268 Ch. 7 • The Age of Absolutism, 1650-1720
King Frederick William I increased the Prussian army from about 39,000 to
80,000 soldiers. He engaged only tall soldiers for his royal guard, those
standing more than six feet in height, virtual giants at the time. One of his
first royal acts was to abolish the luxury industries in Berlin, the capital, that
catered to court and nobles, and to replace them with workshops that turned
out military uniforms. The king ordered all young men in Prussia to register
for military service and organized a procedure by which each regiment was
assigned a specific region from which to recruit or conscript soldiers. Prus
sia established the first system of military reserves in Europe: soldiers drilled
in the summer for two months. This meant that far more men in Prussia
experienced military life than in any other country.
The Russian and Swedish Empires
Two other empires rose in eastern and northern Europe. Early in the six
teenth century, Muscovy was a relatively small state. It stood vulnerable to
invasions by the Mongols, who had conquered what is now Russia in the thir
teenth century, the Tatars of Crimea on the edge of the Black Sea, and by the
kingdom of Poland-Lithuania. That kingdom and grand duchy had been
joined in an enormous confederation in 1386, becoming the Commonwealth
of Poland-Lithuania in 1569, with Warsaw becoming the capital in 1595.
Twice the size of France, the confederation had only about 8 million inhabi
tants. Gradually, the duchy of Muscovy, where Orthodox Christianity had
taken hold, emerged as the strongest of the states of Russia, absorbing Nov
gorod and other rivals and principalities late in the fifteenth century. By the
early sixteenth century, the Russian Orthodox Church had become centered
in Moscow, which now claimed the title of the third Rome (the second was
Constantinople). Muscovy’s ruler Ivan III (ruled 1462—1505) began using
the title ’lord of all Russia,” a title that offended the more powerful state of
Poland-Lithuania. In 1500 and again twelve years later, Ivan brazenly
attacked Poland-Lithuania, capturing the fortress town of Smolensk, which
guarded the upper Dnieper River.
The Expansion of MuscovyThe rise of Russia as an absolute state and empire began with the further
expansion of Muscovy in the late sixteenth century. Tsar Ivan IV (ruled
1533—1584) became in 1547 the first to be crowned tsar of Russia. Muscovy
conquered the Volga basin, driving back the nomadic Muslim Tatars, con
quered the Don and Volga river basins to the south before they could be
taken by either the Ottoman Empire or the Safavid rulers of Iran, absorbed
parts of the Mongol states to the east, and unsuccessfully battled Poland
Lithuania for control of the Baltic territory of Livonia. Peasants, hunters,
and fur traders expanded the domination of Muscovy into the cold and