NORTHERN EUROPE TO THE TREATY OF OLIVA
Character and policy of Oxenstjerna--The Form of Government--War
between Sweden and Denmark--Treaty of Brömsebro--Christina
of Sweden--Her character and ability--Frederick William of
Brandenburg--His character and political aims--The question of
Pomerania--Condition of his dominions at his accession--His
withdrawal from the Thirty Years’ War--Acquisition of east
Pomerania--Establishment of his personal authority--His intrigues
against Charles X. of Sweden--Acknowledgment of Swedish
suzerainty--He joins Charles X. against Poland--Obtains
independence by the treaties of Labiau and Wehlau--Death of Charles
X.--The pacification of the north.
[Sidenote: =Position of Sweden, 1632.=]
While the great powers of Europe were battling for the Rhine and
the Pyrenees, the smaller nations of the north were struggling for
the command of the Baltic. It was a contest in which Denmark played
the part of the Empire, the traditional but feeble possessor of
rightful authority, while Sweden, like another France, strong in her
new-found national unity, was impelled by her geographical position
to claim a freedom which could not fail to end in leadership.
When Gustavus Adolphus fell on the field of Lützen in 1632 he had
succeeded in winning for his country supremacy on the Baltic and a
foothold on German soil; but his life had been too short, his career
too meteor-like for him to have had time to consolidate by his
statesmanship what he had won by his genius. [Sidenote: =Character
and policy of Oxenstjerna.=] That task was left to his friend and
confidant, Axel Oxenstjerna, during the minority of the young Christina
who was only four and a half years old when her father died. The man
was well fitted to the task. Cautious, deliberate, and cold-blooded,
complete master of his emotions, he was a man of fixed ideas and
tenacious policy. Nothing moved him, nothing changed him. Twice only
in a long and anxious life did he know what it was to be sleepless,
once after the battle of Lützen, once after the battle of Nördlingen.
Patriotism in him took bodily form in the House of Vasa and Gustavus
Adolphus. During the life of the king his whole energies were devoted
to carrying out his master’s wishes, after his death to the completion
of his master’s policy. In the Thirty Years’ War, as we have seen, he
was the most strenuous and uncompromising enemy of peace. The miseries
of Germany, the dangerous ambition of France, even the deterioration
of his own country, were as nothing to him compared with the duty of
obtaining for Sweden all that Gustavus might fairly have claimed.
It required the personal intervention of the young queen herself to
prevent her minister from ruining the country in order to preserve its
dignity. At home his chief work was to place on a permanent basis the
alliance of the crown with the official nobility, which it had been the
special object of Gustavus Adolphus to create as a counterpoise to the
influence of the hereditary nobility and the clergy.
[Sidenote: =The Form of Government, 1634.=]
In the Form of Government adopted in 1634, Sweden received from
Oxenstjerna’s hands the first of modern written constitutions. By it
Lutheranism in the form of the Confession of Augsburg was imposed upon
the sovereign and all his subjects. Government was vested in the king,
advised by a senate of twenty members chosen by him from the nobility,
to whom were added five _ex officio_ members being the great
officers of state, _i.e._ the steward, the marshal, the treasurer,
the chancellor and the admiral. The whole direction of affairs during
the illness or minority of the king was placed in their hands, subject
only to the provision that all laws passed, privileges conferred, and
alienation of crown lands effected during the incapacity of the king
must receive his subsequent ratification. Other provisions of a less
important nature regulated the administration of justice, but in all of
them the same care for securing the supremacy of the noble and official
class is everywhere observable. In fact, the result of the Form of
Government was to place the chief direction of affairs in Sweden for
nearly fifty years in the hands of a narrow aristocratic clique of
official families. During the minority of Christina, no less than three
out of the five great officers of state were members of the Oxenstjerna
family alone. [Sidenote: =The government a narrow oligarchy.=]
The policy of the regency was conceived in the interests of the
nobility. They profited by the continuance of the war in Germany, for
to them fell the high commands in the army, and the opportunities of
amassing wealth by plunder and confiscation. They profited equally by
the necessities of the Crown at home, for they became the possessors
either by purchase or grant of large tracts of crown lands made over to
them by the government, partly to secure their loyalty and partly to
relieve its embarrassments. But what was meat to the nobles was poison
to the peasantry. The people soon found that the court noble or the
successful general was a far harder master to serve than ever the Crown
had been. The long-continued war raised the taxes, checked the growth
of manufactures, and drained the country of its best peasant blood,
only to return to it a body of brigand soldiers ruined in morals and
incapable of honest industry. Had it lasted but a few years longer, it
is by no means improbable that Oxenstjerna would have found that he
had purchased a foreign empire at the cost of a domestic revolution.
