Chapter VIII: Northern Europe to the Treaty of Oliva

Character and policy of Oxenstjerna--The Form of Government--War between Sweden and Denmark--Treaty of Brömsebro--Christina of Sweden--Her character and ability--Frederick William of Brandenburg--His character and political aims--The question of Pomerania--Condition of his dominions at his accession--His withdrawal from the Thirty Years’ War--Acquisition of east Pomerania--Establishment of his personal authority--His intrigues against Charles X. of Sweden--Acknowledgment of Swedish suzerainty--He joins Charles X. against Poland--Obtains independence by the treaties of Labiau and Wehlau--Death of Charles X.--The pacification of the north.

[Sidenote: =Position of Sweden, 1632.=]

While the great powers of Europe were battling for the Rhine and the Pyrenees, the smaller nations of the north were struggling for the command of the Baltic. It was a contest in which Denmark played the part of the Empire, the traditional but feeble possessor of rightful authority, while Sweden, like another France, strong in her new-found national unity, was impelled by her geographical position to claim a freedom which could not fail to end in leadership. When Gustavus Adolphus fell on the field of Lützen in 1632 he had succeeded in winning for his country supremacy on the Baltic and a foothold on German soil; but his life had been too short, his career too meteor-like for him to have had time to consolidate by his statesmanship what he had won by his genius. [Sidenote: =Character and policy of Oxenstjerna.=] That task was left to his friend and confidant, Axel Oxenstjerna, during the minority of the young Christina who was only four and a half years old when her father died. The man was well fitted to the task. Cautious, deliberate, and cold-blooded, complete master of his emotions, he was a man of fixed ideas and tenacious policy. Nothing moved him, nothing changed him. Twice only in a long and anxious life did he know what it was to be sleepless, once after the battle of Lützen, once after the battle of Nördlingen. Patriotism in him took bodily form in the House of Vasa and Gustavus Adolphus. During the life of the king his whole energies were devoted to carrying out his master’s wishes, after his death to the completion of his master’s policy. In the Thirty Years’ War, as we have seen, he was the most strenuous and uncompromising enemy of peace. The miseries of Germany, the dangerous ambition of France, even the deterioration of his own country, were as nothing to him compared with the duty of obtaining for Sweden all that Gustavus might fairly have claimed. It required the personal intervention of the young queen herself to prevent her minister from ruining the country in order to preserve its dignity. At home his chief work was to place on a permanent basis the alliance of the crown with the official nobility, which it had been the special object of Gustavus Adolphus to create as a counterpoise to the influence of the hereditary nobility and the clergy.

[Sidenote: =The Form of Government, 1634.=]

In the Form of Government adopted in 1634, Sweden received from Oxenstjerna’s hands the first of modern written constitutions. By it Lutheranism in the form of the Confession of Augsburg was imposed upon the sovereign and all his subjects. Government was vested in the king, advised by a senate of twenty members chosen by him from the nobility, to whom were added five _ex officio_ members being the great officers of state, _i.e._ the steward, the marshal, the treasurer, the chancellor and the admiral. The whole direction of affairs during the illness or minority of the king was placed in their hands, subject only to the provision that all laws passed, privileges conferred, and alienation of crown lands effected during the incapacity of the king must receive his subsequent ratification. Other provisions of a less important nature regulated the administration of justice, but in all of them the same care for securing the supremacy of the noble and official class is everywhere observable. In fact, the result of the Form of Government was to place the chief direction of affairs in Sweden for nearly fifty years in the hands of a narrow aristocratic clique of official families. During the minority of Christina, no less than three out of the five great officers of state were members of the Oxenstjerna family alone. [Sidenote: =The government a narrow oligarchy.=] The policy of the regency was conceived in the interests of the nobility. They profited by the continuance of the war in Germany, for to them fell the high commands in the army, and the opportunities of amassing wealth by plunder and confiscation. They profited equally by the necessities of the Crown at home, for they became the possessors either by purchase or grant of large tracts of crown lands made over to them by the government, partly to secure their loyalty and partly to relieve its embarrassments. But what was meat to the nobles was poison to the peasantry. The people soon found that the court noble or the successful general was a far harder master to serve than ever the Crown had been. The long-continued war raised the taxes, checked the growth of manufactures, and drained the country of its best peasant blood, only to return to it a body of brigand soldiers ruined in morals and incapable of honest industry. Had it lasted but a few years longer, it is by no means improbable that Oxenstjerna would have found that he had purchased a foreign empire at the cost of a domestic revolution. The quick intelligence of Christina, brought up as she was in Sweden, while the Chancellor was forced to spend a large part of his time in Germany, appreciated the danger; and this, quite as much as her natural humanity, prompted her to put an end to a war, which had ceased to have a serious political object, and was being waged in the interests of a class and in honour of a memory.

