The Rise of Brandenburg-Prussia

Margaret Shennan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN:
  9780415129381
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134793976
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

In this pamphlet Margaret Shennan surveys the rise of Prussia from the early seventeenth century to 1740, highlighting and evaluating the role of its rulers, in particular of Frederick William I, the Great Elector, and his two successors. The author takes account of: * international relations * social and economic structures * domestic pressures * ethical and cultural influences * idiosyncratic personalities * terrain and boundaries.

1
THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 1618–48

Internal problems and strategies 1618–40

When Elector George William (1619–40) succeeded John Sigismund in 1619 he was just as wary as his father of becoming embroiled in the Bohemian crisis. Earlier that year the Bohemian Estates had elected Frederick V of the Palatinate as their king, in defiance of the Habsburg claimant. Although the new Elector of Brandenburg had a certain amount in common with the Elector Palatine—they were brothers-in-law and Calvinists—George William was cautious by nature, and with limited resources and few troops at his disposal he was reluctant to commit himself to Frederick’s cause. Instead, he turned for moral support to his neighbour, the Protestant Elector of Saxony; it was the first step in a long-term dependency on that state.

Many of George William’s problems were inherited and not of his own making. His territories were fragmented and without effective communications or a common language, social structure or institutions. In Brandenburg-Prussia the nobility enjoyed social and economic privileges conveyed by earlier margraves. In Cleves-Mark and in Jülich (to which the Hohenzollerns still claimed rights) the nobility was numerically smaller; the peasants were for the most part tenants or free farmers and there was a degree of urban independence in the many fortress towns of the Rhine and Ruhr, administered by an efficient bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the core-state of Brandenburg was still comparatively poor. Its towns were small by western European standards and its commerce less developed.
With a terrain of sandy heath interspersed with swamp, there was a natural shortage of fertile agricultural land and mineral deposits. The total population was about 270,000, considerably less than Prussia’s 400,000; Berlin, the capital, had a mere 12,000 inhabitants. Despite being an electorate, Brandenburg- Prussia lacked the substance of a unified state. It was particularly vulnerable in time of war.

George William was an unsophisticated dynast. ‘His policy was of a naked, dynastic simplicity; his only desire was that he should continue to be an Elector for all his days and that his son should succeed him’ (16, pp. 221–2). With these objectives in mind he had to win the support of the Estates, and primarily of the great nobility, either by coercion or by soliciting their cooperation. On the whole the Prussian nobility and high officials were more accommodating than the junkers of Brandenburg, since it was in their interest, as it was in the Elector’s, to exploit the affluent burghers in Prussia’s thriving towns. The Estates granted taxes on a range of goods and services knowing that the townspeople would carry the major burden. In Cleves John Sigismund had already exploited old conflicts between the nobility and the towns to circumvent the Estates, levying indirect taxes on the transit and import of goods to the detriment of the Rhine trade. However, after 1621 George William’s attempts to control the Estates of Cleves and Mark, and the Estates’ efforts to defend their liberties against his government, foundered, as they were all caught up in the fighting between the forces of Spain and the United Provinces.

After the Spaniards occupied Jülich, Dutch troops invaded Cleves-Mark, ostensibly to protect the principality. These Dutch garrisons ignored the Estates, looting and forcibly extracting contributions and excise duties. To add insult to injury, the citizens had to contribute to the upkeep of the Elector’s small army, even though it was incapable of protecting them. Undeterred, George William’s officials forbade the Estates of Cleves-Mark to discuss policy matters or correspond with foreign states, and they also violated a customary privilege guaranteeing official appointments to local citizens. The Estates’ resentment focused on the governor, Count Adam Schwartzenberg. In 1630 they threatened to appeal to the Emperor against their harsh treatment and in 1631 refused to co-operate until their grievances were redressed. As the Dutch occupation continued, the Estates defied the government and in 1637 formally protested against the treaty between Brandenburg and the United Provinces. Two years later the towns of Cleves repudiated a levy to help pay off the Dutch debt incurred under John Sigismund. But the struggle was evenly balanced. On some occasions the Estates of Cleves-Mark were forced to give way. In 1632, for example, the diet conceded taxes of 100,000 thalers, and in 1633 they failed to win government recognition of their right of free assembly.

