If the Thirty Years' War had produced any form of national consolidation, if it had increased the authority of the Empire or resulted in the absorption of the smaller States by the larger, that would at least have been some compensation to Germany for its long and terrible ordeal. But exactly the opposite was the case. The war ceased simply because no one had the will or the strength to continue it, and a miserable compromise was the result. The only gainers were the Princes, who, as the wielders of the armed forces, had been able to enhance their power, and now acquired a larger measure of independence in their relationships to the Emperor. Their number remained legion. In the Germany mapped out by the Westphalian negotiators there were eight electors, sixty-nine spiritual and ninety-six temporal Princes, sixty-one imperial towns, and a multitude of Counts and Barons exercising various degrees of sovereign power.
Frederick William's claim to the title "Great," which was bestowed upon him by his own generation, has been contested, but may be allowed to pass. As military leader, diplomatist, organizer, and administrator, he certainly had unusual gifts. Above all, he excelled in duplicity and treachery. The most eminent living German historian has said of him that "both in internal and external politics he acted with an unscrupulousness so manifest that it cannot be palliated," and can find no better excuse for his many deeds of "faithlessness" and "double-dealing" than that, in this respect, he was merely "the master of the diplomatic art of his day." The Elector was actuated solely by his own personal and dynastic interests, and was utterly devoid of "German" patriotism, for in return for the liberal subsidies on which he prospered, he undertook, in a secret treaty, to support the candidature of the French King or Dauphin for the Imperial German throne, and he was mainly responsible for the truce which left Strasburg in French hands for nearly two centuries. During the incessant wars which filled up most of his reign he fought both with and against every other belligerent. His sword was always at the disposal of the highest bidder, either of hard cash or of territorial extension, and by adroit choice of the moment for changing sides he generally made a profitable bargain. True, he was obliged to restore the western portion of Pomerania which he had conquered from the Swedes, but he obtained a much more important acquisition—the recognition of his full sovereignty in what is now East Prussia.
That region had been wrested from the Slavs by the German orders of chivalry, founded at the time of the Crusades, and had subsequently become an evangelical duchy, ruled by a junior branch of the house of Hohenzollern, as a fief of the Kingdom of Poland. On the extinction of the ducal line, it had reverted to the rulers of Brandenburg, and by a timely sale of his military assistance, first to the Swedes and then to the Poles, the Great Elector induced both to admit his unrestricted and unqualified rights of sovereignty in the duchy. His successor persuaded the Emperor to agree to his assumption of the kingly title for this territory, and it is an interesting fact—especially in view of the last development of the German Empire, which in its present constitutional form and in much else is dependent upon Catholic support—that this elevation was largely brought about by the intervention of two Jesuit fathers. It was from the Kingdom of Prussia which was thus established, and which was a completely independent State altogether outside the competencies of the Holy Roman Empire, that arose the Hohenzollern ascendency in Germany, and round it that the new German Empire crystallized. For this reason the episode is quite germane to our present purpose.
The Germans excel as diligent pupils and patient imitators, and the Great Elector was no exception to this rule. From his fourteenth to his eighteenth year he had been educated under the care of Frederick Henry, the Statthalter of Holland, then the chief Sea-Power of the world, from whom he had imbibed many ideas as to the importance of navies, colonies, and sea-borne trade. His connection with the Netherlands was maintained and strengthened by his marriage with an Orange Princess, the aunt of William III. of England, and many Dutchmen entered his service. Among them was an ex-admiral, Gijsels by name, who assiduously kept alive the dreams of sea-power which the Elector had brought back with him from Holland. It was on his prompting that, in 1659, when Frederick William was embroiled with the Swedes, and found his operations hampered by the lack of a fleet, an enquiry as to the possibility of remedying this deficiency was ordered by the Elector. The investigation resulted, for the time being, only in the compilation of a memorandum as to a "Brandenburg-Imperial admiralty," and some fruitless attempts to obtain ships in the Netherlands.
But Gijsels' projects went far beyond a mere fleet. All the world was then discussing the colonizing activity of the western European States, and Frederick William's predecessor on the Electoral throne had conceived abortive plans for founding an East Indian trading company. What the ex-admiral proposed to the Elector in 1660 was, that Brandenburg, Austria, and Spain should combine for the purpose of securing a colonial ascendency, which was to be arrived at by playing off England, France, and Holland against one another. Negotiations to this end seem actually to have been commenced, but they broke down over the jealous suspicions of the diplomatists approached, and the perpetual turning of the European kaleidoscope.
During the next fifteen years the idea of a Brandenburg navy appears to have been allowed to sleep. In the meantime a very remarkable book had been published, which should be mentioned here because it contains the essential elements of the programme of the most modern naval agitation in Germany. The author was Johann Becher, by profession a chemist, but in his leisure a political seer of the type of Friedrich List, whose great forerunner he was. His work, "Political Discourse on the Causes of the Rise and Decline of Towns and Countries," was published in 1667. Becher had travelled much, and he wrote:
"In Germany there is hardly any longer trade or commerce; all business is going to ruin; no money is to be found with either great or small; on the other hand look at Holland, how rich she is and how she grows richer every day; that could not be if she feared the sea as much as our nation of High Germany."
Becher then addressed to his countrymen the following impassioned exhortation:
"Up, then, brave German; act so that on the map, besides New Spain, New France, New England, there shall in the future be found also New Germany. You are as little lacking as other nations in the intelligence and resolution to do such things; yea, you have all that is necessary; you are soldiers and peasants, alert, laborious, diligent, and indefatigable."
Becher had held positions at various German Courts, and it is not improbable that his appeal fell upon sympathetic ears among the entourage of the Great Elector. But however that may be, the war of Denmark and Brandenburg against Sweden, which broke out in 1675, did actually, for the first time in history, witness a fleet at the disposal of a member of the dynasty that now occupies the imperial throne in Germany. True, it was not yet the actual property of the Elector, but of Benjamin Raule, an enterprising Dutch merchant, who had migrated to Denmark, and now laid a naval project before the Brandenburg sovereign. His proposals were readily acceded to, and he received permission to fit out a flotilla of two frigates and ten smaller vessels, and to operate with them under the Brandenburg flag against the Swedes. The Elector merely stipulated that he should receive 6 per cent. of the value of all prizes captured. Raule's vessels rendered substantial service in the capture of Stettin, and of that much-coveted strip of the Pomeranian coast which was so essential to the realisation of Frederick William's maritime aspirations.