The quick intelligence of Christina, brought up as she was in Sweden,
while the Chancellor was forced to spend a large part of his time in
Germany, appreciated the danger; and this, quite as much as her natural
humanity, prompted her to put an end to a war, which had ceased to have
a serious political object, and was being waged in the interests of a
class and in honour of a memory.
In the war with Denmark which broke out in 1643 the narrow but
unflinching patriotism of Oxenstjerna showed itself to better
advantage. [Sidenote: =War with Denmark, 1643.=] Free passage
through the Sound and the Belts for Swedish ships was as much a
commercial necessity for the development of Swedish trade, as free
passage through the passes of Savoy was a military necessity for the
aggrandisement of France. But Denmark seated astride of the islands,
with one foot on Halland and the other on Jutland, by merely raising
the dues payable for the passage of ships, could crush the nascent
trade at its birth. In doing so it had to reckon not merely with Sweden
but with the more important maritime countries of Holland and England
who carried on with Sweden, through the Sound, a prosperous and growing
trade in skins, fur and copper, and were therefore keenly interested in
the question of the Sound tolls. But in 1639, seeing England involved
in domestic trouble, and Holland fully occupied in the ceaseless
struggle with Spain, Christian IV. thought the opportunity had
come for vigorous action. He raised the tolls on the Sound, attempted
to take the lead in German affairs by putting himself forward as
mediator in the negotiations for peace, and in July 1640 directly
insulted the government of Sweden by openly assisting the queen-mother,
Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg to escape from the dignified seclusion
in which she was kept. For the moment Oxenstjerna had to temporise,
for the affairs of Germany absorbed his whole energies, but two years
later the opportunity came. Torstenson was suddenly directed upon
Holstein without any declaration of war, and in conjunction with Horn
quickly overran the whole of the mainland. Christian taken by surprise
had to betake himself to his islands and his ships. There he fought
like a hero, holding his own manfully for two summers against the
combined efforts of Swedish fleets and Dutch sailors. [Sidenote: =The
treaty of Brömsebro, 1645.=] But the odds were too many for him,
and after a severe defeat in October 1644 he found himself obliged to
sue for peace. The next year, in August 1645, the treaty of Brömsebro
was negotiated through the mediation of France between Christian and
Oxenstjerna. [Sidenote: =Acquisition of Halland and freedom from the
Sound dues.=] By it Sweden was entirely relieved from the payments
of tolls on the Sound and the Belts, and acquired the province of
Halland on terms which practically involved its annexation. However
questionable on the score of public faith its beginning may have been,
there is no doubt that this was one of the most important and useful
wars waged by Sweden in the seventeenth century. At very little expense
to herself, she completed the work of national consolidation by making
Denmark retire across the natural frontier of the sea, and secured for
the future the free and unhampered development of her commerce. Both
of them were acquisitions essential for her national well-being, and
when once gained were gained for all time. The more showy rewards of
the peace of Westphalia on the contrary, though they mark the zenith of
the political glory of Oxenstjerna, were in no way the best gifts which
Sweden received at his hands. They contained in themselves the fruit of
future contests. Like the battles of Creci and Poitiers and the peace
of Bretigni, the battles of Breitenfeld and Wittstock and the peace of
Westphalia covered the conqueror with military glory at the cost of a
hundred years of war.
[Sidenote: =Christina of Sweden.=]
In this long drama of dull warfare, the reign of Christina is a short
but picturesque interlude. Alone among Swedes and almost alone among
sovereigns, she loved to live a life of culture among men of culture.
She was not a student, but a master of classical literature, not the
patron of men of letters, but herself a member of the sacred band.
