A BRIEF BACKGROUND HISTORY OF THE OLD COUNTRY OF PRUSSIA

1648                The Thirty Years' War ended with the Peace of "Westphalia" treaties of Munster with France and Osnabruck with Sweden

1658-1705       Emperor Leopold I, son of Ferdinand III

1688                Accession in Brandenburg-Prussia of Elector Frederick III, son of the Great Elector; assumed the title of king in 1701; ruled until 1713

1705-1711       Emperor Joseph I, son of Leopold.

1711-1740       Emperor Charles VI, brother of Joseph

1713                Accession in Prussia of King Frederick William I, son of Frederick I.

1740                Accession in Austria of Archduchess(later Empress) Maria Theresa, daughter of Charles VI, queen of Hungary and of Bohemia, and spouse of Grand Duke Francis Stephen of Lorraine, who unsuccessfully sought the imperial crown in 1740 but was elected only in 1745.

1740                Accesssion in Prussia of King Frederick the Great, who ruled until 1786, and who began his reign with an attack on Austria, triggering the three Silesian wars(1740-1742;1744-45; and 1756-63, the third being known in Europe as a whole as the Seven Years' War).

1742-1745       Emperor Charles VII(of Bavaria), twelfth lineal descendant of the fourteenth-century emperor Louis the Bavarian, and the only non-Habsburg to have been elected emperor after 1438.

1745-1765       Emperor Francis I of the house of Habsburg-Lorraine(spouse of Maria Theresa).

1765-1790       Emperor Joseph II, son of Francis and Maria Theresia.

1786                Accession in Prussia of King Frederick William II, nephew of Frederick the Great; ruled until 1797.

1790-1792       Emperor Leopold II, brother of Joseph.

1792-1806       Emperor Francis II, son of Leopold, who laid down the crown of the Holy Roman Empire on its dissolution in 1806, though retaining the title of emperor as ruler of the possessions of  the house of Habsburg-Lorraine.

1797-1840       Accession in Prussia of King Frederick William III, son of Frederick William II.

1804-1835       In Austria, Emperor Francis I(who as noted above had acceded in 1792 as Francis II, but relinquished the title of  Holy Roman Emperor on the dissolution of the empire in 1806) with Metternich as his foreign minister since 1809 and chancellor since 1821(an office he held until 1848).

1806                Dissolution by Napoleon of the Holy Roman Empire and establishment under French sponsorship of the Confederation of the Rhine(excluding Austria and Prussia), which was disbanded when Napoleon was defeated.

1814                Convocation of the Congress of Vienna(which ended the following year) at which the map of Europe was largely redrawn and the German Confederation of thirty-nine states under the presidency of Austria established.

1834                Organization of a Prussian-sponsored tariff union(Zollverein)which gradually came to embrace most German states(but excluded Austria).

1840-1861       In Prussia, King Frederick William IV, son of Frederick William III, in his last years so incapacitated that his younger brother William(later Prussian king and then German emperor) became regent.

1848-1850       Revolution throughout much of Europe, leading in Germany to the unsuccessful attempt of a nationally elected representative assembly at Frankfurt to establish a German constitutional monarchy, and the subsequent attempt of Prussia to establish a measure of unification under her own hegemony(the "Humiliation" of Olmutz at the hands of Austria and Russia).

1861-1888       In Prussia, King William I, brother of Frederick William IV, regent since 1858; German emperor in 1871; with Bismarck as foreign minister and Prussian minister president after 1862 and imperial chancellor after 1871.

1864                The war of Austria and Prussia against Denmark.

1866                The Austro-Prussia War, resulting in Prussian hegemony of Germany.

1870-1871       The Franco-Prussian War, incited by circumstances surrounding the candidacy of a Hohenzollern prince of the Spanish throne, and resulting in the fall of the French Empire and establishment of the German Empire by proclamation at Versailles in January 1871(William I emperor, Bismarck chancellor).