder, aged 11. At the age of 14 he told his Watford under-15s coach about his intention to play for England.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: At the age of 14, he moved to Manchester City in March 2015 for an initial fee of £66,000 under the Elite Player Performance Plan, potentially rising to £500,000 with add ons. Sancho continued to impress in the City academy and was one of a trio of players that City chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, said would be fast tracked into the senior set up in May 2017. In July, Sancho was omitted from City's pre-season tour squad due to a dispute over assurances of playing time in a new contract. It was subsequently reported that Sancho was attempting to engineer a move away from the club and City were alarmed at Sancho's attitude after he missed training following a pre-season tour.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Sancho signed for German Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund on 31 August 2017 for a fee reported to be in the region of £8 million and was immediately included in the first-team squad. He later stated that he felt confident in making the move abroad due to his previous experiences in relocating with Watford and Manchester City. Sancho made his debut for the club against Eintracht Frankfurt on 21 October, coming on as a substitute with six minutes left of the match, becoming the first Englishman to play a Bundesliga match for Dortmund. Sancho made his first league start for Dortmund on 14 January 2018, hitting the woodwork in a goalless draw with VfL Wolfsburg. He scored his first professional goal on 21 April. It was the first goal in a 4–0 victory against Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga and he also assisted two other goals in the same match.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Having signed a new contract keeping him at the club until 2022, Sancho enjoyed a successful October 2018 by being named Bundesliga Player of the Month, registering three goals and an assist in just three league games. Included among his goals for the month was a brace in a draw against Hertha BSC which saw him become the first player born in the 2000s to score twice in a single Bundesliga match and the youngest ever by a Dortmund player. On 24 October, he also became the first player born in the 2000s to score in the UEFA Champions League for Dortmund against Atlético Madrid.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: During a 3–3 draw with Hoffenheim on 9 February 2019, he became the youngest-ever player to score eight goals in a single Bundesliga season, breaking the record previously held by Christian Wück. Later that month, upon scoring in a 3–2 win over Bayer Leverkusen, he broke Lukas Podolski's record to become the youngest player to score nine Bundesliga goals, aged 18 years and 336 days. On 13 April, Sancho scored a brace in a 2–1 win over Mainz and in doing so became the youngest-ever Dortmund player to score at least 10 goals in a single Bundesliga campaign. Following an impressive league campaign in which he scored 12 goals and provided 14 assists, Sancho was named in the 2018–19 Bundesliga Team of the Season.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Success continued ahead of the 2019–20 season, with Sancho providing an assist and scoring in a 2–0 DFL-Supercup victory over Bayern Munich on 3 August 2019. Later that month Sancho agreed a new contract with Dortmund. In November, he was named runner-up in the Golden Boy award. The next month, he was named runner-up in the Kopa Trophy award. Sancho's goal in Dortmund's 3–3 draw with RB Leipzig on 17 December meant he had scored in seven consecutive games for the club (including in Champions League matches against Barcelona and Slavia Prague), bringing his tally up to 15 goals and 16 assists in the Bundesliga in the calendar year of 2019. Sancho's three goals and three assists in five league matches during February 2020 saw him named Bundesliga Player of the Month for the second time in his career.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: On 31 May 2020, Sancho scored his first career hat-trick in a 6–1 away win over SC Paderborn. After scoring his first goal, he removed his shirt to reveal a shirt with the message "Justice for George Floyd", a black man who was murdered earlier that week in Minneapolis by a police officer, who knelt on Floyd's neck until he became unresponsive.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: On 1 July 2021, it was announced that Manchester United and Dortmund had reached an agreement for Sancho's transfer, subject to him signing a contract and passing a medical, both of which were expected to happen after UEFA Euro 2020. The transfer was completed on 23 July, after Sancho signed a five-year contract with the option of a further year. He was given the number 25 shirt last worn by Odion Ighalo. On 14 August, he made his debut as a substitute for Daniel James in a 5–1 home league win over rivals Leeds United. On 23 November, he scored his first goal for the club, against Villarreal to secure a spot in the knockout stage of the Champions League. Five days later he scored his first Premier League goal against Chelsea after Jorginho miscontrolled a long clearance from Bruno Fernandes, allowing Sancho to take advantage of a two-on-one with Édouard Mendy.