It is therefore easy to exaggerate the importance of her reign as an
epoch in the civilisation of her country. The learning and the culture
which gathered round Christina at Stockholm fixed no roots in the
country, answered to no demand even in the university. It was a pure
exotic, called into existence by the strange accident that Sweden
had a cultured queen. It died on her abdication. It was personal and
artificial not national and spontaneous, as unlike the great outburst
of English literature under Elizabeth with which it has sometimes been
compared, as the bouquet of the theatre to the flowers of the Alps.
The men of letters themselves formed, it is to be feared, an unwelcome
and unpopular element in the half barbaric court. To the rough nobles
they were but a côterie of the queen’s friends, a clique with whom she
liked to live, a sort of superior race of pet animals which Sweden had
to feed and maintain in order to please the queen. But the very fact
that some of the most intellectual minds of the day were content to
endure the cold and discomforts of Swedish simplicity, and the hardly
concealed dislike of a barbarous and homely people, rather than lose
the distinction of being numbered among the friends of Christina, is
no mean tribute to her character and her mind. To be with her, to be
received into her friendship, to listen to her conversation, to take
part in her studies, this was the attraction which made Stockholm for
the moment the Athens of the north.
[Sidenote: =Character of Christina.=]
Christina is one of those few sovereigns who have made history by sheer
force of personal character. In the whole range of the seventeenth
century, there is no crowned head who can pretend to equality with
her in the rare gifts of originality and distinction. A sworn foe
to conventionality in all forms, with a mind uncompromisingly
logical, she went straight to the root of a matter, to the horror
of diplomatists and courtiers. The salient point of her character
is her straightforwardness. There was nothing artificial about her
and singularly little which was not original. She formed her own
conceptions of policy, of religion, of culture, of manners. She adhered
to them at all costs. She carried them out unhesitatingly. When one
of them came into collision with another, instantly she surrendered
the less to the greater. She abdicated the crown of Sweden because
she was convinced that she ought to become a Roman Catholic. She
procured the recognition of Charles Gustavus as her successor because
she was determined not to marry. At the age of eighteen she forced
the all-powerful Chancellor into making a peace which he loathed.
Ten years later, after her abdication, she murdered her steward
Monaleschi through a wilfully mistaken view of her sovereign rights.
Throughout her life she was the same,--clear-minded, self-willed, of
keen decision and petulant temper, warmhearted and true to those she
loved, malicious to those she disliked, a hater of humbug, a despiser
of conventionality, cynical in speech, generous in action, prodigal
with money, avaricious of fame, hating and hated by women, always
attractive to men. In truth Christina was one of nature’s mistakes.
She was intended for a man. Masculine in intellect, masculine in will,
masculine in bodily endurance, masculine in the roughness of her
sensibilities, she showed her sex mainly in her dislike of women. She
knew herself to be a man, and resented bitterly the freak of nature
which had clothed her with a woman’s form. She dressed like a man, rode
like a man, at times swore like a man, and confessed that one of her
greatest desires was to see a battle. No noble at the Swedish court
could tire her when hunting, or could surpass her presence of mind in
the hour of danger. She knew not what fear was, she was never seen
in tears. Yet there was something feminine in her love of intrigue,
her passion for notoriety, her want of shame. At the French court
she busied herself in making mischief between the young king and his
mother by encouraging his infatuation for Marie Mancini. She delighted
in shocking the etiquette of the royal circle by the freedom of her
conversation and the unconventionality of her attitudes, and she went
out of her way to outrage all sense of propriety by choosing the famous
courtesan Ninon de L’Enclos as the only Frenchwoman to whom she would
be decently civil. When a queen demeans herself thus, she must expect
to make enemies, and Christina had only herself to thank if she was
afterwards denied permission to visit the French court at Paris, and
found among French women her most persistent detractors.
