Prussia

The Teutonic Order.

In 1226 the Polish Duke Conrad of Masovia invited the Teutonic Knights into his territory to com bat the heathen Prussians. After a difficult struggle, the Order conquered the territory of the heathen Prussians, exterminated most of the native population, and invited German peasants and townspeople into the country as settlers. In the i4th century the State ruled by the Knights was a power in north-eastern Germany. It acquired Pommerellia and for a time the Neumark also, and through its connection with the Order of the Sword, of Livonia, extended its influence as far as Estonia. A string of flourishing cities sprang up along its coast. In Marienburg, since 1309 the seat of the Grand Master of the Order, the splen did castle was built which to this day testifies to the past glories of the Order, and formed the centre of its admirably organized administrative system. But even in the 14th century the Order was beginning to decline, owing mainly to the fact that once the struggle against the heathen was ended, it lost its original spiritual character, occupied itself only with purely mundane tasks, and thus lost touch with its original purpose. The rule of the Knights, who admitted none of the local nobility into their ranks, came to be felt by the inhabitants as a foreign rule. When Poland and Lithuania united into a powerful State at the end of the i4th century, and the rulers of this State began to aspire to possession of the Baltic coast, the Order could not rely fully either on the nobles or on the towns in its territory. After the defeat of their army at the battle of Tannenberg (1410) the Knights were forced to cede part of their territory to Poland. In a second war the Poles took Marienburg, and at the Peace of Thorn (1466) forced the Order to cede them West Prussia and Ermeland, with Danzig and Thorn, and to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Polish king for the rest of their territory. At the beginning of the 16th century, the Reformation began to penetrate these regions also, and the Grand Master of the day, Albert of Brandenburg, a grandson of the Elector Albert Achilles, proceeded, with the consent of the king of Poland, to take the decisive step which was tantamount to the end of the Order's rule. He went over to Protestantism, at the same time proclaiming himself hereditary duke of Prussia (1525). As his only son, Albert Frederick (1568 1618) was an imbecile, the power passed almost wholly to the Estates. Albert Frederick's eldest daughter, Anna, married the Elector John Sigmund, and through her Prussia passed in 1618 to the electors of Brandenburg. As Anna was also co-heiress through her mother of the great territories which had been united under the rule of the dukes of Jillich, Cleve and Berg on the lower Rhine, and as this ducal house had become extinct a few years previously (1609), the electors of Brandenburg could hope to acquire not only Prussia, but also considerable domains in west Germany.

The Great Elector.

Under the Treaty of Xanten (1614), John Sigmund had reached an understanding with the count Palatine of Neuburg, his most dangerous rival for the Jillich succession, securing for himself the reversion of Cleve, Mark and Ravensberg. In order to obtain from the Calvinistic princes of west Germany the support which he needed to keep these acquisitions secure, he had become a convert to Calvinism—a step which aroused great discontent in his ancestral domains, which were wholly Lutheran, and in Prussia, which was also Lutheran. The Thirty Years' War broke out at the end of John Sigmund's reign, and his son George William (1619-40), a weak ruler, found himself confronted with a situation of extraordinary difficulty. Although he urgently desired to remain neutral, both the Danes and Wallenstein's troops invaded his territory. After his cousin, Gustavus Adolphus, landed in Germany, it was no longer possible to preserve neutrality. He was forced to con clude an alliance with the king, but on the latter's death at once attempted to make peace with the emperor; later he even took sides against SWeden, who refused to grant him possession of Pomerania, to which he had laid claim, on the strength of old succession treaties, on the death of the last member of the old ducal family (1637). The Mark of Brandenburg consequently

again became the theatre of war, and the elector was obliged to flee to Prussia, where he died in 1640.

His young son, Frederick William, at that time only 20 years of age, became the real second founder of the Prussian State. He concluded an armistice with Sweden, and, in the face of great difficulties, organized for himself a small army of his own, with the object of achieving greater independence. In the Peace of Westphalia (1648) he succeeded in acquiring Lower Pomerania, and the secularized bishoprics of Minden, Halberstadt and Magdeburg as compensation for Upper Pomerania, which was assigned to Sweden. The last-named districts, however, only actually passed to him in 168o, after the death of the previous administrator.

In the decade which followed the Peace of Westphalia, Fred erick William reinforced his army. In the first Northern War (1655-6o) he was thus a valuable ally to either of the contend ing parties, Sweden or Poland. First he joined the Swedes, and helped them to win the decisive victory near Warsaw (1657). When, however, King Charles Gustavus was forced by the Danish attack to return to Sweden, the elector negotiated with Poland. By adroit manipulation of the situation he managed in the Peace of Oliva (1660) to secure from all parties concerned recognition of his full sovereignty over East Prussia.

The importance of the great elector's reign was even greater for the internal development of the Prussian State. His creation of a standing army gave him an instrument which could be turned against the claims of his own subjects also. After a vigorous struggle with the Estates, which assumed acute form in East Prussia, he succeeded in restricting their rights in important respects. The system of taxation was radically reformed; the old administrative system, which was largely controlled by the Estates, was reinforced by new official bodies, which were purely State organs. The elector's privy council, which had hitherto been a purely Brandenburg institution, was made into the central organ of the whole State. In important deliberations the elector presided personally, and all subordinate officials were accustomed to send in regular reports on their work to the privy council. All these measures bore clear witness to the elector's ambition to create a unified single State out of the different territories, scattered throughout Germany, which had gradually come into his family's possession. When Frederick William died in 1688, his State was already the most powerful and the best administered in northern Germany. (For a detailed account of early Prussian history see BRANDENBURG.) Frederick William I.—Under the elector's son, Frederick III. (1688-1713) the internal development of the State was tempo rarily arrested. In the international sphere, however, Frederick scored an important success when, by promising to support him in the War of the Spanish Succession, he induced the emperor to consent to his assuming the title of king. As the electorate of Brandenburg formed part of the German empire, and was under the suzerainty of the emperor, the title of king could only be attached to those lands which the elector ruled as sovereign prince, viz., the duchy of Prussia. On Jan. 18, 1701, Frederick took the title of "King in Prussia," and solemnly assumed the royal crown in Konigsberg. So it came about that "Prussia," and not the old family domain of Brandenburg, came to be used as the generic name for the Hohenzollern dominions. The new king kept up a splendid court, and thereby ruined the economic equilibrium which his father had laboriously achieved. He also took a lively interest in intellectual matters. He founded the Academy of Arts and the Academy of Sciences in Berlin (I7oi).