In the war with Denmark which broke out in 1643 the narrow but unflinching patriotism of Oxenstjerna showed itself to better advantage. [Sidenote: =War with Denmark, 1643.=] Free passage through the Sound and the Belts for Swedish ships was as much a commercial necessity for the development of Swedish trade, as free passage through the passes of Savoy was a military necessity for the aggrandisement of France. But Denmark seated astride of the islands, with one foot on Halland and the other on Jutland, by merely raising the dues payable for the passage of ships, could crush the nascent trade at its birth. In doing so it had to reckon not merely with Sweden but with the more important maritime countries of Holland and England who carried on with Sweden, through the Sound, a prosperous and growing trade in skins, fur and copper, and were therefore keenly interested in the question of the Sound tolls. But in 1639, seeing England involved in domestic trouble, and Holland fully occupied in the ceaseless struggle with Spain, Christian IV. thought the opportunity had come for vigorous action. He raised the tolls on the Sound, attempted to take the lead in German affairs by putting himself forward as mediator in the negotiations for peace, and in July 1640 directly insulted the government of Sweden by openly assisting the queen-mother, Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg to escape from the dignified seclusion in which she was kept. For the moment Oxenstjerna had to temporise, for the affairs of Germany absorbed his whole energies, but two years later the opportunity came. Torstenson was suddenly directed upon Holstein without any declaration of war, and in conjunction with Horn quickly overran the whole of the mainland. Christian taken by surprise had to betake himself to his islands and his ships. There he fought like a hero, holding his own manfully for two summers against the combined efforts of Swedish fleets and Dutch sailors. [Sidenote: =The treaty of Brömsebro, 1645.=] But the odds were too many for him, and after a severe defeat in October 1644 he found himself obliged to sue for peace. The next year, in August 1645, the treaty of Brömsebro was negotiated through the mediation of France between Christian and Oxenstjerna. [Sidenote: =Acquisition of Halland and freedom from the Sound dues.=] By it Sweden was entirely relieved from the payments of tolls on the Sound and the Belts, and acquired the province of Halland on terms which practically involved its annexation. However questionable on the score of public faith its beginning may have been, there is no doubt that this was one of the most important and useful wars waged by Sweden in the seventeenth century. At very little expense to herself, she completed the work of national consolidation by making Denmark retire across the natural frontier of the sea, and secured for the future the free and unhampered development of her commerce. Both of them were acquisitions essential for her national well-being, and when once gained were gained for all time. The more showy rewards of the peace of Westphalia on the contrary, though they mark the zenith of the political glory of Oxenstjerna, were in no way the best gifts which Sweden received at his hands. They contained in themselves the fruit of future contests. Like the battles of Creci and Poitiers and the peace of Bretigni, the battles of Breitenfeld and Wittstock and the peace of Westphalia covered the conqueror with military glory at the cost of a hundred years of war.

