Prussia, Austria, and the Westernization of Russia

This is Unit Three of Western Civilization Two, part two of two: Peter's army and his Table of Ranks, the war that made Russia a power, five procedures, and the bargain beneath three absolutisms. Part one ended with Peter shaving his nobles. This part binds them. He conscripted one serf in twenty for life, built a capital on a marsh, and after seventeen twenty-two made every noble a servant of the state under the Table of Ranks, the reform the exam's second sample question names. The Great Northern War made the result a European power, and Catherine inherited it. Then five procedures and the payoff of the unit's governing idea: Louis beat and bought his nobles, and the eastern monarchs paid theirs in peasants. By the end you will be able to describe the army, the city and the Table. To describe the war, Russia after Peter, and Catherine. To sequence, read, compare, map and classify. And to state the bargain.

Two entries on what Peter built with the nobles he had shaved: an army that took two-thirds of revenue, a city on the Neva, and the Table of Ranks.

One serf in twenty, for life.

WC2 0214 Conscription, Two-Thirds of Revenue to the Army, and St. Petersburg, 1703

In seventeen-oh-five Peter conscripted one serf in twenty for life, the anchor's figure, and the military took over two-thirds of revenue. Russia took the Neva's mouth in seventeen-oh-three and St. Petersburg rose there on forced labor as the new capital, with a navy and an army built against Swedes and Turks. Semi-slave labor is the anchor's phrase; the deaths are the record.

The reform the exam names.

WC2 0215 The Table of Ranks, 1722: A Service Nobility

After seventeen twenty-two every male noble had to serve as official or officer; the anchor leaves the rule unnamed. The witness names it the Table of Ranks: ranks across army, government and court that anyone, even a commoner, could climb by merit. Technocrats supplanted the boyars, and the table lasted to nineteen seventeen. The exam's answer is a service nobility based on merit.

Three entries on the war and after: Charles the Twelfth from Narva to Poltava, the empire Peter left, and a first look at Catherine.

Narva, Poltava, Nystad.

WC2 0216 Charles XII and the Great Northern War, 1700 to 1721

Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, self-crowned, was absolutism's paragon in the anchor's phrase. Denmark, Saxony and Russia attacked in seventeen hundred; he beat Peter at Narva, turned on Poland, then lost his army at Poltava in seventeen-oh-nine. Killed in Norway in eighteen; the Baltic ceded at Nystad in twenty-one. The anchor's Sweden ruling Denmark and Norway is not voiced.

Six times Ivan's empire.

WC2 0217 Russia After Peter: Six Times Larger, a European Power

Peter died in seventeen twenty-five leaving an empire six times Ivan the Fourth's, the anchor's multiple, dominant in the Baltic with Livonia and Estonia taken, and at peace with the Turks after a failed war in seventeen eleven. Weak rulers followed, but Russia was too large and too absolute, the anchor says, to lose great-power rank.

A German princess who seized a throne.

WC2 0218 Catherine the Great: Banks, Settlers, Crimea, Poland, a First Look

Catherine, a German princess who seized the throne from her husband in seventeen sixty-two, founded state banks and settled Germans on the Volga. She corresponded with philosophes and expanded without pause: Crimea, Central Asia, and Poland partitioned away by seventeen ninety-five. Russia was stronger at her death than ever. Her enlightened side and the partitions belong to unit six.

Five procedures: three monarchies on one line, the Table of Ranks read for the sample question, four features compared, the Empire's map in seventeen eighty-nine, and four kinds of reform.

One fixed point per country, one shared war.

WC2 0219 Sequencing the Eastern Monarchies, 1613 to 1740

Keep one fixed point per country and one shared war: Michael's election in sixteen thirteen, the Compromise of fifty-three, the last Spanish Habsburg's death in seventeen hundred, and the Great Northern War from seventeen hundred to twenty-one under Peter's whole reform. Then place: serfdom in Russia, forty-nine, after Michael and before the Compromise; the Ottomans at Vienna, eighty-three; Peter's accession, eighty-two, the year before the siege; the King in Prussia, seventeen-oh-one, the war's second year; St. Petersburg, oh-three, inside the war; the Table, twenty-two, the year after Nystad; Maria Theresa, forty, after all of them. Two of the anchor's dates are corrected on the witness, seventeen-oh-one and fifteen fifty-six, and the order holds either way.

Service, ranked, earned: three claims.

