The Reformation of the sixteenth century won the submission not only of the German colonists but of three-quarters of the nobility in the great republic of Poland; and toward 1590 about seventy out of a hundred parishes in the Slavic district of Pomerelia were Protestant. It seemed for a short time as if a new commonwealth and a new culture were about to develop in the Slavic East—a great Polish State with German elements in the cities. But the introduction of the Jesuits brought an unsalutary change. The Polish nobility returned to the Catholic Church: in the Jesuit schools their sons were trained to proselytizing fanaticism, and from that time on the Polish State declined, conditions becoming worse and worse.
The attitude of the Germans in West Prussia was not uniform toward the proselytizing Jesuits and Slavic tyranny. A large proportion of the immigrant German nobles became Catholic and Polish; the townsmen and peasants remained for the most part obstinately Protestant. So there was added to the conflict in language conflict in religious creed, and to race hatred a religious frenzy. In this century of enlightenment the persecution of Germans in these districts became fanatical. One church after another was torn down, the wooden ones set on fire, and after the church was burned the village had lost its right to a parish: German preachers and school teachers were driven out and disgracefully maltreated. "Vexa Lutheranum dabit thalerum" ("harry a Lutheran and he will give up a thaler") was the usual motto of the Poles against the Germans. One of the greatest landowners in the country, a certain Unruh of the Birnbaum family, the starost of Gnesen, was sentenced to die, after having his tongue pulled out and his hands chopped off, because he had copied from German books into a notebook sarcastic remarks about the Jesuits. There was no more justice, no more safety. The national party of the Polish nobility, in alliance with fanatic priests, persecuted most passionately those whom they hated as Germans and Protestants. All sorts of plunder-loving rabble collected on the side of the "patriots" or "confederates." They collected into bands, overran the country in search of plunder, and fell upon the smaller towns and German villages, not only from religious zeal, but still more from the greed of booty. The Polish nobleman Roskowsky wore boots of different colors, a red one to indicate fire, and a black one for death. Thus he rode, levying blackmail, from one place to another, and in Jastrow he had the hands, the feet, and finally the head of the Protestant preacher Willich cut off and thrown into a swamp. This happened in 1768.
Such was the condition of the country just before the Prussian occupation. It was a state of things that might perhaps be found now in Bosnia, but would be unheard of in the most wretched corner of Christian Europe.
While still only a boy of twelve in the palace in Berlin, Frederick the Great had been reminded by his father's anger and sorrow that the kings of Prussia had a duty as protectors toward the German colonies on the Vistula. For in 1724 a loud call from that quarter for help had rung through Germany, and the bloody tragedy at Thorn became an important subject of public interest and of diplomacy. During a procession which the Jesuits were conducting through the city, some Polish nobles of the Jesuit college had insulted some citizens and schoolboys, and the angered populace had broken into the Jesuit school and college and inflicted damage. This petty street-riot had been brought up in the Polish parliament, sitting as a trial court, and the parliament, after a passionate speech by the leader of the Jesuits, had condemned to death the two burgomasters of the city and sixteen citizens; whereupon the Jesuit party hastened to put to death the head burgomaster, Rössner, and nine citizens, in some cases with barbarous cruelty. The church of St. Mary was taken from the Protestants, the clergymen driven out, and the school closed. King Frederick William had tried in vain at the time to help the unfortunate city. He had prevailed upon all the neighboring powers to send stern notes, and had felt himself bitterly grieved and humiliated when all his representations were disregarded; now after fifty years his son came to put an end to this barbarous disorder, and to unite again with Prussia this land which before the Polish sovereignty had belonged to the Teutonic order.
[Illustration: FREDERICK THE GREAT ON A PLEASURE TRIP From the Painting by Adolph von Menzel]
Danzig, to be sure, indispensable to the Poles, maintained itself through these decades of disorder in aristocratic seclusion. It remained a free city under Slavic protection, for a long time suspicious of the great King and not well disposed toward him. Thorn also had to wait twenty years longer in oppression, separated from the other German colonies, as a Polish border city. But the energetic assistance of the King saved the country and most of the German towns from destruction. The Prussian officials who were sent into the country were astonished at the desolation of the unheard-of situation which existed but a few days' journey from their capital. Only certain larger towns, in which the German life had been protected by strong walls and the old market traffic, and some sheltered country districts, inhabited exclusively by Germans (such as the lowlands near Danzig, the villages under the mild rule of the Cistercians of Oliva, and the prosperous German places of the Catholic Ermeland), were left in tolerable condition. Other towns lay in ruins, as did most of the farmsteads of the open country. The Prussians found Bromberg, a German colonial city, in ruins; and it is even yet impossible to determine exactly how the city came into that condition. In fact, the vicissitudes which the whole Netze district had undergone in the last nine years before the Prussian occupation are completely unknown. No historian, no document, no chronicle, gives reports of the destruction and the slaughter which must have raged there. Evidently the Polish factions fought between themselves, and crop failures and pestilence may have done the rest. Kulm had preserved from an earlier time its well-built walls and stately churches, but in the streets the foundation walls of the cellars stood out of the decaying wood and broken tiles of the crumbled buildings. There were whole streets of nothing but such cellar rooms in which wretched people lived. Of the forty houses of the main market-place twenty-eight had no doors, no roofs, no windows, and no owners. Other cities were in a similar condition.