Abdications among sovereigns are so rare that the attention of
historians has been naturally attracted by the picturesqueness of that
of Christina to the detriment of her real title to fame. [Sidenote:
=Her political ability.=] In the ten years of her rule over Sweden
she conducted a great war to a glorious end, she established her
authority by sheer ascendency of character over a narrow and jealous
oligarchy, she settled a most difficult constitutional question, that
of the devolution of the Crown, in the best way for the nation, by
her own firmness of will. She made herself beloved by her people, and
easily suppressed the conspiracy of Messenius in spite of its wide
ramifications among the democracy. She made Stockholm for the time
the most learned and cultured court of Europe. Above all when her own
religious convictions forced her into antagonism with the constitution
of her country, she never hesitated to prefer the interests of her
country to her own dignity. She recognised from the first that in
the seventeenth century it was impossible for Sweden to permit her
sovereign to be of any religion except that of Luther, and when she had
made up her mind to become a Roman Catholic she accepted the inevitable
and abdicated her throne. There are few sovereigns who can claim to
have done more for their country by activity or by renunciation than
Christina. Her abdication was right and unavoidable. The mistake she
made lay in not carrying it far enough. She ought to have retired into
private life, but this was too great a self-denial for so active a
mind and so vigorous a personality. She ceased to be queen of Sweden,
but she determined still to be queen. She maintained royal state, she
claimed royal rights, she plunged into intrigue, she interfered in
politics, she tried to dominate over literature and taste. Deprived of
all right to express, and shorn of all power to enforce, her wishes,
she soon sank into becoming the common bore of Europe, and found
herself politely relegated to her palace at Rome, where she became one
of the sights of the city and the leader of a fashionable and artistic
côterie.
While Christina was witching the northern world by the vigour and charm
of her personality, Brandenburg under the cautious and unscrupulous
Frederick William was slowly winning its way to predominance in north
Germany. [Sidenote: =Frederick William of Brandenburg.=] No two
persons could well be more different than the queen and the elector,
whom at one time a marriage project of Gustavus Adolphus had attempted
to unite in a most unequal yoke. Christina, worldly though she might
be in her love of mischief-making and petulance of disposition, was
essentially a woman of noble character and lofty aspirations. She lived
amongst great thoughts and high ideals. Frederick William grovelled
upon the earth, and cherished its mire and its dirt if only he could
possess himself of one acre the more of it. A true Hohenzollern in
his absolute identification of his country with his own crown, he
never rose above the pure selfishness of patriotism. Not one spark
of generosity illuminated his policy, not one grain of idealism
coloured his ambition, no sentiment of moral right ever interfered
with his judgment, no fear of future retribution arrested his action.
Mean-minded, false, and unscrupulous, he was the first sovereign
to display the principles of seventeenth century Machiavellianism,
stripped of their cloak of Italian refinement, in all the hideous
brutality of German coarseness. Yet the political world was not
the worse for the rule of the Great Elector. Putting all questions
of right and wrong on one side, the success achieved by Frederick
William was in the direction of progress. [Sidenote: =Ultimate aim
of his policy.=] The Thirty Years’ War left Germany shattered into
fragments as if by the stroke of a giant’s hammer, at a time when
all Europe was drawing itself together and coalescing into powerful
states. Had that disintegration continued, had no one come forward to
establish a power in northern Europe, which might at any rate form a
nucleus round which the floating atoms of northern Germany and northern
Protestantism might gather, central Europe must have fallen a prey to
French ambition or Russian barbarism. Events have shown clearly enough,
that neither Sweden, nor England, nor the United Provinces, could have
saved Europe from such a catastrophe, had there not been in northern
Germany itself a power, centralised in government and military in
spirit, which could unfurl the flag of German nationality. To found
such a power was the work of the Great Elector’s life, and before his
death the results had made themselves visible in European politics.
He it is who is the real founder of the state of Prussia. Cradled in
the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, nourished by the falseness and
the tyranny of Frederick William, ushered into manhood by the cynical
ambition of Frederick the Great, she has yet become in her steady
protest against French domination one of the chief bulwarks of European
order, in her assertion of German unity the centre of the noblest of
German aspirations.
