HISTORY OF GERMANY PART II

Germany and the Reformation: 1517-1648
The decline of the Holy Roman empire is closely connected with the great 16th-century upheaveal in central Europe - that of the Reformation. The German princes, in the many semi-independent territories of the empire, see the religious options suddenly on offer as political opportunities. The pope is resented by many as a devious and distant intriguer, who drains away money from local church lands and regularly demands more. The emperor, lord of vast new Habsburg territories, is now also a distant figure with interests far beyond the traditional empire.
Once the turmoil of the Reformation begins, in the years after 1517, each German prince assesses his own best chance of securing or expanding his territory and his treasury. The resulting conflicts within German-speaking regions are frequent until the peace of Augsburg in 1555. They then erupt again in the Thirty Years' War of 1618-48. The great dispute soon becomes a European event. But the original flare-up in 1517 is very much a German phenomenon.
Albert of Mainz: 1517
Germany provides a context in which materialism within the Roman Catholic church is offensively evident. Some of the principalities, which together make up the Holy Roman empire, are ruled by unscrupulous prelates living in the style of Renaissance princes. Foremost among them is Albert, archbishop of Mainz and one of the seven imperial electors. By the age of twenty-four Albert holds a bishopric and a second archbishopric in addition to Mainz. Such plurality is against canon law. But the pope, Leo X, agrees to overlook the irregularity in return for a large donation to the building costs of the new St Peter's.
Both pope and archbishop are men of the world (the pope is a Medici). Leo makes it possible for Albert to recover his costs by granting him the concession for the sale of indulgences towards the building of St Peter's. Half the money for each indulgence is go to Rome; the other half will help to pay off Albert's debts (he has borrowed the money for the original donation from the Fuggers of Augsburg). This secret arrangement might distress the faithful if they knew of it. But more immediately shocking to some is the behaviour of the friar Johann Tetzel, whom Albert employs to sell the indulgences.
Tetzel is a showman. When preaching to gullible crowds in German towns he goes far beyond the official doctrine of indulgences. He promises the immediate release of loved ones from the pain of Purgatory as soon as a purchase is made. He even has a catchy jingle to make the point: 'As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, The soul from Purgatory springs.' In October 1517 some parishioners return to Wittenberg with indulgences which they have bought from Tetzel - indulgences so powerful, some have been led to believe, that they could pardon a man who had raped the Virgin Mary. News of this travesty reaches the ears of a professor at the university of Wittenberg.
Luther's ninety-five theses: 1517
Martin Luther, a man both solemn and passionate, is an Augustinian friar teaching theology at the university recently founded in Wittenberg by Frederick the Wise, the elector of Saxony. Obsessed by his own unworthiness, he comes to the conclusion that no amount of virtue or good behaviour can be the basis of salvation (as proposed in the doctrine known as justification by works). If the Christian life is not to be meaningless, he argues, a sinner's faith must be the only merit for which God's grace might be granted. Luther therefore becomes a passionate believer in an alternative doctrine, justification by faith, for which he finds evidence in the writings of St Paul.
Nothing could be further from the concept of justification by faith than Tetzel's impudent selling of God's grace. Luther has often argued against the sale of indulgences in his sermons. Now he takes a more public stand. He writes out ninety-five propositions about the nature of faith and contemporary church practice. The tone of these 'theses', as they come to be known, is academic. But the underlying gist, apart from overt criticism of indulgences, is that truth is to be sought in scripture rather than in the teaching of the church. By nailing his theses to the door of All Saints' in Wittenberg, as Luther does on 31 October 1517, he is merely proposing them as subjects for debate.
Instead of launching a debate in Wittenberg, the ninety-five theses spark off a European conflagration of unparalleled violence. The Reformation ravages western Christendom for more than a century, bringing violent intolerance and hatred which lasts in some Christian communities down to the present day. No sectarian dispute in any other religion has matched the destructive force, the brutality and the bitterness which begins in Wittenberg in 1517. Luther is as surprised as anyone else by the eruption which now engulfs him - slowly at first but with accelerating pace after a year or two. Its violence derives from several unusual elements.
The papacy is determined to suppress this impertinence. Luther's writings are burnt in Rome in 1520; his excommunication follows in 1521. This is the predictable part. The unexpected elements are the groundswell of support in Germany, nourished by a deep resentment of papal interference; and the effect of the relatively new craft of printing. Before Gutenberg, news of Luther's heresy would have circulated only slowly. But now copies of the ninety-five theses are all over Europe within weeks. A fierce debate develops, with pamphlets pouring from the presses - many of them from Luther's pen. Within six years, by 1523, Europe's printers produce 1300 different editions of his tracts.
In these circumstances it is impossible for the issue to be swept under the carpet. Any action taken against Luther in person is certain to provoke a crisis - though in the early years his safety depends heavily on the protection of Frederick the Wise, proud of his university and reluctant to hand over to Rome its famous theologian, however controversial. Support for the excommunicated monk is so strong among German knights that the young emperor, Charles V, is prevailed upon to hear his case at a diet held in 1521 in Worms. Luther is given a safe conduct for his journey to and from the diet. He is no doubt aware of the value of an imperial safe conduct to John Huss a century earlier, but he accepts the challenge.
The Diet of Worms: 1521
