Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/19

Rh HISTORY.] PRUSSIA the emperor's displeasure, concluded a peace with Sweden, which provided for the withdrawal of the Swedish troops from the electorate. During the following years of war Frederick William preserved a strict neutrality and utilized the opportunity to restore the material resources of his country and reorganize and strengthen his army. The fruits of this line of action were seen at the peace of Westphalia (1648), when Frederick William, as lord of an efficient army of 25,000 men, was able to secure a ready hearing for his claims to territorial extension. He established his right to the whole of Pomerania, but, as the Swedes refused to give up Western or Hither Pomerania (Vorpommern), he received as compensation the rich ecclesiastical principalities of Magdeburg, Halberstadt, and Minden, in central Germany. In the second Swedish and Polish war, which broke out in 1655, he used his inter- mediate position with great skill and unscrupulousness, allying himself first with one and then with the other of the belligerents, as seemed likely to be most profitable. Thus the troops of Brandenburg took a prominent share in the defeat of the Poles at the three days' battle of Warsaw (1656), in return for which service Sweden undertook to recognize the elector as independent sovereign of the duchy of Prussia. Scarcely, however, did the scale of victory begin to turn than the elector deserted his former ally, and in the treaty of Wehlau (1657) received his reward in the formal relinquishment by Poland of its feudal rights over Prussia. This important step, which added the electorate to the independent states of Europe and pre- pared the way for the growth of a great north German power, was ratified three years later at the general peace of Oliva. In 1666 the long-vexed question of the inheritance to the Rhenish duchies was settled by an amicable parti- tion, according to which Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg fell to the share of Prussia. When Louis XIV. attacked Holland in 1672 Frederick William was at first the only German prince to suspect danger in the ambitious designs of the French monarch. In spite of tempting offers from France, he concluded an alliance with Holland, and at the head of Austrian and Brandenburgian troops joined the Dutch in an ineffectual campaign on the Rhine. In 1673 he was forced, through lack of sufficient support from the emperor, to make peace with France ; but he joined the triple alliance of Holland, Spain, and the empire in the following year and took part in an indecisive campaign in Alsace. There he received intelligence that the Swedes, at the instigation of France, had broken into Brandenburg. Hastening back to his own country without delay, he took the enemy by surprise, and at the head of about 6000 men gained a brilliant victory over twice that number of Swedish troops at Fehrbellin (1675), a small town to the north-west of Berlin. This success over the hitherto invincible Swedes lent great prestige to the elector's arms, and he followed it up by a series of vigorous campaigns, in which, with the aid of Denmark, he swept Branden- burg and Pomerania clear of the invaders, capturing Stettin in 1677 and Stralsund in 1678. The invasion of Prussia from Livonia, which formed the last effort of the Swedes, was also triumphantly repelled, the most memorable inci- dent of the short struggle being the elector's forced march over the frozen surface of the Frische Haff. At the peace of St Germain (1679), however, owing to the influence of France and the lukewarm support of the emperor, Frederick William saw himself forced to restore Hither Pomerania to Sweden. The policy of the last years of the Great Elector may be described as an endeavour to hold the balance between France and the emperor. At first he joined in a somewhat unnatural alliance with Louis XIV., but after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) he drew nearer to Austria and covered the emperor's rear in his war with the Turks. At his death, which took place in 1688, he was engaged in helping the prince of Orange to prepare for his descent on England. The reign of the Great Elector forms one of the most Branden- signal instances in history of the conquest of adverse cir- cumstances by personal energy and merit ; and it is with reason that Prussian historians describe him as the second Elector, founder of the state. At his accession the greater part of his territory was in the occupation of strangers and de- vastated by war, and in European politics Brandenburg was regarded as merely an appendage of the empire. Its army was of little value; its soil was poor; and its revenue was insignificant. To other sources of weakness were added the scattered nature of the electoral possessions, their mutual jealousies, and their separate interests. At Frederick William's death the new north German state of Brandenburg-Prussia was a power that had to be reckoned with in all European combinations. Inferior to Austria alone among the states of the empire, it was regarded as the head and patron of German Protestantism ; while the fact that one-third of its territory lay outside the empire added to its independent importance. Its area had been raised to 43,000 square miles ; its revenue had multiplied fivefold ; and its small army was nowhere surpassed in efficiency. The elector had overthrown Sweden and in- herited her position on the Baltic, and he had offered a steady and not ineffectual resistance to the ambition of France. While thus winning for himself a position in the councils of Europe, the elector was not less active in strengthening the central authority within his dominions, and the trans^ formation effected during his reign in the internal govern- ment of the state was not less striking than that in its external importance. Frederick William found Branden- burg a constitutional state, in which the legislative power was shared between the elector and the diet ; he left it to his successor as in substance an absolute monarchy. Many circumstances helped him in effecting this change, among the chief of which were the want of harmonious action on the part of the estates and the accelerated decline of the political power of the towns. The substitution of a perma- nent excise for the subsidies granted from time to time by the estates also tended to increase the elector's independ- ence, and the Government officials (Steuerrathe) appointed to collect this tax in the towns gradually absorbed many of the administrative functions of the local authorities. The nobles and prelates generally preferred to raise their quota according to the old method of bede or " contri- bution," and this weakened the last bond of common interest between them and the estate of the burghers. In Brandenburg the elector met with little opposition in establishing his personal sovereignty, and after 1653 no general diet of Brandenburg was held. In Cleves and Mark he gained his end simply by an overwhelming display of force ; but in Prussia, where the spirit of independence was fostered by its history and by its distance from the seat of power, he found much greater difficulty. His emancipation from the suzerainty of Poland gave him a great advantage in the struggle, though the estates on their side averred that their relation with Poland was one that could not be dissolved except by common consent. It was not until the elector had occupied Konigsberg with an armed force, and imprisoned the one (Burgomaster Roth) and executed the other (Baron Kalkstein) of the principal champions of independence, that he was able to bend the estates to his will. Arbitrary and unconstitu- tional as this conduct seems to us, we must not forget that Frederick William's idea of the functions of an absolute prince was very superior to the unqualified egotism of the French monarchs, and that, while he insisted upon being