640 Youth and accession of Frederick William [1631-41

Bohemia, of whose eldest daughter, the incomparable Elizabeth, he became a true friend through life; and then passed on to the Court and camp of his illustrious kinsman, Prince Frederick Henry of Orange. This sojourn was probably as important for his political as it was for his military training, and tended to alienate him completely from the House of Habsburg, by adhering to which, in accordance with the traditions of his own House, his father had gained so little. Instead of being, as he may have hoped to be, placed at the head of the Government of Cleves, he was in 1638 summoned to his father's Court at Königsberg, and during the remainder of George William's reign was excluded from all share in public affairs. Gradually he came to nurse the belief that the omnipotent Minister Schwarzenberg was plotting destruction to himself, the Electoral Prince, and treason in the event of his father's decease. When George William died in December, 1640, the new Elector Frederick William was, according to his own account, left friendless and without resources against his adversaries; while Prussia was secure and fairly prosperous, the electorate had been devastated; and even the allegiance of the troops that garrisoned its fortresses was doubtful, for George William had allowed them to swear fidelity to the Emperor as well as to himself.

The age was still an age of plots; and Schwarzenberg was suspected of maturing a great design for introducing Imperial troops into the Brandenburg fortresses, on whose commanders he was supposed to be able to rely. How far he had proceeded with his schemes is uncertain; but the young Elector, who had from the first made up his mind to break with the régime and the policy of Schwarzenberg, acted with both caution and firmness. While he temporised with the troops, he at once broke off a negotiation into which the Minister had entered with the Emperor for ceding part of Pomerania to Sweden, in return for a compensation elsewhere. The death of Schwarzenberg (March 14, 1641) saved Frederick William from having to institute proceedings against him. The Imperialist policy, which had been espoused by the Estates of the electorate as well as by the Elector George William, suddenly became a thing of the past; and to the next generation it had already become so unintelligible that Schwarzenberg's political career typified to it an unpatriotic ambition which shrank from no crime in order to compass its ends. But, whatever may be thought of his policy, his administrative influence had been altogether deleterious. His personal greed for money kept pace with his ambition, and infected the whole system of government with the spirit of financial corruption; while at the same time there was a competition in expenditure among the chief officers of State.

In foreign policy, Frederick William-instead of following in the wake of the diplomatic overtures of the Emperor-speedily took a line of his own towards a Power whose hostility was of greater importance

to

1641-53] Relations with Sweden and Poland.-Pomerania 641

his State than to any other in the Empire. He concluded with Sweden (July 14, 1641) the Truce of Stockholm, which, though at first extending to only two years, was prolonged to the end of the War. Although the Swedish occupation of Brandenburg was by no means wholly at an end, while that of Pomerania continued, he had thus withdrawn from the number of Sweden's open enemies; and this step may have helped to induce the King of Poland to accord him investiture with Ducal Prussia in the same year, without exacting any fresh concession. The right which by the Treaty of Köpenick, concluded with George William in 1638, Poland had acquired of appropriating a share of the income from the dues levied in the Prussian ports (Memel, Pillau, Elbing) was not yet given up. But the members of the Spiring family, who managed these dues and whom George William had taken over into his service, were dismissed by the new Elector; and in 1646 he put an end to the agreement on the subject with Poland, and to the last traces of her once formidable design of becoming a maritime Power. So far as Sweden was concerned, neither Frederick William nor the oligarchy that now ruled the kingdom had any wish for an entente cordiale, with or without a marriage between Queen and Elector. Indeed, he was both personally and politically drawn in a different direction. The House of Orange had greatly facilitated the settlement of the Brandenburg rule in Cleves; and the seal was set on the friendly relations between the two dynasties by Frederick William's marriage, in December, 1646, with Louisa Henrietta, the daughter of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange. Her influence, like that of other women of her House, proved signally enduring; and her spirit of practical piety found expression both in the Oranienburg palace, which in this reign and in the next became a seat of liberal culture in the midst of a prosperous district largely inhabited by immigrants and their progeny, and in wider spheres.