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Sancho scored his first goal of the 2022–23 season in a 2–1 home victory over Liverpool on 22 August 2022.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: In May 2017, Sancho was part of the England under-17 team that reached the final of the UEFA European Under-17 Championship, and was named player of the tournament for his performances. In September 2017, Sancho was named in England's squad for the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup but the player's new German club resisted the call up. The two parties eventually reached an agreement where he would be available for the group stages of the competition, but his participation was not guaranteed if England progressed to the knock out rounds. On 8 October 2017, he scored twice in England U17's first match, against Chile. On 16 October, during England's round of 16 tie against Japan, he was withdrawn from the competition by Borussia Dortmund.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: On 2 November 2017, Sancho was called up to the England U19 squad for the first time, joining them for 2018 UEFA European Under-19 Championship qualification matches against the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Group 8's host-nation team Bulgaria. He made his first start at U19 level in the 6–0 victory against the Faroes, lasting seventy minutes before being substituted for Ben Brereton; He replaced Brereton in the 66th minute in the win over Iceland, which secured progression to the elite round. He scored the only goal of the match against Bulgaria to help England top their group. Coming on as a substitute for Brereton, Sancho scored the last of the goals in England's 4–1 win over Hungary in the first match of the elite round on 21 March 2018.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Following an impressive start to the 2018–19 season, Sancho was called up to the England senior squad for the first time on 4 October 2018 in preparation for UEFA Nations League fixtures against Croatia and Spain. He made his debut as a 78th-minute substitute against Croatia on 12 October, in a 0–0 away draw. On 22 March 2019, Sancho started his first competitive match for England in their 5–0 win over the Czech Republic at Wembley Stadium for a UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying match. During the September internationals, Sancho scored his debut goals for the senior team, a brace, in a 5–3 home victory over Kosovo in a Euro 2020 qualifier on 10 September.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: On 11 July 2021, Sancho was brought on as a 120th-minute substitute for Kyle Walker during the UEFA Euro 2020 Final against Italy. He took England's fourth penalty in the subsequent shoot-out, which was saved by Gianluigi Donnarumma. Following the 3–2 loss on penalties, Sancho along with Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka (who also missed penalties) were subjected to racially abusive messages on social media.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Sancho can function as a second striker or wide midfielder typically in a Borussia Dortmund 4–2–3–1 formation on either wing of attack. Dortmund's "young player project" helped Sancho function in the focal point of attack alongside a core of talented young stars like Erling Haaland, Gio Reyna and Jude Bellingham.


title: Jadon Sancho

text: Regarded as a quick, highly technical, and creative player, with excellent dribbling skills and ball control, Sancho is known for his trickery and use of feints in one-on-one situations and has been described as one of the world's best young players. Although he is known in particular for his ability to get past opponents and create chances for teammates, he is also capable of scoring goals himself.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories, as well as more than 100 countries. It lies in a tunnel in circumference and as deep as beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The first collisions were achieved in 2010 at an energy of 3.5 teraelectronvolts (TeV) per beam, about four times the previous world record. After upgrades it reached 6.5 TeV per beam (13 TeV total collision energy). At the end of 2018, it was shut down for three years for further upgrades.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The collider has four crossing points where the accelerated particles collide. Seven detectors, each designed to detect different phenomena, are positioned around the crossing points. The LHC primarily collides proton beams, but it can also accelerate beams of heavy ions: lead–lead collisions and proton–lead collisions are typically performed for one month a year.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The LHC's goal is to allow physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics, including measuring the properties of the Higgs boson, searching for the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetric theories, and other unresolved questions in particle physics.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The term "hadron" refers to subatomic composite particles composed of quarks held together by the strong force (analogous to the way that atoms and molecules are held together by the electromagnetic force). The best-known hadrons are the baryons such as protons and neutrons; hadrons also include mesons such as the pion and kaon, which were discovered during cosmic ray experiments in the late 1940s and early 1950s.