Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1899 American Edition.djvu/1009

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zollern, Friedrich III., was elevated to the rank of a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire in 1273, and received the Burggraviate of Nuremberg in fief ; and his great-grandson, Friedrich VI., was invested by Kaiser Sigmund, in 1415, with the province of Brandenburg, and obtained the rank of Elector in 1417. A cen- tury after; in 1511, the Teutonic Knights, owners of the large province of Prussia, on the Baltic, elected Margrave Albrecht, a younger son of the family of Hohenzollern, to the post of Grand- Master, and he, after a while, declared himself hereditary prince. The early extinction of the male line of Albrecht brought the province of Prussia by marriage to the Electors of Brandenburg, who, by early adopting Protestantism, acquired a very important position as leaders of the new faith in Northern Germany. In the seventeenth century, the Hohenzollern territories became greatly enlarged by Friedrich Wilhelm, ' the Great Elector, ' under whose fostering care arose the first standing army in Central Europe. The Great Elector, after a reign extending from 1640 to 1688, left a country of one and a half million inhabitants, a vast treasure, and 38,000 well-drilled troops to his son, Friedrich I., who put the kingly crown on his head at Konigsberg on January 18, 1701. The first King of Prussia made few efforts to in- crease the territory left him by the Great Elector ; but his suc- cessor, Friedrich Wilhelm I., acquired a treasure of nine millions of thalers, or nearly a million and a half sterling, bought family domains to the amount of five million thalers, and raised the annual income of the country to six millions, three-fourths of which sum, however, had to be spent on the army. After adding part of Pomerania to the possessions of the house, he left his son and successor, Friedrich II., called ' the Great, ' a State of 47,770 square miles, with two and a half million inhabitants. Friedrich II. added Silesia, an area of 14,200 square miles, with one and a quarter million of souls ; and this, and the large territory gained in the first partition of Poland, increased Prussia to 74,340 square miles, with more than five and a half millions of inhabitants. Under the reign of Friedrich's successor, Friedrich Wilhelm II., the State was enlarged by the acquisition of the principalities of Anspach and Baireuth, as well as the vast territory acquired in another partition of Poland, which raised its area to the extent of nearly 100,000 square miles, with about nine millions of souls. Under Friedrich Wilhelm III., nearly one-half of this State and population was taken by Napoleon ; l:)ut the Congress of Vienna not only restored the loss, but added part of the Kingdom of Saxony, the Rhineland, and Swedish Pomerania, moulding Prussia into two separate pieces of territory, of a total area of