King William

King William

The Rise of the Kings of Prussia

The Rise of the Kings of Prussia - Frederick I and Frederick William I

Frederick I 1688-1713

Frederick I is not considered to be as important as his predecessor or successors but he is very significant in one way because he was the first King of Prussia. He became King because he continued his father's foreign policy and played a part in the League of Augsburg and after the Treaty of Rijswick in 1698 he decided to gain a royal title for himself because in the age of Louis XIV the title of monarch carried enormous prestige and the title of Elector did not have the same prestige it had once enjoyed. The Emperor Leopold was at first unwilling as the rise of Brandenburg-Prussia had not been welcome to him because any strong German state would present a potential threat to him. On the other hand he needed Prussia's military assistance and for this he reason he agreed that Frederick should become King in Prussia. An agreement was drawn up and Frederick crowned himself king in 1701 in Konigsberg. This gave him new prestige which was recognized by the members of the Grand Alliance. He was involved in war as a member of the Grand Alliance for the rest of his life and at the subsequent peace of Utrecht he gained Spanish Gelderland.
In his domestic policies he attempted to consolidate what his father had done although he would have achieved more if he had been a stronger character. He had the same aims as his father e.g. improved communications, encouragement of immigration and land drainage etc. In 1701 he took another important step towards a strong state when he abolished Imperial control over the administration of justice and set up a supreme court of appeal in Berlin. He also encouraged arts and sciences and the development of culture. In 1696 he founded the Academy if Arts in Berlin and in 1700 the Academy of Sciences. He also founded a university in Prussian Saxony.

Frederick William I 1713-1740

Frederick William I contribution to the development of Prussia was less spectacular but more solid - he was opposed to his father's dependence on foreign allies and love of court etiquette.

1) Character and Army

Frederick William was pious and moral with a sense of duty and industry. He ruled as an absolute monarch who was to be obeyed instantly and he was fond of military affairs and only found relaxation in the Tabaks Kollegium, informal gatherings of his closest advisers. He was very strict - even with his own children - at one point thinking of executing his own son. He was contemptuous of poetry and philosophy. Frederick William ascended the throne in 1713 but despite the Peace of Utrecht he wanted to increase his army and reduce its dependence on foreign subsidies. He achieved both his aims by the end of the reign. He founded the 'blue boys' or tall grenadiers at Potsdam and by his death had doubled the Prussian army to 80,000 men. This was made possible by the enrolment of a considerable proportion from the Prussian population but foreigners still formed a large part of his army. He tried to improve conscription with quotas of men to be conscripted from certain areas. Prussia's armies were the largest and most efficient in Germany but even more important was the fact that the army did not rely on subsidies from other nations and this meant that military finances had to be raised from home.

2) Finance for the Army

He managed to reduce expenditure and increase revenue and economies were placed on everything but the army. Feudal tenure was replaced by a uniform land tax and royal estates, especially in Prussia were carefully administered and yields increased from this source as better leases were given. Excise was continued and tariffs placed on imports following mercantilist policy. Professor Drogsen thinks Frederick William could have raised as much as 7 million tahlers in 1740 compared to 3,655,000 in 1713. Frederick William left Prussia solvent despite the great expenditure on the army. Frederick William also encouraged the Prussian officer's corps and his Cadettenhaus in Berlin put into practice his ideas that service in the army was the chief duty of the Junkers - he created nobility of military service and made officers a privileged class in the state.

3) Administrative Reforms

Frederick William was less successful in his administrative reforms. The dispersed and varied nature of his territories increased the problems. The King directly managed his domain land in Prussia like a private estate and elsewhere administration was shared among provincial departments and churches, towns and country officials. Frederick William secured unification through his Ordinance of 1723, a code of civil administration and administrative law which centralized the government to a certain extent but he did little to achieve specialization. The General Directory which he formed at the same time was really an administrative board whose members dealt with all aspects except justice and foreign affairs - this had an inevitable lack of efficiency and promptitude. The Prussian central administration was to remain unsatisfactory and contributed to the downfall of the state in the Napoleonic War. However, the system functioned adequately under his autocratic rule.

4) Other Domestic Policies

Frederick William also continued the Hohenzollern policy of religious toleration and encouraging immigration by offering exemption for a period of years from taxation and military service e.g. 20,000 Lutheran peasants expelled from Salzburg in 1728 were settled in East Prussia and 400,000 foreigners came in and many in fact joined the army. Skilled craftsmen from abroad were highly desired for Frederick William also encouraged the development of manufactures e.g. cloth weaving in Brandenburg.

5) Foreign Policy

Frederick William's army hardly went into action during his reign. After the two wars at the beginning of his reign he followed a policy of peace and non aggression. In the west the War of the Spanish Succession in which he himself fought at Malplaquet ended when he came to the throne and he joined Holland and Britain and made peace with France which gave him Spanish Gelderland. In the east the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 exhausted Sweden and Frederick William entered the war on Russia's side in 1715. After his troops had taken Stralsund he deserted Russia and bought from Sweden in 1720 part of Western Pomerania including Stettin on the Oder. Frederick also wished to secure Julich-Berg which Prussia had not obtained when it took Cleves. But the Emperor Charles VI would not grant him this despite Prussian recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction on 1726. He made no permanent alliances and got no further provinces for Prussia and Waddington reckons Frederick William had no head for foreign policy as he mistrusted allies and did not wish to risk his army unnecessarily as he was also conscious of the strategic weakness of his territory and its small population. Because of this his reputation never achieved the brilliance of his son's but he did husband his potential power which enabled his son to carry on a successful foreign policy. Frederick William provided an excellent army, a tradition of devotion to the state, strict financial economy, military efficiency, and personal absolutism. The military duty of the nobility towards the sate was to be of long lasting and far reaching consequences in Prussia and in Germany as a whole.

Simon Harding

www.chronosconsulting.com

www.biblon.com

www.chronosme.com

About the Author

Explain / give the reasons why king William built castles in england?

explain / give the reasons why king William built castles in england

The most difficult country anywhere to control and manage is UK. The Romans soon found this to their cost and had to keep expensive legions garriosoned here on a perma basis.

Likewise the Normans had a really tough time dealing with the English and when they came up against my own Welsh ancestors, their Norman lives were turned into a living hell.

Hence all the castles.

No one in England wants Norman ancestry except the English aristocracy. As for the expression Anglo-Norman, forget it. A native Brit is either English, Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Cornish or Scottish, Celts.

Not even the hated Norms could do away with this prehistoric and pagan event. . .

The Celtic Obby Oss of Padstow Kernow

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=v_EJTCftTew

King William I "The Conqueror" (1028-1087) - Pt 1/3