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: A "collider" is a type of a particle accelerator which brings two opposing particle beams together such that the particles collide. In particle physics, colliders, though harder to construct, are a powerful research tool because they reach a much higher center of mass energy than fixed target setups. Analysis of the byproducts of these collisions gives scientists good evidence of the structure of the subatomic world and the laws of nature governing it. Many of these byproducts are produced only by high-energy collisions, and they decay after very short periods of time. Thus many of them are hard or nearly impossible to study in other ways.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Many physicists hope that the Large Hadron Collider will help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, which concern the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelation between quantum mechanics and general relativity.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Data are also needed from high-energy particle experiments to suggest which versions of current scientific models are more likely to be correct – in particular to choose between the Standard Model and Higgsless model and to validate their predictions and allow further theoretical development.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The collider is contained in a circular tunnel, with a circumference of , at a depth ranging from underground. The variation in depth was deliberate, to reduce the amount of tunnel that lies under the Jura Mountains to avoid having to excavate a vertical access shaft there. A tunnel was chosen to avoid having to purchase expensive land on the surface, which would also have an impact on the landscape and to take advantage of the shielding against background radiation that the earth's crust provides.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The wide concrete-lined tunnel, constructed between 1983 and 1988, was formerly used to house the Large Electron–Positron Collider. The tunnel crosses the border between Switzerland and France at four points, with most of it in France. Surface buildings hold ancillary equipment such as compressors, ventilation equipment, control electronics and refrigeration plants.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The collider tunnel contains two adjacent parallel beamlines (or "beam pipes") each containing a beam, which travel in opposite directions around the ring. The beams intersect at four points around the ring, which is where the particle collisions take place. Some 1,232 dipole magnets keep the beams on their circular path (see image), while an additional 392 quadrupole magnets are used to keep the beams focused, with stronger quadrupole magnets close to the intersection points in order to maximize the chances of interaction where the two beams cross. Magnets of higher multipole orders are used to correct smaller imperfections in the field geometry. In total, about 10,000 superconducting magnets are installed, with the dipole magnets having a mass of over 27 tonnes. Approximately 96 tonnes of superfluid helium-4 is needed to keep the magnets, made of copper-clad niobium-titanium, at their operating temperature of , making the LHC the largest cryogenic facility in the world at liquid helium temperature. LHC uses 470 tonnes of Nb–Ti superconductor.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: During LHC operations, the CERN site draws roughly 200 MW of electrical power from the French electrical grid, which, for comparison, is about one-third the energy consumption of the city of Geneva; the LHC accelerator and detectors draw about 120 MW thereof. Each day of its operation generates 140 terabytes of data.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: When running an energy of 6.5 TeV per proton, once or twice a day, as the protons are accelerated from 450 GeV to 6.5 TeV, the field of the superconducting dipole magnets is increased from 0.54 to . The protons each have an energy of 6.5 TeV, giving a total collision energy of 13 TeV. At this energy, the protons have a Lorentz factor of about 6,930 and move at about , or about slower than the speed of light ("c"). It takes less than for a proton to travel 26.7 km around the main ring. This results in per second for protons whether the particles are at low or high energy in the main ring, since the speed difference between these energies is beyond the fifth decimal.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Rather than having continuous beams, the protons are bunched together, into up to , with in each bunch so that interactions between the two beams take place at discrete intervals, mainly apart, providing a bunch collision rate of 40 MHz. It was operated with fewer bunches in the first years. The design luminosity of the LHC is 10 cms, which was first reached in June 2016. By 2017, twice this value was achieved.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Before being injected into the main accelerator, the particles are prepared by a series of systems that successively increase their energy. The first system is the linear particle accelerator Linac4 generating 160 MeV negative hydrogen ions (H ions), which feeds the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB). There, both electrons are stripped from the hydrogen ions leaving only the nucleus containing one proton. Protons are then accelerated to 2 GeV and injected into the Proton Synchrotron (PS), where they are accelerated to 26 GeV. Finally, the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is used to increase their energy further to 450 GeV before they are at last injected (over a period of several minutes) into the main ring. Here, the proton bunches are accumulated, accelerated (over a period of ) to their peak energy, and finally circulated for 5 to while collisions occur at the four intersection points.