The majority of the country people also lived in circumstances which seemed pitiable to the King's officers, especially on the borders of Pomerania, where the Wendish Cassubians dwelt. Whoever approached a village there saw gray huts with ragged thatch on a bare plain without a tree, without a garden—only the wild cherry-trees were indigenous. The houses were built of poles daubed with clay. The entrance door opened into a room with a great fireplace and no chimney; heating stoves were unknown. Seldom was a candle lighted, only pineknots brightened the darkness of the long winter evenings. The chief article of the wretched furniture was a crucifix with a holy water basin below. The filthy and uncouth people lived on rye porridge, often on herbs which they cooked like cabbage in a soup, on herrings, and on brandy, to which women as well as men were addicted. Bread was baked only by the richest. Many had never in their lives tasted such a delicacy; few villages had an oven. If the people ever kept bees they sold the honey to the city dwellers, they also trafficked in carved spoons and stolen bark; in exchange for these they got at the fairs their coarse blue cloth coats, black fur caps, and bright red kerchiefs for the women. Looms were rare and spinning-wheels were unknown. The Prussians heard there no popular songs, no dances, no music—pleasures which even the most wretched Pole does not give up; stupid and clumsy, the people drank their wretched brandy, fought, and fell into the corners. And the country nobility were hardly different from the peasants; they drove their own primitive plows and clattered about in wooden shoes on the earthen floors of their cottages. It was difficult even for the King of Prussia to help these people. Only the potato spread quickly; but for a long time the fruit-trees which had been planted by order were destroyed by the people, and all other attempts at promoting agriculture met with opposition.
Just as poverty-stricken and ruined were the border districts with a Polish population. But the Polish peasant in all his poverty and disorder at least kept the greater vivacity of his race. Even on the estates of the higher nobility, of the starosts, and of the crown, all the farm buildings were dilapidated and useless. Any one who wished to send a letter must employ a special messenger, for there was no post in the country. To be sure, no need was felt of one in the villages, for most of the nobility knew no more of reading and writing than the peasants. If any one fell ill, he found no help but the secret remedies of some old village crone, for there was not an apothecary in the whole country. If any one needed a coat he could do no better than take needle in hand himself—for many miles there was no tailor, unless one of the trade made a trip through the country on the chances of finding work. If any one wished to build a house he must provide for artisans from the West as best he could. The country people were still living in a hopeless struggle with the packs of wolves, and there were few villages in which every winter men and animals were not decimated. If the smallpox broke out, or any other contagious disease came upon the country, the people saw the white image of pestilence flying through the air and alighting upon their cottages; they knew what such an apparition meant: it was the desolation of their homes, the wiping out of whole communities; and with gloomy resignation they awaited their fate. There was hardly anything like justice in the country. Only the larger cities maintained powerless courts. The noblemen and the starosts inflicted their punishments with unrestrained caprice. They habitually beat and threw into horrible dungeons not only the peasants but the citizens of the country towns who were ruled by them or fell into their hands. In the quarrels which they had with one another, they fought by bribery in the few courts which had jurisdiction over them. In later years that too had almost ceased. They sought vengeance with their own resources, by sudden onslaughts and bloody sword-play.
It was in reality an abandoned country without discipline, without law, without masters. It was a desert; on about 13,000 square miles 500,000 people lived, less than forty to a square mile. And the Prussian King treated his acquisition like an uninhabited prairie. He located boundary stones almost at his pleasure, then moved them some miles farther again. Up to the present time the tradition remains in Ermeland, the district around Heilberg and Braunsberg, with twelve towns and a hundred villages, that two Prussian drummers with twelve men conquered all Ermeland with four drumsticks. And then the King in his magnificent manner began to build up the country. He was attracted by precisely these run-down conditions, and West Prussia henceforth became, as Silesia had been before, his favorite child, which with infinite care, like a dutiful mother, he washed and brushed, provided with new clothes, forced into school and good behavior, and never let out of his sight. The diplomatic negotiations about the conquest were still going on when he sent a troop of his best officials into the wilderness. The territory was subdivided into small districts, in the shortest possible time the whole land area was appraised and equitably taxed, each district provided with a provincial magistrate, with a court, and with post-offices and sanitary police. New parishes were called into life as if by magic, a company of 187 school teachers was brought into the country—the worthy Semler had chosen and drilled part of them—and squads of German artisans were got together, from the machinist down to the brickmaker. Everywhere was heard the bustle of digging, hammering, building. The cities were filled with colonists, street after street rose from the ruins, the estates of the starosts were changed into crown estates, new villages of colonists were laid out, new agricultural enterprises ordered. In the first year after the occupation the great canal was dug, which in a course of a dozen miles or so unites the Vistula by way of the Netze with the Oder and the Elbe. A year after the King issued the order for the canal he saw with his own eyes laden Oder barges 120 feet long enter the Vistula, bound east. Through the new waterway broad stretches of land were drained and immediately filled with German colonists. Incessantly the King urged on, praised, and censured. However great the zeal of his officials was, it was seldom able to satisfy him. In this way, in a few years, the wild Slavic weeds which had sprung up here and there even over the German fields were brought under control, and the Polish districts, too, got used to the orderliness of the new life; and West Prussia showed itself, in the wars after 1806, almost as stoutly Prussian as the old provinces.
While the gray-haired King planned and created, year after year passed over his thoughtful head. His surroundings became stiller and more solitary; the circle of men whom he took into his confidence became smaller. He had laid aside his flute, and the new French literature appeared to him shallow and tedious. Sometimes it seemed to him as if a new life were budding under him in Germany, but he was a stranger to it. He worked untiringly for his army and for the prosperity of his people; the instruments he used were of less and less importance to him, while his feeling for the great duties of his crown became ever loftier and more passionate.