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PRIVERCA

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA.

PRU-PRU

PRUDENTIUS, AURELIUS CLEMENS, a Christian verse in the Hôtel de Landry (now Rothschild), his ceiling paint

writer, apparently a native of Spain, who flourished during the latter half of the 4th century and in the beginning of the 5th. According to the meagre and vague autobiographical notices given by himself in the preface to his poems he was born in the year 348, and, after receiving a liberal education, practised at the bar and subsequently held judicial office in two important cities. At the time of the publication of his poems in 405 he held from the emperor a high military appointment at court. Of his subsequent history nothing is known.

His extant works, besides the preface already referred to and an epilogue, are the following:-(1) Cathemerinon Liber, a series of twelve hymns (xaonμeper iuvv) in various metres to be repeated or sung at particular periods of the day or seasons of the year; (2) Apotheosis, a poem of 1085 hexameter verses on the divinity of Christ; (3) Hamartigenia (967 hexameter verses) on the origin of evil and sin; (4) Psychomachia, or the conflict between virtue and vice for the soul (915 hexameter verses); (5) Contra Symmachum, two books, of 658 and 1131 hexameter verses respectively, directed against the petition of Symmachus to the emperor for the restoration of the altar and statue of Victory which Gratian had cast down; (6) Peristephanon Liber, fourteen poems in various metres, in honour of certain saints who had won the crown of martyrdom (hence the name, repl σrepávwv), --these, which are often vigorous and graphic, are generally considered to show Prudentius at his best; (7) Diptychon or Dittochæon, a series of forty-nine hexameter tetrastichs on various events and characters mentioned in Scripture. The editio princeps appeared at Deventer in 1472; among modern elitions may be named those of Faustus Arevalus (2 vols., Rome, 1788-89), Obbarius (Tübingen, 1845), and Dressel (Leipsic, 1860). PRUD'HON, PIERRE (1758-1823), French painter, born at Cluny on the 4th of April 1758, was the third son of a mason. The monks of the abbey undertook his education. The paintings which decorated the monastery excited his emulation, and by the aid of Moreau, bishop of Mâcon, he was placed with Devosges, director of the art school at Dijon. In 1778 Prud'hon went to Paris armed with a letter to Wille, the celebrated engraver, and three years later he obtained the triennial prize of the states of Burgundy, which enabled him to go to Rome, where he became intimate with Canova. He returned to Paris in 1787, and led for some time a precarious existence, painting portraits and making designs for booksellers. The illustrations which he executed for the Daphnis and Chloe published by Didot brought him into notice, and his reputation was extended by the success of his decorations

ing of Truth and Wisdom for Versailles (Louvre), and of Diana and Jupiter for the Gallery of Antiquities in the Louvre. In 1808 he exhibited Crime pursued by Vengeance and Justice (Louvre, engraved by Royer), which had been commissioned for the assize courts, and Psyche carried off by Zephyrs (engraved by Massard). These two remarkable compositions brought Prud'hon the Legion of Honour; his merit was widely recognized; he received innumerable orders, and in 1816 entered the Institute. Easy as to fortune, and consoled for the misery of his marriage by the devoted care of his excellent and charming pupil, Mademoiselle Mayer, Prud'hon's situation seemed enviable; but Mademoiselle Mayer's tragical suicide on 26th May 1821 brought ruin to his home, and two years later (16th February 1823) Prud'hon followed her to the grave. classic revival which set in towards the close of the 18th century, and of which Louis David was the academic chief, found in Prud'hon an interpreter whose gifts of grace and naiveté tempered by seriousness atoned by the personal charm which they imparted to all he did for the want of severity and correctness in his execution. Mademoiselle Mayer (1778-1821) was his ablest pupil. Her Abandoned Mother and Happy Mother are in the Louvre.

The

Voiart, Notice historique de la vie et œuvres de P. Prud'hon; Arch. de l'art français; Qu. de Quincy, Discours prononcé sur la tombe de Prud'hon, Fev. 1823; Eugène Delacroix, Rev. des Deux Mondes, 1846; Charles Blanc, Hist. des peintres français.