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The LHC physics programme is mainly based on proton–proton collisions. However, during shorter running periods, typically one month per year, heavy-ion collisions are included in the programme. While lighter ions are considered as well, the baseline scheme deals with lead ions (see A Large Ion Collider Experiment). The lead ions are first accelerated by the linear accelerator LINAC 3, and the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) is used as an ion storage and cooler unit. The ions are then further accelerated by the PS and SPS before being injected into LHC ring, where they reach an energy of 2.3 TeV per nucleon (or 522 TeV per ion), higher than the energies reached by the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The aim of the heavy-ion programme is to investigate quark–gluon plasma, which existed in the early universe.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Nine detectors have been constructed at the LHC, located underground in large caverns excavated at the LHC's intersection points. Two of them, the ATLAS experiment and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), are large general-purpose particle detectors. ALICE and LHCb have more specialized roles and the other five, TOTEM, MoEDAL, LHCf, SND and FASER, are much smaller and are for very specialized research. The ATLAS and CMS experiments discovered the Higgs boson, which is strong evidence that the Standard Model has the correct mechanism of giving mass to elementary particles.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Data produced by LHC, as well as LHC-related simulation, were estimated at approximately 15 petabytes per year (max throughput while running is not stated)—a major challenge in its own right at the time.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The LHC Computing Grid was constructed as part of the LHC design, to handle the massive amounts of data expected for its collisions. It is an international collaborative project that consists of a grid-based computer network infrastructure initially connecting 140 computing centres in 35 countries (over 170 in 36 countries ). It was designed by CERN to handle the significant volume of data produced by LHC experiments, incorporating both private fibre optic cable links and existing high-speed portions of the public Internet to enable data transfer from CERN to academic institutions around the world. The Open Science Grid is used as the primary infrastructure in the United States, and also as part of an interoperable federation with the LHC Computing Grid.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The distributed computing project LHC@home was started to support the construction and calibration of the LHC. The project uses the BOINC platform, enabling anybody with an Internet connection and a computer running Mac OS X, Windows or Linux to use their computer's idle time to simulate how particles will travel in the beam pipes. With this information, the scientists are able to determine how the magnets should be calibrated to gain the most stable "orbit" of the beams in the ring. In August 2011, a second application (Test4Theory) went live which performs simulations against which to compare actual test data, to determine confidence levels of the results.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: By 2012, data from over 6 quadrillion () LHC proton–proton collisions had been analysed, LHC collision data was being produced at approximately 25 petabytes per year, and the LHC Computing Grid had become the world's largest computing grid in 2012, comprising over 170 computing facilities in a worldwide network across 36 countries.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The LHC first went operational on 10 September 2008, but initial testing was delayed for 14 months from 19 September 2008 to 20 November 2009, following a magnet quench incident that caused extensive damage to over 50 superconducting magnets, their mountings, and the vacuum pipe.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: During its first run (2010–2013), the LHC collided two opposing particle beams of either protons at up to 4 teraelectronvolts or , or lead nuclei (574 TeV per nucleus, or 2.76 TeV per nucleon). Its first run discoveries included the long-sought Higgs boson, several composite particles (hadrons) like the χ (3P) bottomonium state, the first creation of a quark–gluon plasma, and the first observations of the very rare decay of the B meson into two muons (B → μμ), which challenged the validity of existing models of supersymmetry.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The size of the LHC constitutes an exceptional engineering challenge with unique operational issues on account of the amount of energy stored in the magnets and the beams. While operating, the total energy stored in the magnets is and the total energy carried by the two beams reaches .