[Sidenote: =Christina of Sweden.=]

In this long drama of dull warfare, the reign of Christina is a short but picturesque interlude. Alone among Swedes and almost alone among sovereigns, she loved to live a life of culture among men of culture. She was not a student, but a master of classical literature, not the patron of men of letters, but herself a member of the sacred band. It is therefore easy to exaggerate the importance of her reign as an epoch in the civilisation of her country. The learning and the culture which gathered round Christina at Stockholm fixed no roots in the country, answered to no demand even in the university. It was a pure exotic, called into existence by the strange accident that Sweden had a cultured queen. It died on her abdication. It was personal and artificial not national and spontaneous, as unlike the great outburst of English literature under Elizabeth with which it has sometimes been compared, as the bouquet of the theatre to the flowers of the Alps. The men of letters themselves formed, it is to be feared, an unwelcome and unpopular element in the half barbaric court. To the rough nobles they were but a côterie of the queen’s friends, a clique with whom she liked to live, a sort of superior race of pet animals which Sweden had to feed and maintain in order to please the queen. But the very fact that some of the most intellectual minds of the day were content to endure the cold and discomforts of Swedish simplicity, and the hardly concealed dislike of a barbarous and homely people, rather than lose the distinction of being numbered among the friends of Christina, is no mean tribute to her character and her mind. To be with her, to be received into her friendship, to listen to her conversation, to take part in her studies, this was the attraction which made Stockholm for the moment the Athens of the north.

[Sidenote: =Character of Christina.=]

Christina is one of those few sovereigns who have made history by sheer force of personal character. In the whole range of the seventeenth century, there is no crowned head who can pretend to equality with her in the rare gifts of originality and distinction. A sworn foe to conventionality in all forms, with a mind uncompromisingly logical, she went straight to the root of a matter, to the horror of diplomatists and courtiers. The salient point of her character is her straightforwardness. There was nothing artificial about her and singularly little which was not original. She formed her own conceptions of policy, of religion, of culture, of manners. She adhered to them at all costs. She carried them out unhesitatingly. When one of them came into collision with another, instantly she surrendered the less to the greater. She abdicated the crown of Sweden because she was convinced that she ought to become a Roman Catholic. She procured the recognition of Charles Gustavus as her successor because she was determined not to marry. At the age of eighteen she forced the all-powerful Chancellor into making a peace which he loathed. Ten years later, after her abdication, she murdered her steward Monaleschi through a wilfully mistaken view of her sovereign rights. Throughout her life she was the same,--clear-minded, self-willed, of keen decision and petulant temper, warmhearted and true to those she loved, malicious to those she disliked, a hater of humbug, a despiser of conventionality, cynical in speech, generous in action, prodigal with money, avaricious of fame, hating and hated by women, always attractive to men. In truth Christina was one of nature’s mistakes. She was intended for a man. Masculine in intellect, masculine in will, masculine in bodily endurance, masculine in the roughness of her sensibilities, she showed her sex mainly in her dislike of women. She knew herself to be a man, and resented bitterly the freak of nature which had clothed her with a woman’s form. She dressed like a man, rode like a man, at times swore like a man, and confessed that one of her greatest desires was to see a battle. No noble at the Swedish court could tire her when hunting, or could surpass her presence of mind in the hour of danger. She knew not what fear was, she was never seen in tears. Yet there was something feminine in her love of intrigue, her passion for notoriety, her want of shame. At the French court she busied herself in making mischief between the young king and his mother by encouraging his infatuation for Marie Mancini. She delighted in shocking the etiquette of the royal circle by the freedom of her conversation and the unconventionality of her attitudes, and she went out of her way to outrage all sense of propriety by choosing the famous courtesan Ninon de L’Enclos as the only Frenchwoman to whom she would be decently civil. When a queen demeans herself thus, she must expect to make enemies, and Christina had only herself to thank if she was afterwards denied permission to visit the French court at Paris, and found among French women her most persistent detractors.

