This crisis of confidence in France did not discredit absolutism.. The obvious cure for present troubles was a new, better absolutism. The majority of social critics looked to other absolutist countries for their models of reform. Prussia was the foremost of these.

This lecture is an investigation of Prussia, the ideals on which it was built, the methods of its government, and its accomplishments.

Let's begin by specifying what Prussia was: a group of widely separated districts spread across northern Germany and Poland. There were three main parts.

• Electorate of Brandenburg centered in Berlin. Its ruler enjoyed the rank of elector, which meant he was one of seven German princes who elected the Holy Roman Emperor.
• Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg in northwestern Germany,
• East Prussia, formerly the property of the Teutonic Knights; in 1701 ,the Elector of Brandenburg declare himself King of Prussia.

Like many other German states of the late 17th and 18th centuries, Prussia had been damaged by domestic and foreign armies. Depopulation was the major problem. The total wealth of society and its productive capacity had dropped drastically. Every prince had to be very concerned with creating wealth, and needed an up-to-date, well-disciplined, well-supplied army.

One of best sources for goals and attitudes of German governments are the police ordinance recently investigated by Marc Raeff. Pioneered by Charles V in the 16th c. Ordinances attempted to ensure that princely domains would enjoy good order in the broadest sense

Up to 1650 and beyond, the police ordinances of Germany in general reflected the harsh, moralistic attitudes of rulers in a period of religious conflict and moral reform imposed from above. Early police codes were largely negative, forbidding actions in the hope of restoring a divinely ordained past order.

After the Thirty Years' War, however, the emphasis of ordinances began to shift towards making people more productive and disciplined.

For instance sumptuary laws were passed to forbid unseemly luxury among the lower classes. Sumptuary laws, as the name implies, seek to control consumption, and usually do so on the basis of rank. In other words, such laws permit more ostentation and luxury among lords than among peasants.

German sumptuary laws were part of an effort to discipline social life in a productive direction. Not only was extravagance (in weddings, etc.) forbidden, but traditional holidays were banned.

One of the chief problems was a lack of peasant labor. Thus harsh punishments that destroyed the work force went out of favor. It was beggars and gypsies who threatened social order, not witches.

Coercion was used to turn all inhabitants into settled subjects, or to get rid of those who would not. Paternalism. Laws proclaimed that an unstructured and disorderly life could not be tolerated, while those who did not work were morally evil. (Gypsies).

Settled, hardworking subjects, on the other hand, were cared for as never before. The basic attitude was summed up by Frederick II: "Useful hardworking people should be guarded as the apple of one's eye, and in wartime recruits should be levied in one's own country only when the bitterest necessity compels."

Not only were the productive to be sheltered from the horrors of war, they were to be protected as much as possible from the abuses of lordly or state power. The protection of Prussian peasants from injustice was an important matter of policy.

Economic concerns far more central in German absolutism than in French because of the greater poverty of German society. Prussia did the best job in all of Europe to implement central economic planning.

Why?

1. Prussian rulers, and not just their ministers, took production of wealth seriously.
2. Prussian monarchs had a more fluid society to deal with, and thus could rearrange it more easily than, for instance, Louis XIV.
3. Prussia had two capable rulers in a row. Frederick William I (1713-40) and Frederick II the Great (1740-86).

Prussia may have been poor, but the monarchs had a great deal of control over peasants and nobility alike. Prussia had been devastated and impoverished, and much of the land was abandoned. Frederick William able to lay claim to 30% of land in the kingdom, thanks to his strong army, and thus cutting down the independence of the nobility and gaining for himself an independent power base and income.

This wealth used to implement an impressive bureaucratic government. Compare to France, where offices had been sold for generation. . In Prussia, offices had seldom been sold, and were not sold at all after 1740. Frederick William I and Frederick II were able to do this because they were solvent and so powerful that they could keep discipline among nobles and officers alike.

The greatest accomplishment of these wealthy, puritanical kings was perhaps the new ruling class that they created. Both Frederick William and his more cultured son thought of themselves as protectors and patrons of the old landed nobility, the Junkers, whom they depended upon to command the army on which their power was ultimately based.. But at the same time they knew that they needed educated men to plan and oversee the technical aspects of government., including industrial and trade policy and most of all the supplying and feeding of their huge army. Prussia, as usual, was most successful in creating such a class, drawn from both nobility and middle class.

These Prussian bureaucrats were both:

• more businesslike than any merchants of the 18th century, in our modern sense of managing huge enterprises systematically, (there were no huge private corporations back then) and
• the original socialist technocrats.

Limitations on success of the Prussian absolutist system:

1. Prussia, though economically progressive, was entirely authoritarian in its attitudes. In particular, the welfare that the Prussian welfare state sought to create was the welfare of the state. The individual meant nothing, except in so far as his or her existence benefited the corporate body and the interests of the ruler. Examples:
   • Peasants as class protected, but any peasant family could be expropriated if replaced by another one.
   • Nobles, too, were regulated very strictly in their private lives. For instance they were not even allowed to leave the country without permission, which was almost never granted.
2. The success of the system is consistently exaggerated by the neglect of significant factors.
   • For instance, the role of plunder: success largely financed by confiscations of FW I (used to build an army), the use of that army (by F II) to conquer Silesia (increase in size of state by 25%). Even this plunder did not guarantee success. Frederick II's savings (four years' state revenue) ran out long before the end of the Seven Years' War. War had to be financed by savage taxation of conquered Saxony, and later partition of Poland. Much of Prussian economy was theft on a grand scale.
   • Often overlooked in discussion of Prussian "welfare state.": 1/9 of Prussian population died in Seven Years' War.
   • Fighting such wars not an unfortunate necessity for Frederick: the whole point of being king.

Frederick William II, Frederick the Great's son, spent his father's savings of 52 million thalers and ran up a debt of 40 million thalers. Fortunately he died before he could completely wreck the state. New reforms (after humiliating defeats by Napoleon) gave Prussia a new lease on life. The nineteenth century success of Prussia is partly due to the fact that in this crisis, the absolutist government took the daring step of eliminating mercantilist restrictions on trade, dysfunctional privileges, and indeed most features of the society of orders.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C.B.A. Behrens, Society, Government and the Enlightenment: The Experiences of Eighteenth-century France and Prussia (London, 1985).

William W. Hagen, "Seventeenth Century Crisis in Brandenburg: The Thirty Years' War, the Destabilization of Serfdom, and the Role of Absolutism," AHR 94(1989): 302-335.

Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France 1400-1750 (Baton Rouge, 1985).

Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800 (New Haven, 1983).

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