Where Huss had slipped into Constance in 1414 almost alone, Luther arrives at the diet at Worms supported by a large number of enthusiastic German knights. Nevertheless the purpose of the confrontation, from the emperor's point of view, is a demand that he should recant. In a lengthy speech Luther explains that he will recant any of his views if they can be proved wrong by scripture or reason. Otherwise he must remain true to his conscience and to his understanding of God's word. The presses soon reduce this to the pithy statement which has been remembered ever since: Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders., 'Here I stand. I can not do otherwise.'
The emperor and the diet declare Luther an outlaw in the Edict of Worms (using the violently Intemperate language of the time). Luther leaves Worms with his safe conduct guaranteed for a few days. Once it has expired, it becomes the duty of any of the emperor's loyal subjects to seize the heretic. Precisely that disaster seems to happen. Luther is bumping along in his wagon when armed men gallop up and drag him off. He is not seen in public for almost a year, causing many to assume that he is dead. But the armed men belong to Frederick the Wise. They take Luther to safety in one of Frederick's castles, the Wartburg, where he is given new clothes and a new identity - as Junker Georg, or plain Squire George.
Speyer:1526-1529
In the years following the Edict of Worms, and Luther's return to Wittenberg in 1522, the princes of German states and the councils of imperial cities engage in furious argument whether to accept the Edict's rejection of Luther's reforms. There is growing hostility to external interference in German affairs - from Rome and from the pope's committed ally, a Holy Roman emperor whose interests now seem as much Spanish as German. A large minority within the empire is in rebellious mood. In 1526 the emperor, Charles V, attempts to calm the situation by appeasement.
An imperial diet held in Speyer in 1526 modifies the outright ban on Luther's teachings, imposed five years previously in the Edict of Worms. Now each German prince is to take his own decision on the matter, with the responsibility to answer for it 'to God and the emperor'. Three years later, once again at Speyer, another diet take the opposite line. The concession of 1526 is withdrawn, and the Edict of Worms reinstated. A dissenting minority, consisting of five princes and fourteen imperial cities, publishes a 'Protestation' against the decision. As a result they become known as the Protestants.
Augsburg: 1530-1555
The need to settle religious unrest in Germany is made more urgent by the shock of the Turks besieging Vienna in September 1529. They withdraw unsuccessfully a month later. But the affront vividly suggests the possibility of greater dangers. The emperor Charles V makes a new attempt to resolve the issue at a diet in Augsburg in June 1530. Luther, officially an outlaw under the terms of the Edict of Worms, is unable to attend. His place is taken by Melanchthon, who presents what is now known as the Augsburg Confession. Drawing various previous documents into one coherent whole, this becomes the standard statement of the Lutheran faith.
Melanchthon's purpose is to emphasize that the Lutheran reforms 'dissent in no article of faith from the Catholic church'. They merely strip away abuses which have been introduced in recent centuries. The diet refuses to accept this, decreeing instead that by April 1531 all Protestant princes and cities must recant from the Lutheran position and (an important element) restore all church and monastic property which has been seized. The threat of military intervention by the emperor is implicit. In response, the Protestant princes and some of the imperial cities form a defensive pact for mutual defence, established in 1531 as the League of Schmalkalden.
Over the next two decades the League is often in action against its Catholic neighbours in Germany. In 1547 it suffers a severe reverse in the battle of Mühlberg, a victory for Charles V which results in the League's two main leaders - the elector of Saxony and Philip of Hesse - spending five years as the emperor's prisoners. But no military victory can resolve these deep religious divisions within the empire. When another imperial diet meets at Augsburg in 1555, presided over by Charles V's brother Ferdinand, all sides are weary and desperate for a solution.
The compromise eventually accepted, and known as the Peace of Augsburg, acknowledges the reality which has emerged in the years since Luther's ninety-five theses sparked off the conflict. Each prince and city is to be allowed to choose between Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism (but all other sects, such as the Swiss reformed church and the Anabaptists, remain proscribed). The formula is later succinctly described in the Latin phrase cuius regio, eius religio(whoever has the kingdom chooses the religion). The principle of the ruler choosing the religion has effectively held sway for some time within the empire. And it has been far more starkly the case in the independent kingdoms of northwest Europe.
After Augsburg: 1555-1619
The Augsburg formula preserves for half a century an uneasy peace in the German lands, while princes use their religious freedom as a form of diplomacy. Catholic rulers can be sure of strong support from a newly invigorated Rome after the Council of Trent; an energetic role is now played in their territories by the new order of Jesuits. Lutheran princes gain strength not only from each other but from Protestant kingdoms to the northwest, Denmark and Sweden. And the minority of Calvinist territories can expect friendship from France during the reign of Henry IV.
Early in the 17th century the two sides form up in opposing blocs, each headed by a branch of the Wittelsbach family. The Wittelsbachs of the Rhine Palatinate, in southwest Germany, are Calvinist; they lead the Protestant Union, formed in 1608. The Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, just to the east, form the Catholic League in the following year. This confrontation does not immediately lead to armed conflict - until the Protestants of distant Bohemia elect as their king, in 1619, the Calvinist Wittelsbach, Frederick V. The response by the Catholic League, in alliance with pope and emperor, becomes one of the opening encounters of the Thirty Years' War.

