His successor, Frederick II Irontooth, established Berlin as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and eventually as German emperors.

He replaced mandatory military service among the middle class with an annual tax, established primary schools, and resettled East Prussia ( which had been devastated by the plague in 1709 ).

Pomerelia became part of Royal Prussia, a newly established province of the Kingdom of Poland, and later on of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

From 1763, against resistance from the nobility and citizenry, an " enlightened absolutism " was established in Prussia and Austria, according to which the ruler governed according to the best precepts of the philosophers.

Napoleon established direct or indirect control over most of western Europe, including the German states apart from Prussia and Austria.

In 1834 the Zollverein was established, a customs union between Prussia and most other German states, but excluding Austria.

In its place the North German Federation ( German Norddeutscher Bund ) was established, under the leadership of Prussia.

In 1525 the Duchy of Prussia was established as a fief of the King of Poland.

* Teutonic Knights, established about 1190, and ruled the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia until 1525

* 1456 – The University of Greifswald is established, making it the second oldest university in northern Europe ( also for a period the oldest in Sweden, and Prussia )

Its founding members were the United Kingdom, Austrian Empire, Russian Empire and Kingdom of Prussia, the members of the Quadruple Alliance responsible for the downfall of the First French Empire ; in time France became established as a fifth member of the concert.

In 1866 it was annexed by Prussia, together with the Free City of Frankfurt, Hesse-Homburg and the duchy of Nassau, which established the province of Hesse-Nassau.

But the parts of Hesse-Darmstadt north of the Main river ( the region around the town of Gießen, commonly called Oberhessen ) were incorporated in the Norddeutscher Bund, a tight federation of German states, established by Prussia in 1867.

* A permanent standing army is established in Prussia.

* October 17 – The University of Greifswald is established, making it the second oldest university in northern Europe ( also for a period the oldest in Sweden and Prussia ).

The Napoleonic Code was not the first legal code to be established in a European country with a civil legal system-it was preceded by the Codex Maximilianeus bavaricus civilis ( Bavaria, 1756 ), the Allgemeines Landrecht ( Prussia, 1794 ), and the West Galician Code ( Galicia, then part of Austria, 1797 ).

The area of western Prussia around Gdańsk was Christianized via Pomerania as well, and the monastery of Oliwa at Gdańsk was established at that time, while eastern Prussia was Christianized later via Riga by the Teutonic Knights.

Albert established himself as the first duke of the Duchy of Prussia and a vassal of the Polish crown by the Prussian Homage.

The Seedienst Ostpreußen was established to provide an independent transport service to East Prussia.

In 1769, Frederick II of Prussia established a military school in the city, according to Stanisław Salmonowicz its purpose was the germanization of local Polish nobility.

Nearly 50, 000 Huguenots established themselves in Germany, 20, 000 of which were welcomed in Brandenburg-Prussia, where they were granted special privileges ( Edict of Potsdam ) by Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia.

In 1864 Holstein became subordinate to Prussia, which soon afterwards established the district of Oldenburg in Holstein.

When Schleswig-Holstein became a province of Prussia in 1867, the district of Steinburg was established.

The military decoration called the Iron Cross which existed in the Kingdom of Prussia, and later in the German Empire and Third Reich, was established by King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia and first awarded on 10 March 1813 in Breslau ( now Wrocław in Poland ), during the Napoleonic Wars.

Starting in great force late in December, from a line stretching from East Prussia to Budapest, the Red armies had swept two hundred miles across Poland to the Oder, thirty miles from Berlin, and the Upper Danube region was being rapidly overrun, while the Western Allies had not yet occupied all of the left bank of the Rhine.

Marlborough wrote an appeal to the Duke of Württemberg, the commander of the Danish contingent – " I send you this express to request your Highness to bring forward by a double march your cavalry so as to join us at the earliest moment …" Additionally, the King in Prussia, Frederick I, had kept his troops in quarters behind the Rhine while his personal disputes with Vienna and the States-General at The Hague remained unresolved.

Danish and Frisian were spoken predominantly in the north of the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein and Dutch in the western border areas of the Prussia -- that is, Hanover, Westphalia and the Rhine Province.

