Vanished Kingdoms

by Norman Davies

  The next year, however, saw the beginnings of a strong Polish revival. At the Treaty of Wehlau (September 1657) the margrave-duke-elector agreed to abandon the Swedes, but only if the Polish negotiators matched the Swedes by conceding Prussia’s sovereign status. Poland could not refuse. And the concession was incorporated into the Treaty of Oliwa (1660) that ended the Potop.

  In later times, the Treaty of Wehlau and its consequences have caused considerable controversy. German historians have usually seen it as an inevitable step in Prussia’s rise to power. Polish historians have often seen it as a shameless act of blackmail, carried out by a grasping Prussian who had treacherously deserted his duty. All agree that it was an important milestone, and few could deny that the feudal contract was broken. As a vassal of Poland, the margrave-duke-elector definitely had an obligation of loyalty; equally, as the feudal liege, the Polish king had an obligation to protect his vassal. Both sides had broken their bond. It is also beyond dispute that the Treaty of Wehlau was never constitutionally ratified by the Sejm of the Commonwealth, and that many clauses remained a dead letter. One, for example, granted Poland-Lithuania the right of reversion to the Duchy of Prussia, much as the Hohenzollerns had obtained in the previous century. Another, which granted Brandenburg-Prussia the income of Lauenburg and Bütow, was made conditional on Berlin supplying 1,500 infantrymen and 500 cavalrymen for the commonwealth’s campaigns against Muscovy. By a similar arrangement, the elector was to enjoy the city of Elbing’s income until the commonwealth refunded the costs of his operations against the Swedes. Neither side observed these near-impossible commitments, thereby storing up a mass of unresolved disputes for the future.

  From 1657 to 1701 the Duchy of Prussia was thus an independent state attached by personal union to the dependent, imperial state of Brandenburg. It was already a monarchy in substance, if not in name, and though its ruler did not change his titles, he had definitely improved his status. The margrave-duke-elector of Brandenburg-Prussia, like the Stuart kings of England-Scotland-Ireland in the same period, was moving from the third class to the second class of European rulers.

  This was the age of Louis XIV, when the absolutist model of government in France was widely praised, and the Hohenzollern elector was one of many who was attracted to it. In Brandenburg, Blumenthal proposed that nobles committed to military service be relieved of taxation in return for surrendering their rights to assemble in the Estates. Eventually, in 1678, he would succeed in founding and financing a substantial standing army. His master was moving along an authoritarian, if not a strictly absolutist, road.

  Huge resentment built up in the duchy. The governor, whose first act had been to hang two of Königsberg’s burghers accused of collaboration with the Swedes, was seen to violate the guarantee of self-government which the Prussian Estates had received; they protested in fury. The imperial envoy to Poland, Franz von Lisola, expressed his surprise:

  [A] strong aversion to the Elector [prevails] in the whole Duchy of Prussia, not just among the Catholics but also among the Lutherans and the common folk… They all plan rebellion as soon as possible, mainly because of religion, [but also] because the Elector aims… to subject Prussia to the arbitrary power of his ministers from Brandenburg and to abolish all privileges. The Elector joined the Swedish party without the consent of the estates, thereby provoking the revenge and the hatred of the Poles against them.63

  The elector’s own chancellor, Otto von Schwerin, shared the opinion. ‘Your Electoral Highness would not believe to what extent the Polish crown is dear to their hearts,’ he reported in 1661, ‘and how they all seek their good in this connection.’ A decade later he wrote, ‘As long as one generation lives who remembers Polish rule, there will be a source of resistance in Prussia.’64

  The reasons for constitutional conflict between Brandenburg and Prussia ran deep. The two states drew on different traditions concerning the relationship between ruler and ruled:

  While pro-Hohenzollern theorists proclaimed the duty of the ruled to believe and trust in the good intentions of the ruler legibus solutus, some among the Ducal Prussian estates, including the burghers of Königsberg, defended the principle of fundamental laws restricting the power of central government. [It was] the outsider from Berlin who diminished their liberties, while the Polish crown, with whom they had formed ‘one body’, was their natural home. The belief that they were dealing with a foreign ruler provoked a refusal to finance the Elector’s other domains and provinces in the Empire, which had no connection with Prussia but through the dynasty: ‘Shall the last drop of blood be wrung from the Prussian nobility, although they have nothing to do with the Holy Roman Empire?’

