(^154) Chapter Five
than Russia’s portion (the Ukraine and grasslands eastward into cen
tral Asia). As for Poland, internal quarrels so weakened that country
that it disappeared entirely as a sovereign state through three succes
sive partitions, 1773, 1793, and 1795.
Before Poland’s political demise dramatized the sharp changes that
had come to power-relationships in eastern Europe, another claimant
to great-power status arose: the kingdom of Prussia. Like their territo
rially more impressive neighbors, Prussian rulers benefited from gov
erning a march state. Prussia’s comparatively large size among German
principalities reflected its medieval frontier history. Even as late
as the eighteenth century, by importing techniques long familiar in
more westerly lands—artificial drainage and canalization above all—
Prussians were able to bring considerable amounts of new land under
cultivation, thereby increasing the country’s wealth.^10
But the basis of Prussia’s political success was the superior rigor of
its organization for war—a rigor that dated back to the seventeenth
century when heartfelt local reaction against Swedish depredations
found effective institutional expression within the lands of the Hohen-
zollern princely dynasty. After the war, the Great Elector, Frederick
William (r. 1640–88), was able to beat down local opposition to cen
tralized taxation. This allowed him and his successors to maintain an
army large enough to count in European wars, despite the narrow
extent and scant resources of the original domains of the electorate.
The Great Elector, like many another German prince, built up his
army by accepting subsidies from foreign powers to supplement local
taxation. Not until the reign of Frederick William I (1713–40) did the
Hohenzollerns become financially self-sufficient. This became possi
ble only through a remarkable fusion between the nobility and the
officer corps which made the king’s service (the royal title dated from
1701) the normal career for rural landholders. The “king’s coat” worn
without badges of rank by all officers below general rank, and by
Frederick William I as well, made all officers equals, and equally the
servants of the house of Hohenzollern. Both officers and soldiers lived
very frugal, indeed poverty-stricken lives, yet a collective spirit of
“honor” and sense of duty raised the Prussian army to a level of
efficiency—and cheapness—no other European force came near to
equaling. As a result, a succession of canny rulers added to the size of
the Prussian army and to the extent of Hohenzollern territories, but
- Cf. Anton Zottman, Die Wirtschaftspolitik Friedrichs des Grossen mit besondere
Berücksichtigung der Kriegswirtschaft (Leipzig, 1937); W. O. Henderson, Studies in the
Economic Policy of Frederick the Great (London, 1963).