Abdications among sovereigns are so rare that the attention of historians has been naturally attracted by the picturesqueness of that of Christina to the detriment of her real title to fame. [Sidenote: =Her political ability.=] In the ten years of her rule over Sweden she conducted a great war to a glorious end, she established her authority by sheer ascendency of character over a narrow and jealous oligarchy, she settled a most difficult constitutional question, that of the devolution of the Crown, in the best way for the nation, by her own firmness of will. She made herself beloved by her people, and easily suppressed the conspiracy of Messenius in spite of its wide ramifications among the democracy. She made Stockholm for the time the most learned and cultured court of Europe. Above all when her own religious convictions forced her into antagonism with the constitution of her country, she never hesitated to prefer the interests of her country to her own dignity. She recognised from the first that in the seventeenth century it was impossible for Sweden to permit her sovereign to be of any religion except that of Luther, and when she had made up her mind to become a Roman Catholic she accepted the inevitable and abdicated her throne. There are few sovereigns who can claim to have done more for their country by activity or by renunciation than Christina. Her abdication was right and unavoidable. The mistake she made lay in not carrying it far enough. She ought to have retired into private life, but this was too great a self-denial for so active a mind and so vigorous a personality. She ceased to be queen of Sweden, but she determined still to be queen. She maintained royal state, she claimed royal rights, she plunged into intrigue, she interfered in politics, she tried to dominate over literature and taste. Deprived of all right to express, and shorn of all power to enforce, her wishes, she soon sank into becoming the common bore of Europe, and found herself politely relegated to her palace at Rome, where she became one of the sights of the city and the leader of a fashionable and artistic côterie.

While Christina was witching the northern world by the vigour and charm of her personality, Brandenburg under the cautious and unscrupulous Frederick William was slowly winning its way to predominance in north Germany. [Sidenote: =Frederick William of Brandenburg.=] No two persons could well be more different than the queen and the elector, whom at one time a marriage project of Gustavus Adolphus had attempted to unite in a most unequal yoke. Christina, worldly though she might be in her love of mischief-making and petulance of disposition, was essentially a woman of noble character and lofty aspirations. She lived amongst great thoughts and high ideals. Frederick William grovelled upon the earth, and cherished its mire and its dirt if only he could possess himself of one acre the more of it. A true Hohenzollern in his absolute identification of his country with his own crown, he never rose above the pure selfishness of patriotism. Not one spark of generosity illuminated his policy, not one grain of idealism coloured his ambition, no sentiment of moral right ever interfered with his judgment, no fear of future retribution arrested his action. Mean-minded, false, and unscrupulous, he was the first sovereign to display the principles of seventeenth century Machiavellianism, stripped of their cloak of Italian refinement, in all the hideous brutality of German coarseness. Yet the political world was not the worse for the rule of the Great Elector. Putting all questions of right and wrong on one side, the success achieved by Frederick William was in the direction of progress. [Sidenote: =Ultimate aim of his policy.=] The Thirty Years’ War left Germany shattered into fragments as if by the stroke of a giant’s hammer, at a time when all Europe was drawing itself together and coalescing into powerful states. Had that disintegration continued, had no one come forward to establish a power in northern Europe, which might at any rate form a nucleus round which the floating atoms of northern Germany and northern Protestantism might gather, central Europe must have fallen a prey to French ambition or Russian barbarism. Events have shown clearly enough, that neither Sweden, nor England, nor the United Provinces, could have saved Europe from such a catastrophe, had there not been in northern Germany itself a power, centralised in government and military in spirit, which could unfurl the flag of German nationality. To found such a power was the work of the Great Elector’s life, and before his death the results had made themselves visible in European politics. He it is who is the real founder of the state of Prussia. Cradled in the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, nourished by the falseness and the tyranny of Frederick William, ushered into manhood by the cynical ambition of Frederick the Great, she has yet become in her steady protest against French domination one of the chief bulwarks of European order, in her assertion of German unity the centre of the noblest of German aspirations.