[Sidenote: =Rivalry between Brandenburg and Sweden in the Thirty
Years’ War.=]
When Frederick William succeeded his father in the electorate of
Brandenburg in 1640 no one would have predicted that from that desolate
discredited and divided state was to arise the hope of Germany. The
policy of neutrality in the earlier years of the war, adopted not
without a certain amount of shrewdness by George William in conjunction
with his friend John George of Saxony, had broken down under the menace
of the guns of Gustavus Adolphus and the invasion of Tilly. But the
league between the Swedes and the elector could never be anything more
than hollow, unless the former were prepared to surrender the rights of
a conqueror over Pomerania. George William was the acknowledged heir of
the old duke Boguslav. Pomerania, with its extensive seaboard, was just
what Brandenburg wanted for her national development, and the Elector
had been accustomed to look upon it as his own. The landing of Gustavus
Adolphus changed the whole face of affairs in a moment. Pomerania
became just as important to the Swedes as a basis of communication
with Sweden and the Baltic, as it was to Brandenburg as a step in her
aggrandisement. Why should the Swedes, who had saved the country from
the hands of Wallenstein, surrender it tamely to George William who had
not stirred one finger of his own free will on behalf of the Protestant
cause? Naturally enough the Swedes stuck obstinately to their rights
of conquest. Never would Oxenstjerna yield to the technical claims of
Brandenburg, what Gustavus Adolphus had wrested from the enemy by force
of arms. Never would Brandenburg abate her just and legal demands in
the face of a selfish and brutal conqueror. So as time went on Sweden
became far more the national enemy of Brandenburg than the Emperor had
ever been. The unfortunate mark, lying as it did on the straight road
between Bohemia and the Baltic, was harried alternately by the armies
of both sides as the fortune of war ebbed and flowed. In 1635 George
William accepted the treaty of Prague, but that gave no respite to his
unlucky domain. In 1638, unable to find sustenance in the impoverished
mark, he removed his court to Königsberg in east Prussia, where he died
worn out with misery and failure in 1640, leaving his son Frederick
William at the age of twenty the possessor of little land and many
claims.
[Sidenote: =Brandenburg at the accession of Frederick William,
1640.=]
The territories owned by Frederick William on his accession were
divided into three quite separate districts.[3] The old possessions
of the house of Hohenzollern in north Europe consisted of the mark of
Brandenburg, subdivided for administrative purposes into the old mark,
the middle mark and the new mark, which they had ruled as margraves and
as electors since the beginning of the fifteenth century. [Sidenote:
=The mark of Brandenburg.=] This country, purely German, was like
other German states part of the Empire, subject to the legal authority
of the Emperor and had its own diet with vague powers of counsel and
control over the elector in local affairs. [Sidenote: =The duchy of
East Prussia.=] On the east of the Vistula, altogether outside of
the limits of the Empire, was the duchy of east Prussia, which had
become the hereditary possession of the Hohenzollerns by one of the
accidents of the Reformation. The country belonged to the Order of the
Teutonic Knights, and was subject to the suzerainty of Poland, but
in 1525 the Knights accepted the Lutheran Reformation, dissolved the
Order, and formed their territory into a duchy hereditary in the house
of the grand master of the time, count Albert of Hohenzollern. At the
beginning of the seventeenth century his line became merged in that of
the Brandenburg branch of the family, and the elector of Brandenburg
became also duke of east Prussia. Here, as in the mark, the existence
of a diet in which sat both nobles and burghers formed a constitutional
check on the will of the ruler, a check all the more effective because
of the reluctance with which the people of east Prussia and their
feudal suzerain the king of Poland had acknowledged the rights of the
Brandenburg branch to the duchy. But the territorial claims of the
young elector did not stop with the German mark of Brandenburg, the
Polish duchy of east Prussia, and the succession to the German duchy of
Pomerania. [Sidenote: =Duchy of Cleves.=] Within the limits of the
Empire, stretching along both banks of the Rhine, in the neighbourhood
of Köln, lay the duchies of Cleves, Jülich, Berg and Mark, to which the
elector of Brandenburg and the count of Neuburg had put in claims as we
have seen in 1609 and thereby very nearly precipitated the great war.
By the treaty of Xanten, concluded in 1614 and practically renewed in
1630, the disputed territory was divided between the claimants, and the
duchies of Cleves Mark and Ravensberg fell to the share of Brandenburg.
During the war, however, Brandenburg was unable to make its power
recognised over its new domains. The country was for some time the
battle-ground of the Spaniards and the Dutch. As the tide of war rolled
away from the lower Rhine it was occupied and practically administered
by the Dutch, and when peace was restored Frederick William found
himself obliged to assert what was to all intents and purposes a new
sovereignty.
