Brandenburg-Prussia

Brandenburg-Prussia is the historiographical name for the early modern realm of the Hohenzollern dynasty between 1618 and 1701. Its core was the Margraviate of Brandenburg, whose ruling branch inherited the Duchy of Prussia in 1618 when the Prussian Hohenzollern line died out in the male line. The duchy lay outside the Holy Roman Empire and remained a Polish fief until the Treaty of Bromberg in 1657. The Thirty Years' War devastated the composite state: armies crossed it repeatedly and perhaps half the population was killed or displaced. Under Frederick William, the Great Elector, Brandenburg-Prussia rebuilt its finances, created a standing army in 1653, and won renown at Warsaw in 1656 and Fehrbellin in 1675. The Peace of Westphalia added Minden, Halberstadt, Farther Pomerania and Magdeburg, while the Treaty of Xanten had already brought Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg in 1614. The Great Elector also opened the country to Huguenot and other Protestant refugees through the Edict of Potsdam and began centralising administration. In 1701 his son Frederick III obtained the royal title as Frederick I, and the Hohenzollern lands were thereafter known as the Kingdom of Prussia, although the personal union with Brandenburg legally lasted until 1806.