WC2 0220 Reading the Table of Ranks: What the Exam's Answer Assumes

The exam calls the Table of Ranks a service nobility based on merit, and the phrase packs three claims. Service: the anchor says every male noble after seventeen twenty-two had to serve as official or officer; the witness lists ranks across army, government and court. Nobility now meant a post. Ranked: the witness describes titles each classed with a number, fourteen steps in the standard account; a noble was a number on a ladder. Merit: the witness says anyone, a commoner included, could work up with hard work and skill, and technocrats supplanted the boyars. Together they rule out the distractors: court protocol is Versailles, conscription the peasant's burden, taxation another reform. Do not overstate the merit; the anchor's emphasis is compulsion and the witness's is opportunity, and the exam wants the second.

What nobles got, peasants lost, armies did, crowns stood on.

WC2 0221 Prussia, Austria, and Russia Compared: Nobles, Peasants, Army, Crown

Four features carry the comparisons. Prussia: nobles got a land monopoly and their serfs in fifty-three; peasants lost the right to leave; the army was the state's purpose, eighty-three thousand under the Soldier-King; the crown stood above by taxing without consent. Austria: nobles got the robot; peasants lost their labor; the army held the frontier of eighty-three; the crown stood above unevenly, strong in Bohemia, resisted in Hungary. Russia: nobles got serfs by the law of forty-nine and lost their independence to the Table; peasants lost movement and one in twenty went to the army for life; the army took two-thirds of revenue and won the Baltic; the crown made nobility itself a service. The floor is serfdom, and the instruments stay distinct: the Compromise Prussian, the robot Austrian, the Table Russian.

The Habsburg mass, the Prussian fragments, a vanishing Poland.

WC2 0222 Reading a Map of the Holy Roman Empire in 1789: Habsburg, Prussian, Polish

Three questions read the anchor's map of seventeen eighty-nine. The Habsburg mass sits in the southeast, Austria, Bohemia and Hungary contiguous, Hungary outside the Empire's border. The Prussian fragments: Brandenburg around Berlin, East Prussia outside the Empire to the northeast, which is why the title was King in Prussia, and scattered Rhine lands, the inheritance of sixteen eighteen. East of both, Poland, partitioned once in seventy-two and gone by ninety-five, a state in the act of vanishing. The Empire's own border is the least useful line; after Westphalia the anchor calls it window dressing. A map with one solid Prussia is a later century's, and inside the Empire means which lands were German.

The elite's look, the state's spending, the peasant's freedom, the nobles' price.

WC2 0223 Classifying a Reform: Westernization, Militarization, Serfdom, Compromise

Four kinds, one question each. Westernization changes how the elite looks and thinks: beard taxes and sons in Dutch shipyards. Militarization changes what the state spends on: one in twenty conscripted and two-thirds of revenue. Serfdom changes what the peasant may do: bound to the land, forbidden to flee. A compromise changes what the nobles get for consenting: a land monopoly for an army's taxes. The trap is the Table of Ranks, which westernizes the state and militarizes the nobility at once; classify it by what it changed most, the nobility's relation to the crown. Expect the exam to test the Table against conscription: the first bound nobles, the second bound peasants.

One capstone entry: the bargain beneath three absolutisms, and the price it set.

Three bargains, one price.

WC2 0224 Three Absolutisms Built on Serfdom: Prussia, Austria, Russia

The exam asks how absolutism formed in Austria and Prussia and how Russia was westernized, and the anchor's answer to all three is one bargain: the eastern monarchs could not beat or buy their nobles, so they paid them in peasants. Prussia first and cleanest: the Compromise of fifty-three, taxes for an army and law without noble oversight against a land monopoly and serfdom made permanent, then the war office, the title of seventeen-oh-one, and the Soldier-King's army with a country. Austria unevenly, across three kingdoms: the robot in Bohemia, resistance in Hungary, and a frontier where the Turks reached Vienna in eighty-three before the Holy League drove them south. Russia last and most completely: serfdom by law in forty-nine, then Peter binding the nobles too, with Western dress, schooling, and after twenty-two the Table of Ranks, a ladder the witness says a commoner could climb. The army took two-thirds of revenue and one serf in twenty; St. Petersburg rose on forced labor; Nystad in twenty-one made Russia the Baltic's master and six times Ivan's size. Spain is the counter-case, a monarchy that could not bargain and lost Portugal and then its dynasty. Absolutism was not one thing; it was a set of compromises, and in the east the compromise was serfdom.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe conscription and St. Petersburg, and the Table of Ranks as a service nobility based on merit, the exam's second sample answer. You can describe Poltava and Nystad, the empire six times Ivan's, and the Catherine who inherited it. You can sequence three monarchies, read the Table's three claims, compare four features, read the map of seventeen eighty-nine, and classify four reforms. And you can state the bargain, nobles paid in peasants, which is this unit's one idea. Unit four opens on the trade that paid for the great powers.