It was now that the cast-iron system of bureaucratic administration, where not actually created, was placed on a firm foundation.

But in external affairs Prussia continued to earn its character as the robber State of Europe _par excellence_.
In 1772 Friedrich joined with Austria in the first partition of Poland, acquiring the whole of West Prussia as his share.

A few years later Friedrich formed an anti-Austrian league of German princes, under Prussian leadership, which was the first overt sign of the conflict for supremacy in Germany between Prussia and Austria, which lasted for wellnigh a century.

By the time of his death--August 7, 1786--Friedrich had increased Prussian territory to nearly 75,000 square miles and between five and six millions of population.
Under Friedrich's nephew, Friedrich Wilhelm II, while the rigour of bureaucratic administration, controlled by a monarchical absolutism, continued and was even accentuated, the absence of the able hand of Friedrich the Great soon made itself apparent.

As regards external policy, however, Prussia, while allowing territories on the left bank of the Rhine to go to France, eagerly saw to the increase of her own dominions in the east to the extent of nearly doubling her superficial area by her participation in the second and third partitions of Poland, which took place in 1783 and 1795 respectively.