Prussia (region) in the context of "Masovia"

The Kingdom of Prussia (German: Königreich Preußen, pronounced [ˈkøːnɪkʁaɪç ˈpʁɔʏsn̩] ) was a German state that existed from 1701 to 1918. It played a significant role in the unification of Germany in 1871 and was a major constituent of the German Empire until its dissolution in 1918. Although it took its name from the region called Prussia, it was based in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. Its capital was Berlin.

The kings of Prussia were from the House of Hohenzollern. The polity of Brandenburg-Prussia, predecessor of the kingdom, became a military power under Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, known as "The Great Elector". As a kingdom, Prussia continued its rise to power, especially during the reign of Frederick II "the Great". Frederick the Great was instrumental in starting the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), holding his own against Austria, Russia, France and Sweden and establishing Prussia's dominant role among the German states, as well as establishing the country as a European great power through the victories of the powerful Prussian Army. Prussia made attempts to unify all the German states (excluding the German cantons in Switzerland) under its rule, and whether Austria would be included in such a unified German domain became an ongoing question. After the Napoleonic Wars led to the creation of the German Confederation, the issue of unifying the German states caused the German revolutions of 1848–1849, with representatives from all states attempting to unify under their own constitution. Attempts to create a federation remained unsuccessful and the German Confederation collapsed in 1866 when the Austro-Prussian War ensued between its two most powerful member states.

Prussia (/ˈprʌʃə/; German: Preußen [ˈpʁɔʏsn̩] ; Old Prussian: Prūsija) was a German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization act of the Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, expanding its size with the Prussian Army. Prussia, with its capital at Königsberg and then, when it became the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany. Prussia formed the German Empire when it united the German states in 1871. It was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and de jure by an Allied decree in 1947.

The name Prussia derives from the Old Prussians who were conquered by the Teutonic Knights – an organized Catholic medieval military order of German crusaders – in the 13th century. In 1308, the Teutonic Knights conquered the region of Pomerelia with Danzig. Their monastic state was mostly Germanised through immigration from central and western Germany, and, in the south, it was Polonised by settlers from Masovia. The imposed Second Peace of Thorn (1466) split Prussia into the western Royal Prussia, a province of Poland, and the eastern Duchy of Prussia, a feudal fief of the Crown of Poland until 1657. After 1525, the Teutonic Order relocated their headquarters to Mergentheim, but managed to keep land in Livonia until 1561. The union of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia in 1618 led to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701.

East Prussia (German: Ostpreußen [ˈɔstˌpʁɔɪ̯sn̩] ) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1772 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 1871); following World War I it formed part of the Weimar Republic's Free State of Prussia, until 1945. Its capital city was Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad). East Prussia was the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast.

The bulk of the ancestral lands of the Baltic Old Prussians were enclosed within the later province of East Prussia. During the 13th century, the native Prussians were conquered by the crusading Teutonic Knights. After the conquest they were gradually converted to Christianity. As a result of the medieval Ostsiedlung, Germans became the dominant ethnic group, while Poles and Lithuanians formed sizeable minorities. From the 13th century, the region of Prussia was part of the monastic state of the Teutonic Knights. After the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 it became a part of the Kingdom of Poland, either directly (Warmia) or as a fief (remainder). In 1525, with the Prussian Homage, the territory became the Duchy of Prussia, a vassal duchy of Poland. It gained full sovereignty in 1657, when Poland renounced its feudal rights in the Treaty of Bromberg.

Royal Prussia (Polish: Prusy Królewskie; German: Königlich-Preußen or Preußen Königlichen Anteils, Kashubian: Królewsczé Prësë) or Polish Prussia (Polish: Prusy Polskie; German: Polnisch-Preußen) became a province of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, which was annexed following the Second Peace of Thorn (1466) from territory in Pomerelia and western Prussia which had been part of the State of the Teutonic Order. Royal Prussia retained its autonomy, governing itself and maintaining its own laws, customs, and rights.

In 1569, Royal Prussia was fully integrated into the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and its autonomy was largely abolished. As a result, the Royal Prussian parliament was incorporated into the Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1772 and 1793, after the first and second partition of Poland, the former territory of Royal Prussia was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia and subsequently re-organized into the province of West Prussia. This occurred at the time of the First Partition of Poland, with other parts of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth being annexed by the Russian Empire and Habsburg Austria.

The State of the Teutonic Order (German: Staat des Deutschen Ordens, pronounced [ˈʃtaːt dɛs ˌdɔʏtʃn̩ ˈʔɔʁdn̩s] ) was a theocratic state located along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea in northern Europe. It was formed by the knights of the Teutonic Order during the early 13th century Northern Crusades in the region of Prussia. In 1237, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword merged with the Teutonic Order of Prussia and became known as its branch – the Livonian Order (while their state, Terra Mariana, covering present-day Estonia, Latvia, and a small part of Russia, became part of the State of the Teutonic Order). At its greatest territorial extent during the early 15th century, the State encompassed Chełmno Land, Courland, Gotland, Livonia, Estonia, Neumark, Pomerelia (Gdańsk Pomerania), Prussia and Samogitia.