[Sidenote: =Rivalry between Brandenburg and Sweden in the Thirty Years’ War.=]

When Frederick William succeeded his father in the electorate of Brandenburg in 1640 no one would have predicted that from that desolate discredited and divided state was to arise the hope of Germany. The policy of neutrality in the earlier years of the war, adopted not without a certain amount of shrewdness by George William in conjunction with his friend John George of Saxony, had broken down under the menace of the guns of Gustavus Adolphus and the invasion of Tilly. But the league between the Swedes and the elector could never be anything more than hollow, unless the former were prepared to surrender the rights of a conqueror over Pomerania. George William was the acknowledged heir of the old duke Boguslav. Pomerania, with its extensive seaboard, was just what Brandenburg wanted for her national development, and the Elector had been accustomed to look upon it as his own. The landing of Gustavus Adolphus changed the whole face of affairs in a moment. Pomerania became just as important to the Swedes as a basis of communication with Sweden and the Baltic, as it was to Brandenburg as a step in her aggrandisement. Why should the Swedes, who had saved the country from the hands of Wallenstein, surrender it tamely to George William who had not stirred one finger of his own free will on behalf of the Protestant cause? Naturally enough the Swedes stuck obstinately to their rights of conquest. Never would Oxenstjerna yield to the technical claims of Brandenburg, what Gustavus Adolphus had wrested from the enemy by force of arms. Never would Brandenburg abate her just and legal demands in the face of a selfish and brutal conqueror. So as time went on Sweden became far more the national enemy of Brandenburg than the Emperor had ever been. The unfortunate mark, lying as it did on the straight road between Bohemia and the Baltic, was harried alternately by the armies of both sides as the fortune of war ebbed and flowed. In 1635 George William accepted the treaty of Prague, but that gave no respite to his unlucky domain. In 1638, unable to find sustenance in the impoverished mark, he removed his court to Königsberg in east Prussia, where he died worn out with misery and failure in 1640, leaving his son Frederick William at the age of twenty the possessor of little land and many claims.

[Sidenote: =Brandenburg at the accession of Frederick William, 1640.=]

The territories owned by Frederick William on his accession were divided into three quite separate districts.[3] The old possessions of the house of Hohenzollern in north Europe consisted of the mark of Brandenburg, subdivided for administrative purposes into the old mark, the middle mark and the new mark, which they had ruled as margraves and as electors since the beginning of the fifteenth century. [Sidenote: =The mark of Brandenburg.=] This country, purely German, was like other German states part of the Empire, subject to the legal authority of the Emperor and had its own diet with vague powers of counsel and control over the elector in local affairs. [Sidenote: =The duchy of East Prussia.=] On the east of the Vistula, altogether outside of the limits of the Empire, was the duchy of east Prussia, which had become the hereditary possession of the Hohenzollerns by one of the accidents of the Reformation. The country belonged to the Order of the Teutonic Knights, and was subject to the suzerainty of Poland, but in 1525 the Knights accepted the Lutheran Reformation, dissolved the Order, and formed their territory into a duchy hereditary in the house of the grand master of the time, count Albert of Hohenzollern. At the beginning of the seventeenth century his line became merged in that of the Brandenburg branch of the family, and the elector of Brandenburg became also duke of east Prussia. Here, as in the mark, the existence of a diet in which sat both nobles and burghers formed a constitutional check on the will of the ruler, a check all the more effective because of the reluctance with which the people of east Prussia and their feudal suzerain the king of Poland had acknowledged the rights of the Brandenburg branch to the duchy. But the territorial claims of the young elector did not stop with the German mark of Brandenburg, the Polish duchy of east Prussia, and the succession to the German duchy of Pomerania. [Sidenote: =Duchy of Cleves.=] Within the limits of the Empire, stretching along both banks of the Rhine, in the neighbourhood of Köln, lay the duchies of Cleves, Jülich, Berg and Mark, to which the elector of Brandenburg and the count of Neuburg had put in claims as we have seen in 1609 and thereby very nearly precipitated the great war. By the treaty of Xanten, concluded in 1614 and practically renewed in 1630, the disputed territory was divided between the claimants, and the duchies of Cleves Mark and Ravensberg fell to the share of Brandenburg. During the war, however, Brandenburg was unable to make its power recognised over its new domains. The country was for some time the battle-ground of the Spaniards and the Dutch. As the tide of war rolled away from the lower Rhine it was occupied and practically administered by the Dutch, and when peace was restored Frederick William found himself obliged to assert what was to all intents and purposes a new sovereignty.

