Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/317

 THE EAST AND THE NORTH 3°5 last foothold in Hungary, and in the following year he crowned his triumphs at the battle of Belgrade. The treaty of Passarowitz closes the last period of Turkish aggression. Meanwhile the states on the Baltic had been the scene of picturesque and sometimes important events. Gustavus Adolphus was succeeded on the Swedish throne 2. The Baltic by his daughter Christina, a remarkable lady, who Nations, governed with vigour for ten years after she came of age, and then at the age of twenty-eight abdicated in favour of her cousin Charles x. Charles was a brilliant soldier, moved by a spirit of conquest. He attacked and overran Poland, and was attacked in turn by Denmark, which he vanquished in an astonishing campaign. His death after a meteoric career in 1660 was followed by the treaty of Oliva. But the man who had really profited by the Swedish king's operations was Frederick William, the ' Great Elector ' of Brandenburg, who had given Charles support or .. . . ° . . rr, Brandenburg-, opposition strictly with an eye to his own advan- tage. Attached to the Electorate of Brandenburg was the principality of Prussia beyond the Vistula, formally held by the Teutonic Knights, and still subject to the sovereignty of Poland. The elector seized his opportunity to procure from the King of Poland the release of Prussia from his sovereignty, and it thus became his own independent possession. Sweden now passed under a regency which after joining the Triple Alliance with England and Holland against France in 1668 was bought over like the English king by Louis four years later. Frederick William stood by Holland, and the young Swedish King Charles XI., who now took up the govern- ment, found himself obliged by the French treaty to invade Brandenburg. In an extremely successful campaign the elector drove out the Swedes, but was deprived of his subsequent conquest of Pomerania by a treaty forced on him by France after the Peace of Nimeguen. Still the acquisition of Prussia as an independent possession prepared the way for the future power of Brandenburg, though for purposes of consolidation she still needed to acquire the territories between Brandenburg and Prussia. Charles xi. in Sweden devoted most of his reign