PRUSSIA (Ger., Preussen; Lat., Borussia), a kingdom Plate I. of northern Europe and by far the most important member of the German empire, occupies almost the whole of northern Germany, between 5° 52′ and 22° 53′ E. long. and 49° 7′ and 55° 53′ N. lat. It now forms a tolerably compact mass of territory, with its longest axis from southwest to north-east; but within the limits just indicated lie the "enclaves" Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, Brunswick, and other small German states, while beyond them it possesses Hohenzollern, in the south of Würtemberg, and other "exclaves" of minor importance. On the N. Prussia is bounded by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic; on the E. by Russia and Poland; on the S. by Austrian Silesia, Moravia, Bohemia, Saxony, the Thuringian states, Bavaria, Hesse-Darmstadt, the Rhenish Palatinate, and Lorraine; and on the W. by Luxemburg, Belgium, and

race.

North

the Netherlands. With the exception of the sea on the | Elbe on the west to the Oder and the Vistula on the east north and the mountain-barrier on the south-east, the is a question mainly of antiquarian interest and one upon frontiers are political rather than geographical, a fact that which authorities are not wholly agreed. In the openhas always been characteristic of Prussia's limits and that ing centuries of the Christian era we find it occupied by has had considerable influence in determining its history. Slavonic tribes, whose boundaries reach even to the west The Prussian monarchy, with an area of 134,490 square of the Elbe, and the conquest and absorption of these by miles, comprises nearly two-thirds of the entire extent of the growing German power form the subject of the early the German empire. Its kernel is the Mark of Branden- history of Brandenburg. Hand in hand with the territorial burg, round which the rest of the state has been built up extension of the Germans went the spread of Christianity, gradually, not without costly and exhausting wars. The which, indeed, often preceded the arms of the conquering territory ruled over by the first Hohenzollern elector The Slavs to the east of the Elbe were left un(1415-40) did not exceed 11,400 square miles, an area molested down to the foundation of the German monarchy, that had been quadrupled before the death of the first king established by the successors of Charlemagne about the in 1713. Frederick the Great left behind him a realm of middle of the 9th century. Then ensued the period of 75,000 square miles, and the following two monarchs, by formation of the German "marks" or marches, which served their Polish and Westphalian acquisitions, brought it to a at once as bulwarks against the encroachments of external size not far short of its present extent (122,000 square enemies and as nuclei of further conquest. The North Estabmiles in 1803). After the disastrous war of 1806 Prussia Mark of Saxony, corresponding roughly to the northern lishment shrank to something smaller than the kingdom of Frederick part of the present province of Saxony, to the west of the of the the Great (61,000 square miles), and the readjustment Elbe, was established by the emperor Henry I. about the Mark. of Europe in 1815 still left it short by 14,000 square year 930, and formed the beginning of the Prussian state. miles of its extent in 1803. Fully one-fifth of its present The same energetic monarch extended his career of conarea is due to the war of 1866, which added Hanover, quest considerably to the east of the Elbe, obtaining more Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Nassau, Schleswig-Holstein, and the or less firm possession of Priegnitz, Ruppin, and the district city of Frankfort-on-the-Main to the Prussian dominions. round the sources of the Havel, and even carried his arms to the banks of the Oder. His son Otho I. (936973) followed in his father's footsteps and founded the bishoprics of Havelberg and Brandenburg, the latter taking its name from the important Wendish fortress of Brannibor. Towards the end of the 10th century, however, the Wendish flood again swept over the whole territory to the east of the Elbe, and the Germans were confined to the original limits of the North Mark. Christianity was rooted out and the bishop of Brandenburg reduced to an episcopus in partibus. The history of the next century and a half is simply a record of a series of desultory struggles between the margraves of the North Mark and the encompassing Wends, in which the Germans did no more than hold their own on the left bank of the Elbe.

HISTORY.

The claims which Prussian history makes upon our attention are based neither upon venerable antiquity nor upon uniformity of origin. The territorial and political development of the country has taken place wholly within the last thousand years; and the materials out of which it has been built up-marquisates and duchies, ecclesiastical principalities and free imperial cities-are of the most -are of the most heterogeneous description. The history of Prussia acquires its primary significance from the fact that this state was the instrument by which the political regeneration of Germany was ultimately effected from within, and the unity and coherence of the narrative are best observed when we consider it as a record of the training that fitted the country for this task. This rôle was forced upon Prussia rather by the exigencies of its geographical position than by its title to be racially the most representative German state. The people who have established the power of Germany cannot rank in purity of Teutonic blood with the inhabitants of the central, western, and southern parts of the empire. The conquest of the Slavonic regions that form so great a part of modern Prussia did not occur without a considerable intermingling of race, and Prussia may perhaps be added to the list of great nations that seem to owe their pre-eminence to the happy blending of their composite parts. It is perhaps also worthy of remark that this state, like its great rival, was developed from a marchland of the German empire, Prussia arising from the North Mark erected against the Wends, and Austria from the East Mark erected against the Hungarians.