[Sidenote: =Aims of Frederick William.=]
Bearing in mind the scattered character of the Brandenburg possessions,
a glance at the map is sufficient to show how geographical
considerations dictated to the young elector his policy, and inspired
his territorial ambitions. If only he could make good his claims on
Pomerania, or at least on the eastern part of it, there would be
nothing but the strip of west Prussia along the banks of the Vistula
to separate his German dominions from his duchy of east Prussia. A
successful war, or a lucky diplomatic stroke, might raise him at once
into the position of the greatest power in the north. Side by side
with the territorial dream went as was natural in a prince of the
seventeenth century a dynastic ambition. Already events had made his
dependence upon the Emperor almost nominal, the same success which won
him west Prussia and united his dominions would also free him from his
feudal vassalage to Poland. Once thoroughly independent of foreign
authority he could turn his attention to his own subjects, and on the
ruins of the effete and discredited diets raise, like Richelieu in
France, a highly centralised military sovereignty in which the crown
should be all in all. Such was the policy laid down for himself and
his house by the Great Elector, and adhered to unflinchingly by his
descendants ever since. Centralisation of the government, military
rule, constant territorial aggrandisement have been the characteristics
of the Prussian monarchy, and have ended in making out of the
disjointed and turbulent dominions of Frederick William, a united and
peaceful kingdom, which stretches from Russia to Belgium, and embraces
in its ample folds the valleys of the Rhine, the Elbe, the Oder and the
Vistula.
[Sidenote: =Unavoidable hostility of Sweden and Poland.=]
Directly in the way of the realisation of the least of these designs,
as the Great Elector well knew, lay the hostile powers of Sweden and of
Poland. He could not touch Pomerania without encountering the bitter
jealousy of Sweden, he could not advance an inch towards the union of
east Prussia and Brandenburg without first destroying the integrity
of Poland. Over the prostrate bodies of these formidable neighbours
lay the only road to his territorial ambition. It was a road beset
with difficulties. What chance could the barren ravaged and disunited
Brandenburg have in an unequal contest with Sweden, at that time
admittedly the first military power in northern Europe? How could the
half-starved German peasant withstand the onslaught of the brave though
undisciplined masses of Polish cavalry? Frederick William knew that he
must wait for a favourable opportunity, and spent the time in anxious
preparation. His first care was to transfer the conduct of affairs in
the mark from the hands of his father’s minister, Schwartzenburg, who
was devoted to the Emperor, to his own, and to reorganise the army
under himself. In this he was aided by the death of Schwartzenburg
in 1641, and the subsequent revolt of his son and the discontented
officers. [Sidenote: =Establishment of his personal authority in
Brandenburg and East Prussia, 1641.=] Having thus got at his back a
force upon which he could depend he openly broke with the Emperor, and
with the full approbation of the diet entered into negotiations with
the Swedes for a treaty of neutrality. Then turning his attention to
the duchy of east Prussia, where the estates were trying to establish
their superiority over him, with a diplomatic skill rarely found in a
man of twenty, he succeeded in sowing dissensions between the nobles
and the representatives of the towns, who took the lead in opposing
his authority. By winning the former over to his side he was able to
procure the recognition of his rule from John Casimir, king of Poland,
in spite of the protest of the towns, and thus to enter legally upon
his sovereignty. [Sidenote: =His withdrawal from the Thirty Years’
War, 1643.=] In 1643 the treaty with Sweden was successfully
concluded, and for the rest of the war Brandenburg was practically free
from the ravages of the rival armies. The breathing space thus gained
was devoted by Frederick William to the reorganisation of the finances
and the training of the army, and Brandenburg was in consequence
enabled to assert her claims to consideration in the negotiations at
Münster and Osnabrück with a force which would have appeared incredible
in the days of George William. [Sidenote: =Gains of Brandenburg at
the peace of Westphalia, 1648.=] When the peace of Westphalia was
finally settled it was found that Brandenburg was given the right of
annexing the secularised bishoprics of Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Minden
and Camin, and the duchy of eastern Pomerania. [Sidenote: =Occupation
of Eastern Pomerania, 1653.=] But the larger part of the lands were
at the time of the conclusion of peace in the military occupation of
the Swedes, and they were not at all disposed to evacuate them, until
they had been paid the indemnity for their expenses which had been
secured to them by the peace. Finally however, after much negotiation
and many delays, the patience and skill of the Great Elector prevailed
over all obstacles, and the year 1653 saw the back of the last Swedish
soldier in retreat from eastern Pomerania.
