Pomerania in the early modern period
Garrison, plunder, numerous battles, famine and diseases left two thirds of the population dead and most of the country ravaged.
[12] Brandenburg-Prussia was able to integrate southern Swedish Pomerania into her Pomeranian province during the Great Northern War, which was confirmed in the Treaty of Stockholm in 1720.
The war ended in October 1466 with the Second Peace of Thorn, which provided for the Order's cession to the Polish Crown of its rights over the western half of Prussia, including Pomerelia and the districts of Elbląg (Elbing), Malbork (Marienburg), and Chełmno (Kulm).
Royal Prussia enjoyed a certain degree autonomy in its affiliation to the Crown of Poland – it had its own Diet, treasury and monetary unit and armies.
Also in 1521, Johannes Bugenhagen, the Doctor Pomeranus, the most important person in the following conversion of Pomerania to Protestantism, left Belbuck Abbey to study in Wittenberg, close to Luther.
On December 13, 1534, a Landtag was assembled in Treptow an der Rega, where the dukes and the nobility against the vote of Cammin bishop Erasmus von Manteuffel officially introduced Protestantism to Pomerania.
In the same year, Pomerania-Rügenwalde (consisting of the areas around Rügenwalde and Bütow) was split off Pomerania-Stettin to satisfy Barnim XII.
The Pomeranian dukes Johann Friedrich and Ernst Ludwig refused to pay their taxes to the circle's treasury (Kreiskasten in Leipzig) properly, and in the rare cases they did, they marked it as a voluntary act.
[20] The Pomeranian dukes justified their actions with events of 1563, when an army led by Eric of Brunswick crossed and devastated their duchy, and the circle did not give them support.
[19] Yet, due to the rejection of financial support by the nobility, the Pomeranian dukes' funds for the campaign were low, resulting in their humiliation during the war for fighting with bad horses and weapons.
[19] The 1637 death of the last Griffin duke Bogislaw XIV and the 1648 Peace of Westphalia marked the end of the duchy.
[10] During the Thirty Years' War Pomerania, lost two thirds of its population[10][11] due to military raids, plague, famine and criminal violence.
Though the countryside was hit hardest, many towns had been burned down, too, especially in Farther Pomerania: Bärwalde, Kolberg, Naugard, Regenwalde, Rügenwalde, Rummelsburg, and Stargard.
[11] Following the death of Bogislaw XIV, Duke of Pomerania without issue in 1637, control was disputed between Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia – which had previously held reversion to the Duchy.
Throughout the High and Late Middle Ages, the rural population of Pomerania was dominated by free farmers working on their own, small, hereditary farms.
[23] In 1657, Polish forces led by general Czarniecki ravaged southern Swedish Pomerania, and destroyed and plundered Pasewalk, Gartz (Oder) and Penkun.
[25] In 1659, imperial forces led by general de Souches invaded Swedish Pomerania, took and burned Greifenhagen, took Wollin island and Damm, besieged Stettin and Greifswald without success, but took Demmin on November 9.
Counterattacks were mounted by general Müller von der Lühnen, who lifted the siege laid on Greifswald by the Brandenburgian prince elector, and major general Paul Wirtz, who from besieged Stettin managed to capture the Brandenburgian ammunition depot at Curau and took it to Stralsund.
Only Stettin commander Meyerfeldt refused to hand over the towns without receiving direct order of Swedish king Charles XII.
Stettin was subsequently besieged by Russian and Saxon forces led by prince Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov, and surrendered on September 29.
According to the Treaty of Schwedt on October 6, Menshikov was paid his war costs by Prussia, and Stettin was occupied by Holstein and Brandenburg troops.
[13] On November 22, 1714, King Charles XII of Sweden returned from Turkey to lead the Swedish defense in Pomerania in person.
By this, Sweden ceded the parts east of the Oder River that had been won in 1648 as well as Western Pomerania south of the Peene and the islands of Wolin and Usedom to Brandenburg-Prussia in turn for a 2 million Taler payment.
The Swedes took Demmin, Usedom and Wollin, but were forced back by Prussian general Hans von Lehwaldt, who then turned to Swedish Stralsund.
[35][38] In the following years, new farmland was made available by clearing woodlands and draining swamps (e.g. Thurbruch, Plönebruch, Schmolsiner Bruch) and lakes (e.g. Madüsee, Neustettiner See) as well as levee construction at some rivers (e.g. Ihna, Leba).
In 1750, recruitment of settlers started in Danzig, Elbing, Warsaw, Augsburg, Frankfurt am Main, Nuremberg, Hamburg, and Brussels.
The Polish administrative and legal code was replaced by the Prussian system, and education improved; 750 schools were built from 1772 to 1775.
[40] Frederick despised Poles and called them "dirty" and "vile apes"[41]- In the annexed lands the number of schools was reduced and some of them reoriented towards Germanization, while the peasant population was burdened with heavy taxes and twenty years of military service, while Prussian goods could move freely into acquired Polish territories, Polish wool industry(being the largest) was subject to prohibition of export to other Prussian areas; this put local industries at danger[42] He considered West Prussia as uncivilized as Colonial Canada[43] and compared the Poles to the Iroquois.
[44] In a letter to his brother Henry, Frederick wrote about the province that "it is a very good and advantageous acquisition, both from a financial and a political point of view.
[43] In the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, further annexations were made, with Prussia obtaining Gdańsk and Toruń, Germanised into Danzig and Thorn.
