Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (84 page)

The Empire meanwhile preserved those who failed to secure
recognition, including relatively weak elements like the imperial cities, alongside much larger entities such as Bavaria and the Palatinate. All elements remained bound within a common order guaranteeing their autonomy and status, which would evaporate if the Empire were dissolved. They paid at least lip service to formal norms, since to do otherwise would discredit their own position and hand advantages to local rivals.
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Prussia and the Empire

The power of established norms is demonstrated by Prussia’s behaviour after its elevation to a kingdom in 1700. Prussia’s emergence as the emperor’s most dangerous vassal is usually explained by reference to the continuous line of healthy, able rulers since the ‘Great Elector’ Frederick William. His son and successor was dismissed by his own grandson, King Frederick II, as a ‘theatre king’ whose elevation as King Frederick I was simply part of an alleged obsession with irrelevant ceremony.
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In fact, Frederick I increased the army by a third to total 40,000 men by his death in 1713, making the accession of Frederick William I less of a ‘break in style’ than commonly assumed. Nonetheless, Frederick William I’s cuts in court expenditure and ruthless military expansion are generally interpreted as creating the tools employed aggressively against Austria by his son Frederick II after 1740.

Military power was crucial to Prussia’s influence, but any explanation is incomplete without reference also to its place in the Empire. Even after the inheritance of ducal Prussia in 1618, two-thirds of Hohenzollern land was within the Empire, as were all further gains until 1740. The Hohenzollerns were major beneficiaries from the Peace of Westphalia, which secured them half the disputed Jülich-Cleves inheritance, half of Pomerania, and several secularized imperial church lands. Although individually small, these territories were more densely populated and produced higher per-capita tax revenues than ducal Prussia: by 1740, three-quarters of the Hohenzollerns’ 2.4 million subjects were also inhabitants of the Empire.
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These possessions were already over twice as large as Bavaria or Saxony by 1648, but their full potential remained to be developed. Brandenburg’s soil was poor, while much Hohenzollern territory remained in relatively isolated parcels scattered across northern Germany. The
Great Elector applied considerable pressure on the Estates of each territory to grant higher taxes during the 1650s, but this became harder to achieve from the 1670s as Leopold I vetoed unlimited war taxes and the imperial courts threatened to intervene.
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Subsequent Hohenzollern rulers preferred to leave the tax structure unchanged rather than unpick the bargains they had struck with their various provincial nobilities and towns. Significant reform was continually postponed until Prussia’s defeat by Napoleon in 1806 made change unavoidable. Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover and to a lesser extent the Palatinate and even Münster all enjoyed similar revenues and maintained large armies roughly comparable to Prussia’s until 1700. The Bavarian and Saxon courts continued to outshine Prussia’s, further concealing the growing discrepancy in real power that developed after 1700.

The real significance of ducal Prussia lay in its position outside imperial jurisdiction. Skilful diplomatic and military manoeuvres during the Northern War (1655–60) secured international recognition of Prussia’s full independence from Poland, though it took some time for its provincial Estates to accept this.
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It placed the Hohenzollerns alongside the Habsburgs as the only imperial princes with sovereign land outside the Empire, and provided the basis for the Hohenzollerns’ subsequent elevation to royalty. However, their political gravity remained in northern Germany. Frederick I was crowned king in the Prussian capital Königsberg, but Berlin remained the centre of Hohenzollern government. Frederick and his next two successors continued developing Berlin as a city of European importance. Their behaviour was identical to that of the House of Savoy, which remained based in Turin in Piedmont rather than relocating to Sardinia; this provided the basis for its royal title after 1720. Prussia and Sardinia remained subordinate adjuncts in contrast to the other German princes who acquired crowns, including the Hanoverians and Saxon Wettins, whose electorates assumed secondary status to Britain and Poland. Savoy’s ambitions lay south of the Alps, so its royal status did not disrupt the hierarchical order in Germany, especially as the Savoyards deliberately disengaged from the Reichstag to avoid ceremonial difficulties after 1714. Additionally, Savoy was underpowered compared to Prussia and was not in a position to challenge Austria until well into the nineteenth century.
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By contrast, the Hohenzollerns were deeply embedded in the Empire
both geographically and constitutionally. Moreover, their royal status was less certain: they were only kings ‘in’ Prussia, whereas the Savoyards were kings
of
Sardinia, which had long been recognized as a kingdom. Considerable doubt existed whether Leopold I really possessed the authority to raise Prussia to a kingdom, especially since that territory’s incorporation into Poland had been both more recent and more secure than its earlier ties to the Empire. Unlike over-mighty vassals during the Middle Ages, the Hohenzollerns were not challenging the Habsburgs for the imperial title, but instead sought recognition as a second powerful dynastic-territorial monarchy with equivalent status and autonomy to Austria.