  What separated the Elector and his advisors from the Prussian opposition was a fundamental difference in the understanding of human nature, the function of government, and… the common good.65

  Hohenzollern military policy was soon tested. Sweden, though it had its wings clipped in 1660, still possessed a fine army and a first-rate navy, and the Swedes were unhappy with their rivals’ diplomatic intrigues. In 1675 they launched a lightning attack on Berlin from Stettin. The local defences were overrun, and the margrave-duke-elector was obliged to march his Prussian army 155 miles in ten days to rescue Brandenburg. At Fehrbellin, the Prussians gained a famous victory, and showed that a new power had entered the European stage. The date of 28 June remained a national holiday in Berlin until 1918, and the ‘Fehrbelliner March’ supplied one of the finest tunes in the European military repertoire.66 The victor was raised in popular parlance to the ranks of ‘the Great’.

  Three years later, the Swedes tried another manoeuvre. This time, the margrave-duke-elector had to deploy his troops by sleigh, in the depths of winter, capturing Stralsund and the island of Rügen. He showed that his new standing army – already 40,000 professional men strong – was as mobile as it was muscular. Even so, one is not entitled to imagine that Brandenburg-Prussia had already overtaken Poland-Lithuania in every respect. The Great Elector’s last years coincided with the career of Poland’s greatest warrior king, Jan Sobieski.

  Poland-Lithuania was apparently recovering well from the catastrophes of preceding reigns, and Sobieski’s pet project was the reconquest of Prussia. He swore ‘to reduce the Hohenzollerns to the Polish obedience’: that is, to reverse the Treaty of Wehlau, which in Polish eyes had been signed under duress. But in 1672 the Ottoman Turks invaded the province of Podolia, and Sobieski’s attention was diverted to the south. By the mid-1670s, the Ottomans were overrunning Hungary, and by the early 1680s were heading for Austria. In the end, Sobieski found glory in 1683 at the Siege of Vienna (see p. 282), only to be endlessly bogged down thereafter in his Danubian campaigns. He never brought Prussia to heel: the Great Elector died in 1688, unpunished, head of a state that was fast developing into one of the wonders of the Continent.

  The next margrave-duke-elector, Friedrich or Frederick III (r. 1688–1713), did not at first seem particularly adventurous. His inheritance was put in jeopardy in 1697 when his neighbour and chief rival in Germany, the elector of Saxony, was unexpectedly crowned king of Poland in succession to Sobieski. Brandenburg-Prussia was now all but surrounded by a Saxon-Polish-Lithuanian combination that enjoyed a marked preponderance of territory and resources. The Saxon elector-king, August II the Strong, whose amorous adventures have gained him a place in the Guinness Book of Records, was intent on competing in the military as well as the erotic lists. The dangers rose dramatically in 1700, when Charles XII of Sweden set out to rekindle the northern wars and August set out to oppose him. As in 1656, Brandenburg-Prussia threw in its lot with the Swedes.

  Such was the setting for one of the most astonishing events of self-promotion in modern history. No one could have guessed what the outcome might be of the two vastly complicated European wars then beginning, nor how Hohenzollern Brandenburg-Prussia would emerge from them. The War of the Spanish Succession had thirteen years to run. The Great Northern War was to last for twenty-one ye
ars. In the politics of the north, no one could have foretold whether Charles of Sweden, Peter of Russia or even August of Saxony-Poland-Lithuania would prevail. Yet the margrave-duke-elector, as the proud owner of a fine army, knew he was going to be courted by all sides, and would be able to exact a price for his support. He wanted to bring recognition to his father’s achievements, to draw level with his Saxon rival (who had already been crowned in Kraków), and to ensure that his representatives would be sitting at the top table when fighting gave way to diplomacy. To this end, he determined to raise his international status to that of a crowned king.

