The Thirty Years' War had far-reaching and untold consequences on Germany itself and indirectly on the course of modern civilization generally. For close upon a generation Central Europe had been ravaged from end to end by hostile and plundering armies. Rapine and destruction were, for near upon a third of the century, the common lot of the Germanic peoples from north to south and from east to west. Populations were as helpless as sheep before the brutal, criminal soldiery, recruited in many cases from the worst elements of every European country. The excesses of Mansfeld's mercenary army in the earlier stages of the war created widespread horror. But the defeat and death of Mansfeld brought no alleviation. The troops of Wallenstein proved no better in this respect than those of Mansfeld. On the contrary, with every year the war went on its horrors increased, while every trace of principle in the struggle fell more and more into the background. Everywhere was ruin.
The population became by the time the war had ended a mere fraction of what it was at the opening of the seventeenth century. Some idea of the state of things may be gathered from the instance of Augsburg, which during its siege by the Imperialists was reduced from 70,000 to 10,000 inhabitants. What happened to the great commercial city of the Fuggers was taking place on a scale greater or less, according to the district, all over German territory. We read of towns and villages that were pillaged more than a dozen times in a year. This terrific depopulation of the country, the reader may well understand, had vast results on its civilization. The whole great structure of Mediæval and Renaissance Germany—its literature, art, and social life—was in ruins. At the close of the seventeenth century the old German culture had gone and the new had not yet arisen. But of this we shall have more to say in the next chapter. For the present we are chiefly concerned to give a brief sketch of the second great epoch-making event, or rather train of events, which conditioned the foundation and development of modern Germany. We refer, of course, to the rise of the Prussian monarchy.
We should premise that the Prussians are the least German of all the populations of what constitutes modern Germany. They are more than half Slavs. In the early Middle Ages the Mark of Brandenburg, the centre and chief province of the modern Prussian State, was an outlying offshoot of the mediæval Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, surrounded by barbaric tribes, Slav and Teuton. The chief Slav people were the Borussians, from which the name "Prussian" was a corruption. The first outstanding historic fact concerning these Baltic lands is that a certain Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, at the end of the tenth century went north on a mission of enterprise for converting the Prussian heathen. The neighbouring Christian prince, the Duke of Poland, who had presumably suffered much from incursions of these pagan Slavs, offered him every encouragement. The adventure ended, however, before long in the death of Adalbert at the hands of these same pagan Slavs.
The first indication of the existence of a Mark of Brandenburg with its Markgraves is in the eleventh century. There is, however, little definite historical information concerning them. The first of these Markgraves to attract attention was Albrecht the Bear, one of the so-called Ascanian line, the family hailing from the Harz Mountains. Albrecht was a remarkable man for his time in every way. Under him the Markgravate of Brandenburg was raised to be an electorate of the empire. The Markgrave thus became a prince of the empire. It was Albrecht the Bear who first introduced a limited measure of peace and order into the hitherto anarchic condition of the Mark and its adjacent territories. The Ascanian line continued till 1319, and was followed by a period of political anarchy and disturbance, until finally Friedrich, Count of Hohenzollern, acquired the electorate, and became known as the Elector Friedrich I. Meanwhile the Order of the Teutonic Knights, who earlier began their famous crusade against the Borussian heathens, had established themselves on the territories now known as East and West Prussia. In spite of this fact and of the for long time dominant power of their Polish neighbours, the Hohenzollern rulers continued to acquire increased power and fresh territories.
At the Reformation Albrecht, a scion of the Hohenzollern family, who had been elected Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, adopted Protestantism and assumed the title of Duke of Prussia. Finally, in 1609, the then Elector of Brandenburg, John Sigismund, through his marriage with Ann, daughter and heiress of Albrecht Friedrich, Duke of Prussia, came into possession of the whole of Prussia proper, together with other adjacent territories. The Prussian lands suffered much through the Thirty Years' War during the reign of John Sigismund's successor, George Wilhelm. But the latter's son, Friedrich Wilhelm, the so-called Great Elector, succeeded by his ability in repairing the ravages the war had made and raising the electorate immensely in political importance. He left at his death, in 1688, the financial condition of the country in a sound state, with an effective army of 38,000 men. Friedrich I, who followed him, held matters together and got Prussia promoted to the rank of a kingdom in 1701. His son, Friedrich Wilhelm I, by rigid economies succeeded in raising the financial condition of the kingdom to a still higher level. The military power of the monarchy he also developed considerably, and is famous in history for his mania for tall soldiers.