Frederick I immediately pushed for ceremonial changes to assert this, quickly souring relations with Austria. Already in 1705, Habsburg ministers regretted the award of royal status to the Hohenzollerns, and diplomatic relations were temporarily broken off after 1707, despite the continuing military alliance against France.
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Despite the problems, Frederick secured a partial exemption for all Hohenzollern fiefs from Reichskammergericht jurisdiction in 1702. Such privileges were not uncommon, as we shall see (
pp. 626–7)
. What is more significant is that the Hohenzollerns did not push for more uniform autonomy like the Habsburg lands, but instead continued to treat each of their possessions as distinct so as not to forgo even comparatively minor rights and influence associated with them. The Austrian lands were far larger than Hohenzollern territory before 1715, but they only had a single vote in the Reichstag, while the Habsburgs exercised a further vote for Burgundy, plus Lorraine’s vote until 1738. The Hohenzollerns instead kept their possessions distinct to maximize representation both in the Reichstag and in the Westphalian and Upper and Lower Saxon Kreis Assemblies.

Formal political influence was important, because the Hohenzollerns could not compete with Habsburg informal patronage. Although large, the Hohenzollern army and court lacked the prestige and the number of well-paid appointments the Habsburgs could offer, while the emperor had much wider powers of ennoblement. The Hohenzollerns also remained second-class participants in the dynastic marriage market, with their choice of partners largely restricted to middling Protestant princely families, such as the Brunswick Welfs. Representation in the Reichstag provided a platform to rally support to block uncongenial Habsburg measures, as well as to legitimate Hohenzollern
policy on a wider stage. This proved particularly important to Prussia’s military expansion during the wars after 1672 when its involvement was sanctioned through the system of imperial defence, allowing it to forge ties with numerous minor territories that paid Prussia to field their contingents to the imperial army. These opportunities ended with peace in 1714, which also cut off Anglo-Dutch subsidies precisely as Frederick William I was expanding his army further, forcing him to introduce conscription by 1733 to reduce military expenses.
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Although now more than twice as large as the army of any other German principality, Prussia’s forces remained within the system of collective security, contributing a contingent during the War of the Polish Succession. Prussia also adhered to the constitutional requirement to notify other imperial Estates when shifting units from one part of its scattered possessions to another, and generally complied more closely with the obligation to pay for accommodation and transport during transit than either Austria or Saxony.

Prussia deliberately encouraged the immigration of Huguenot and other Protestant refugees after the 1680s to increase its population. Although on a far larger scale, such measures were not unusual in the Empire. The Hohenzollerns meanwhile remained within the Empire’s broader religious order. Attempts to rally support against the Habsburgs by fanning Protestant fears failed to enable the Hohenzollerns to displace Saxony as leader of the Corpus Evangelicorum and instead temporarily discredited the Prussian king as a troublemaker (see
p. 130
).