The Winter King: 1619-1620
In accepting the Bohemian throne, and being crowned in Prague in November 1619, Frederick V is perpetrating an extremely inflammatory act within the edgy community of the German states. Ferdinand II, Habsburg successor to the kingdom of Bohemia, has been elected Holy Roman emperor in August of that year. Frederick owes Ferdinand allegiance, as one of the German princes and as an imperial elector (the elector palatine of the Rhine). Instead, by popular demand in Bohemia, he is usurping his lord's place.
Ferdinand is able to organize a powerful army against the Protestant upstart. The bulk of it comes from the duchy of Bavaria, a Catholic line of the Wittelsbach dynasty and deeply hostile to the Protestant branch headed by Frederick in the Palatinate. In return for his support the Bavarian duke, Maximilian I, is promised Frederick's hereditary lands and his status as an imperial elector. Frederick, by contrast, receives messages of goodwill but little practical help from the Protestant states.
The issue is decided in a single brief encounter. The Bavarian army, under its distinguished general Johann Tserclaes von Tilly, marches on Prague. A battle at the White Mountain, to the west of the city, lasts only an hour before the Protestant army gives way. On the evening of that same day, 8 November 1620, almost exactly a year after his coronation, Frederick flees from Prague with his family. His wife is Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England. Their brief reign causes Frederick and Elizabeth to become known as the Winter King and Queen. (But unwittingly they found a dynasty. A century later their grandson becomes king of Great Britain as George I).
After the White Mountain: 1620-1625
Both the emperor Ferdinand II and the duke of Bavaria, Maximilian I, benefit greatly from the victory at the White Mountain. Ferdinand gains full control over Bohemia. Meanwhile Maximilian has occupied part of Austria, which he intends to hold until all Ferdinand's debts to him are paid. He also now takes much of Frederick's territory in the Palatinate (part has been quietly occupied by the Spanish, moving down from the Netherlands while the locals are busy in Bohemia).
Maximilian is passionately opposed to any increase in Habsburg power. As a great Catholic prince now ruling the whole of southern Germany, he seems well placed to keep Ferdinand in check. But Ferdinand's ruthless suppression and exploitation of conquered Bohemia introduces a new element to upset the balance. It provides him with great wealth. It also brings to prominence a general and entrepreneur of extraordinary ambition and talent - Albrecht von Wallenstein.
Wallenstein is a minor Czech nobleman who becomes rich through marriage to an elderly widow. From 1617 he uses her money to raise a small private army with which he assists Ferdinand. His reward, after the suppression of Bohemia, includes a licence to issue coins debased to half their previous value. With the profit he buys at a knock-down price sixty large estates, which together make him lord of the whole of northeastern Bohemia. Wallenstein now proposes to Ferdinand a bold extension of his earlier private army. He offers to provide, at no expense to the emperor, an independent imperial army of 24,000 men. The expense, raised by a financial agent, will be recovered from conquered territories.
The idea appeals to Ferdinand because it frees him from reliance on the powerful duke of Bavaria, whose army made possible the victory at the White Mountain. Wallenstein's plan is approved and he is appointed chief of all the imperial forces. Seeing another rich opportunity, he mobilizes his estates in Bohemia to provide arms and equipment for the army. Wallenstein acquires a welcome opportunity to put his army into the field when Christian IV, the king of Denmark, decides to take a hand in the troubled affairs of Germany.
Lutherans from Scandinavia: 1625-1631
As a Lutheran monarch, the Danish king Christian IV has good cause to support Protestant states in north Germany under threat from Catholic neighbours. He is also eager to keep Catholics away from the Baltic. He has been promised a subsidy by England if he intervenes in Germany's wars. And he is interested in extending his own territory southwards to the estuaries of the Elbe and the Weser. In May 1625 he marches into Germany.
Christian IV is an unskilled commander, and he has the misfortune to have ranged against him the two most experienced generals of the age. Tilly commands the Bavarian army on behalf of the Catholic League. Wallenstein is at the head of the separate imperial army which he has raised for Ferdinand II. Christian's first defeat is at the hands of Tilly, at Lutter in August 1626. Between them, Tilly and Wallenstein then drive the Danes north, clearing them from the Baltic coast, pursing them into the peninsula of Denmark and eventually confining Christian IV and his army to the Danish islands.
By 1628 Wallenstein has been granted the duchy of Mecklenburg, and an army of his is besieging the town of Stralsund. If it falls to him, he will be master of the German Baltic coast. This dramatic increase in Catholic power, and in Wallenstein's personal standing, has several results of great significance for the next stage of the war. A new surge of confidence causes Ferdinand II, in March 1629, to issue the Edict of Restitution. It demands that all Protestant land not specifically ceded in 1555 in the peace of Augsburgbe now returned to the Catholic church. This unilateral attempt to put the clock back eighty years is guaranteed to inflame the present religious conflict.
The new Catholic presence on the shores of the previously Lutheran southern Baltic persuades the king of Sweden, Gustavus II, that he should enter the war. Resolving his long dispute with Poland (in the treaty of Altmark in September 1629), he brings an army across the sea and marches into Germany in July 1630. Meanwhile the greatly increased stature of Wallenstein prompts the duke of Bavaria and the Catholic League to issue an ultimatum. Unless Ferdinand dismisses his general, he can expect no further cooperation. With reluctance, in August 1630, the emperor deprives an outraged Wallenstein of his high command.
After Wallenstein's dismissal, Tilly becomes commander of the combined armies of the Catholic League and of the emperor against the intruding Swedes. For a year the two opposing sides, Protestant and Catholic, fail to meet in direct battle. Each attempts to secure firm alliances among the many German principalities (Protestant princes are at this stage reluctant to commit themselves to the Swedish king). But eventually, at Breitenfeld near Leipzig in September 1631, there is a confrontation. It is Tilly's misfortune that this is the first public display of new tactics devised by Gustavus II. They prove devastating.
Swedish tactics: 1631
During the early years of his reign Gustavus II has effected a quiet revolution in the Swedish army. Where other monarchs rely on foreign mercenaries, he conscripts and trains his Swedish subjects - thus achieving an organized version of a citizen army. He instils in his soldiers sufficient discipline for them to be able to respond to flexible tactics on the battlefield. For the same purpose he makes his infantrymen's pikes less unwieldy, shortening them from 16 to 11 feet. He lightens the weight of armour, wearing himself only a leather jacket in battle. And he reduces the number of men in each company in battle formation.
Together with these measures of increased human mobility go similar improvements in artillery. Gustavus's ordnance factories produce a cast-iron cannon less than half the weight of any other in the field, but still capable of firing a four-pound shot. Moreover a form of cartridge holding a prepared charge of powder means that the cannon can be reloaded faster even than the muskets of the day. This field artillery is mounted on carriages which can be pulled by two horses or even, when required, by a platoon of men.
When Gustavus's army is first seen in action in Germany, at Breitenfeld in 1631, the opposing Catholic army under Tilly is deployed in the cumbersome Spanish squares which have been the military convention for a century and more. The Swedes begin the encounter with an artillery barrage from about 100 cannon which they have been able to bring to the field of battle. Thereafter the rout of the Catholics is completed in a series of unwelcome surprises - musketeers appear among lines of infantrymen instead of on the flanks, cavalry charges suddenly materialize from unexpected quarters. The battle sets a new order of military priority. Fire power and mobility are now the trump cards on the battlefield.
Breitenfeld and Lützen: 1631-1632
The Swedish victory at Breitenfeld causes many of the German Protestant princes to declare their support for Gustavus, who presses his campaign further south into Catholic Germany. In May 1632 he takes Munich. In the same month his ally the Protestant elector of Saxony enters Prague. Confronted by these threats, the emperor Ferdinand II has already reappointed Wallenstein to his post as commander of the imperial army. Wallenstein's subtle strategies manoeuvre Gustavus out of his newly won territories in the south without risking a pitched battle. When this comes, it is again in the north near Leipzig - at Lützen in November 1632.