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Loss of only one ten-millionth part (10) of the beam is sufficient to quench a superconducting magnet, while each of the two beam dumps must absorb . These energies are carried by very little matter: under nominal operating conditions (2,808 bunches per beam, 1.15×10 protons per bunch), the beam pipes contain 1.0×10 gram of hydrogen, which, in standard conditions for temperature and pressure, would fill the volume of one grain of fine sand.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: With a budget of €7.5 billion (approx. $9bn or £6.19bn ), the LHC is one of the most expensive scientific instruments ever built. The total cost of the project is expected to be of the order of 4.6bn Swiss francs (SFr) (approx. $4.4bn, €3.1bn, or £2.8bn ) for the accelerator and 1.16bn (SFr) (approx. $1.1bn, €0.8bn, or £0.7bn ) for the CERN contribution to the experiments.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The construction of LHC was approved in 1995 with a budget of SFr 2.6bn, with another SFr 210M toward the experiments. However, cost overruns, estimated in a major review in 2001 at around SFr 480M for the accelerator, and SFr 50M for the experiments, along with a reduction in CERN's budget, pushed the completion date from 2005 to April 2007. The superconducting magnets were responsible for SFr 180M of the cost increase. There were also further costs and delays owing to engineering difficulties encountered while building the cavern for the Compact Muon Solenoid, and also due to magnet supports which were insufficiently strongly designed and failed their initial testing (2007) and damage from a magnet quench and liquid helium escape (inaugural testing, 2008) "(see: Construction accidents and delays)". Because electricity costs are lower during the summer, the LHC normally does not operate over the winter months, although exceptions over the 2009/10 and 2012/2013 winters were made to make up for the 2008 start-up delays and to improve precision of measurements of the new particle discovered in 2012, respectively.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: With the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the participation of Russians with CERN was called into question. Approximately 8% of the workforce are of Russian nationality. In June 2022 CERN said the governing council "intends to terminate" CERN's cooperation agreements with Belarus and Russia when they expire, respectively in June and December 2024. CERN said it would monitor developments in Ukraine and remains prepared to take additional steps as warranted. CERN further said that it would reduce the Ukrainian contribution to CERN for 2022 to the amount already remitted to the Organization, thereby waiving the second instalment of the contribution.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: In both of its runs (2010 to 2012 and 2015), the LHC was initially run at energies below its planned operating energy, and ramped up to just 2 x 4 TeV energy on its first run and 2 x 6.5 TeV on its second run, below the design energy of 2 x 7 TeV. This is because massive superconducting magnets require considerable magnet training to handle the high currents involved without losing their superconducting ability, and the high currents are necessary to allow a high proton energy. The "training" process involves repeatedly running the magnets with lower currents to provoke any quenches or minute movements that may result. It also takes time to cool down magnets to their operating temperature of around 1.9 K (close to absolute zero). Over time the magnet "beds in" and ceases to quench at these lesser currents and can handle the full design current without quenching; CERN media describe the magnets as "shaking out" the unavoidable tiny manufacturing imperfections in their crystals and positions that had initially impaired their ability to handle their planned currents. The magnets, over time and with training, gradually become able to handle their full planned currents without quenching.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The first beam was circulated through the collider on the morning of 10 September 2008. CERN successfully fired the protons around the tunnel in stages, three kilometres at a time. The particles were fired in a clockwise direction into the accelerator and successfully steered around it at 10:28 local time. The LHC successfully completed its major test: after a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen showing the protons travelled the full length of the collider. It took less than one hour to guide the stream of particles around its inaugural circuit. CERN next successfully sent a beam of protons in an anticlockwise direction, taking slightly longer at one and a half hours owing to a problem with the cryogenics, with the full circuit being completed at 14:59.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: On 19 September 2008, a magnet quench occurred in about 100 bending magnets in sectors 3 and 4, where an electrical fault led to a loss of approximately six tonnes of liquid helium (the magnets' cryogenic coolant), which was vented into the tunnel. The escaping vapour expanded with explosive force, damaging a total of 53 superconducting magnets and their mountings, and contaminating the vacuum pipe, which also lost vacuum conditions.