Ebook: The Habsburg and Hohenzollern Dynasties in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

"The opening of the seventeenth century found the Habsburg dominions
in central Europe in a state of considerable, and unaccustomed,
uncertainty....This family disunity was superimposed on a great ideological
division that had come ro run through all their dominions, in
consequence of rhe Reformation....
"It was in almost every respect an unhappy age both for the dynasty
and its peoples. The political tension between Catholic rulers and
largely Protestant Estates found a counterpart...in severe social distress.
...Catholics and Protestants throughout central Europe girded themselves
for a conflict, which the Protestants of Bohemia precipitated by
throwing two of [the Emperor] Matthias’s Catholic advisers out of a
window of the Royal Palace in Prague....
"He would have been a bold man who had prophesied in 1600 that
less than two hundred years later the Hohenzollerns would be challenging
the Habsburgs for the leadership of central Europe....Historians
usually date the upturn of the family fortunes from the accession of
the Elector Frederick William, who ruled from 1640 to 1688 [and
made his realm]...a force to be reckoned with internationally, while
at home he had laid the foundations on which his successors were to
construct the efficient edifice of the Prussian military-bureaucratic
state....
"The selection of documents [here]...is of necessity highly eclectic.
It does not pretend to constitute a compendium of the most important
pieces of the period—who shall say exactly which these arc?—but to
illustrate the trends with examples from each."— C. A . M a c a r t n e y