Swedish tactics again win the day at Lützen, though Gustavus himself dies leading a cavalry charge. Swedish armies continue to campaign in Germany. But the death of the king ends the heady period when there has been a serious possibility of Protestant Sweden playing a major role in German affairs. Meanwhile the irrepressible Wallenstein is once again building himself an empire, with the help of an army which owes allegiance more to him than to the real emperor. By 1634 Ferdinand II is so exasperated that he authorizes the assassination (by an English captain, Walter Devereux) of his brilliant but over-ambitious commander.
Peace of Prague: 1635
Exhaustion among the German princes now at last makes a compromise possible. The conflict which flared up in Prague in 1618 is resolved, at least in local terms, by a peace agreed in Prague in 1635. It is the emperor who makes the major concession. Instead of the ownership of church lands being restored to the situation that prevailed in 1555, as demanded by Ferdinand's Edict of Restitution, the date of the agreed status quo is now to be the very recent one of 1627 - reflecting the period immediately before the issue of the edict in 1629. (In 1648, in the peace of Westphalia, there is a final minor change - the relevant year becomes 1624).
If the war had only involved the German states, the agreement at Prague might well have ended it. But it has had from the start a broader theme, with the Spanish Habsburgs giving active support to the emperor, their Austrian cousin. From 1621 Spain has also renewed her war against the United Provinces of the Netherlands. And the Swedes, at war with the emperor and the Catholic League, are not party to the peace of Prague. Most significant of all, the improvement in Habsburg fortunes alarms the dynasty's greatest enemy, France. During the months before the peace of Prague, Cardinal Richelieu forms alliances with the United Provinces and Sweden. And he declares war on Spain and the Austrian empire.
Final years and the peace of Westphalia: 1635-1648
The active intervention of France, as the ally of Sweden and the United Provinces against imperial Austria and Spain, ensures that warfare rumbles on for several more years after the peace of Prague in 1635. But it does so in a somewhat haphazard manner, with numerous local encounters across Europe from the Netherlands to Bohemia and with no clear outcome. There are certain significant turning points. In 1640 Portugalseizes the opportunity to reassert its independence, thus diverting Spain from her efforts to recover the United Provinces. A new northern war adds urgency from 1643, when the Swedes attack Denmark.
By 1643 all sides are eager for a settlement. In July of that year delegates to a peace congress gather in the Westphalian towns of Münster and Osnabrück. Eventually there are 150 such delegates(all but forty of them German), representing the various interested parties. Their deliberations, spread over five years, are complicated by the fact that warfare is continuing - so the situation over which they are bargaining is in a state of constant flux. Apart from that unusual element, this is the first example of a modern peace conference.
By 1648 major decisions have been agreed, involving both redistribution of territory and the acknowledgement of newly independent states. In territorial terms the main winners from the peace of Westphalia are Sweden (gaining valuable Baltic territory, much of it from Denmark) and France (receiving from the Habsburg empire various rights in Lorraine and Alsace). The Rhine Palatinate is restored to the heir of Frederick V. Outside Germany the independence of the United Provincesis at last accepted by Spain, and that of the Swiss Confederation is now formally acknowledged (having been recognized in effect since the peace of Basel in 1499).
The most significant concessions are those over which the series of wars has primarily been fought. The Holy Roman emperor (by now Ferdinand III) no longer claims to be the ruler of the German principalities. They are recognized as independent states with the right to engage in their own international diplomacy. Their future struggles will be not against the anachronistic Holy Roman emperor but among themselves, to discover which of the great German princely dynasties eventually has the strength to assert a new form of leadership within Germany.
On the religious issue, rulers may still (as agreed in the Peace of Augsburg) choose the religion of their own territory, but freedom of conscience is also assured - citizens professing another form of Christianity now have the right to worship in private or to emigrate. An exception to this is one of the few points gained by the emperor; he alone may impose Roman Catholicism on his subjects (though he too makes exceptions, as in the case of Protestant Silesia). In international terms the effect of all this is a weakened empire, a strengthened France (which does not finally make peace with Spain until 1659), and a fully independent Dutch republic now free to concentrate on its enormously successful commercial and imperial enterprises.
Aftermath in Germany: 1648-1700
For thirty years armies have marched to and fro across Germany, living off the land and plundering where they please. Any such conflict is devastating, but the Thirty Years' War has gone down in European folk memory as a time of particular horror. For the rest of the century the first instinct of any German is to avoid further war on German soil. The states of the German empire, now granted their independence, are a numerous and very mixed bunch. About 200 are ruled by princes or counts and another fifty by archbishops, bishops or abbots. Then there are the imperial cities, many of them not much more than market towns.
Among the princes of the empire there are five great dynastic families whose rule covers huge areas. By far the most powerful are the Habsburgs, with their hereditary lands occupying the southeast of the empire. To the north of them are the Wettin, a family headed by the elector of Saxony. Beyond Saxony, in the northeast, is the territory of the Hohenzollern. Their original province is Brandenburg, where their title is margrave, but they have acquired in the Reformation the valuable duchy of Prussia and more recently (under the terms of the peace of Westphalia) another large stretch of the Baltic coast, in Pomerania.
In northwest Germany the ancient house of Welf has many provinces, of which Brunswick and Hanover are the most important. And the whole of southern Germany is in the hands of the Wittelsbachs, who rule in Bavaria and in the Rhine Palatinate. The Hohenzollern are the most recent of these families to achieve such high status, with Brandenburg coming into their possession as recently as 1411. But during the late 17th century they begin to establish a position second only to the Habsburgs. The significant factor is Prussia.
Brandenburg and Prussia: 1657-1701
Since 1525 part of Prussia, on the Baltic, has been a hereditary duchy belonging to the Hohenzollern family, but they have held it only as a fief of the Polish crown. In 1618 the Hohenzollern line in Prussia dies out and the duchy passes to a Hohenzollern cousin, the elector of Brandenburg. On the coast between Brandenburg and the elector's new possession of ducal Prussia there lies the other part of Prussia. Known as royal Prussia, it includes the valuable harbour of Gdansk. Royal Prussia is fully integrated into the Polish kingdom.
Ducal Prussia, by contrast, is largely German - as a result of German settlers being brought there in the 13th century to till the soil and to control the pagan Prussians. This ethnic division, with a Polish region between two German ones, is one of the more disastrous accidents of history. The isolation of the Germans in ducal Prussia is irrelevant while Europe still has the patchwork allegiances of feudalism. But by the 17th century there is a trend towards self-contained independent states. Inevitably a political pressure builds up to bridge the territorial gap between Brandenburg and ducal Prussia - particularly after Brandenburg acquires another long stretch of Baltic coast (that of eastern Pomerania) in 1648.
In 1657 ducal Prussia acquires a new status, tying it more closely to Brandenburg. The elector Frederick William of Brandenburg succeeds in that year (through a well-judged blend of warfare and diplomacy) in severing the feudal link between his duchy and the Polish kingdom. Poland is forced to concede its loss of ducal Prussia in the treaty of Wehlau (1657). With the peace of Oliva (1660), the international community recognizes Prussia as an independent duchy belonging to Brandenburg.
This achievement enables Frederick William's son, Frederick III of Brandenburg, to achieve the crucial next step. In 1700 the Austrian emperor, Leopold I, needs Frederick's assistance in the War of the Spanish Succession. The sweetener is a significant new title. There are no German kings within the Holy Roman empire, apart from the Habsburg emperors' own kingdom of Bohemia. Now, using the legal nicety that Prussia is outside the empire, Leopold allows Frederick to call himself the "king in Prussia" (another legal refinement - the more convincing "king of Prussia" is only allowed from 1740). The new king crowns himself, as Frederick I of the Prussian dynasty, in Königsberg in 1701.

