[Sidenote: =Despotic policy of the Great Elector in Prussia.=] While Sweden was falling into bankruptcy, and was being threatened with disruption, Frederick William of Brandenburg was diligently employing the time in making his authority over his various dominions absolute and unquestioned. He had already succeeded in reducing the diets of Brandenburg and Cleves to impotence, and organising an administration dependent on himself alone outside the scope of their interference. But in Prussia the task was far more difficult, and directly the treaty of Oliva was signed he applied himself seriously to the business. Under the suzerainty of Poland the nobles and burghers of Prussia had been accustomed to exercise a considerable amount of independence, but now that the Great Elector had been recognised as immediate sovereign over Prussia by the treaties of Wehlau and of Oliva, both sides understood that the old relations between the duke and his subjects would have to be modified. The Prussian diet determined to yield as little as possible. It refused to ratify the treaty, it drew up a constitution to secure its own authority. By the treaty Frederick William only succeeded to the same rights over Prussia which Poland had enjoyed, _i.e._ those of a feudal suzerain, but he was determined if possible to make himself absolute sovereign, and reduce the diet to insignificance. Most foolishly the diet played into his hands. The two parties of which it was composed, the landed gentry and the burghers, quarrelled over the nature of a tax which was to be imposed. Each side wanted the other to bear the burden, and Frederick William was enabled, under cover of settling the dispute, to march troops into Königsberg, and arrest Rhode, the leader of the burgher party, in 1662. This display of determination awed the burghers into submission, but the nobles and the landed gentry still remained to be dealt with. Led by Kalkstein, and secretly favoured by Poland, they were too strong to be crushed. [Sidenote: =The Charter of 1663.=]