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650

Brandenburg and the Dutch Republic [1667-74

by a desire to induce the French Court to abandon its support of the Prince of Condé's candidature for the Polish throne. He can hardly have remained neutral from any real fear of isolation, though neither of the two Habsburg dynasties at first showed any tendency to energetic co-operation with each other; and he certainly concluded (December 15, 1667) an agreement with the French Minister at his Court, by which, in return for the undertaking of the French Government to prevent the succession on the Polish throne of any French Prince, he promised to remain neutral in the Belgian war. So striking was the success of French diplomacy in keeping him out of the combination against France, that unfounded rumours spread as far as the willing ears of Charles II that Frederick William aspired to the hand of the Grande Mademoiselle (Louis XIV's cousin, the Duchess of Montpensier).

Although, as has been seen elsewhere, France was in the Peace of Aachen (1668) disappointed as to the fulfilment of her larger expectations, she continued to pursue them with the consistency which has always been proper to her diplomacy. Her policy owed an unavowed but extraordinary strength to the secret agreement as to the Spanish Succession concluded between Leopold I and Louis XIV in January, 1668, and confirmed by them in 1671. Both England and Sweden were, by arguments specious in both the one and the other case, gained over to co-operation in the projected French campaign against the United Provinces. Thus the amicable relations which had existed between England and Brandenburg since the conclusion of a defensive alliance and commercial treaty between them in July, 1661, proved of no avail. When, in 1672, that momentous campaign actually began. the Dutch Republic could look for no other ally besides the Elector of Brandenburg; and it was no doubt for this reason that the Emperor sent troops to support any action that might be taken by the Elector. No sooner, however, had French forces begun to occupy the Cleves territory, than Frederick William's resolution gave way, even though the Emperor did not withdraw his troops; and in June, 1673, the Elector executed one of the least creditable of his rearward manœuvres by concluding with France the separate Peace of Vossem, in which, by way of return for the evacution of the duchy of Cleves, he promised to abstain from any future act of hostility against France, except in the event of a declaration of war against her by the Empire. But, in the very next year, such a declaration was actually issued; whereupon Frederick William duly took part in the demonstration intended to meet the extraordinary display of force by which Louis XIV sought to overwhelm the United Provinces; and the mission to England of Otto von Schwerin the younger, mentioned above, seemed to promise to draw the Protestant Powers together once more. But, though Frederick William put an army of 20,000 men in the field, the campaign of the German

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auxiliary force proved a failure, owing both to the genius of Turenne and to the mutual distrust between the Imperial and the Brandenburg commanders. The Elector suspected treachery on the part of the former, Count Bournonville; but of the secret instructions which are supposed to have reached him from Vienna there is no actual proof. In January, 1675, after an unsuccessful fight at Türkheim, the German troops recrossed the Rhine and took up their winterquarters. A few months earlier the Elector had lost his eldest son, Charles Emil, a virtuous and promising youth, whose death from fever at Strassburg (November 27, 1674) the father attributed to a French poisoner. His life was full of such morbid suspicions, and we are reminded how near we still are to the dark and ruthless age of the Thirty Years' War.

In the same month as that which witnessed the withdrawal of the German forces from the left bank of the Rhine, Sweden, instigated by France with a view to bringing about this result, invaded Brandenburg, and once more spread desolation through the land. The situation was full of peril for the dominions of Frederick William. The ambitious John Sobieski now sat on the Polish throne; and Louis XIV was seeking to engage him to take part in an attack upon his Prussian neighbour. On the other side of the Mark, the Brunswick-Lüneburg Duke John Frederick, the Catholic convert who held sway at Hanover, was eager to give proof of his sovereign independence by running contrary to the line of policy followed by the other Princes of his House, who loyally adhered to the Emperor in his conflict with France. Thus Frederick William was environed by foes actual or prospective, when in June, 1675, he set forth on the most celebrated campaign of his life, and the first great campaign in the annals of what may by anticipation be called the Prussian army.