Augustus the Strong of Saxony: 1694-1733

The powerful neighbour of Brandenburg in northeast Germany 
is another Protestant ruler, the elector of Saxony. In the early 18th century, 
while Brandenburg's elector is acquiring a new dignity as the king in Prussia,
 Saxony is also developing royal pretensions.

Frederick Augustus I succeeds his brother in Saxony in 1694. Two years later,
 when the Polish throne becomes vacant, he throws his cap in the ring along with 
eighteen others. He is elected, becoming Augustus II of Poland - known to history 
as Augustus the Strong. By nature an opportunist 
(he converts to Roman Catholicism and in doing so loses his wife to win Poland),
 Augustus soon sees a further opportunity to advance Saxon interests. 

In 1699 Augustus makes a secret alliance with Denmark and Russia for a joint attack 
on the Swedish territories round the Baltic. His own target is Livonia, which he intends to acquire for Saxony (his new Polish subjects refuse to cooperate in the enterprise). In February 1700 Augustus marches north with a Saxon army to besiege Riga.

His action launches the long Northern War against Sweden.
 But in spite of his own resounding name, Augustus the Strong
 more than meets his match in 1700 in the young Charles XII of Sweden.
 
Over the next six years the victories of Charles XII over Augustus the Strong
 are devastating. The Saxons are driven back across the Daugava river in the
 summer of 1701, ending their threat to Riga. Charles XII reaches and enters 
Warsaw in May 1702. He defeats Augustus two months later in a battle furtheR 
south in Poland, at Kliszow.

In 1704 Charles persuades the Poles to depose Augustus and to elect in 
his place a Polish noble as Stanislaw I. In 1706 the Swedish king completes 
the humiliation of Augustus by marching into Saxony to impose a treaty signed 
at Altranstädt.

Augustus later recovers his Polish throne, in 1709. But his interests remain in Saxony, where he is turning Dresden into one of Europe's most beautiful cities (much painted, later in the century, by Bernardo Bellotto). Here Augustus commissions an early rococo palace, the Zwinger, designed by his court architect M.D. Pöppelmann and built in 1711-20. Restored after bombing, it now houses Dresden's art gallery.

In 1717 Pöppelmann creates for Augustus a palace on the banks of the Elbe in which 25,000 pieces of porcelain are displayed. Herein lies Augustus' greatest claim to fame, because some of the pieces come from his own royal porcelain factory at Meissen. 

The Prussian machine: 1701-1740

The new dignity achieved in 1701 by the Hohenzollern, as kings in Prussia, is only part of the reason for their growing prestige and power during the 18th century. Their underlying strength derives from the reform of the administration and the army undertaken by Frederick William (elector of Brandenburg from 1640, known as "the Great Elector") and continued by his son and grandson, the first two Prussian kings.

Frederick William's internal policy has two main features. He establishes a permanent system of taxation, thus removing from the estates general their main source of power; and he spends a large slice of the resulting revenue on a standing army.
 