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Shortly after the incident, CERN reported that the most likely cause of the problem was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, and that – owing to the time needed to warm up the affected sectors and then cool them back down to operating temperature – it would take at least two months to fix. CERN released an interim technical report and preliminary analysis of the incident on 15 and 16 October 2008 respectively, and a more detailed report on 5 December 2008. The analysis of the incident by CERN confirmed that an electrical fault had indeed been the cause. The faulty electrical connection had led (correctly) to a failsafe power abort of the electrical systems powering the superconducting magnets, but had also caused an electric arc (or discharge) which damaged the integrity of the supercooled helium's enclosure and vacuum insulation, causing the coolant's temperature and pressure to rapidly rise beyond the ability of the safety systems to contain it, and leading to a temperature rise of about 100 degrees Celsius in some of the affected magnets. Energy stored in the superconducting magnets and electrical noise induced in other quench detectors also played a role in the rapid heating. Around two tonnes of liquid helium escaped explosively before detectors triggered an emergency stop, and a further four tonnes leaked at lower pressure in the aftermath. A total of 53 magnets were damaged in the incident and were repaired or replaced during the winter shutdown. This accident was thoroughly discussed in a 22 February 2010 "Superconductor Science and Technology" article by CERN physicist Lucio Rossi.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: In the original schedule for LHC commissioning, the first "modest" high-energy collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 900 GeV were expected to take place before the end of September 2008, and the LHC was expected to be operating at 10 TeV by the end of 2008. However, owing to the delay caused by the incident, the collider was not operational until November 2009. Despite the delay, LHC was officially inaugurated on 21 October 2008, in the presence of political leaders, science ministers from CERN's 20 Member States, CERN officials, and members of the worldwide scientific community.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Most of 2009 was spent on repairs and reviews from the damage caused by the quench incident, along with two further vacuum leaks identified in July 2009; this pushed the start of operations to November of that year.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: On 20 November 2009, low-energy beams circulated in the tunnel for the first time since the incident, and shortly after, on 30 November, the LHC achieved 1.18 TeV per beam to become the world's highest-energy particle accelerator, beating the Tevatron's previous record of 0.98 TeV per beam held for eight years.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The early part of 2010 saw the continued ramp-up of beam in energies and early physics experiments towards 3.5 TeV per beam and on 30 March 2010, LHC set a new record for high-energy collisions by colliding proton beams at a combined energy level of 7 TeV. The attempt was the third that day, after two unsuccessful attempts in which the protons had to be "dumped" from the collider and new beams had to be injected. This also marked the start of the main research programme.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The first proton run ended on 4 November 2010. A run with lead ions started on 8 November 2010, and ended on 6 December 2010, allowing the ALICE experiment to study matter under extreme conditions similar to those shortly after the Big Bang.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: CERN originally planned that the LHC would run through to the end of 2012, with a short break at the end of 2011 to allow for an increase in beam energy from 3.5 to 4 TeV per beam. At the end of 2012, the LHC was planned to be temporarily shut down until around 2015 to allow upgrade to a planned beam energy of 7 TeV per beam. In late 2012, in light of the July 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, the shutdown was postponed for some weeks into early 2013, to allow additional data to be obtained before shutdown.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The LHC was shut down on 13 February 2013 for its 2-year upgrade called Long Shutdown 1 (LS1), which was to touch on many aspects of the LHC: enabling collisions at 14 TeV, enhancing its detectors and pre-accelerators (the Proton Synchrotron and Super Proton Synchrotron), as well as replacing its ventilation system and of cabling impaired by high-energy collisions from its first run. The upgraded collider began its long start-up and testing process in June 2014, with the Proton Synchrotron Booster starting on 2 June 2014, the final interconnection between magnets completing and the Proton Synchrotron circulating particles on 18 June 2014, and the first section of the main LHC supermagnet system reaching operating temperature of , a few days later. Due to the slow progress with "training" the superconducting magnets, it was decided to start the second run with a lower energy of 6.5 TeV per beam, corresponding to a current of 11,000 amperes. The first of the main LHC magnets were reported to have been successfully trained by 9 December 2014, while training the other magnet sectors was finished in March 2015.