Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/565

* PRUSSIA. 495 PRUSSIA. waged until in 1466 the Peace of Thorn destroyed the independent sovereignty which the Order- ha<l erected. Western Prussia was annexed to the Polish kingdom and Eastern Prussia, much reduced, was retained by the Teutonic Knights as a fief of Poland. In 1511 Albert of the Ansbach branch of the Hohenzol- lern was elected grand master of the Teu- tonic Order under a pledge to refuse to do homage to Poland. Finding this impracticable and failing to find support from the memljers of the Order who were residing elsewliere. he re- garded himself as absolved from his pledge, and with most of the Prussian meml)ers became Prot- estant, secularized the State over which he ruled, and received it from Poland as hereditary Duke of Prussia ( 152.5 ) . By agreement with the elder line, upon the failure of heirs in the line of Duke Albert the Duchy of Prussia in 1618 was added to the domains of the Brandenburg Hohenzollern. In the reign of John Sigisnumd also the begin- nings were made of the dominion of Brandenburg in the region of the Rhine. In 1C09 the ducal line of .Julich and Cleves became extinct, and in the succession contest which ensued Brandenburg was one of the claimants. In 1666 Cleves. ilark. and Ravensberg were definitively assigned to her. During the Thirty Years' War (q.v.) Branden- burg was wasted bj' the contending armies, al- though tile Elector George William (1619-40) temporized with both sides in a vain endeavor to follow the peaceable and thrifty policy of his predecessors. It was, therefore, a devastated and impoverished country to the sovereignty of which Frederick William I., "the Great Elector" (1640-88), succeeded. He was the first of the three creators of the greatness hf modern Prussia. He saw the necessity of making Bran- denburg a military State, because of its central and exposed position. He brought a small army into existence, was able to command a hearing in the 'estphalian peace negotiations, and se- cured for Brandenburg by his shrewd diplomacy Farther Pomerania (the line of Slavic dukes of Pomerania having become extinct in 1637), the sees of Halberstadt, ilinden. and Kamniin, and the succession to the See of Magdeburg (1648). In 1656 he joined Charles Gustavus of Sweden in his onslaunjht iipon Poland, but in 1657, with his customary shrewd regard for the interests of his house, he changed sides, and for his espousal of the Polish cause he obtained from Poland in the Treaty of Wehlau, in the same year, a renunciation of her suzeraint}' over the Duchy of Prussia. In 1675, when the Swedes in- vaded Brandenburg w-hile Frederick William was camjiaigning against France on the Rhine, he returned, totally defeated them at Fehrbellin, and drove them out of Pomerania. Although Swedish Pomerania had to be given up in 1670. a new power had demonstrated its claim to l)e lieard in the nfl'airs of the Baltic. When Louis XTV. re- voked the Edict of Naiitcs (q.v.), Frederick Wil- liam replied by the Potsdam Decree, which made Brandenbui'g the hospitable asylum for perse- cuted Protestants and drew to it thousands of French Huguenots, who made most useful citi- zens. The Great Elector thus prepared the way, during his long reign, for the next great step in the development of his State under his son, Frederick III. (1688-1713). The ilargraviate of Brandenbiirg was a vassnl State of the Holy Eoman Empire ; the Duchy of Prussia had been made an independent sovereignty, but its sove- reign, as a duke, occupied an inferior rank. When the Emperor, Leopold I., entered upon the strug- gle of the Spanish Succession he was anxious to secure the support of the German princes, and he consented, against the advice of some of his shrewdest counselors, to allow his vassal, the Elector of Brandenburg, to erect ducal Prussia, which was outside the Empire, into a kingdom (November 16, 1700). Frederick III. of Bran- denburg placed the royal crown upon his head at Konigsberg on January 18, 1701, and thus be- came King Frederick 1. of Prussia. As such he was placed on a level with the other independent sovereigns of Europe, and from this time Bran- denburg-Prussia had to be reckoned with as a European power. Tlie reign of Frederick I., aside from this most important achievement, was uneventful. At his deatli in 1713 he was succeeded by his son, Fred- erick William I. (1713-40), an eccentric mon- arch, who practiced the closest economies in ad- ministration, established the Prussian bureau- cracy on a sound basis, and continued the mili- tary development of the countrj-. raising the army to an effective strength of more than 80.000 men, the best disciplined troops in Europe. By the Treaty of Stockholm (1720) he acquired a great part of Swedish Pomerania, including Stettin. He fought no wars and turned over to his son. Frederick II.. -the Great" (1740-86), an efficient military machine and a well-filled treasury. Hitherto the House of Hohenzollern had been steadily loyal to that of Austria. The inevitable rivaliy of Prussia and Austria for supremacy in the Germanic body had not made itself apparent. Frederick William saw it just before his death. Frederick clearly understood it, and thereafter it formed the keynote of Prussian policy. Imme- diately after his accession Frederick made war upon Austria for the possession of Silesia and secured most of that extensive province. The first twenty-three years of his reign were occu- pied in a great measure by wars in which the well- husbanded resources of the country were taxed to the utmost. (See StccE.s.sioN Wabs: Sevek Ye.rs' W.r.) The second period was devoted to the restoration of the country, the establishment of its prosperity on a permanent basis by the cultivation of its material resources, and the thorough organization of its government in all departments. The government was a despotism, although a benevolent one, in accordance with the prevailing ideas of the eighteenth century. The rise of Prussia to the rank of a first-rate power, representing as she did the Ciermanic spirit, stinnilated German thought and patriot- ism, and prepared the way for the new Germany. By the first partition of Poland the greater part of West Prussia was added to the kingdom, thereby filling the gap between Brandenburg and East Prussia. Frederick's nephew and .suc- cessor, Frederick William II. (1786-97). took up arms against revolutionary France, and in the Treaty of Basel (1795) had to give up the Prus- sian territories west of the Rhine. He shared in the second and third partitions of Poland in 1793 and 1795. See Pol.'VND. I'nder Frederick William ITL (1797-1840) Prussia passed through a jierind of humiliation and then of reorganization. Napoleon (q.v.) saw in the independent (iermanic kingdom a menace to his plans and aimed to crush out its national