  There was more to royal titles than met the eye. They were symbols of legitimacy, and were fiercely guarded. Negotiations between the Hohenzollern and the Holy Roman Emperor, the ageing Leopold I, were pursued by Charles Ancillon, son of the leader of the Huguenot community in Berlin. The emperor was a stickler for protocol. He was, or had been, the holder of the only royal titles permitted in the Empire: ‘king of the Germans’, ‘king of the Romans’ and ‘king of Bohemia’. On the other hand, Ancillon noticed that the formation of a new grand alliance against Louis XIV was causing anxiety; the emperor’s advisers were inclined to make concessions. So he argued that his master, as duke of Prussia, already enjoyed the rights of an independent sovereign and, most importantly, that the status of Brandenburg would not be affected. If the elector of Saxony could be crowned outside the Empire, why couldn’t the Hohenzollern? The deal was struck. In exchange for an alliance against France and a contingent of 8,000 grenadiers, the margrave-duke-elector was to be granted a coronation.

  One crucial detail remained, namely the wording of the royal title. The margrave-duke-elector could not become ‘king of Brandenburg’, because Brandenburg was part of the Empire. Nor could he become ‘king of Prussia’, because the western half of Prussia belonged to Poland, over which his Swedish allies also claimed suzerainty. (In 1704, when Charles XII invaded Poland, one of the first things he did was to declare himself Polish king.) So what could the prospective realm be called? The title had somehow to be based on Frederick’s duchy. The solution was found with ‘the Kingdom in Prussia’.*

  Frederick’s coronation took place in Königsberg, the city where he had been born in the year of the Treaty of Wehlau. It required a colossal logistical operation: 1,800 carts and carriages pulled by 30,000 horses dragged 200 courtiers and their paraphernalia from Berlin over 400 miles of unpaved roads. For a substantial part of the journey the travellers were crossing Polish territory. The expedition took exactly four weeks – with Christmas celebrated on the way:

  By January 18, 1701 everything was ready – trumpeters, drummers, bells. The King-to-be created a scenario for his own coronation. The people of Koenigsberg saluted Friedrich and his wife Sophie Charlotte as their King and Queen. Friedrich put the crown onto his own head and after that let the [specially created] bishops bless him… [so that] the kingship [be] considered as God-given. Thus Friedrich III became Friedrich I King in Prussia…

  After the self-coronation, he called for his wife in order to crown her a Queen. She came in a gorgeous golden dress all shining with diamonds, with a wonderful pearl bouquet fastened onto the dress, and wearing the purple mantle with crowns and eagles similar to her husband’s. She [knelt] before the King, and he put the crown onto her head. Sophie Charlotte, being a… highly intellectual woman, perceived the event as a farce…

  Not seeing… the Queen’s sufferings, the King continued his performance. The servants brought the best piece of roasted ox and two rummers of wine for the royal couple. The feast began. Gold and silver coins to the sum of 6000 thalers were scattered among the crowd. The first day of celebration finished with fireworks and illuminations. The whole celebration continued till spring and finished in Berlin. Afterward it occurred that the event had cost the King… six million thalers!67

  Frederick’s annual income was 4 million thalers. Prussia’s pretentiousness became something of a joke. Stories, true and false, were retailed around Europe:

  Frederick imitated the rigid etiquette of the Spanish court in his little kingdom, surrounded his palace with Swiss guards, and indulged his taste for pomp and magnificence… [His ministers] drew funds from the unfortunate people in various and novel ways. Taxes on wigs, dresses, and hogs’ bristles were imposed; and it is scarcely necessary to say that the extortionate [chief ] minister took good care to fill his own pockets… He even had recourse to alchemy to procure gold; and one alchemist [called]… the Conte de Ruggiero, was put to death (… for deceiving the King)… being hanged on a gilded gallows, in a toga made of gilt paper.68

  The coronation did not increase the territory of Brandenburg-Prussia by one square inch, but its rulers could now regard themselves as kings and be so regarded by others. They had broken the unseen barrier which, in an age of faith, divided the company of the Lord’s Anointed from mere chief executives. In the new century, their kingdom and its fortunes would advance from strength to strength.