[Sidenote: =Position of Brandenburg, 1653.=]
The year 1653 closes the first chapter of the story of the
aggrandisement of Brandenburg. The territory of the elector now
stretched in a compact mass across north Germany from Halberstadt to
the Baltic. It comprised parts of the fertile valleys of the Elbe,
the Havel and the Oder with their industrious populations, as well
as the important coast line of eastern Pomerania with its numerous
harbours. Detached from the central mass lay the duchy of east Prussia
beyond the Vistula and the scattered districts of Cleves and Mark upon
the Rhine and of Ravensberg and Minden upon the Weser. Inferior in
prestige and military power to Sweden, inferior in extent to Poland,
Brandenburg nevertheless emerged from the Thirty Years’ War stronger,
both actually and relatively, than she was when the struggle began.
There was no German power in north Germany her equal in strength,
and no power in north Europe her superior in government. Since he
had come to the throne Frederick William had steadily followed the
policy of centralising the administration under himself and crushing
the independent rights of the diets. In Brandenburg itself, where the
advantages of centralisation under so able and keen-sighted a ruler
were quickly seen, the opposition was never formidable, and in 1653,
the very year of the annexation of eastern Pomerania, the ancient diet
went quietly into perpetual sleep for want of being summoned. In east
Prussia and in Cleves the work was far more difficult, and the Elector
had to content himself for a time with crushing all serious opposition
by the employment of Brandenburg soldiers to keep order, a proceeding
which although illegal was extremely effective.
In 1655 occurred an event which called forth all the Great Elector’s
powers of statesmanship. The old hostility between Poland and Sweden,
the two most dangerous neighbours of Brandenburg, suddenly flamed out
again. John Casimir, king of Poland, refused to acknowledge Charles
Gustavus, who had succeeded to the Swedish throne on the abdication
of Christina. [Sidenote: =War between Sweden and Poland, 1655.=]
Charles, who had been brought up in the school of the Thirty Years’ War
and was no mean soldier, determined to avenge the insult, and demanded
from the Great Elector the right of passage through eastern Pomerania
into Poland, in order to avoid the difficult task of the siege of the
sea fortress of Dantzig, which had cost Gustavus Adolphus many weary
hours some twenty-five years before. Frederick William was not in a
position to resist, and after making a few demonstrations to cover
appearances, gave the required permission. The Swedes, using Pomerania
as their basis of operations, poured across Brandenburg into Poland,
defeated John Casimir, drove him back on Cracow and then returned
leisurely into west Prussia to form the siege of Dantzig. The Great
Elector now thought he saw his opportunity. [Sidenote: =Unsuccessful
intrigue of Frederick William against Sweden.=]The Poles were
beaten not conquered. Denmark was ever ready to strike a blow at her
old enemy across the Baltic. Charles X. was fully occupied
round Dantzig. A well-planned alliance and a well-timed stroke might
bring Sweden to her knees and win his own independence of Poland. But
Charles was too quick for him. [Sidenote: =Acknowledgment of Swedish
suzerainty over East Prussia, 1656.=] Hearing of the negotiations in
the middle of the winter of 1655–56 he at once broke up his camp and
marched into east Prussia on Königsberg. Frederick William had to make
his peace as best he could. By the treaty of Königsberg, developed by
the treaty of Marienbad, concluded in June 1656, Brandenburg was forced
to acknowledge the suzerainty of Sweden over east Prussia, instead
of that of Poland, to grant to the Swedes free passage through the
country, and to provide a contingent to serve under Swedish orders in
the Polish war.
