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Frederick II had inherited a style of absolute government that owed much to the peculiar circumstances of Brandenburg-Prussia as it emerged from the Thirty Years’ War. Lacking natural frontiers and war-ravaged when Frederick William inherited the electorate in 1640, Brandenburg had little more than the prestige of the ancient house of Hohenzollern. The diplomacy of Jules Cardinal Mazarin contributed to the acquisition (1648) of East Pomerania, Magdeburg, and Minden, and war between Sweden and Poland brought sovereignty over East Prussia, formerly held as a fief from Poland. A deal with the Junkers at the Recess of 1653, which secured a ...(100 of 156573 words)