[1648 - 1806] The Rise of Prussia

In the year 1648, the heart of Europe lay shattered. The Thirty Years' War, a cataclysm of religious fervor and political ambition, had concluded, leaving behind a landscape of ruin and ghosts. In this scarred world, the territory of Brandenburg-Prussia was little more than a footnote—a scattered collection of lands stretching from the Rhine to the borders of Poland, disconnected, depopulated, and impoverished. Its ruler, Frederick William, later known as the 'Great Elector,' surveyed his inheritance not with pride, but with grim determination. His lands had been a playground for foreign armies, his people decimated. Berlin, his capital, was a provincial town of barely 6,000 souls. Survival, not glory, was the order of the day. But in this desperation, a seed of radical change was planted. Frederick William understood a brutal truth of his age: to be without an army was to be a victim. He would not be a victim. He embarked on a path that would define Prussia for the next two centuries. He established a standing army, a permanent, professional force loyal only to him. This was a shocking expense for such a poor state, funded by new taxes that crushed the traditional power of the noble estates. He created a centralized bureaucracy, the General War Commissariat, whose initial purpose was to supply the army but soon grew to oversee every aspect of the state. This was the birth of the famously efficient, if rigid, Prussian civil service. To repopulate his lands and import vital skills, he opened his borders, most famously welcoming over 20,000 Huguenot refugees fleeing persecution in France. These artisans and merchants brought with them new technologies, particularly in textiles, breathing life into the stagnant economy. The Great Elector’s son, Frederick I, was a man of different tastes. Where his father saw the state as a barracks, he envisioned it as a court. He craved the legitimacy and splendor of other European monarchs. His great prize came in 1701. In exchange for promising military aid to the Holy Roman Emperor in the War of the Spanish Succession, he was granted a crown. He could not be 'King of Prussia,' as part of it still lay within the Polish kingdom, but he became 'King *in* Prussia.' The distinction was subtle, but the elevation in status was monumental. Frederick I poured money into the arts and sciences, founding academies and building opulent palaces like Charlottenburg, its baroque façade and lavish interiors a stark contrast to his father’s austerity. He transformed Berlin into a cultural center, though it nearly bankrupted the state he had inherited. Then came the pendulum swing. His son, Frederick William I, the 'Soldier King,' ascended the throne in 1713 and was appalled by his father’s extravagance. Legend says he sold off the palace finery and kept only a single silver spoon for himself. His obsession was singular: the army. He was a brute of a man, frugal to the point of parody, who viewed his kingdom as a machine for generating soldiers. His personal passion was his regiment of 'Potsdam Giants,' men recruited or even kidnapped from all over Europe for their extraordinary height. But beneath this eccentricity was a formidable state-builder. He doubled the army to over 80,000 men, making it the fourth-largest in Europe, while Prussia ranked only thirteenth in population. He introduced the Kanton system, dividing the country into recruitment districts, which militarized society to an unprecedented degree. Every boy knew that his future likely involved a blue coat and a musket. Yet, incredibly, the Soldier King, for all his love of the army, barely used it. He drilled it, perfected it, and filled the state treasury, leaving his son a powerful weapon he himself was too cautious to wield. That son was Frederick II, who would be known to history as 'Frederick the Great.' A sensitive youth who loved poetry and the flute, he was brutalized by his father, who saw his artistic interests as decadent and weak. Few could have predicted the wolf that lay beneath the sheep's clothing. In 1740, mere months after taking the throne, he unleashed the army his father had built. In a shocking act of aggression, he seized the wealthy Austrian province of Silesia, catapulting Prussia into a conflict with the mighty Habsburg dynasty that would last for decades. This gamble initiated the War of the Austrian Succession and later, the even more desperate Seven Years' War. From 1756 to 1763, Prussia stood alone against a coalition of giants: Austria, France, and Russia. The kingdom was invaded, Berlin was occupied, and defeat seemed inevitable. Yet Frederick, displaying a military genius that stunned Europe, fought on. He used rapid marches and daring tactics to defeat vastly superior armies at battles like Rossbach and Leuthen. His soldiers, disciplined to perfection and clad in their iconic dark blue uniforms, became the most feared infantry in the world. He was on the brink of total collapse when salvation arrived in 1762. Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia, his implacable foe, died, and her successor, an admirer of Frederick, immediately pulled Russia out of the war. This 'Miracle of the House of Brandenburg' saved him. Prussia emerged from the war battered but victorious, Silesia secured, its status as a great European power cemented. In peace, Frederick embodied the ideal of the 'enlightened despot.' He was a philosopher king who corresponded with Voltaire, composed music, and built the delicate Rococo palace of Sanssouci—'Without a Care'—as his personal retreat. He reformed the legal system, abolishing torture and promoting a degree of religious tolerance. He championed agricultural innovations, famously promoting the potato as a staple crop to guard against famine. But he never softened the military core of his state. The society remained rigidly hierarchical, with the 'Junker' nobility providing the officer corps and the peasantry providing the muscle. The state he had perfected was a marvel of efficiency, a machine for war and administration unlike any other. Yet, this very perfection contained the seeds of its own demise. After Frederick the Great's death in 1786, his successors lacked his vision and energy. The Prussian army, basking in the glory of its past victories, became complacent. Its leadership, drawn from an insular aristocracy, resisted the new ideas on warfare and nationalism sweeping across Europe with the French Revolution. The machine grew rusty. The reckoning came on a single, catastrophic day in 1806. At the twin battles of Jena-Auerstedt, the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte, fluid, modern, and led by officers promoted on merit, utterly annihilated the legendary Prussian forces. The state built by the Great Elector and perfected by Frederick the Great collapsed in an afternoon. The rise was over. A new, more painful chapter of defeat and rebirth was about to begin.