In Germany Napoleon set up the " Confederation of the Rhine ," comprising most of the German states except Prussia and Austria.

Saxony changed sides to support Napoleon and join his Confederation of the Rhine ; its elector was rewarded with the title of king and given a slice of Poland taken from Prussia.

Prussia first set foot on the Rhine in 1609 by the occupation of the Duchy of Cleves and about a century later Upper Guelders and Moers also became Prussian.

The Prussian Rhine province was formed in 1822 and Prussia had the tact to leave them in undisturbed possession of the liberal institutions they had become accustomed to under the republican rule of the French.

Originally, it consisted of Westphalia and the northern parts of the Rhine Province, both formerly part of Prussia.

Nicholas and Charlotte were third cousins, as they were both great-great-grandchildren of Frederick William I of Prussia. Emperor Alexander II, born 17 April 1818, successor of father Nicholas I, assassinated 13 March 1881, married 1841, Marie of Hesse and by Rhine

However, when Napoleon advanced as far as Thuringia after September 1806 in response to the Berlin Ultimatum, which demanded the withdrawal of French troops from the left bank of the Rhine, Frederick Augustus joined with Prussia.

After the collapse of the French dominated West Bank in the early 19th century, the German and Dutch ( Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg ) speaking regions at the middle and lower course of the Rhine were annexed to the kingdom of Prussia.

The Prussian administration reorganized the territory as the Rhine Province ( also known as Rhenish Prussia ), a term continuing in the names of the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia.

While the only recent war experience of the Prussian Army was in the War of the Polish Succession ( Rhine campaign of 1733 – 1735 ) it had largely been kept out of combat, since Prussia was not fully trusted by Austria.

Shortly after the seizure of the Rhineland, on April 5, 1815, King Frederick William III of Prussia promised the establishment of a new university in the new Rhine province ( German: den aus Landesväterlicher Fürsorge für ihr Bestes gefaßten Entschluß, in Unsern Rheinlanden eine Universität zu errichten ).

Napoleon created the Confederation of the Rhine, a string of German states meant to serve as a buffer between France and Prussia.

Only Austria, Prussia, Danish Holstein, and Swedish Pomerania stayed outside the Confederation of the Rhine.

* The Grand Duchy of the Lower Rhine ( 1815-1822 as part of Prussia )

The Congress of Vienna assigned the city to Prussia, and in 1822, it was made the seat of government for the Prussian Rhine Province.

These powers initiated a series of invasions of France by land and sea, with Prussia and Austria attacking from the Austrian Netherlands and the Rhine, and Great Britain supporting revolts in provincial France and laying siege to Toulon.

Even before the close of 1794 the king of Prussia retired from any active part in the war, and on the 5 April 1795 he concluded with France the Peace of Basel, which recognized France's occupation of the left bank of the Rhine.

Napoleon created the Confederation of the Rhine, a string of German states meant to serve as a buffer between France and Prussia.

At Vienna, in spite of the powerful backing of Alexander of Russia, he failed to secure the annexation of the whole of Saxony to Prussia ; at Paris, after Waterloo, he failed to carry through his views as to the further dismemberment of France ; he had weakly allowed Metternich to forestall him in making terms with the states of the Confederation of the Rhine, which secured to Austria the preponderance in the German federal diet ; on the eve of the conference of Carlsbad ( 1819 ) he signed a convention with Metternich, by which — to quote the historian Treitschke — “ like a penitent sinner, without any formal quid pro quo, the monarchy of Frederick the Great yielded to a foreign power a voice in her internal affairs .”

After the Battle of Austerlitz, where he commanded the grenadiers in the absence of General Oudinot, he was employed in a series of important negotiations with Frederick William III of Prussia, with the elector of Saxony ( December 1806 ), in the incorporation of certain states in the Confederation of the Rhine, and in the conclusion of the armistice of Znaim ( July 1809 ).

Further, Prussia and Spain ( and also Hessen-Kassel ) decided to make peace, in the Peace of Basel Prussia secretly ceded the left bank of the Rhine to France and freeing French armies from the Pyrenees while Spain ceded the eastern two thirds of Hispaniola ( now the Dominican Republic ).