ABSTRACT
The accession of Frederick W illiam was to transform the destinies of both Brandenburg-Prussia and its ruling dynasty. It would be absurd to claim his reign and his achievements were the catalyst which ensured Bismarck’s united Germany and the Second Empire, but it is impossible to see how Hohenzollern Prussia could have risen to the heights it did over the next centuries if Frederick W illiam had not rescued his lands and dynasty from the position of impo tence and even irrelevance he inherited. By his death he had made the Hohenzollerns a permanent and increasingly influential factor in both Germany and northern Europe. To use the essential cliché of the historical profession, Brandenburg-Prussia had become ‘a force to be reckoned with’ !