This combination of an absolute monarch with a large and efficient army becomes
characteristic of Prussia. By the time of the Great Elector's grandson, Frederick William I,
 the Prussian army amounts to 80,000 men, consisting of 4% of the population.

The system devised for keeping this many men under arms makes possible the maintenance
 of a highly trained citizen army without damage to the economy. Half the army is made up 
of foreign mercenaries. The other half is a shifting population of peasants from Brandenburg
 and Prussia.



Each peasant is drafted into the army as a young man, but after completing his training
 he goes home to his everyday work for ten months of each year. Nobles are expected to serve their turn in the army too, but the mercantile classes are exempted.

By means of a tightly controlled and lean bureaucracy, Frederick William I manages
 to combine this level of mobilization with healthy government finances. In 1740 
he bequeaths to his son, Frederick II, a thriving economy, a large cash surplus and 
Europe's best-trained army. Better known as Frederick the Great, the son uses these advantages
 to immediate effect - beginning the real expansion of Prussian influence in both Germany and Europe.

Emerging states: 18th century

The dominant factor in 18th-century German history is undoubtedly the emergence of Prussia as 
the main rival to Austria, which has long been the leading state within the German empire. Prussia grows in stature for several reasons - through Frederick the Great's seizure of the rich province of Silesia, through the personal prestige acquired by Frederick himself, and through the vast gain of territory in the successive partitions of Poland.

But certain other states can also be identified at this time as likely players in the struggles which will eventually lead, in the 19th century, to a united Germany.


Saxony begins the 18th century as a very significant power. The state is weakened in subsequent decades, through disastrous involvement in Poland and because it lies between the arch-rivals Prussia and Austria. Even so, Saxony's size and large population give it an undeniable importance.

Hanover is the state which acquires an entirely new stature during the century, from the personal link with Britain after the elector succeeds to the British throne in 1714 as George I. In the wars of the 18th century Hanover has a special importance and exposure, as Britain's continental outpost. 

Bavaria, ruled by the Wittelsbachs, has played a major role in German history from early medieval times. In recent centuries a division between two branches of the family has somewhat reduced its status. From 1329 the western region goes its own way as the Palatinate of the Rhine. The split is accentuated in the Reformation, when the Palatinate becomes Protestant while Bavaria remains Roman Catholic.

The Palatinate returns to the Catholic fold in 1685 (when another branch of the Wittelsbachfamily succeeds to the throne), and by the end of the 18th century this line has recovered the entire inheritance. In 1777 the Bavarian line of the dynasty dies out. The region is reunited under the rule of the Palatine branch.


Prussia has been the first of these German states to achieve the high dignity of a kingdom, in 1701. The Napoleonic wars bring the same status to the other three (Bavaria in 1806, Saxony in 1807, Hanover in 1814). But the turmoil throughout Europe during the years of Napoleon's triumph confronts these German rulers with most alarming dilemmas.

During the 18th century the choice has only been whether self-interest is best advanced by siding with Austria or Prussia. In the Napoleonic period, the new option of an alliance with France greatly raises the stakes. Great advantage or serious damage will depend on the outcome of a long and complex sequence of war and diplomacy.


The profusion of principalities in the 18th century is of considerable benefit to Germany's cultural life. The princes compete against each other in the quality of the entertainment they can offer.

Johann Sebastian Bach is at the tiny court of Kô:then in 1721 when he writes the Brandenburg Concertos; later he is court composer to the elector of Saxony. Mannheim is famous for the quality of its music during much of the century, and in 1782 the court theatre puts on Schiller's first play. Weimar, an otherwise insignificant duchy, is perhaps the outstanding example. The presence of Goethe from 1775 and the involvement of Schiller from 1794 give this little place a period of immense distinction.

