ABSTRACT
After the W ar of the North not all Frederick W illiam ’s troops were disbanded, since he was determined to keep at least some as a stand ing army. The war had shown how soldiers could be used to impose taxes whether the Estates agreed or not. Consequently, when the Brandenburg Estates’ permanent committee and successive repres entative diets refused to continue the contributions in the early 1660s and pressed instead for the remaining troops to be dismissed, Frederick W illiam showed his tougher and increasingly arbitrary side. In January 1662 he insisted to the Estates that 'the preserva tion of his lands depended next to God on arms’,1 and he followed his wartime practice of simply informing them what money he re quired and then seeing this was collected, sometimes by force. His promise of 1653 to consult the Estates was forgotten, as he became more convinced that he could only keep a permanent force by free ing himself from their financial shackles. Frederick W illiam ’s impa tience comes out clearly in tart comments written on a document presented by the Estates’ deputies in Ju ly 1666:
A few days later he told the deputies bluntly: ‘The burden of tax ation in the present circumstances is unavoidable . . . for our safety and welfare.’2
