The ascendancy of France, 1598-1715

by Henry Offley Wakeman

Frederick William was also by no means unmindful of the general welfare of his people. The constant want of money under which he laboured, was in itself enough to draw his attention to the fact, that the real weakness of his power lay in the sterile and poverty-stricken state of his country. To improve this, he set an excellent example of economy in the wise and careful management of his own domains, he promoted numerous schemes of industrial and commercial enterprise, and he cordially welcomed the Huguenot exiles from France, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, who brought into Brandenburg many of the finer manufactures, of which France had for some time had the monopoly.

War with Sweden, 1674.

This policy of steady but quiet centralisation and industrial development was rudely interrupted by the war of aggression undertaken by Louis XIV. against the Dutch. Frederick William was closely connected with the Dutch by marriage and by trade interests, and was one of the first of European sovereigns to draw the sword in their favour in 1673. Beaten hopelessly in the field by Turenne, he was obliged to withdraw from the struggle six months after he had declared war; but in the next year the increasing difficulties of Louis emboldened him again to enter the field. Louis, however, was prepared for this move, and the presence of 16,000 Brandenburgers on the Rhine was the signal of the advance of Charles XI. with a Swedish army on the road to Berlin. Frederick William at once hastened back to defend his capital, reached the Elbe in June 1675, and, dashing forward his cavalry between the two divisions of the Swedish army, seized Rathenow, and prevented their junction on the Havel. Battle of Fehrbellin, 1675. To do this he had been forced to leave the bulk of his infantry behind. Nevertheless, with the brilliance of decision which marks a great general, he determined to throw himself with the few troops which he had with him upon the Swedish column, which was retreating from Brandenburg, before they reached the pass of Fehrbellin. Pursuing them by forced marches, he came up with their rear-guard on the 17th of June, and on the 18th forced them to accept battle. The weight of numbers was sadly against him. He had but 6000 men against double the number of his enemies, but the Swedes were dispirited, and the elector, in spite of the advice of his generals, insisted on the attack. The battle was hotly contested, but Frederick William had the better position and the more effective artillery, and by nightfall a counter-charge, promptly delivered, carried destruction into the ranks of the enemy. They broke and fled in complete rout through the pass. The day of Fehrbellin is the first great victory of the power of Brandenburg-Prussia, the first step in the ladder which has led to Sadowa and Sedan. It is also the death-day of the military prestige of the Swedes in Europe. From the battle of Lützen to the battle of Fehrbellin, they had never been defeated except by superior numbers. They were now seen not to be able to hold their own with Brandenburg, for Fehrbellin was no isolated victory. The elector pushed on into Swedish Pomerania, victorious and almost unchallenged,—Wohlgart, Stettin, Stralsund and Greifswald fell successively into his hands. By October 1678 Sweden held not a foot of territory in Pomerania. Had it not been for her potent ally at Paris, the work of Gustavus Adolphus and of Oxenstjerna would have been completely undone long before the close of the century, and Frederick William would have been admittedly the master of the north. Treaty of S. Germain en Laye, 1679. But Louis XIV. insisted upon the full restoration to Sweden of all which she had lost as the price of peace, and the Great Elector had to sign the treaty of S. Germain en Laye in June 1679, by which France evacuated Cleves, which she had occupied and paid to Brandenburg the sum of 300,000 crowns, while Brandenburg restored to Sweden all her conquests in Pomerania, except a small strip of land on the Oder.

Monarchical revolution in Sweden.

Sweden thus emerged from an unsuccessful and mismanaged war, without payment of indemnity or substantial loss of territory. As things turned out she proved to be the gainer rather than the loser for her misfortunes, for they enabled her to rid herself of her incapable aristocratical government. Charles XI. did for Sweden what Frederick III. had done for Denmark. Taking advantage of the unpopularity of the government, he effected a revolution in favour of the Crown without difficulty. With the help of the clergy and the people the royal power was made absolute, and the domain lands, which the nobles had divided among themselves, were ordered to be restored. This destroyed at a blow a large part of the wealth of the noble class, and reduced them to a position of dependence upon the Crown. Charles proved himself worthy of the responsibility which he had undertaken. Until his death in 1697 Sweden was at peace, commerce revived, the abuses of the administration were rooted out, and the government carried on without the assistance of French subsidies. For eighteen years tranquillity reigned on the shores of the Baltic. The Great Elector and his son Frederick III. were busy with schemes of internal reform and personal aggrandisement. Denmark under Christian V. was mainly occupied with the pleasures and extravagances of a courtly magnificence, while Sweden was recovering from the evils of administration, brought about by the corrupt rule of the nobles during the king’s minority. The interest of the politics of the Baltic veers further north, where behind the swamps of the Neva and the Dniester the barbaric power of Russia was preparing to enter upon the stage of the civilised world.

Condition of Russia.

Russia is the last-born child of European civilisation. While the nations of the west were painfully hammering out their culture and their polity, under the leadership of the Church, in the school of feudalism, through the inspiration of Roman law, the thinly populated expanse of forest and morass, which stretches between the Baltic and the Ural mountains was subject to Tartar rule and made no claim to civilised life. Even Christianity, which might under happier circumstances have become a bond of union between the backward north and the cultured south, proved rather a hindrance than a help, on account of the enmity between the East and the West. Ivan the Terrible.As long as Constantinople stood, Moscow was its disciple and its ally; when Constantinople fell, Moscow claimed to be its heir, and its avenger. It was not till the days of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century that the domination of the Tartar was overthrown, and Russia began to be a nation and to enter into relations with other nations. Its prosperity was short-lived. The troublous times. Hardly had the breath left the body of the savage autocrat in 1584, than a period of anarchy and misery began, which has left its mark upon the country in the legal establishment of serfdom, and was only ended by the accession of the Romanoff dynasty to the throne in 1612.

Michael Romanoff.

Michael, the first of that ill-fated house, could do little more than repress the elements of disorder, and restore the authority of the Czar, but so well was this work done, that he was enabled to hand on to his son Alexis, on his death in 1645, a crown which was at once popular secure and despotic. Two dangers only threatened the infant state; one from the turbulent spirit of the local nobles, the boyárs, the other from the physical power wielded by the national guard, called the Streltsi, who played the part of the Prætorian guard, or the Janizaries, of the court of Moscow, and were always as ready to intimidate as to protect their sovereign. Reign of Alexis. In the earlier years of the reign of Alexis, however, all went well. In 1648 he began the march of Russia towards the south-east of Europe by assuming the protectorate of the Cossacks of the Ukraine, then in revolt against Poland, and succeeded in obtaining legal sanction for the absolute autocracy of the Czar, by the passing of a code, or constitution, which concentrated all the powers of the state in his hands. By these two measures, which established the internal polity of Russia, and indicated the direction of her foreign policy, Alexis may with some justice claim to have been the real founder of the greatness of his country. Unfortunately a change soon took place. The weak and amiable Czar fell quickly into the hands of courtiers and favourites. Corruption and faction asserted themselves among the boyárs. The government became disorganised. Sedition broke out in the chief towns, and more than once Alexis had to sacrifice his ministers to the fury of the populace, in order to save his own life. Even the Church was split into two by an ill-managed effort to revise the antiquated service-books, and the evils of ecclesiastical schism and religious persecution were added to those of domestic strife.

Reign of Theodore I.