The results obtained in the Peace of Westphalia (1648) by the Brandenburg-Prussian State, and the course of its foreign relations in the period immediately ensuing, have been briefly indicated in a previous volume. The most important matter for the future of the State was the condition in which the Peace left the Pomeranian question. After the death (in 1637) of Duke Bogislav XIV, nothing stood in the way of the succession of the House of Brandenburg, whose claim was clear, except the certainty that here and nowhere else would the Swedish Crown seek its "satisfaction" for its long and deliberately protracted exertions in the Great War. The Emperor having ceased for some time to pretend to any objection against the payment of this part of the price of peace by Brandenburg, its Elector had to content himself with securing part of the eastern half of Pomerania (Hinterpommern), where Kolberg is the only port of any significance; nor was it till five years later (1653) that even this territory was actually evacuated by the Swedes. In addition, Brandenburg had at Osnabrück finally gained the bishoprics

C. M. H. V.

41

642 Early years of Frederick William's reign [1641-58

of Halberstadt and Minden, together with the reversion (which in 1680 actually fell in) of the archbishopric of Magdeburg as a secular duchy.

In Brandenburg-Prussia, as in other parts of the Empire, the years which followed on the Peace were a period of more or less sturdy attempts at self-recovery. To the sense of the difficulty of the task which awaited Frederick William at home was added that of political isolation. His relations with the Emperor Ferdinand III were cold; and his close connexion with the Government of the United Provinces had come to an unexpected end with the death, in 1650, of William II of Orange, and with the transfer of power, for a term of twenty-two years. to an oligarchy little interested in supporting the interests, or espousing the quarrels, of Brandenburg in the Rhenish duchies.

Thus, at this early stage, Frederick William arrived at a clear conception of what was indispensable, if from the basis of his augmented but ill-cohering dominions he was to play an effective part in European politics. He must find allies in whom he could confide; but of this confidence it was a preliminary condition that they, in their turn, should trust him as the ruler of a loyal and prosperous State. To reach this end, it was necessary to reorganise the home government. The control of this his father had abandoned to Schwarzenberg; from Schwarzenberg it had descended to Conrad von Burgsdorf, who, though much valued and trusted by the Elector, and in the period of his ascendancy (1641-51) very nearly approaching the position of a Prime Minister, was very specially intent upon making his service profitable to himself. And after it had during a few eventful years been in the hands of Count George Frederick of Waldeck, it was in 1658 finally committed to the trustiest and most far-sighted of the Great Elector's Ministers-in a sense his master's alter ego-Otto von Schwerin, who was created Chancellor of the Electoral Mark, and Director of the Privy Council, and who effectively carried on the work of these combined offices for twoscore years. The reforms in the administration had begun about 1652, and were carried out with the aid of a reorganised Privy Council and a special Commission. They were directed to a more complete separation of the civil from the military administration, and of both from the Court, and to the subordination of the requirements of the latter to those of the State. The financial system in particular was put in better order; but, though steps were taken to ensure an early preparation of the budget (état) in each of the "provinces" (as they were already called), the determination of the provincial Estates to assert their powers of self-control had still to be very seriously taken into account.

Above all, a beginning was made (except in so far as it may be held to have been anticipated by George William in 1637) with the establish ment of a standing military force - the future right arm of Prussia in the struggle which was to end in her becoming a Great Power, as her civil administrative system was to be the left. When Frederick William's

1648-60]

Brandenburg. - Prussia

643

original difficulties with his troops, which he had solved by dismissing those levied in the Mark, are remembered, together with the unwillingness of an exhausted population to make fresh sacrifices for the purpose of setting on foot a new military establishment, he must be credited with extraordinary energy for having by 1651, when he had thought of trying conclusions on the battle-field, managed to muster an army of about 16,000 men-a total which, by 1656, had been increased by about 10,000 more. From this date onward, the Prussian standing army may be said to have had a continuous existence.