In tracing the early development of Prussia three main currents have to be noticed, even in a short sketch like the present, which do not completely unite until the beginning of the 17th century; indeed many writers begin the history of modern Prussia with the accession of the Great Elector We have (1) the history of the Mark of Brandenburg, the true political kernel of the modern state; (2) the history of the district of Preussen or Prussia, which gave name and regal title to the monarchy; and (3) the history of the family of Hohenzollern, from which sprang the line of vigorous rulers who practically determined the fortunes of the country.

Mark of Brandenburg.—Whether Teutons or Slavs were the earlier inhabitants of the district extending from the

Things begin to grow a little clearer in 1134, when the Albert emperor Lothair rewarded the services of Álbert the the Bear. Bear, a member of the house of Anhalt and one of the most powerful princes of the empire, by investing him with the North Mark. Albert seems to have been a man of great vigour and considerable administrative talent, and by a mixture of hard fighting and skilful policy he extended his power over the long-lost territories of Priegnitz, Ruppin, the Havelland, and the Zauche. He also shifted the centre of power to the marshy district last-mentioned and changed his title to margrave of Brandenburg. The North Mark henceforth began to be known as the Altmark, or Old Mark, while the territory round Brandenburg was for a short time called the New Mark, but more permanently the Mittelmark, or Middle Mark. The soil of Albert's new possessions was for the most part poor and unpromising, but he peopled it with industrious colonists from Holland and elsewhere, and began that system of painstaking husbandry and drainage which has gradually converted the sandy plains and marshes of Brandenburg into agricultural land of comparative fertility. The clergy were among his most able assistants in reclaiming waste land and spreading cultivation, and through them Christianity was firmly established among the conquered and Germanized Slavs. Albert's descendants, generally known Ascanian as the Ascanian line from the Latinized form of the name line. of their ancestral castle of Aschersleben, ruled in Brandenburg for nearly two hundred years; but none of them seem to have been on a par with him in energy or ability. On the whole, however, they were able to continue in the course marked out by him, and, in spite of the pernicious practice

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graves,

of dividing the territory among the various scions of the reigning house, the Mark grew steadily in size and importance. Before the end of the 12th century the margrave was created arch-chamberlain of the German empire, an office that eventually brought in its train the privilege of belonging to the electoral college. Berlin became a fortified post of the margraves in 1240 and soon began to take the place of Brandenburg as the political centre of the margraviate. Under Waldemar, who succeeded in 1309, the scattered possessions of the house were again gathered into one hand. His sway extended over the Altmark; Priegnitz, or the Vormark; the Middle Mark, now extending to the Oder; the lands of Krossen and Sternberg beyond the Oder; the Ukermark, to the north; Upper and Lower Lusatia; and part of Pomerania, with a feudal superiority over the rest. No other German prince of the time had a more extensive territory or one less exposed to imperial interference. With Waldemar's death in 1319 the Ascanian line be came extinct and a period of anarchy began, which lasted for a century and brought the once flourishing country to the verge of annihilation. Its neighbours took advantage of its masterless condition to help themselves to the outlying portions of its territory, and its resources were further wasted by intestine conflicts. In 1320 the emperor Bavarian Louis the Bavarian took possession of the Mark as a lapsed fief, and conferred it upon his son Louis, at that time a mere child. But this connexion with the imperial house proved more of a curse than of a blessing: the younger Louis turned out a very incompetent ruler, and Brandenburg became involved in the evils brought upon the Bavarian house by its conflict with the pope. To crown all, a pretender to the name of Waldemar appeared, whose claims to Brandenburg were supported by the new emperor, Charles IV.; and in 1351 Louis, wearied of his profitless sovereignty, resigned the margraviate to his brothers, Louis the Roman and Otho. The first of these died in 1365, and Otho soon became embroiled with Charles IV. But he was no match for the astute emperor, who invaded the Mark, and finally compelled the margrave to resign his territory for a sum of ready money and the Lurem promise of an annuity. The ambition of Charles was burg directed towards the establishment of a great east German monarchy, embracing Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia, and Brandenburg, and he had the sagacity to recognize the commercial importance of the last-named as offering an outlet by the Baltic Sea. Charles, however, died in 1378, and with him perished his far-reaching plans. He was succeeded in the electorate of Brandenburg-for as such it had been formally recognized in the Golden Bull of 1356-by his second son Sigismund. This prince was too greatly hampered by his other schemes to bestow much attention on Brandenburg, and in 1388 his pecuniary embarrassments were so great that he gave the electorate in pawn to his cousin Jobst or Jodocus of Moravia. The unfortunate country seemed now to have reached the lowest point consistent with its further independent existence. Jobst looked upon it merely as a source of income and made little or no attempt at government. Internal order completely disappeared, and the nobles made war on each other or plundered the more peaceful citizens without let or hindrance. Powerful neighbours again took the opportunity of appropriating such parts of Brandenburg as lay most convenient to their own borders, and the final dissolution of the electorate seemed imminent. Jobst died in 1411; and Sigismund, who succeeded to the imperial throne mainly through the help of Frederick VI., burgrave of Nuremberg, conferred the electorate of Brandenburg on this stout supporter, partly in gratitude for services rendered and partly as a mortgage for money advanced. Sigismund may possibly have recognized in Frederick the fitting