We now come to the real founder of the Prussian monarchy as a great European Power, Friedrich Wilhelm I's son, who succeeded his father in 1740 as Friedrich II, and who is known to history as Friedrich the Great.
Friedrich no sooner came to the throne than he started on an aggressive expansionist policy for Prussia. The opportunity presented itself a few months after his accession by the dispute as to the Pragmatic Sanction and Maria Theresa's right to the throne of Austria. In the two wars which immediately followed, the Prussian army overran the whole of Silesia, and the peace of 1745 left the Prussian King in possession of the entire country. East Friesland had already been absorbed the year before on the death of the last Duke without issue. In spite of the exhaustion of men and money in the two Silesian wars, Friedrich found himself ready with both men and money eleven years later, in 1756, to embark upon what is known as the Seven Years' War. Though without acquiring fresh territory by this war, the gain in prestige was so great that the Prussian monarchy virtually assumed the hegemony of North Germany, becoming the rival of Austria for the domination of Central Europe, the position in which it remained for more than a century afterwards. Nevertheless, after this succession of wars the condition of the country was deplorable. It was obvious that the first thing to do was the work of internal resuscitation. The extraordinary ability and energy of the King saved the internal situation. Agriculture, industry, and commerce were re-established and reorganized. It was now that the cast-iron system of bureaucratic administration, where not actually created, was placed on a firm foundation. But in external affairs Prussia continued to earn its character as the robber State of Europe par excellence.
In 1772 Friedrich joined with Austria in the first partition of Poland, acquiring the whole of West Prussia as his share. A few years later Friedrich formed an anti-Austrian league of German princes, under Prussian leadership, which was the first overt sign of the conflict for supremacy in Germany between Prussia and Austria, which lasted for wellnigh a century. By the time of his death—August 7, 1786—Friedrich had increased Prussian territory to nearly 75,000 square miles and between five and six millions of population.
Under Friedrich's nephew, Friedrich Wilhelm II, while the rigour of bureaucratic administration, controlled by a monarchical absolutism, continued and was even accentuated, the absence of the able hand of Friedrich the Great soon made itself apparent. As regards external policy, however, Prussia, while allowing territories on the left bank of the Rhine to go to France, eagerly saw to the increase of her own dominions in the east to the extent of nearly doubling her superficial area by her participation in the second and third partitions of Poland, which took place in 1783 and 1795 respectively. These external successes, or rather acts of spoliation, were, notwithstanding, counter-balanced at home by a degeneracy alike of the civil bureaucracy and of the army. The country internally, both as regards morale and effectiveness, had sunk far below its level under Friedrich the Great. This showed itself during the great Napoleonic wars, when Prussia had to undergo more than one humiliation at the hands of Buonaparte, culminating in October 1806 with the collapse of the Prussian armies at Jena and Auerstädt. The entry of Napoleon in triumph into Berlin followed. At the Peace of Tilsit, in 1807, Friedrich-Wilhelm had to sign away half his kingdom and to consent to the payment of a heavy war indemnity, pending which the French troops occupied the most important fortresses in the country.
Following upon this moment of deepest national humiliation comes the period of the Ministers Stein and Hardenberg, of the enthusiastic adjurations to patriotism of Fischer and others, and of the activity of the "League of Virtue" (Tugendbund). It is difficult to understand the enthusiasm that could be aroused for the rehabilitation of an absolutist, bureaucratic, and militarist State, such as Prussia was—a State in which civil and political liberty was conspicuous by its absence. But the fact undoubtedly remains that the men in question did succeed in pumping up a strong patriotic feeling and desire to free the country from the yoke of the foreigner, even if that only meant increased domestic tyranny. It must be admitted, however, that as a matter of fact not inconsiderable internal reforms were owing to the leading men of this time. Stein abolished serfdom, and in some respects did away with the legal distinction of classes, thereby paving the way for the rise of the middle class, which at that time meant a progressive step. He also conferred rights of self-government upon municipalities. Hardenberg inaugurated measures intended to ameliorate the condition of the peasants, while Wilhelm von Humboldt established the thorough if somewhat mechanical education system which was subsequently extended throughout Germany. He also helped to found the University of Berlin in 1809.