Prussian estates
They were at first composed of officials of six big cities of the region; Braunsberg (Braniewo), Culm (Chełmno), Elbing (Elbląg), Danzig (Gdańsk), Königsberg (Królewiec) and Thorn (Toruń).
[1][2] Norman Housley noted that "The alienation of the Prussian Estates represented a massive political failure on the part of the Order".
[12] Nicolaus Copernicus, then canon of the Prince-Bishopric of Warmia, addressed the Prussian estates with three memoranda, in fact little essays,[13] on currency reform.
They had raised most of the funds for the warfares, and now lightened their debt burden by debasing their coins, thus passing on part of the burden to receivers of nominally fixed revenues, such as civic and ecclesiastical creditors and civic, feudal and ecclesiastical collectors of nominally fixed monetarised dues.
[16] Under Polish sovereignty, Prussians, particularly those from Royal Prussia, saw their liberties confirmed and expanded; local cities prospered economically (Gdańsk became the largest and richest city in the Commonwealth), and local nobility participated in the benefits of Golden Liberty, such as the right to elect the king.
[20] Members of the Estates, then by status mostly noble landed manor holders, and the circle of potential debtors were literally the same.
[21] In 1807 the East Prussian Estates made a political bargain on accepting the king as a member within their credit corporation with his royal East Prussian demesnes, to be encumbered as security for the Pfandbriefe to be issued in his favour, which he was to sell to investors, thus raising credit funds.
On 9 October 1807 the reforming Prussian minister Heinrich vom und zum Stein prompted Frederick William III to decree the October Edict (Edict concerning the relieved possession and the free usage of real estate [landed property] as well as the personal relations of the rural population) which generally transformed all kind of landholdings into free allodial property.
[23] This act enormously increased the amount of alienable real estate in Prussia apt to be pledged as security for credits, needed so much to pay the higher taxes in order to finance Napoléon's warfare through the compulsory war contributions to France.
[24] Most remaining legal differences between the estates (classes) were abolished in 1810, when almost all Prussian subjects – former feudal lords, serfs, burghers (city dwellers), free peasants, Huguenots etc., turned into citizens of Prussia.
On 23 January Count Friedrich Ferdinand Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten, president of the Estates assembly, called its members for 5 February 1813.
[25] However, this civic act of initiating Prussia's participation in the liberation wars did not meet with the gratitude of the monarch, who again and again procrastinated over his promise to introduce a parliament of genuine legislative competence for all the monarchy.
