| Brandenburg-Prussia in the Seventeenth Century |
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MONARCHS KEY EVENTS 1652 First Diet of all Brandenburg lands 1701 Frederick promoted from Elector to King. CULTURE |
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Electorate of Brandenburg was a comparatively poor, isolated and backward region of the Holy Roman Empire. The Elector had no army and little power over the nobles who controlled the enserfed masses. The fortunes of the Hohenzollern family began to look up with the inheritance of the duchy of Cleves and the counties of Mark and Ravensburg in 1614 (confirmed 1666). He inherited the Duchy of Prussia in 1618. The Electors also did well out of the Peace of Westphalia, where they gained much of eastern Pomerania along with some wealthy bishoprics. The Hohenzollern lands were scattered across Germany and had little in common with one another, but Frederick William, "the Great Elector" created order out of chaos. He built up centralized institutions and a powerful army, and asserted firm control over the nobility. By offering nobles a rewarding career in state service, he undermined the nobles' independence.
Frederick William allied first with Sweden and then with Poland,
and in 1610 emerged with the Duchy of Prussia no longer in fief
to the Polish crown. Later he fought first took Dutch subsidies
to fight the French, then French money to support Louis XIV,
then secretly allied with Leopold against France. The Prussian economy benefited significantly from Louis XIV's Revocation of the Edict of Nantes as thousands of skilled Huguenot textile workers sought refuge in Prussia. Frederick William did all he could to encourage trade, including the construction of a canal between the Oder and Spree rivers to divert traffic from Poland and Silesia towards Berlin. |
