Eastern European Absolutism

The grounds for absolutism in Prussia was the army and military values, unlike Austria. In the second half of the seventeenth century when Elector Frederick I was looking to establish Prussia’s one and only permanent standing army, many recent wars like those of Louis XIV built up the idea that war was almost a certainty and an army could do nothing but good for the country. After the army was established in 1660, Frederick not only had financial independence but also superior force, things that in most non-absolutist governments were controlled by groups of people for the most responsible and least biased use believed possible. The Elector began building up the army immediatly. Within time, a population of one million maintained an army of thirty thousand soldiers. Less than a century later King Frederick William I stepped into the painting of Prussia’s most important people in history. Frederick William added intense military values to the economy of Prussia. He lived his days as a brutal military leader afraid to put his army into action and see his men disappear to their deaths. He was Machiavellian in the senses that he had a standing army ready for anything and he showed more values of being feared than loved in that his punishment just for one of his men missing a button on their uniform was a nice beating. At the end of his rule, the Estates and local self-government was close to its demise in Prussia or had already diminished, and the army was the fourth largest in all of Europe, and quite possibly the strongest and most reliable.

Prussia came out the more absolutist of the two countries. The reasoning for this can be seen as a “quality over quanitity” example. While Austria’s development to a state of absolutism included elements of absolutism that Prussia’s didn’t, such as control of the church, Prussia had so much backing up their military side of absolutism that they didn’t need as many elements to build up a nearly invincible country. In Prussia, lfe revolved around the army, and the army was one-hundred percent in the hands of Frederick William I, giving the Prussian ruler full control over his land. The Ferdinands and Maria Theresa never reached a place of full control in Austria.

There were only two countries. There were only five rulers of importance. Different factors put into place influenced both countries’ development into absolutism, but the matter of highest importance is that both developments were carried out, even if Prussia’s was more significant than Austria’s.