[Sidenote: =War with Poland, 1656.=]
It was a bitter lesson to the Great Elector, but ever patient and
ever trustful of his own diplomatic skill, he continued his policy
and awaited a more favourable opportunity, but for the present he had
to submit to the inevitable. The Brandenburg contingent marched with
Charles X. and the Swedish army to Warsaw, and did their
share in the winning of the great three days’ battle in July 1656,
which placed Poland at the feet of the Swedes. But the victory of
Charles X. was, as is so often the case, the beginning of his
difficulties. It was always easy to defeat a Polish army, it was almost
impossible to reduce the country to submission. The intrigues of the
Great Elector began to bear fruit. [Sidenote: =Coalition against
Sweden.=] While Charles was planning the pursuit of John Casimir
into the recesses of the forests of Galicia, the king of Denmark was
preparing to invade Sweden itself, the Russians declared war, and a
horde of Tartars and Lithuanians poured into east Prussia. Charles
X. found himself in the middle of a hostile country, with
a doubtful ally, surrounded by a host of enemies. Frederick William
insisted on an immediate return to defend east Prussia from the
invaders. Charles could not resist so plausible a demand. [Sidenote:
=Treaty of Labiau. Ackowledgment of the independence of East Prussia
by Sweden, 1656.=] With a heavy heart he retired from the scene of
his victory into west Prussia, where he took ship for Denmark, having
first done what he could to retain Frederick William in his enforced
alliance by recognising the independence of east Prussia in the treaty
of Labiau, signed in November 1656. Directly his back was turned,
the Great Elector threw off the mask, and offered his friendship and
assistance to John Casimir, if only he would follow the example of
Sweden, and release east Prussia from all claims of feudal vassalage.
[Sidenote: =Treaty of Wehlau. Acknowledgment of the independence
of East Prussia by Poland, 1657.=] As long as he obtained his
independence, Frederick William did not trouble about the honesty
of the transaction. John Casimir accepted the terms. By the treaty
of Wehlau, concluded in September 1657, the Great Elector cynically
reversed the treaty of Labiau, made only ten months before, became the
ally of Poland and the enemy of Sweden, and received as the reward of
his dissimulation, the recognition of the independence of east Prussia
by his legitimate suzerain.
The anger of Charles X. when he heard of it knew no bounds.
Thirsting for revenge he nerved himself to attempt the feats of a hero.
[Sidenote: =Attack upon Denmark by Sweden, 1657.=] In the depth
of the winter of 1657–58, he suddenly marched his army of 20,000 men
across the ice of the Belts upon Denmark, and captured the islands of
Fünen and Zealand on his way without ships, crossing it is said some
runlets of open water by bridges. Denmark, paralysed with astonishment
hastened to make peace, and Charles directed his army upon east
Prussia. But fortunately for the Great Elector, Europe had become tired
of incessant war; and the great states, especially the maritime powers
of England and Holland, had no wish to see their trade interfered with
by the conquests of a new Alexander of the north. They interfered
to impose negotiations for peace upon the combatants. [Sidenote:
=Treaties of Oliva, Copenhagen, and Kardis, 1660–1661.=] The death
of Charles X. in February 1660 made their task the easier,
and on May 3rd, 1660, was signed the treaty of Oliva, between Sweden,
Poland and Brandenburg. In the following month the treaty of Copenhagen
restored peace to Sweden and Denmark, and in 1661 the north was finally
pacified by the conclusion of the treaty of Kardis between Sweden and
Russia.
[Sidenote: =Terms of the pacification of north.=]
By these treaties John Casimir of Poland renounced all claims upon
the throne of Sweden, and acknowledged the independent sovereignty of
Frederick William in east Prussia. Frederic III. of Denmark
surrendered almost all the remaining possessions of Denmark on the
Scandinavian peninsula to Sweden, and all other conquests made were
restored. Sweden thus attained the geographical unity which she had
long desired, and the Great Elector had guaranteed to him by European
treaty the independent sovereignty over the duchy of east Prussia which
he had risked so much to gain. If the peace of Westphalia marks the
first great step in the territorial aggrandisement of Brandenburg,
the peace of Oliva marks the first great step towards the dynastic
aggrandisement of the elector. Already absolute and sovereign in
Brandenburg, he now became sovereign in east Prussia, and only one step
remained to be taken, to make the united state of Brandenburg-Prussia
the most formidable, because the most centralised power of the north.