state's origins in the Teutonic order?

No. The phrase gained currency in the eighteenth century and referred to the fact that although Prussia was a relatively small European state (only the tenth largest in area), by the mid-century it boasted the third largest army. Under the Soldatenkönig Frederick William I, the ranks of the army swelled, and was used to great effect by his son Frederick II. To achieve this, Prussian administration had to go to extraordinary lengths with its cantonal system of recruitment. The Prussian nobility also became especially militarized as a service elite who became the officers of the Prussian army. The Table of Ranks put out by Frederick William I placed soldiers ahead of civilians n the social pecking order of the ancien regime. Thus in comparisons to the rest of Europe, it appeared that the various social organs and institutions of Prussia served the interests of the army. Frederick II in particular emphasized this "neo-Spartanism" of Prussia in both the make-up of his court, which consisted largely of men in uniform, and his own public persona as the continent's foremost soldier. This, as well as Frederick II's use of his father's army to expand Prussia, gave the impression to contemporary Europeans that Prussia was a militaristic power. Napoleon allegedly said that "Prussia was hatched from a cannonball" and there was a widespread stereotype that associated Prussia with its army in the aftermath of Frederick II's campaigns. The independent track of the Prussian army in late 1812, in which the Prussian General Ludwig Yorck arranged for a ceasefire with the Russian army without first getting the consent of the Prussian King, also cemented the image of the Prussian army as an institution onto itself. The close association with the Hohenzollern house with the military as well as the archreactionary ethos of the officer corps after the failed 1848 revolutions further helped to entrench a picture of an innately militaristic Prussia. It was this image of an ingrained militarism that underlay the formal abolition of Prussia in 1947 which, in the words of the Allied powers, Prussia "from early days has been a bearer of militarism and reaction in Germany has de facto ceased to exist."