The Elector believed that in Schwartzenberg he had found an ideal chief minister to counter the Estates and manipulate power in his princely interests. The count, who had served the Emperor as well as the dukes of Cleves, had no ties with the nobility of Brandenburg-Prussia, and to browbeat the junkers he resorted to the arbitrary methods which he had used in Cleves. After a celebrated treason case in 1627, he removed three noble members from the Privy Council and proceeded to sideline the institution by creating a new organ of government, the Kriegsrat or War Council, in 1630. Staffed by commoners or by foreign nobility, this body steadily took on other functions. By 1640 the Privy Council had effectively ceased to function.

In the interests of the Elector, Schwartzenberg now moved against the customary privileges of the Brandenburgers. The Estates were suspicious of George William’s Calvinism; when they showed reluctance to advance him money, the minister’s solution was to ignore their right of consent. Once the diet, the assembly of the Estates, had been dissolved, taxes were simply levied by force. As in Cleves, the Brandenburg Estates tried to strike back. The diet of 1636 refused to vote taxes until the accounts of the War Council had been handed over to them for scrutiny, but Schwartzenberg countered with the charge that the Estates’ representative had failed to attend the Kriegsrat. By his determination and guile—qualities the Elector lacked—Schwartzenberg had forced the Estates into compliance by 1639. This point is often overlooked. It is usually George William’s successors who are credited with breaking the particularism—that is, the pursuit of vested rights—of the Estates in the interests of the absolute state. In fact, the process was under way before 1640.

However, the Thirty Years War imposed massive strains on Brandenburg-Prussia. Unlike Maximilian of Bavaria, who had amassed a large treasury and standing army before 1618, George William had no reserves, financial or military. By forced contributions it proved possible to raise the total militia from a negligible number to about 4,500 by 1640, but it was also necessary to resort to hiring mercenaries, so that discipline frequently broke down, epecially when Brandenburg became a theatre of war. For princes and generals of outstanding ability the war brought cash, provisions and services extracted from the defeated citizens. But it was George William’s misfortune to have no military talent, and the most capable Brandenburg-born general, Hans Georg von Arnim, took service with more ambitious rulers, such as the Emperor and the Elector of Saxony.
With no military reputation, Brandenburg-Prussia was a natural prey to aggressors. The imperialist general, Wallenstein, seized hostages in the Old Mark, demanding provisions and taxes from the townspeople of this western part of Brandenburg. In 1626 Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden captured Prussia’s ports and siphoned off the proceeds of the Baltic trade. Five years later the Swedish army occupied most of Brandenburg, insisting on a monthly maintenance payment of 30,000 thalers from the inhabitants. Despite formal protests, Dutch garrisons extracted 1,500,000 thalers from the people of Cleves over a period of twenty-five years. The impoverishment and devastation affected all sections of society, including the landowning nobility. Tax grants could not be collected in full. George William was reduced to selling or mortgaging part of his estates. By 1640 a futile cycle of diminishing returns was in place.

International relations 1620–40

George William’s main concern was to retain his patrimony. He was a conventional and conservative prince with a traditional respect for the Empire and its constitution as the embodiment of German liberties and the integrity of the states. Instinctively loyal to the Emperor, his first inclination and strategy in international affairs was to support imperial policy, or at least to avoid taking any serious step which would jeopardize it. The defeat and humiliation of Frederick of Bohemia, the ‘Winter King’, showed the consequences of defying the Habsburg Emperor. In fact, George William remained faithful to the imperial alliance for a decade, although his faith was often shaken by the Emperor’s behaviour, and in particular by his decision to allow troops of Spain and the Catholic League to seize the Palatinate and occupy Cleves-Jülich (1620–3), to place Frederick under the imperial ban and then divest him of his title and principality in favour of the ambitious prince of Bavaria.

Both George William and John George of Saxony refused to recognize the validity of these last measures. They talked of raising a new Protestant Union of princes against the Catholic League.
But their nerve failed, and in an act of gesture-politics, they made formal representations to the Emperor instead. Then, in 1626, after the imperial general Tilly had defeated the Protestant king of Denmark, George William took defensive precautions by renewing his loyalty to Ferdinand. But professions of allegiance were not enough to save him from a rap over the knuckles from his imperial overlord: Brandenburg was invaded by imperialist troops under Wallenstein. As a result, George William was too cowed to protest at the Emperor’s unconstitutional dismissal of the Duke of Mecklenburg and the elevation of Wallenstein to his duchy (1627). He also turned a blind eye to the Emperor’s growing ambition to extend imperial control into the Baltic.

It was the Edict of Restitution of 1629 which forced Brandenburg and Saxony to reconsider their loyalty to the Emperor. Ferdinand II revealed his deep hostility to Calvinism and threatened the strict enforcement of the clauses in the Peace of Augsburg safeguarding Catholic benefices. George William was alarmed that Protestants would lose their secularized lands.
Ignoring the advice of Schwartzenberg, who was a Catholic, he joined his fellow Protestant princes in issuing a manifesto in 1630 criticizing the Restitution Edict. However, Ferdinand was at the height of his power and George William was always a reluctant rebel. His gesture made, he ultimately followed Saxony and tamely accepted the terms of the Peace of Prague in 1635.
The new treaty still omitted a guarantee for Calvinism. It also enhanced the Emperor’s authority at the expense of the princes and the Estates by binding them to supply troops to the imperialist army. Another clause, preventing the German princes from maintaining private armies, was shortly to leave Brandenburg at the mercy of another foreign invasion and occupation (1636–7).

If George William hoped to defend his fragmented territories by allegiance to the Emperor, his second strategy was to avoid military intervention by adopting a neutral position. His mistake was to confuse neutrality with appeasement: leaders such as Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus seized the opportunity to ride roughshod over his lands. It was, as the English agent Sir Thomas Roe observed at the time, ‘too cold and stupid a neutrality’. He was neither machiavellian enough to exploit nonalignment, as the French did, nor intelligent enough to respond to changing situations. Neutrality did not save Cleves-Mark or the Prussian ports from foreign occupation; and although George William had kept out of the Danish-Saxon war (1625–6), Brandenburg suffered in Wallenstein’s retaliatory campaigns (1626–7). Even as late as 1631, with the Swedes entrenched in nearby Pomerania, the Elector hesitated to abandon his neutral position. His failure to act left the way open for imperial troops to reach Magdeburg, and they sacked the city. Finally, after the Swedes stormed Frankfurt and appeared at the gates of Berlin George William’s hand was forced. They had taken over all his fortresses except Küstrin on the Oder, leaving him with no choice in 1631 but to abandon his neutrality and side with the Swedish king. But he remained a reluctant ally and was wary of joining the Protestant union of German states, the League of Heilbronn (1633). After Sweden’s defeat by the Imperialists at Nördlingen in 1634, he wavered, and in 1635, as we have seen, he turned back to the Emperor’s cause, although his country paid dearly for this belated act of loyalty. In 1636 the military tables were turned once more against the Emperor and his allies at the battle of Wittstock-on-Dosse in northern Brandenburg. The Swedes occupied the electorate, exploiting its resources for the next eight years.

George William’s dynastic connections proved to be another liability. He was tied by a web of Protestant marriage alliances to leading Calvinist dynasties as well as to the Lutheran House of Vasa. His wife was Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatine, sister of the ill-fated ‘Winter King’ and a granddaughter of the great Protestant protagonist, William the Silent. The Elector’s eldest sister was married to Gustavus Adolphus; another sister to Bethlen Gabor, the Calvinist Prince of Transylvania. A family pact also provided for the Hohenzollern succession to Pomerania on the death of Duke Bogislav XIV. Yet far from bringing protection to Brandenburg, these dynastic connections put added strains on George William’s foreign policy. After the Bohemian débâcle and the expulsion of Frederick V and his family in 1620, George William felt bound to provide refuge for his Palatine in-laws and put at risk his professed neutrality.
His chivalry brought him few thanks and no advantage, and it was a relief when they moved on to The Hague. However, his other brother-in-law, Bethlen Gabor, supported Frederick and campaigned against the Habsburgs in 1624 and 1626, placing George William’s troubled relations with the Emperor in further jeopardy.