Likewise, numerous territories were earmarked as potential future acquisitions by Frederick William I and his son, but selection was guided by dynastic claims and, before 1740, mainly targeted minor principalities that would increase Prussian influence in south Germany. No attempt was made to seize these by force. Instead, Prussia tried to tighten its grip through protectorate rights and buying out rival claimants. Its first two kings were obliged to accept several setbacks, notably in 1722 when Charles VI annulled a favourable inheritance treaty painstakingly negotiated with Prussia’s Hohenzollern relations in Bayreuth.
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Even comparatively minor imperial Estates withstood Prussian bullying before 1740. That changed in June of that year with the accession of Frederick II, a man who held the Empire in contempt and – unlike his predecessors – was prepared to use force to achieve his goals.

The War of the Austrian Succession

Frederick did not have long to wait for an opportunity. Charles VI’s death on 20 October 1740 extinguished the Habsburg male line and opened the question of the Austrian succession. Powers hostile to the Habsburgs ignored their earlier recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction revising Habsburg inheritance law in favour of Charles’s daughter, Maria Theresa. With a large army and full treasury, Frederick was able to act first, already deciding just nine days after Charles’s death to attack, despite having no claims on Habsburg territory beyond largely lapsed rights to small parts of Silesia. Silesia was not only large, populous and industrious, but its capture would prevent Saxony establishing a land bridge to Poland.
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Prussian troops crossed the frontier on 16 December 1740, deliberately confusing the local Habsburg authorities by claiming they were occupying Silesia to safeguard it for Maria Theresa.

This step determined Frederick’s policy for the rest of his reign. It is important not to read subsequent events with the benefit of hindsight, especially as Frederick fostered an image of himself and his kingdom as ‘great’.
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Despite Austria’s near bankruptcy, demoralized army and elderly statesmen, Frederick’s action was extremely risky. The Habsburgs had defeated every challenger since the sixteenth century. Frederick’s ambitions nearly came to an end just a few months into his invasion when he fled the battle of Mollwitz in April 1741, narrowly avoiding capture by the Austrians. Although his army went on to win, he came close to capture or death in several later battles. Had this been the case, it is almost certain that his relations would have made peace on disadvantageous terms, just as Sweden had done when a bullet ended its great power status by killing King Charles XII at the siege of Frederiksten in 1718. The actual outcome for Frederick proved very different. By December 1745, Prussia had compelled Austria to cede Silesia and Glatz, increasing its territory to over 161,000 square kilometres with 4 million inhabitants. Prussia now had nearly a third more territory than Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover and the Palatinate combined, and the equivalent to four-fifths of their total population. Already apparent before 1740, the material discrepancy now carried real political weight, as Austria had meanwhile defeated Bavaria by 1745.

Wittelsbach Imperial Rule, 1742–5

Whereas Frederick sought additional territory to bolster Prussia’s European status, Bavaria’s elector Carl Albrecht made a bid for the imperial crown in the manner of the late medieval struggles to rule the Empire (
pp. 377–96
). Bavarian intervention paradoxically demonstrated the success of Habsburg methods since 1438. Although able to secure election as Charles VII on 24 January 1742, the Bavarian elector was unable to establish stable imperial rule. Meanwhile, Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis Stephen, were able to survive on the considerable resources of the Habsburg lands, supplemented by Anglo-Dutch support.
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Bavaria was already weak and only managed to launch its bid for Habsburg possessions eight months after Prussia’s invasion of Silesia, a move that caused considerable disquiet amongst the other electors and contributed to a 15-month interregnum. Loyalty to the Habsburgs remained strong amongst some middling and many minor imperial Estates. The Bavarian elector eventually triumphed over Francis as the Habsburg candidate thanks to massive French and Prussian pressure combined with discontent over the last decade of Charles VI’s reign and concern at Austria’s great power interests.
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The Austrian army entered Munich two days after Charles VII’s election, amply demonstrating Bavaria’s incapacity to sustain imperial rule. Bavarian revenue in 1742 was only 1.9 million florins compared to expenditure of 6.48 million, of which 4.5 million went to the army, which still totalled only 25,000 soldiers, many of whom were hastily pressed militiamen. France supplied 8.8 million florins in aid, but Bavaria’s debts had climbed to over 32 million by the time of Charles’s death in 1745.
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