[Sidenote: =Aims of Frederick William.=]

Bearing in mind the scattered character of the Brandenburg possessions, a glance at the map is sufficient to show how geographical considerations dictated to the young elector his policy, and inspired his territorial ambitions. If only he could make good his claims on Pomerania, or at least on the eastern part of it, there would be nothing but the strip of west Prussia along the banks of the Vistula to separate his German dominions from his duchy of east Prussia. A successful war, or a lucky diplomatic stroke, might raise him at once into the position of the greatest power in the north. Side by side with the territorial dream went as was natural in a prince of the seventeenth century a dynastic ambition. Already events had made his dependence upon the Emperor almost nominal, the same success which won him west Prussia and united his dominions would also free him from his feudal vassalage to Poland. Once thoroughly independent of foreign authority he could turn his attention to his own subjects, and on the ruins of the effete and discredited diets raise, like Richelieu in France, a highly centralised military sovereignty in which the crown should be all in all. Such was the policy laid down for himself and his house by the Great Elector, and adhered to unflinchingly by his descendants ever since. Centralisation of the government, military rule, constant territorial aggrandisement have been the characteristics of the Prussian monarchy, and have ended in making out of the disjointed and turbulent dominions of Frederick William, a united and peaceful kingdom, which stretches from Russia to Belgium, and embraces in its ample folds the valleys of the Rhine, the Elbe, the Oder and the Vistula.

[Sidenote: =Unavoidable hostility of Sweden and Poland.=]

Directly in the way of the realisation of the least of these designs, as the Great Elector well knew, lay the hostile powers of Sweden and of Poland. He could not touch Pomerania without encountering the bitter jealousy of Sweden, he could not advance an inch towards the union of east Prussia and Brandenburg without first destroying the integrity of Poland. Over the prostrate bodies of these formidable neighbours lay the only road to his territorial ambition. It was a road beset with difficulties. What chance could the barren ravaged and disunited Brandenburg have in an unequal contest with Sweden, at that time admittedly the first military power in northern Europe? How could the half-starved German peasant withstand the onslaught of the brave though undisciplined masses of Polish cavalry? Frederick William knew that he must wait for a favourable opportunity, and spent the time in anxious preparation. His first care was to transfer the conduct of affairs in the mark from the hands of his father’s minister, Schwartzenburg, who was devoted to the Emperor, to his own, and to reorganise the army under himself. In this he was aided by the death of Schwartzenburg in 1641, and the subsequent revolt of his son and the discontented officers. [Sidenote: =Establishment of his personal authority in Brandenburg and East Prussia, 1641.=] Having thus got at his back a force upon which he could depend he openly broke with the Emperor, and with the full approbation of the diet entered into negotiations with the Swedes for a treaty of neutrality. Then turning his attention to the duchy of east Prussia, where the estates were trying to establish their superiority over him, with a diplomatic skill rarely found in a man of twenty, he succeeded in sowing dissensions between the nobles and the representatives of the towns, who took the lead in opposing his authority. By winning the former over to his side he was able to procure the recognition of his rule from John Casimir, king of Poland, in spite of the protest of the towns, and thus to enter legally upon his sovereignty. [Sidenote: =His withdrawal from the Thirty Years’ War, 1643.=] In 1643 the treaty with Sweden was successfully concluded, and for the rest of the war Brandenburg was practically free from the ravages of the rival armies. The breathing space thus gained was devoted by Frederick William to the reorganisation of the finances and the training of the army, and Brandenburg was in consequence enabled to assert her claims to consideration in the negotiations at Münster and Osnabrück with a force which would have appeared incredible in the days of George William. [Sidenote: =Gains of Brandenburg at the peace of Westphalia, 1648.=] When the peace of Westphalia was finally settled it was found that Brandenburg was given the right of annexing the secularised bishoprics of Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Minden and Camin, and the duchy of eastern Pomerania. [Sidenote: =Occupation of Eastern Pomerania, 1653.=] But the larger part of the lands were at the time of the conclusion of peace in the military occupation of the Swedes, and they were not at all disposed to evacuate them, until they had been paid the indemnity for their expenses which had been secured to them by the peace. Finally however, after much negotiation and many delays, the patience and skill of the Great Elector prevailed over all obstacles, and the year 1653 saw the back of the last Swedish soldier in retreat from eastern Pomerania.

