A Short History of Germany

by Mary Platt Parmele

But the long war outlived the enthusiasm it had created. England grew tired of fighting for the Hapsburgs; there were court intrigues for Marlborough's downfall, and finally he was recalled, and cast aside like a rusty sword. Louis, too, had grown old and weary, and so in 1713 the Peace of Utrecht terminated the long struggle. Philip V. was left upon the throne of Spain, with the condition that the crowns of Spain and France should never be united.

The disappointed Archduke Karl had now succeeded to the Imperial throne as Karl VI. If the life of a nation be in its people, there was really no Germany at this time. There was nothing but a wearisome succession of wars and diplomatic intrigues, and new divisions and apportionments of territory. Prussia was expanding and Poland declining, while Hungary and Naples, and Milan and Mantua, were fast in the grasp of Austria. Indeed, to tell of the territorial changes occurring at this period is like painting a picture of dissolving elements, which form new combinations even as you look at them.

At the North, too, there were these same changing combinations, where had arisen two new ambitious kings. Charles XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia were at war; and Denmark and Poland were lending a hand to defeat the Swedish King. Peter the Great was extending his Baltic provinces and preparing to build his new capital of St. Petersburg (1709); but Charles XII. was defeated by Prussia and Hanover, in his attempt to make of Sweden one of the great powers of Europe. His death in 1718 ended that dream.

Not since the infamous Irene's deposition at Byzantium had there been a woman on the throne of the Cæsars. When Karl VI. issued the decree called the "Pragmatic Sanction," providing that the crown should descend to female heirs in the absence of male, he forged one of the most important links in the chain of events. This secured the succession to his little daughter Maria Theresa, who was born in 1717. The link had need to be a strong one, for there were to be twenty years of effort to break it. But it held.

At about this same time there was another important link forging in Prussia, where Frederick William I. had succeeded his father Frederick I. as king. By these two events the long spell was to be broken.

Volumes have been written about this fierce, miserly King Frederick William and his coarse brutalities. But his reign was the rough, strong bridge which led to a Frederick the Great, and the reign of the Great Frederick was that other bridge which led to a powerful and dominating kingdom of Prussia,—from which was to spring a new German Empire!

If Frederick William was a tyrant of the most savage sort, on the other hand he organized industry, finance, and an army. If he was a miser in his family, he brought wealth and prosperity to his people. If he beat and cudgeled his own son for playing the flute, he left that son a kingdom and an army which were the foundation of his greatness.

His hatred for all that was French, for art, for the formalities and even the decencies of life, was an enraged protest against the prevailing affectations and artificiality of his time.

We can imagine how the polished and refined Court at Vienna must have regarded this Prussian King. Austria, entirely Catholic, in a state of moral and intellectual decline, sat looking backward and sighing for the return of the spirit of the Middle Ages. Prussia, altogether Protestant, had set her face toward a future which was to be greater than she dreamed.

In 1736 Maria Theresa was married to Francis of Lorraine. In 1740 she succeeded her father Karl VI., on the Imperial throne; and that very same year Frederick William of Prussia died, and was succeeded by his son, who was to be known as Frederick the Great.