The German empire: 1871
The creation of the German empire, long a cherished intention of Bismarck's, is much eased by the Franco-Prussian war. When France declares war in 1870, the three independent south German states (Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria) place their armies under the command of the Prussian king, William I, in what is seen as an essentially German cause. After the victory at Sedan, talks are held to discuss possible German unification. By November terms are agreed. Minor concessions to Bavaria are devised to give the impression of semi-independence, but essentially this is to be a single state under Prussian leadership.
William I is extremely reluctant to accept the title of emperor, but Bismarck contrives to persuade him. His proclamation in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles (the symbol of French power and triumphalism) is sweet revenge for the humiliation of Prussia at Napoleon's hands in the early years of the century. In the treaty of Frankfurt France cedes Alsace and most of Lorraine to the new Germany, pays a masssive indemnity of 5000 million francs and suffers German occupation in part of France until the money is delivered (a precise echo of France's terms in 1807). As an added twist of the knife, Bismarck imposes a victory march of Prussian troops through the streets of Paris.
The reconstitution of the ancient German Reich, in a modern, compact, national form, brings back the Reichstag as a parliament. Meeting in Berlin, with delegates elected from all over the new nation, it is only a legislative body with little control over the executive. Now more firmly than ever, the executive is Bismarck himself - the first imperial chancellor. His German empire, like its medieval prototype, consists of clearly separate constituent states (4 kingdoms, 5 grand duchies, 13 duchies and principalities, and the free cities of Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen). But it is at last a nation, federal in kind but with strong central control. The story of Prussia becomes that of Germany.
The Iron Chancellor: 1871-1890
Bismarck acquires the name of Iron Chancellor partly because of his statement (as early as 1862) that a strong Prussia can only be achieved through a military policy which he describes, pithily, as one of Eisen und Blut (iron and blood). But the phrase is also appropriate to the rigidly authoritarian manner in which he maintains control of Germany during his long period in office. He is an essentially conservative politician, ruling in the interests of his own class - the Lutheran land-owning aristocrats of Prussia who are known as Junker(country squires).
The natural enemies of the Junker are the Catholics of southern Germany, on religious grounds, and the emerging left-wing parties on political grounds. Either group, if presented as a threat to the German state, can be used to rally national and imperial sentiments. Bismarck targets the Catholics first, in the struggle of the 1870s which becomes known as the Kulturkampf (culture battle). The battle is largely over education. The teaching ordershave traditionally been in charge of schools in Catholic kingdoms, but Bismarck now insists that the state should train and license priests. The struggle escalates to the point where two Catholic archbishops and many lesser prelates find themselves in prison.
The disadvantage of Bismarck's religious policy is that anti-clericalism is associated with liberal policies. The National Liberals (the largest party in the Reichstag) become Bismarck's allies, and the 1870s see the introduction of several liberal measures - the removal of many existing restrictions on personal freedom, greater autonomy for municipal councils and even, in 1874, freedom of the press. But these policies offend the Junker. Towards the end of the 1870s Bismarck changes tack. He mends his fences with Rome and introduces politically repressive measures. His target now is the Social Democrats, founded in 1875 as the first Marxistparty of national significance in Europe.
In the election of 1877 the Social Democrats win eleven seats in the Reichstag. In 1878 there are two assassination attempts on the emperor. Bismarck takes the opportunity of dissolving the Reichstag and calling new elections on the issue of 'the social peril'. A ban soon follows on Social Democrat activities. But Bismarck the paternalist is not above stealing some of their clothes to make his own bid for working class support. During the 1880s he introduces pioneering welfare policies, only later imitated in other countries. They include insurance for workers against accident and illness, and a state pensions policy.
In foreign affairs Bismarck is mainly concerned to preserve the European balance of power, of which Germany is now the central element. Elsewhere the most notable aspect of German foreign policy is the belated and hurried creation of a German empire in Africa. The purpose seems to be, as much as anything, to please nationalist feeling by competing directly with Britain. Bismarck does not long survive the death of his own emperor, William I, in 1888 - followed a few months later by that of Frederick III. The emperor of the third generation, William II, is out of sympathy with the aged chancellor on almost every issue. Bismarck puts up a desperate fight to retain power, but in 1890 he is forced to resign.
Uneasy years: 1890-1914
For the quarter of a century after Bismarck's fall, the political system which he has put in place causes political paralysis in Germany. The reason is the dichotomy between the democratic Reichstag, the parliament of the new united Germany, which is elected by universal suffrage; and the parliaments of the individual states, most of which are largely unreformed. By far the largest state is Prussia (30 million people compared to the next in size, Bavaria, with only 5 million), and Prussia is ruled on the most reactionary of systems. The electorate, voting in a non-secret ballot, is divided into three classes. This leaves all effective power in the hands of the Junker, the landed aristocracy.
By contrast the political complexion of the Reichstag becomes increasingly liberal. To the alarm of the ruling class, the party growing most steadily in strength is the Social Democrats. As Europe's leading Marxist party, they naturally provoke horror in Junker circles. But as they become more successful, the Social Democrats also become less extreme - inclining now to the view that change can come through the democratic process rather than revolution. By the time of the election of 1912, which makes them the largest single party in the Reichstag, they are a conventional democratic party. But, like all other members of the national parliament, they are virtually powerless.
The reason is that Bismarck, eager to ensure the unchanging autonomy of Prussia, decreed that direct taxes (the only fiscal threat to the upper classes) should remain the prerogative of the state parliaments and that the Reichstag should have power only over indirect taxation on consumer goods, which bears most heavily on the poorer sections of society. This intrinsic impasse contributes to the rapid downfall of several successive chancellors in the years after Bismarck. It also has the effect of leaving a great deal of power in the hands of the emperor, William II, and of his senior military advisers - a well-established but undemocratic group in the Prussian tradition.
The emperor himself, mainly interested in international affairs, is torn between a desire for peace and a determination to assert Germany's greatness in the wide world. By nature impulsive, his sudden gestures often rebound to Germany's disadvantage (as in his intervention in Morocco in 1904). But both he and his advisers are also to an extent trapped by the long-term strategies which they have devised to enhance and safeguard Germany's position among what are seen as inevitably hostile European neighbours. These strategies are associated in particular with two men: an admiral, Alfred von Tirpitz, and a general, Alfred von Schlieffen.

