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

Rh 8 PRUSSIA [HISTORY. master in his own house, it was that he might at the same time be the first servant of the state. In his eyes an absolute government was the best guarantee of the common welfare, and was not sought merely for the sake of personal aggrandizement. It is not without significance in con- nexion with this that beyond his own territories he twice espoused the cause of the people against an absolute ruler, first in opposing Louis XIV., and again in aiding William of Orange. In matters of general administration Frederick William showed himself a prudent and careful ruler, and laid the foundation of the future greatness of Prussia in almost every department. The military and bureaucratic systems of the country both received their first important impulse in this reign. The wounds inflicted by the Thirty Years' War were in a great measure healed, and the finances and credit of the state were established on a firm basis. Agri- culture and commerce were improved and encouraged by a variety of useful measures, and education was not neglected. The elector even established Prussian colonies in Africa, and formed a small but efficient navy. In matters of religion Brandenburg stands out prominently as the only country of the time in which all Christian confessions were not only tolerated but placed upon an equal footing. The condition of the peasantry, however, reached almost its lowest ebb, and the " recess " or charter of 1653 practically recognizes the existence of villainage. While the barons had been losing power on the one side as opposed to the elector, they had been increasing it on the other at the expense of the peasants. The Thirty Years' War afforded them frequent opportunities of replac- ing the village " Schulzen " with manorial courts ; and the fact that their quota of taxation was wholly wrung from the holdings of the peasants made the burden of the latter four or five times as great as that of the towns. The state of public morals also still left much to be desired, while the clergy were too much occupied with squabbles over Lutheranism and Calvinism to be an effective instrument of reform. King The Great Elector's son Frederick I. ( 1 688-1 7 1 3) was an Frederick ostentatious and somewhat frivolous prince, who hazarded the acquisitions of his father by looking on his position as assured and by aiming rather at external tokens of his dignity than at a further consolidation of the basis on which it rested. The Brandenburg troops showed all their wonted prowess in the war of the second coalition against Louis XIV. and in that of the Spanish Succession ; but Frederick's interests were only mediately concerned, and neither the peace of Ryswick (1697) nor that of Utrecht (1713) brought him any very tangible advantage. Bran- denburg soldiers also helped the emperor in his wars with the Turks, and English readers should not forget that Frederick's action in covering the Dutch frontier with 6000 troops left William of Orange free scope in his expedition to England. The most notable incident in Frederick's reign was, however, his acquisition of the title of king of Prussia, which long formed the principal object of his policy, and which led him to make important con- cessions to all whose co-operation was necessary. The emperor's consent was finally purchased by the promise of a contingent of 8000 men to aid him in the War of the Spanish Succession, and on 18th January 1701 Frederick crowned himself at Konigsberg with accompanying cere- monies of somewhat inflated grandeur. Elector Frederick III. of Brandenburg became henceforth King Frederick I. of Prussia, 1 the title being taken from that part of his 1 Strictly speaking, the title assumed was "king in Prussia" (Konig in Preussen), this apparently being meant to indicate that there was still a Prussia (West Prussia) of which he was not king, though it has also been otherwise explained. territories in which he had no suzerain to acknowledge. Superficial as this incident may at first sight appear, it added considerably to the moral and political moment- um of the country, and its advantages were reaped by Frederick's two vigorous successors. About the same time (1697) the elector of Saxony also acquired the kingly dignity by his election to the throne of Poland, but in doing so he had to become a Roman Catholic, and thus left the Hohenzollerns without a rival among the Protest- ant dynasties of Germany. Frederick was an extravagant ruler, who lavished large sums in maintaining his personal state ; but his expenditure was not wholly of this profitless nature, since he founded the university of Halle as a school of liberal theology, established academies of art and science at Berlin, and patronized men of literary eminence. In this he was perhaps mainly inspired by his talented wife Sophia Charlotte, a sister of George I. of England. The court of Vienna had consoled itself for the growing power of Prussia under the Great Elector by the reflexion that it was probably of a temporary nature and due mainly to the vigorous individuality of that prince. The events of Frederick I.'s reign seemed to justify this view. At his accession Prussia might fairly claim to rank as the second state of Germany and possessed considerable influence as a European power of all but the first order. This, however, had been changed before the death of Frederick. Bavaria, Saxony, and Hanover had all raised themselves to at least a level with Prussia, which now sank back into the posi- tion of a merely German state and loyal supporter of the empire. Frederick's preoccupation in the western wars had allowed Sweden to reassert her pre-eminence in northern Europe, and it was Russia and not Prussia that now impeded her progress. The internal soundness of the country had also suffered : the finances were in a state of complete disorganization, and the burden of taxation was almost insupportable. If Frederick's successor had not been a man of vigorous character the downhill progress might have continued until it had removed Prussia alto- gether from the list of important states. Perhaps the general estimate of Frederick's character is unduly low owing to the fact that he was followed as well as preceded by a ruler of unusual capacity. His son Frederick William I. (1713-1740) possessed Frederick administrative talents of no mean order and was singularly William painstaking, industrious, and determined in carrying out ' his plans. Though marked by no great external achieve- ments or exciting events, his reign is of the utmost im- portance in the Prussian annals from having checked the threatened downfall of Prussia and paved the way for Frederick the Great. By carefully husbanding his finances Frederick William filled his treasury and was able to keep on foot one of the largest and best disciplined armies in Europe, thereby securing for Prussia an influence in Euro- pean councils altogether disproportionate to its size and population. In internal management he made Prussia the model state of Europe, though his administration was of a purely arbitrary type, in which the estates were never con- sulted and his ministers were merely clerks to register his decrees. The first act of the young king, who was as economical as his father was extravagant, was to institute a salutary reform in the expensive institutions of the court ; and some idea of the drastic nature of this change may be gathered from the fact that the annual allowance for the salaries and pensions of the chief court officials and civil servants was at once reduced from 276,000 to 55,000 thalers. The peace of Utrecht (1713), which added Guelders to the Prussian territories, left Frederick William free to turn his attention to the northern war then raging between Sweden on the one side and Russia, Poland, and Denmark on the other. Though at first disposed to be