Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/12

Rh PRUSSIA HISTORY. the Netherlands. With the exception of the sea on the north and the mountain -barrier on the south-east, the frontiers are political rather than geographical, a fact that has always been characteristic of Prussia's limits and that has had considerable influence in determining its history. The Prussian monarchy, with an area of 134,490 square miles, comprises nearly two-thirds of the entire extent of the German empire. Its kernel is the Mark of Branden- burg, round which the rest of the state has been built up gradually, not without costly and exhausting wars. The territory ruled over by the first Hohenzollern elector (1415-40) did not exceed 11,400 square miles, an area that had been quadrupled before the death of the first king in 1713. Frederick the Great left behind him a realm of 75,000 square miles, and the following two monarchs, by their Polish and Westphalian acquisitions, brought it to a size not far short of its present extent (122,000 square miles in 1803). After the disastrous war of 1806 Prussia shrank to something smaller than the kingdom of Frederick the Great (61,000 square miles), and the readjustment of Europe in 1815 still left it short by 14,000 square miles of its extent in 1803. Fully one-fifth of its present area is due to the war of 1866, which added Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Nassau, Schleswig-Holstein, and the city of Frankfort-on-the-Main to the Prussian dominions. HISTORY. The claims which Prussian history makes upon our attention are based neither upon venerable antiquity nor upon uniformity of origin. The territorial and political development of the country has taken place wholly within the last thousand years ; and the materials out of which it has been built up marquisates and duchies, ecclesiastical principalities and free imperial cities are of the most heterogeneous description. The history of Prussia acquires its primary significance from the fact that this state was the instrument by which the political regeneration of Germany was ultimately effected from within, and the unity and coherence of the narrative are best observed when we consider it as a record of the training that fitted the country for this task. This role was forced upon Prussia rather by the exigencies of its geographical position than by its title to be racially the most representative German state. The people who have established the power of Germany cannot rank in purity of Teutonic blood with the inhabitants of the central, western, and southern parts of the empire. The conquest of the Slavonic regions that form so great a part of modern Prussia did not occur without a considerable intermingling of race, and Prussia may perhaps be added to the list of great nations that seem to owe their pre-eminence to the happy blending of their composite parts. It is perhaps also worthy of remark that this state, like its great rival, was developed from a marchland of the German empire, Prussia arising from the North Mark erected against the Wends, and Austria from the East Mark erected against the Hungarians. In tracing the early development of Prussia three main currents have to be noticed, even in a short sketch like the present, which do not completely unite until the beginning of the 17th century; indeed many writers begin the history of modern Prussia with the accession of the Great Elector in 1640. We have (1) the history of the Mark of Bran- denburg, the true political kernel of the modern state; (2) the history of the district of Preussen or Prussia, which gave name and regal title to the monarchy; and (3) the history of the family of Hohenzollern, from which sprang the line of vigorous rulers who practically deter- mined the fortunes of the country. Mark of Brandenburg. Whether Teutons or Slavs were the earlier inhabitants of the district extending from the Elbe on the west to the Oder and the Vistula on the east is a question mainly of antiquarian interest and one upon which authorities are not wholly agreed. In the open- ing centuries of the Christian era we find it occupied by Slavonic tribes, whose boundaries reach even to the west of the Elbe, and the conquest and absorption of these by the growing German power form the subject of the early history of Brandenburg. Hand in hand with the territorial extension of the Germans went the spread of Christianity, which, indeed, often preceded the arms of the conquering race. The Slavs to the east of the Elbe were left un- molested down to the foundation of the German monarchy, established by the successors of Charlemagne about the middle of the 9th century. Then ensued the period of formation of the German "marks" or marches, which served at once as bulwarks against the encroachments of external enemies and as nuclei of further conquest. The North Estab- Mark of Saxony, corresponding roughly to the northern lishment part of the present province of Saxony, to the west of the f ^ Elbe, was established by the emperor Henry I. about the Mart, year 930, and formed the beginning of the Prussian state. The same energetic monarch extended his career of con- quest considerably to the east of the Elbe, obtaining more or less firm possession of Priegnitz, Ruppin, and the district round the sources of the Havel, and even carried his arms to the banks of the Oder. His son Otho I. (936- 973) followed in his father's footsteps and founded the bishoprics of Havelberg and Brandenburg, the latter taking its name from the important Wendish fortress of Bran- nibor. Towards the end of the 10th century, however, the Wendish flood again swept over the whole territory to the east of the Elbe, and the Germans were confined to the original limits of the North Mark. Christianity was rooted out and the bishop of Brandenburg reduced to an episcopus in partibm. The history of the next century and a half is simply a record of a series of desultory struggles between the margraves of the North Mark and the encom- passing Wends, in which the Germans did no more than hold their own on the left bank of the Elbe. Things begin to grow a little clearer in 1134, when the Albert emperor Lothair rewarded the services of Albert the the Bear Bear, a member of the house of Anhalt and one of the most powerful princes of the empire, by investing him with the North Mark. Albert seems to have been a man of great vigour and considerable administrative talent, and by a mixture of hard fighting and skilful policy he ex- tended his power over the long-lost territories of Priegnitz, Ruppin, the Havelland, and the Zauche. He also shifted the centre of power to the marshy district last-mentioned and changed his title to margrave of Brandenburg. The North Mark henceforth began to be known as the Altmark, or Old Mark, while the territory round Brandenburg was for a short time called the New Mark, but more per- manently the Mittelmark, or Middle Mark. The soil of Albert's new possessions was for the most part poor and unpromising, but he peopled it with industrious colonists from Holland and elsewhere, and began that system of painstaking husbandry and drainage which has gradually converted the sandy plains and marshes of Brandenburg into agricultural land of comparative fertility. The clergy were among his most able assistants in reclaiming waste land and spreading cultivation, and through them Christ- ianity was firmly established among the conquered and Germanized Slavs. Albert's descendants, generally known Ascani as the Ascanian line from the Latinized form of the name > ine - of their ancestral castle of Aschersleben, ruled in Branden- burg for nearly two hundred years ; but none of them seem to have been on a par with him in energy or ability. On the whole, however, they were able to continue in the course marked out by him, and, in spite of the pernicious practice