The diplomatic drift towards war: 1890-1914 In the years leading to World War I there are five major powers within Europe - Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France and Britain. The cast list is unchanged since the early 18th century (except that Prussia is now Germany), and the players are well used to the game of diplomacy in which alliances formed for defensive purposes turn into aggressive partnerships as soon as a new war develops (a circumstance considered almost inevitable sooner or later in the atmosphere of national rivalry). However the 19th century has introduced one new element in the form of very much shorter wars. If the Seven Years' Warcharacterizes the 18th century, the Seven Weeks' War is more typical of the 19th (the Franco-Prussian War is almost equally short).    The idea of rapid victory in a short war is particularly prevalent in Germany, the victor in both the Seven Weeks' War and the Franco-Prussian War. And the German nation is both more hungry for immediate success on the international stage than its rivals, and more nervous about succumbing to hostile alliances. The reasons are numerous. Germany has recently been transformed by Bismarck from a relatively minor player to potentially the most powerful nation in continental Europe. But as a late arrival on the world stage, it has no empire to match those of Britain, France and Russia. Nor, unlike them, has it a great navy - the most tangible symbol, perhaps, of international power.    German nervousness is increased during the 1890s when alliances among the European powers seem to be slipping beyond German control. Bismarck worked on the assumption of hostility from France (eager to avenge the loss of Alsace and Lorraine) and a neutral stance from Britain (historically the great rival of France). He therefore concentrated his efforts on creating alliances with his eastern neighbours, Russia and Austria-Hungary. To these he added Italy, a new nation on the verge of great power status within Europe. The Triple Alliance, agreed in 1882 between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, lasts until 1915.   Bismarck's chosen path is not easy, particularly since Austria-Hungary and Russia have conflicting spheres of interest in the unstable Balkans. As a result, while Austria-Hungary and Italy remain constant allies (the three nations become known from 1882 as the Central Powers of Europe), Bismarck is constantly having to patch up or renew the alliance with Russia under the pressure of international events. The careful edifice crumbles after Bismarck's dismissal in 1890. The new Kaiser, recognizing the incompatibility of Russia and Austria-Hungary as allies, breaks off the alliance with Russia. As a result Russia and France, both equally alarmed by Germany, begin secret negotiations - which result in the Franco-Russian alliance of 1894.    Then, even more surprisingly, in 1904 France and Britain agree an unprecedented Entente Cordiale. Austria-Hungary, a declining power, and the relatively weak Italy now seem to be Germany's only probable allies in a European conflict. And by this time many, particularly in Germany, feel that such a conflict cannot be far in the future. All the major nations have been preparing for such an eventuality, but Germany has done so in the most deliberate fashion.    The strategic drift towards war: 1890-1914 A popular buzz-word in Germany at this time is Weltpolitik('world politics'), meaning that the nation must assert itself on the international stage in order to claim its 'place in the sun' (another current phrase). To this end much pride is placed in the plan devised by Admiral von Tirpitz to provide the nation with a High Seas Fleet to match the naval forces of Britain. Tirpitz's demands on the Reichstag escalate in the inexorable pattern of any arms race. In 1898 he persuades the politicians to pass a Navy Law providing for a fleet of 16 battleships. Two years later a new Navy Law revises the figure to 38 battleships, with a completion date of 1917 for the full fleet.    This level will still be below that of the British navy, but Tirpitz argues that it will provide Germany with a Risikoflotte ('risk fleet'), meaning one too dangerous for Britain to attack. Britain radically upsets the calculation by introducing in 1906 a vastly more powerful class of battleship, the first of the famous 'dreadnoughts'. Germany follows suit, upgrading its production line to the new standard. To the German argument that Britain is escalating the stakes, Winston Churchill (when first lord of the admiralty in 1912) replies that for an island nation a powerful navy is a defensive necessity, whereas to Germany it is 'more in the nature of a luxury'.    Meanwhile the German strategy for the army in the event of war is both more secret and more illicit. It is the work of Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the general staff from 1891 to 1906. During the second half of the 1890s, when France and Russia are in alliance and it is accepted that a war must be fought on both fronts, Schlieffen devises a two-stage plan. A massive and rapid flanking attack will be made on France from the north, through Belgium (in total disregard of Belgium's neutrality), while a relatively light force holds at bay the Russians - who are likely to be slower in their mobilization. France will then be defeated in time to redirect the full German might against Russia.    In December 1912 the emperor William II and his military advisers hold a secret meeting in which they discuss the possible launch of a preventive war, on the basis of the Schlieffen Plan, to protect Germany's interests. Tirpitz argues for delay to give him more time to build up the fleet. His view prevails, but it is agreed that it will be essential to wait for not much more than two years. In 1913 the Reichstag passes a bill to increase the size of Germany's peacetime army, with a target of 800,000 men by the autumn of 1914. The other four players in this dangerous game are also now following suit. There is no evident reason for war. But policy, as if by stealth, seems to be making it inevitable.    Five weeks to war: 1914 The flashpoint comes in Bosnia on 28 June 1914, when a Serbian nationalist assassinates the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. This is a highly dramatic event, though less unusual then than now (since the turn of the century assassins have claimed the lives of a president of the USA, a king of Portugal and a king of Greece). But it is certainly not due cause for a world war. The mere five weeks between the shot fired in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip and the first declaration of war between the major powers demonstrates vividly the tangle in which Europe's statesmen have tied themselves.    The first reaction to the outrage at Sarajevo is from Vienna. To the Austrian emperor and his advisers the immediate requirement is to destroy the influence of Serbia, the mainstay of Slav resistance to Austria-Hungary in the Balkans. But the danger is that an invasion of Serbia may provoke Slav solidarity and thus war with Russia. So an urgent question is sent on July 4 to Berlin. Will Germany come to the assistance of Austria-Hungary if Russia intervenes on behalf of Serbia? Within two days an answer comes back in the affirmative. The Austrian emperor should deal with Serbia as he thinks fit.    Germany nevertheless hopes that Russia will hold back, leaving the Serbian crisis as a local affair between Vienna and Belgrade. Subsequently the Kaiser even sends telegrams to the Tsar urging this course of action. But if Russia does intervene, there will be one advantage to Germany. The subsequent war can be presented to the world as the result of Russian aggression. For three weeks there is a deceptive lull, partly owing to disagreements in Vienna and partly because Serbia makes conciliatory efforts to defuse the situation. Then suddenly, on July 28, Austria-Hungary declares war on its small neighbour. The following day, removing all chance of further diplomacy, an Austrian flotilla on the Danube bombards Belgrade.    In response Russia mobilizes her army, thus inevitably triggering the urgent launch by Germany of the Schlieffen Plan - for if Russia gains the advantage of amassing troops in the east, there will be no time for the preliminary defeat of France in the west. With her options thus seemingly reduced by strategic demands to only one, Germany impetuously declares war on Russia on August 1. Two days later she also declares war on France. During the night of the same day, August 3, German armies cross the border into Belgium, to begin the flanking movement which is intended to bring them rapidly down into northern France and so once again (echoes of 1871) to Paris.    This action brings in the fifth of the European powers. Britain's Entente Cordiale does not commit her to come to the defence of France, and many in the German high command expect her not to do so. But the violation of the neutrality of Belgium introduces an element which the Germans have either overlooked or have considered insignificant. Britain was one of the powers guaranteeing (in 1831 and again in 1839), to protect Belgium as 'an independent and perpetually neutral state'. Under this obligation Britain declares war on Germany on August 4. For the first time in 100 years all the major powers of Europe are at war. A mere five weeks and three days have passed since the unexpected event at Sarajevo.