Following the battles of Grunwald in 1410 and Wilkomierz in 1435, the State fell into decline. After losing extensive territories in the imposed Peace of Thorn in 1466, the extant territory of its Prussian branch became known as Monastic Prussia (Polish: Prusy zakonne) or Teutonic Prussia (Polish: Prusy krzyżackie). It existed until 1525 as a fiefdom of the Polish Crown. The Livonian branch joined the Livonian Confederation and continued to exist as part of it until 1561.

During the Great Northern War (1700–1721), many towns and areas around the Baltic Sea and East-Central Europe had a severe outbreak of the plague with a peak from 1708 to 1712. This epidemic was probably part of a pandemic affecting an area from Central Asia to the Mediterranean. Most probably via Constantinople, it spread to Pińczów in southern Poland, where it was first recorded in a Swedish military hospital in 1702. The plague then followed trade, travel and army routes, reached the Baltic coast at Prussia in 1709, affected areas all around the Baltic Sea by 1711 and reached Hamburg by 1712. Therefore, the course of the war and the course of the plague mutually affected each other: while soldiers and refugees were often agents of the plague, the death toll in the military as well as the depopulation of towns and rural areas sometimes severely impacted the ability to resist enemy forces or to supply troops.

This plague was the last to affect the area around the Baltic, which had experienced several waves of the plague since the Black Death of the 14th century. However, for some areas, it was the most severe. People died within a few days of first showing symptoms. Especially on the eastern coast from Prussia to Estonia, the average death toll for wide areas was up to two thirds or three quarters of the population, and many farms and villages were left completely desolated. It is, however, hard to distinguish between deaths due to a genuine plague infection and deaths due to starvation and other diseases that spread along with the plague. While buboes are recorded among the symptoms, contemporary means of diagnosis were poorly developed, and death records are often unspecific, incomplete or lost. Some towns and areas were affected only for one year, while in other places the plague recurred annually throughout several subsequent years. In some areas, a disproportionally high death toll is recorded for children and women, which may be due to famine and the men being drafted.

Old Prussians, Baltic Prussians or simply Prussians were a Baltic people that inhabited the region of Prussia, on the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea between the Vistula Lagoon to the west and the Curonian Lagoon to the east. As Balts, they spoke an Indo-European language of the Baltic branch now known as Old Prussian and worshipped pre-Christian deities. Their ethnonym was later adopted by predominantly Low German-speaking inhabitants of the region.

The duchy of the Polans under Mieszko I, which was the predecessor of the Kingdom of Poland, first attempted to conquer and baptize the Baltic tribes during the 10th century, but repeatedly encountered strong resistance. Not until the 13th century were the Old Prussians subjugated and their lands conquered by the Teutonic Order. The remaining Old Prussians were assimilated during the following two centuries. The Old Prussian language, documented only in a limited way, was effectively extinct by the 18th century.

Galindians were two distinct, and now extinct, tribes of the Balts. Most commonly, Galindians refers to the Western Galindians who lived in the southeast part of Prussia. Less commonly, it is used for a tribe that lived in the area of what is today Moscow (Russian: Голядь).

Swedish Pomerania (Swedish: Svenska Pommern; German: Schwedisch-Pommern) was a dominion of Sweden from 1630 to 1815 on what is now the Baltic coast of Germany and Poland. Following the Polish War and the Thirty Years' War, Sweden held extensive control over the lands on the southern Baltic coast, including Pomerania and parts of Livonia and Prussia (dominium maris baltici).

Sweden, which had been present in Pomerania with a garrison at Stralsund since 1628, gained effective control of the Duchy of Pomerania with the Treaty of Stettin in 1630. At the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the Treaty of Stettin in 1653, Sweden received Western Pomerania (German Vorpommern), with the islands of Rügen, Usedom, and Wolin, and a strip of Farther Pomerania (Hinterpommern). The peace treaties were negotiated while the Swedish queen Christina was a minor, and the Swedish Empire was governed by members of the high aristocracy. As a consequence, Pomerania was not annexed to Sweden like the French war gains, which would have meant abolition of serfdom, as the Pomeranian peasant and shepherd regulation of 1616 was practised there in its most severe form. Instead, it remained part of the Holy Roman Empire, making the Swedish rulers Reichsfürsten (imperial princes) and leaving the nobility in full charge of the rural areas and its inhabitants. While the Swedish Pomeranian nobles were subjected to reduction when the late 17th-century kings regained political power, the provisions of the peace of Westphalia continued to prevent the pursuit of the uniformity policy in Pomerania until the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806.