[Sidenote: =Position of Brandenburg, 1653.=]

The year 1653 closes the first chapter of the story of the aggrandisement of Brandenburg. The territory of the elector now stretched in a compact mass across north Germany from Halberstadt to the Baltic. It comprised parts of the fertile valleys of the Elbe, the Havel and the Oder with their industrious populations, as well as the important coast line of eastern Pomerania with its numerous harbours. Detached from the central mass lay the duchy of east Prussia beyond the Vistula and the scattered districts of Cleves and Mark upon the Rhine and of Ravensberg and Minden upon the Weser. Inferior in prestige and military power to Sweden, inferior in extent to Poland, Brandenburg nevertheless emerged from the Thirty Years’ War stronger, both actually and relatively, than she was when the struggle began. There was no German power in north Germany her equal in strength, and no power in north Europe her superior in government. Since he had come to the throne Frederick William had steadily followed the policy of centralising the administration under himself and crushing the independent rights of the diets. In Brandenburg itself, where the advantages of centralisation under so able and keen-sighted a ruler were quickly seen, the opposition was never formidable, and in 1653, the very year of the annexation of eastern Pomerania, the ancient diet went quietly into perpetual sleep for want of being summoned. In east Prussia and in Cleves the work was far more difficult, and the Elector had to content himself for a time with crushing all serious opposition by the employment of Brandenburg soldiers to keep order, a proceeding which although illegal was extremely effective.

In 1655 occurred an event which called forth all the Great Elector’s powers of statesmanship. The old hostility between Poland and Sweden, the two most dangerous neighbours of Brandenburg, suddenly flamed out again. John Casimir, king of Poland, refused to acknowledge Charles Gustavus, who had succeeded to the Swedish throne on the abdication of Christina. [Sidenote: =War between Sweden and Poland, 1655.=] Charles, who had been brought up in the school of the Thirty Years’ War and was no mean soldier, determined to avenge the insult, and demanded from the Great Elector the right of passage through eastern Pomerania into Poland, in order to avoid the difficult task of the siege of the sea fortress of Dantzig, which had cost Gustavus Adolphus many weary hours some twenty-five years before. Frederick William was not in a position to resist, and after making a few demonstrations to cover appearances, gave the required permission. The Swedes, using Pomerania as their basis of operations, poured across Brandenburg into Poland, defeated John Casimir, drove him back on Cracow and then returned leisurely into west Prussia to form the siege of Dantzig. The Great Elector now thought he saw his opportunity. [Sidenote: =Unsuccessful intrigue of Frederick William against Sweden.=]The Poles were beaten not conquered. Denmark was ever ready to strike a blow at her old enemy across the Baltic. Charles X. was fully occupied round Dantzig. A well-planned alliance and a well-timed stroke might bring Sweden to her knees and win his own independence of Poland. But Charles was too quick for him. [Sidenote: =Acknowledgment of Swedish suzerainty over East Prussia, 1656.=] Hearing of the negotiations in the middle of the winter of 1655–56 he at once broke up his camp and marched into east Prussia on Königsberg. Frederick William had to make his peace as best he could. By the treaty of Königsberg, developed by the treaty of Marienbad, concluded in June 1656, Brandenburg was forced to acknowledge the suzerainty of Sweden over east Prussia, instead of that of Poland, to grant to the Swedes free passage through the country, and to provide a contingent to serve under Swedish orders in the Polish war.

