Prussia: The History That Changed Europe

The history of Prussia begins with the pagan Baltic tribes, who had no centralized authority yet became the target of the Teutonic Order’s crusades. The knights’ castles, the colonization by German settlers, and a harsh program of Christianization reshaped the region’s ethnic map and launched a new state—first a monastic one, later a secular polity. After the Order’s defeat at Grunwald, its power waned, and its lands became the Duchy of Prussia, which the Hohenzollerns gradually led out from under Polish suzerainty.

Thanks to the reforms of the Great Elector and, later, Frederick II, Prussia built a formidable army, an exemplary bureaucracy, and the ambitions of a great power. Victory in the War of the Austrian Succession and the seizure of Silesia turned it into a major European player and the chief engine behind the future unification of the German lands. This journey—from Baltic pagans to “kings in Prussia”—shows how a single state repeatedly reinvented itself and ultimately shifted the balance of power across the continent.

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