On June 25 the Swedes were driven out of Rathenow on the Havel by the Brandenburgers; and on the 28th the Brandenburg vanguard, numbering barely 6000 men, chiefly cavalry, routed nearly double the number of Swedes on the famous field of Fehrbellin. The glory that has continued to surround the name of this battle is mainly due to the fact that it was a purely German victory over a wholly alien adversary; but there was much that was striking in the fight itself, and in the rapid march — an exploit like that of Cincinnatus of old - by which it had been preceded. From the day of Fehrbellin onward Frederick William was known to his people as the "Great Elector." The Ratisbon Diet was encouraged to issue a declaration of war against Sweden; and Frederick William openly avowed his intention of driving the Swedes out of Pomerania. His isolation was at an end; and his troops were joined by an Imperial force, including the contingents of the Brunswick-Lüneburg Dukes and of the Bishop of Münster. Denmark, too, always ready to "bite the heel" of Sweden, became a member of the alliance against her. In the course of

652

Nymegen and St Germain

[1676-9

the autumn the war extended into western Pomerania, and operations were carried on round the two Haffs in 1676, when the Brunswick and Münster troops expelled the Swedes from the duchies of Bremen and Verden. But Stettin still held out; nor was it till after a siege lasting from the end of August to December, 1677, that the fortress, the most important position held by the Swedes on German soil, capitulated. In the following year the island of Rügen, Stralsund, and Greifswald were taken, and the expulsion of the Swedes from Germany was for the time accomplished. Their attempt to retaliate by an invasion of Prussia, proceeding in November, 1678, from Livonia, where they still maintained a footing, proved a failure; for in January, 1679, Frederick William with resistless energy led an expedition into his remote duchy, and drove out the foe.

But, unfortunately for the Great Elector, whose sword seemed at last to have secured the acquisition which he and his House had so long had at heart, his success had been achieved just when the allies whom he had abandoned at Vossem were making up their minds for peace; and Sweden's defeat by Brandenburg greatly helped to incline Louis XIV in the same direction. At the Peace Congress which assembled in 1676 at Nymegen, where England played the recognised part of the mediating Power, Brandenburg found herself once more in an isolated position. The failure of Frederick William to furnish effective aid to the United Provinces in return for the subsidies received from them now revenged itself upon him; and France would of course do nothing against Sweden, whom she had urged into a war which had proved so disastrous. Thus, when in 1678-9 the Peace of Nymegen was actually concluded, all the German territories assigned to Sweden in the Peace of Westphalia were once more restored to her. Frederick William, with whom Denmark alone held out against these conditions, hesitated long before accepting them; but at last he submitted to the inevitable, and, in June, 1679, concluded the Treaty of St Germain, by which western Pomerania with Stettin was given back to the Swedes. For the second time, and after a more complete and far more glorious conquest than that of nineteen years earlier, the prize had eluded his grasp.

The disappointment was severe; and its bitterness turned against the allies who this time had left him in the lurch as he had before left them. The United Provinces were to be regretted not only as friends, but also as paymasters; England was of no value in either capacity, and might be left to carry on her game of balancing and trimming; the fulness of the Great Elector's indignation seems to have been directed against the Emperor. Leopold had given further offence by taking advantage of the extinction in 1675 of the Liegnitz line of the Lower Silesian Dukes (by the death of Duke George William) to confiscate the principalities of Liegnitz, Brieg, and Wohlau, held by that House as the last survivors of the native dynasty, descended from the Piasts of Poland.

1679-85] The Great Elector's alliance with France 653

The relations between the Hofburg and the young Protestant Power, which had quickly lost their traditional cordiality, were enduringly embittered by the complications that arose between them with regard to this Piast inheritance, and to another Silesian principality, that of Jägerndorf, which, though purchased by the House of Brandenburg, had escheated to the Emperor when in 1620 Margrave John George had been placed under the ban.

