Prussia: Encyclopedia II - Prussia - Early history

Prussia - Early history

In 1226 Conrad of Mazovia invited a German order of crusading knights, the Order of the Teutonic Knights from Transylvania to conquer the Prussian tribes on his borders. However, after struggling against more than a century of resistance from the Prussians they created a semi-independent state, which came to control most of what are now Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as parts of northern Poland. Eventually defeated, the Knights had to acknowledge the sovereignty of the King of Poland and Lithuania from 1466. In 1525 the Master of the Order became a Protestant, and converted part of the Order's territories into the Duchy of Prussia, the first Protestant State.

For more on Prussia's early history see Origins of Prussia, Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights, Prussian Confederation, Duchy of Prussia.

The territory of the Duchy was at this time confined to the area east of the mouth of the Vistula, near the present border between Poland and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. In 1618 the Duchy was inherited by the Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg, who was at the same time ruler of Prussia and Brandenburg, a German state centered on Berlin and ruled since the 15th century by the Hohenzollern dynasty. For Hohenzollern, the newly acquired state was very important, since it spread outside the reach of the Holy Roman Empire. This state, known as Brandenburg-Prussia, although divided into two parts separated by Polish territory, was steadily drawn out of the orbit of the declining Polish state. Under Frederick William, known as "the Great Elector," Prussia steadily acquired territories, including Magdeburg and enclaves west of the Rhine.

For more on this period, see Brandenburg-Prussia and Royal Prussia.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Early history", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki