(^308) SERENISSIMA
Prussian diplomacy experienced similar difficulties. When Jan von
Hoverbeck first came to Warsaw in 1632, in the Prussian delegation to the
enthronement of Wladyslaw IV, he saw how their request to be presented to the
Senate was refused on the grounds that they were envoys of a vassal. Yet when
he died in Warsaw fifty years later, in 1682, not only was he ambassador of a
sovereign state, he was one of the most influential men in Poland. This Flemish
refugee, whose parents came to the Republic from the Spanish Netherlands for
reasons of religion, served the Hohenzollerns for half a century, speaking Polish
and establishing unrivalled connections in political circles. He survived numer-
ous turns of fortune. In 1641, he assisted at the last Prussian investiture. In 1648
he placed the Grand Elector's vote in favour of Jan Kazimierz; in 1669, in favour
of the Duke of Neuburg. In 1649, he was proxy to the Great-Elector's oath of
allegiance to Jan Kazimierz, in 1670 to the act of homage for Bytau and
Lauenberg. During the Swedish War, he opposed the Great-Elector's submis-
sion to Charles X, and was denounced in Berlin as a polnischer Hund. In 1657
he was instrumental in the Prussian reconciliation with the Republic in the
Treaty of Wehlau. In 1660, his contribution to the Peace of Oliwa was honoured
by the title of Baron of the Empire. He was not personally involved in the
Kalkstein affair of 1670, although the task of repairing relations with Sobieski
inevitably fell to him. During the same period, he fought to save Prussia from
Polish reprisals, promising to cede Riga to the Republic in exchange for Polish
neutrality. After Fehrbellin, the danger was much relieved. In 1681, Hoverbeck's
brokerage in the marriage of Charlotte Radziwill and Ludwig von
Hohenzollern — which was arranged in spite of the bride's betrothal to Jakub
Sobieski, the King's son and heir - expressed the nonchalant attitude which the
Prussians could now afford to take towards Polish sensitivities. Like
Sheremetiev, Hoverbeck still occupied a modest position in the formal world of
diplomacy and protocol. But in the real world of power and influence, the loom-
ing status of the Prussians could no longer be ignored. Hoverbeck's son, Johann
Dietrich, Prussian resident in Warsaw from 1690 to 1697, may still have been
objecting to the lowly place awarded to him in the processions of ambassadors.
But by then, the Prussians were building a new state without regard to the
Republic on whose distress their own fortunes were in part founded.^28
The balance of power in Eastern Europe shifted unobtrusively but irrevoca-
bly in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. John Sobieski came to the
throne in 1674 with every hope and intention of reversing the recent Prussian
and Muscovite advances. The Treaty of Wehlau (1657), which released the
Hohenzollerns from their Polish fealty, was seen as a concession of doubtful
validity exacted under duress. The Truce of Andrusovo, which left Smolensk,
Kiev, and the left-bank Ukraine in Muscovite hands, was supposedly a tempo-
rary measure. Such, indeed, was Sobieski's complacency on these two issues that
he felt quite free to pursue his Turkish campaigns to the end. In that era, the
Ottomans posed a more direct and appreciable threat than did Muscovy, just as
the invincible Swedes seemed infinitely more dangerous than the Prussians.
c. jardin
(C. Jardin)
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