It was therefore in a spirit of something like spite as well as with his usual design of turning the actual situation to the best possible account that, in August, 1679, Frederick William concluded an alliance, which, with certain modifications, was renewed in the years ensuing. Thus began a period in the history of his policy upon which it is difficult to look with admiration from the national point of view by no means, as has been seen, ignored by Frederick William. He now entered into a system of entire co-operation with France. Not only did he grant to her armies the right of free transit through his dominions, including even resort to the protection of his fortresses, but he promised to support the Dauphin as a candidate for the succession to the Imperial throne. In connexion with these transactions, no excessive importance should be attached to the mere fact of his acceptance of an annual French pension of 100,000 livres; for the payment for services rendered, or about to be rendered, or about to be withheld, is an element never absent from any turn in the politics of this age, when the state-machine refused to move without constant greasing of the wheels. The subsidy which Frederick William had previously drawn from the United Provinces is to be regarded in much the same way.

In general, however, it cannot be denied that in the steadily advancing encroachments of France Frederick William had a very distinct share of responsibility, and that it is impossible to disconnect altogether from his course of action the "temporary" loss of Strassburg and the "reunited" places and districts, of which France was left in possession by the Truce concluded with her by the Empire at Ratisbon in 1684. Curiously enough, his policy had thus become alienated from that of England, who, although he had, in March, 1681, concluded a political and commercial alliance with her, was now disposed to turn away from France. With the Emperor himself Frederick William's relations became so strained that, in 1682, his offer of an auxiliary force of 12,000 troops, when Vienna seemed in danger from the Turks, was declined as dangerous. He employed it in occupying the disputed Silesian principalities.

But the nadir of his political course had now been reached. It was inconceivable that Frederick William's amicable relations with France, themselves the result of a reaction, should endure beyond a limited period of time; and happily their close announced itself before that of his

654 The Great Elector and William of Orange [1685-6

career. The final change in his policy, which during the last three years of his reign (1685-8) gave him an important place among the European Princes and statesmen who were preparing the great struggle against the enduring predominance of France, may without hesitation be attributed to the very noblest among the principles that actuated his public and private life. His hatred of religious intolerance and oppression was, as has already been seen, roused, together with his Protestant sympathies, by the persecutions that preceded the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and reached their height when that measure of blind bigotry was actually proclaimed. The Great Elector's treaty of alliance with the United Provinces, which marks a complete revulsion in his system of foreign policy, was concluded in August, 1685; his direct response to the actual Revocation has been already noted. The difficult diplomacy necessitated by the Elector's action was skilfully conducted by his ambassador at Paris, Ezechiel Spanheim (who was thoroughly imbued with the liberal Calvinism representative of the progressive spirit of the age); but the French subsidies were stopped for a time. Frederick William now actually came to be regarded as holding a position towards Protestantism somewhat resembling that held by Oliver Cromwell a generation before; and the remote Protestant cantons of Switzerland, apprehensive lest their turn might come next, sought his alliance.

But, with his extraordinary insight into the demands of the moment, he concentrated his attention upon his relations with the Maritime Powers. His kinsman William of Orange was rapidly assuming the character in which alone his memory remains immortal-that of the head and front of the European resistance to the aggressions of France. So far as England was concerned, Frederick William had quickly realised the prospects of the political situation which was developing there. During his exile after the death of Charles II, Monmouth had met with considerable sympathy in Protestant Germany; and his formal expulsion from Brandenburg was far from representing the view actually taken by the Electoral Government of his pretensions.

Meanwhile, with his usual impetuousness - a feature in his character which should not be overlooked in accounting for the mutability of his political action Frederick William, in March, 1686, concluded a secret treaty of alliance with the Emperor, which once more bound closely together the interests of Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs. Effective aid was promised by the Elector to the Emperor against the Turks; and, while Frederick William, in order to leave no doubt as to his loyalty, renounced the claims of his House upon any other portion of Silesia, he received in return, or believed that he received in return, the cession of the Schwiebus Circle, which formed part of the principality of Glogau, and of which more anon. Hereupon, he drew up the strategical plan for the expected war with France, and became a party to the League of Augsburg, concluded for purposes of defence in June, 1686, by the Emperor

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