In his political action within and without the boundaries of the Empire it behoved the Elector, even after he had secured to himself a free hand, to proceed with the utmost circumspection. In the Peace of Westphalia he had made the best bargain he could for himself, without yielding to the seduction of a proffered French alliance. It has been seen in a previous volume how, in the transactions which intervened. between that Peace and the Peace of Oliva he had striven gradually to assert the political influence of his State. He had failed in his attempt in 1651 to wrest Jülich and Berg by force from the Catholic Duke of Neuburg; but during the remainder of the reign of Ferdinand III he lost no opportunity of upholding at the Diet, or furthering by negotiation, the autonomy of the Princes of the Empire. Indeed, the very remarkable "plan of Union" elaborated by his far-sighted and high-spirited Minister Waldeck in December, 1653, though originally confined to Protestant Princes, really aimed at a general league of non-Austrian States very much on the lines of the Fürstenbund, set on foot a century and a quarter later by Frederick the Great.

But the chief political action of the Elector during these eleven or twelve years (1648-60) lay in a different direction. In this it was exerted with a most remarkable combination of energy and statecraft, which resulted, not only in preserving Ducal Prussia from falling into the grasp of either Poland or Sweden, but also, in accordance with the policy suggested by Waldeck, secured the duchy as an independent sovereign possession to the House of Hohenzollern. (It is no disproof of Waldeck's sincerity of purpose only an illustration of the strangely shifting conditions of the political life of his age, that he should afterwards have himself passed into the Swedish service.) This acquisition, although its magnitude cannot palliate the diplomatic manoeuvres-almost unparalleled in the brusqueness of their sequence and in the effrontery of their inconsistencies was the chief gain which the Peace of Oliva brought to Frederick William. For he came forth from the two Wars (the Polish and the Danish) provoked by the ambition of Charles X of Sweden, without having gained the friendship of any one of the contending Powers, and with a sense of insecurity as against future encroachments on their part. And he had been obliged to relinquish the places in western Pomerania into which he had thrown garrisons, regarding the

644

Administrative changes. Magdeburg

[1658-80

process as merely an assertion of his rights to his own. But at least he was now master of the whole of the territories under his rule. It was an alien Power, France who at the time of the negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia had dangled Silesia before his eyes as the price of his support that had prevented him from driving out another alien Power. Sweden, from its foothold in Germany. But to this circumstance he was probably not unduly sensitive; though it is worth noting that in 1658 he had caused a pamphlet to be put forth, addressed to "honest Germans," and striking a singularly modern national note as to the capture of the great north-German waterways by foreign nations. This appeal ad populum was widely read and reproduced in a series of editions.

For what Frederick William had achieved, or for aid in his endeavours to retain what he had been obliged to renounce, he owed no thanks to the House of Habsburg. Yet to his action had been principally due the election of 1658, when Leopold I was chosen Emperor in his father's stead-on condition, to be sure, that he would henceforth renounce all support of Spain in the Franco-Spanish conflicts in Italy and the Netherlands. On the other hand, Frederick William was so far from any present intention of joining the Rheinbund, that, vexed by its friendliness to Sweden, he denounced it as subjecting weak German Princes to strong foreign Powers.

With the year 1660 a new period opens in the reign of the Great Electora time of sorely needed rest and recuperation for his dominions. During the ensuing twelve years the army, to which (though the Estates had insisted on a reduction of its numbers) the Elector continued to devote special attention, was but once employed on active service. This was in 1663, when Brandenburg troops aided the Imperial Government in one of its numerous conflicts with the Turkish Power. But there was much to do at home. The Prussian Estates, who disliked the sway of the Brandenburg Elector, if only because he was a professed Calvinist, resented the changes introduced by him into the administration of the duchy; and it was only by a strong display of military force and punitive energy at Königsberg that he induced the Estates to do homage to him as their hereditary Duke (October, 1663). The settlement effected on this occasion was not again undone; though it was some time before the spirit of resistance, stimulated by the Polish environment of Ducal Prussia, came to an end there. It cannot be said that in his dealings with the Prussian Estates the Elector had shown any very scrupulous respect for the forms of law. Another remarkable example of the vigour of his transforming processes is that of the archbishopric of Magdeburg, which was not actually incorporated in his dominions till the death, in 1680, of the last Administrator, Duke Augustus of Saxony, but whose Estates he forced to do homage to him so early as 1666, and in whose chief city an electoral garrison had lain since 1650.