  As from 1701, therefore, the meaning of ‘Prussia’ shifted once again. It ceased to be a geographical term, and, in a brilliant act of political branding, was turned into a dynastic one. At the start of Frederick III’s reign, it had referred exclusively to the eastern segment of Brandenburg-Prussia. After the coronation (when he adopted the style of Frederick I), it was applied to all parts of the king’s realms, and the change required a deliberate mental adjustment. Every person who let the word ‘elector’ pass their lips paid a one-thaler fine into the charity box. Henceforth, every single place on which the Hohenzollerns laid their hands was officially designated as ‘Prussian’ – any number of distant localities from Poznan to Neuchâtel to Mönchengladbach were destined to be called ‘Prussian’. Strange to say, Berlin became Prussian. Still more strangely, Brandenburg became Prussian. Duke Albrecht would never have believed it.

  One of the very first and most famous products of the new kingdom was discovered by mistake. In 1704 a couple of Berlin paint-makers were trying to mix a red pigment. The potash which they used was contaminated, so, instead of red, they precipitated a beautifully stable, synthetic and light-fast blue. Its chemical name is ferric hexacyanoferrate. They called it Prussian Blue, ‘PB’ for short. Had their discovery occurred only four or five years earlier, it probably would have been called Brandenburg Blue.69

  All stories, like all good essays, have a beginning, a middle and an end. The Prussian story is no exception – the only difficulty is to specify its start point, mid-point and end point. If the exercise is confined to recorded history, the total span, from the Golden Bull of Rimini in 1226 to Law No. 46 of 1947, measures 721 years. This would put the mathematical mid-point at 1586, in the era when Prussia’s association with Brandenburg was just breaking into bud. If on the other hand one counts the span less mechanically in round centuries, the central period is occupied by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the early period by the thirteenth century to the fifteenth and the terminal period by the eighteenth century to the twentieth.70 By this reckoning, the coronation of 1701 marks the start point of Prussia’s final flourish.

  It is not hard to see therefore that the ‘Rise of Prussia’, traditionally dated from 1640, as generally conceived is a manifest misnomer. It would be better described as the ‘Rise of Hohenzollern Prussia’, or perhaps of the ‘Fifth Prussia’. Indeed, the conventional ‘Rise of Prussia’ owes its very existence to a group of nineteenth-century historians, known as the ‘Borussian School’, who were working for the Hohenzollern court. Scholars such as J. G. Droysen (1808–40), Heinrich von Sybel (1817–95) and, above all, Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–96), were partisans of the Hohenzollerns’ historic mission, of Prussian Protestantism as opposed to Austrian Catholicism, of the ‘Prussian Spirit’ and of the Kleindeutsch solution of the German Question in their own day. They lionized the Teutonic Knights, but shunned those parts of the story that tied Prussia neither to Germany nor to the Hohenzollerns.71 They cemented the notion that Prussia and Germ
any were one and the same thing. Among foreign scholars, their views have won a near-monopoly. ‘When we speak of Germany we think of Prussia,’ wrote two distinguished British authors from the same era, ‘and when we speak of Prussia we are thinking of Germany.’72

  The Berlin-centred and rarely questioned ‘Borussian approach’ has benefited greatly from the disappearance of all Prussia’s rivals which had once figured prominently, but which from a later standpoint can appear insignificant. Several powerful countries disappeared not only from the forefront of international politics but also from the front pages of historiography. Sweden’s power was demolished by Peter the Great. Saxony lost much ground after its separation from Polish-Lithuania in 1763. Poland-Lithuania collapsed catastrophically during the Partitions of 1773–93, when it was physically swallowed by its neighbours (see pp. 285–90). The Holy Roman Empire was destroyed in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. Its demise left Prussia vying with Austria for supremacy in the German world, and with the Russian Empire for dominance in the East.