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: On 5 April 2015, the LHC restarted after a two-year break, during which the electrical connectors between the bending magnets were upgraded to safely handle the current required for 7 TeV per beam (14 TeV collision energy). However, the bending magnets were only trained to handle up to 6.5 TeV per beam (13 TeV collision energy), which became the operating energy for 2015 to 2018. The energy was first reached on 10 April 2015. The upgrades culminated in colliding protons together with a combined energy of 13 TeV. On 3 June 2015, the LHC started delivering physics data after almost two years offline. In the following months, it was used for proton–proton collisions, while in November, the machine switched to collisions of lead ions and in December, the usual winter shutdown started.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: In 2016, the machine operators focused on increasing the luminosity for proton–proton collisions. The design value was first reached 29 June, and further improvements increased the collision rate to 40% above the design value. The total number of collisions in 2016 exceeded the number from Run 1 – at a higher energy per collision. The proton–proton run was followed by four weeks of proton–lead collisions.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: In 2017, the luminosity was increased further and reached twice the design value. The total number of collisions was higher than in 2016 as well.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The 2018 physics run began on 17 April and stopped on 3 December, including four weeks of lead–lead collisions.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Long Shutdown 2 (LS2) started on 10 December 2018. The LHC and the whole CERN accelerator complex was maintained and upgraded. The goal of the upgrades was to implement the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) project that will increase the luminosity by a factor of 10. LS2 ended in April 2022. The Long Shutdown 3 (LS3) in the 2020s will take place before the HL-LHC project is done.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: LHC became operational again on 22 April 2022 with a new maximum beam energy of 6.8 TeV (13.6 TeV collision energy), which was first achieved on 25 April. It officially commenced its run 3 physics season on July 5, 2022. This round is expected to continue until 2026. In addition to a higher energy the LHC is expected to reach a higher luminosity, which is expected to increase even further with the upgrade to the HL-LHC after Run 3.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: An initial focus of research was to investigate the possible existence of the Higgs boson, a key part of the Standard Model of physics which was predicted by theory, but had not yet been observed before due to its high mass and elusive nature. CERN scientists estimated that, if the Standard Model was correct, the LHC would produce several Higgs bosons every minute, allowing physicists to finally confirm or disprove the Higgs boson's existence. In addition, the LHC allowed the search for supersymmetric particles and other hypothetical particles as possible unknown areas of physics. Some extensions of the Standard Model predict additional particles, such as the heavy W' and Z' gauge bosons, which are also estimated to be within reach of the LHC to discover.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: The first physics results from the LHC, involving 284 collisions which took place in the ALICE detector, were reported on 15 December 2009. The results of the first proton–proton collisions at energies higher than Fermilab's Tevatron proton–antiproton collisions were published by the CMS collaboration in early February 2010, yielding greater-than-predicted charged-hadron production.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: After the first year of data collection, the LHC experimental collaborations started to release their preliminary results concerning searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model in proton–proton collisions. No evidence of new particles was detected in the 2010 data. As a result, bounds were set on the allowed parameter space of various extensions of the Standard Model, such as models with large extra dimensions, constrained versions of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, and others.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: On 24 May 2011, it was reported that quark–gluon plasma (the densest matter thought to exist besides black holes) had been created in the LHC.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Between July and August 2011, results of searches for the Higgs boson and for exotic particles, based on the data collected during the first half of the 2011 run, were presented in conferences in Grenoble and Mumbai. In the latter conference, it was reported that, despite hints of a Higgs signal in earlier data, ATLAS and CMS exclude with 95% confidence level (using the CLs method) the existence of a Higgs boson with the properties predicted by the Standard Model over most of the mass region between 145 and 466 GeV. The searches for new particles did not yield signals either, allowing to further constrain the parameter space of various extensions of the Standard Model, including its supersymmetric extensions.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: On 13 December 2011, CERN reported that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass constrained to the range 115–130 GeV.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: Both the CMS and ATLAS detectors have also shown intensity peaks in the 124–125 GeV range, consistent with either background noise or the observation of the Higgs boson.


title: Large Hadron Collider

text: On 22 December 2011, it was reported that a new composite particle had been observed, the χ (3P) bottomonium state.