Meanwhile, his Orange and Vasa connections lulled him into a false sense of security. The Dutch proved to be predators, and Swedish self-interest proved far stronger than dynastic obligations. In three campaigns in 1626, 1631 and 1636–7, the Swedes occupied large areas of Brandenburg and the Baltic coastline of Prussia, yet this did not preclude a Swedish proposal that the Electoral Prince Frederick William should marry Gustavus Adolphus’s only child, Christina. The last humiliation at the hands of Sweden came when the Duke of Pomerania died in 1637 and Swedish troops invaded the duchy despite George William’s legitimate claim to the succession. Unable to expel them, the Elector retired to the relative security of Prussia, where he died in 1640. His legacy was mixed. His son and heir was strong, ambitious and able, but his patrimony was weak.
‘Pomerania is lost, Jülich is lost, we hold Prussia like an eel by the tail, and we must mortgage the (Brandenburg) Mark’, one of his advisors lamented.

The apprenticeship of Frederick William I 1640–48

The new Elector, Frederick William I (1620–88) was only 20 years old and was inexperienced in government and in military command. Yet he quickly decided that neither appeasement nor the imperial alliance had served Brandenburg-Prussia’s interests.
What his territories needed urgently was peace: not a humiliating peace imposed by foreign powers, but a negotiated peace that respected the territorial integrity and legal claims of his patrimony. It was logical that one of his first actions was to travel to Warsaw to receive formal recognition of his rights to the duchy of Prussia from the Polish king.

In Prussia Frederick William worked out his strategy. Against the advice of Schwartzenberg (whose opposition was anyway cut short by his death in 1641), he decided to break away from the imperial alliance. He halved his small mercenary army to stop the drain on his resources and indicate his conciliatory intentions, and he opened secret armistice negotiations with

Sweden. From 1643, when Frederick William returned to Berlin to take control of the government, his aims became clear. He knew that the evacuation of Swedish troops was a precondition of Brandenburg’s financial and material recovery. Preliminaries to an armistice had been signed in July 1641 but the Swedes continued to procrastinate. He realized that by reducing his forces he had sent out the wrong signals. Keen to retrench his position, he began to rearm in 1643–4, drawing on the manpower of Cleves, Prussia and Brandenburg to create a standing army of about 5,500 men. This included an elite personal bodyguard of 500 musketeers.

He was also helped by changes in Sweden. The ruler, Queen Christina, made clear her desire for peace. The armistice between Brandenburg and Sweden was finally ratified in 1644. The Swedes handed over some fortresses still in their possession, such as Frankfurt-on-Oder and Krossen. In the meantime, hostilities had again broken out in 1643 between Sweden and Denmark as the former overran Jutland. The Swedish government invited Frederick William to mediate in the dispute. The Peace of Brömsebro (1645) gave a certain boost to the young Elector’s morale and reputation. Saxony, which for two decades had given the lead to George William, now followed Brandenburg’s example in leaving the imperial alliance and concluding an armistice with Sweden.

Any general peace settlement, however, had to deal with many long-standing issues. Frederick William had already decided that the constitution of the German Empire was out of date. At the Diet of Regensburg (1640–41) he had given notice of his intention to leave the imperial alliance and repudiate the terms of the Peace of Prague as a basis for nego...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Time Chart
• Introduction
• 1: The Thirty Years War 1618–48
• 2: The Great Elector Foreign Relations and Policies 1648–88
• 3: The Great Elector: Internal Reconstruction 1648–88
• 4: The Role of Brandenburg-Prussia In Europe 1688–1740
• 5: The Domestic Policies of the First Two Kings 1700–40
• 6: Social and Cultural Developments 1648–1740
• Conclusion
• Select Bibliography