[Sidenote: =War with Poland, 1656.=]

It was a bitter lesson to the Great Elector, but ever patient and ever trustful of his own diplomatic skill, he continued his policy and awaited a more favourable opportunity, but for the present he had to submit to the inevitable. The Brandenburg contingent marched with Charles X. and the Swedish army to Warsaw, and did their share in the winning of the great three days’ battle in July 1656, which placed Poland at the feet of the Swedes. But the victory of Charles X. was, as is so often the case, the beginning of his difficulties. It was always easy to defeat a Polish army, it was almost impossible to reduce the country to submission. The intrigues of the Great Elector began to bear fruit. [Sidenote: =Coalition against Sweden.=] While Charles was planning the pursuit of John Casimir into the recesses of the forests of Galicia, the king of Denmark was preparing to invade Sweden itself, the Russians declared war, and a horde of Tartars and Lithuanians poured into east Prussia. Charles X. found himself in the middle of a hostile country, with a doubtful ally, surrounded by a host of enemies. Frederick William insisted on an immediate return to defend east Prussia from the invaders. Charles could not resist so plausible a demand. [Sidenote: =Treaty of Labiau. Ackowledgment of the independence of East Prussia by Sweden, 1656.=] With a heavy heart he retired from the scene of his victory into west Prussia, where he took ship for Denmark, having first done what he could to retain Frederick William in his enforced alliance by recognising the independence of east Prussia in the treaty of Labiau, signed in November 1656. Directly his back was turned, the Great Elector threw off the mask, and offered his friendship and assistance to John Casimir, if only he would follow the example of Sweden, and release east Prussia from all claims of feudal vassalage. [Sidenote: =Treaty of Wehlau. Acknowledgment of the independence of East Prussia by Poland, 1657.=] As long as he obtained his independence, Frederick William did not trouble about the honesty of the transaction. John Casimir accepted the terms. By the treaty of Wehlau, concluded in September 1657, the Great Elector cynically reversed the treaty of Labiau, made only ten months before, became the ally of Poland and the enemy of Sweden, and received as the reward of his dissimulation, the recognition of the independence of east Prussia by his legitimate suzerain.

The anger of Charles X. when he heard of it knew no bounds. Thirsting for revenge he nerved himself to attempt the feats of a hero. [Sidenote: =Attack upon Denmark by Sweden, 1657.=] In the depth of the winter of 1657–58, he suddenly marched his army of 20,000 men across the ice of the Belts upon Denmark, and captured the islands of Fünen and Zealand on his way without ships, crossing it is said some runlets of open water by bridges. Denmark, paralysed with astonishment hastened to make peace, and Charles directed his army upon east Prussia. But fortunately for the Great Elector, Europe had become tired of incessant war; and the great states, especially the maritime powers of England and Holland, had no wish to see their trade interfered with by the conquests of a new Alexander of the north. They interfered to impose negotiations for peace upon the combatants. [Sidenote: =Treaties of Oliva, Copenhagen, and Kardis, 1660–1661.=] The death of Charles X. in February 1660 made their task the easier, and on May 3rd, 1660, was signed the treaty of Oliva, between Sweden, Poland and Brandenburg. In the following month the treaty of Copenhagen restored peace to Sweden and Denmark, and in 1661 the north was finally pacified by the conclusion of the treaty of Kardis between Sweden and Russia.

[Sidenote: =Terms of the pacification of north.=]

By these treaties John Casimir of Poland renounced all claims upon the throne of Sweden, and acknowledged the independent sovereignty of Frederick William in east Prussia. Frederic III. of Denmark surrendered almost all the remaining possessions of Denmark on the Scandinavian peninsula to Sweden, and all other conquests made were restored. Sweden thus attained the geographical unity which she had long desired, and the Great Elector had guaranteed to him by European treaty the independent sovereignty over the duchy of east Prussia which he had risked so much to gain. If the peace of Westphalia marks the first great step in the territorial aggrandisement of Brandenburg, the peace of Oliva marks the first great step towards the dynastic aggrandisement of the elector. Already absolute and sovereign in Brandenburg, he now became sovereign in east Prussia, and only one step remained to be taken, to make the united state of Brandenburg-Prussia the most formidable, because the most centralised power of the north.