Counts of Brandenburg, of the family of Hohenzollern, had been men of
ambition and ability. The little county had grown by adding small
territories around it. One of these counts, called "the Great
Elector," had added to Brandenburg the greater part of the neighboring
county of Pomerania. His son did not have the ability of his father,
but was a very proud and vain man. He happened to visit King William
III of England, and was very much offended because during the
interview, the king occupied a comfortable arm chair, while the
elector, being simply a count, was given a chair to sit in which was
straight-backed and had no arms. Brooding over this insult, as it
seemed to him, he went home and decided that he too should be called a
king. The question was, what should his title be. He could not call
himself "King of Brandenburg," for Brandenburg was part of the Empire,
and the emperor would not allow it. It had happened some one hundred
years before, that, through his marriage with the daughter of the Duke
of Prussia, a Count of Brandenburg had come into possession of the
district known as East Prussia, at the extreme southeastern corner of
the Baltic Sea. Between this and the territory of Brandenburg lay the
district known as West Prussia, which was part of the Kingdom of
Poland. However, Prussia lay outside the boundaries of the Empire, and
the emperor had nothing to say about what went on there. Therefore,
the elector sent notice to all the kings and princes of Europe that
after this he was to be known as the "King of Prussia." It was a
situation somewhat like the one we have already referred to, when the
kings of England were independent monarchs and yet subjects of the
kings of France because they were also dukes of Normandy.

[Illustration: Frederick The Great]

The son of this elector who first called himself king had more energy