A Short History of Germany

by Mary Platt Parmele

From the year 1667 until 1704 Germany was the center of the Grand Monarch's ambitious designs. In 1687, while Prince Eugene was leading a German army against the Turks, and while German princes, excepting the Great Elector, were engaged in copying French fashions, two powerful French armies suddenly appeared upon the Rhine, and the great war which was to involve all Europe had commenced.

It was not love for Germany which brought Holland, England, Spain, and Sweden into this war with France, but fear of the advancing power of a King who aspired to be supreme in Europe.

In the year 1700, an event occurred which intensified the situation. Charles II., the last of the half Castilian and half Hapsburg kings of Spain descended from Charles V., died without children, and that country was looking for the next nearest heir in foreign lands from which to choose a new king. Of the two it found, one was son of the Emperor of Germany and the other grandson of Louis XIV. It was a choice of evils for Europe; as in one case the German Empire with Spain annexed would be a preponderating power, as in the time of Charles V.; and in the other, the grasping Louis would be far on the road to the very end which Europe had combined to defeat!

Inflammable oil, poured on fire, does not make a fiercer blaze than did this question of the Spanish Succession at that time. The embarrassing thing for Louis was that, when he had married the Infanta, he had solemnly renounced the throne of Spain for her heirs! But the Pope, with whom the ultimate decision lay, had more need of the rising house of Bourbon than of the waning Hapsburg, so, after "prayerful deliberation," he concluded that the King might be absolved from that little promise, and that Philip V. was rightful King of Spain.

There was rage in Vienna. The Emperor Leopold I. and his disappointed son the Archduke Karl declared they would wrest the throne from Philip and have vengeance upon Louis, who with swelling pride was declaring that "the Pyrenees had ceased to exist."

When Leopold called upon the German states to arm, the Great Elector of Brandenburg was dead. But his son Frederick took advantage of the opportunity. He would assist the Emperor on one condition, that he be permitted to assume the title of King! An embarrassment arose in the fact that traditional custom permitted only one King among the Electors (King of Bohemia), and therefore the Elector of Brandenburg could not be also King of Brandenburg.

The difficulty was overcome by adopting for the new kingdom the name of his detached duchy of Prussia, that province which had been snatched from Russia by the Teutonic knights long before, and had then been appropriated by that masterful Hohenzollern who was then head of the Order, as his own kingdom. It was this high-handed proceeding which thereafter inseparably linked the name of Hohenzollern with that of Prussia.

So, in 1701, the Elector and his wife traveled in midwinter to Königsberg, almost in the confines of Russia, where he was crowned Frederick I. of Prussia, and then returned to Berlin in Brandenburg, which thereafter remained his capital. And so it was that Prussia—the name of a small Slavonic people on the frontier—became that of the entire kingdom of which Berlin was the capital.

England and Holland were in alliance with Leopold—not for the sake of setting up the Hapsburg, but rather to put down the great Bourbon who began to wear the prestige of invincibility. England entered the alliance languidly at first, but when the French king threw down the glove by recognizing the exiled Stuart (son of James II.) as the heir to her throne, she needed no urging and sent the best of her army into Germany under the command of the man who was going to destroy that prestige of invincibility, and to hold in check the arrogant king.

Marlborough and Prince Eugene formed a combination too strong for Louis. Marlborough's great victory at Blenheim in 1704 virtually decided the contest, although it continued for many years longer. He was created Duke of Marlborough and received the estate of Blenheim as his reward.