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ruler to checkmate any attempt on the part of the PolishLithuanian power, which had just overthrown the Teutonic Order (see p. 6), to push forward the Slavonic settlements to their old frontier on the Eibe. At first Frederick was merely appointed administrator of Brandenburg; but in 1415 he was declared the actual feudal superior of the land, and two years later formally installed as elector. The Brandenburg to which Frederick succeeded was con- Internal siderably smaller than it had been in the best days of the conAscanians, consisting merely of the Altmark, Priegnitz, Brandenthe Mittelmark, part of the Ukermark, and the territory of burg, Sternberg. Including his family possessions of Ansbach 11th to and Baireuth, he ruled over a territory of about 11,400 14th censquare miles in extent. The internal condition of Branden- tury. burg had declined as much as its territorial extension had decreased. The central power had become weakened and the whole inner organization relaxed, while the electorate had also lost most of the advantages that once favourably distinguished it from other imperial fiefs. Under the first margraves the official side of their position had been prominent, and it was not forgotten that technically they were little more than the representatives of the emperor. In the 13th century this feeling began to disappear, and Brandenburg enjoyed an independent importance and carried out an independent policy in a way not paralleled in any other German mark. The emperor was still, of course, the suzerain of the country, but his relations with it had so little influence on the course of its development that they may be practically ignored. Within the Mark the power of the margraves was at first almost unlimited. This arose in part from the fact that few great nobles had followed Albert the Bear in his crusade against the Wends, and that consequently there were few large feudal manors or lordships with their crowds of dependent vassals. The great bulk of the knights, the towns, and the rural communes held their lands and derived their rights directly from the margraves, who thus stood in more or less immediate contact with all classes of their subjects. The towns and villages were generally laid out by contractors (locatores), not necessarily of noble birth, who were installed as hereditary chief magistrates of the community and received numerous encouragements to reclaim waste lands. This mode of colonization was especially favourable to the peasantry, who seem in Brandenburg to have retained the disposal of their persons and property at a time when villainage or serfdom was the ordinary state of their class in feudal Europe. The dues paid by these contractors in return for their concessions formed the principal revenue of the margraves. As the expenses of the latter increased, chiefly in consequence of the calls of war, lavish donations to the clergy, and the attempt to maintain court establishments for all the members of the reigning house, they were frequently driven to pawn these dues for sums of ready money. This gave the knights or barons an opportunity to buy out the village magistrates and replace them with creatures of their own; and the axe was laid at the root of the freedom of the peasants when Louis the Bavarian formally recognized the patrimonial or manorial jurisdiction of the noblesse. Henceforth the power of the nobles steadily increased at the expense of the peasants, who were gradually reduced to a state of feudal servitude. Instead of communicating directly with the margrave through his burgraves and vogts (bailiffs), the village communities came to be represented solely by the knights who had obtained feudal possession of their lands. Many of the towns followed in their wake. Others were enabled to maintain their independence, and also made use of the pecuniary needs of the margraves, until many of them practically became municipal republics. Their strength, however, was perhaps more usefully shown in their ability

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