The bold move succeeded. In a hand-to-hand struggle, amid bogs and dunes, Brandenburg was saved by its chief. At the crisis of the fight he put himself at the head of a wavering squadron, and with one wild charge shattered the Swedes and their prestige together. The result of Fehrbellin was that Brandenburg took rank as the first military power of Northern Europe and that the land had rest for many years.
Fehrbellin forms a conspicuous landmark on the road to Hohenzollern greatness, but it is separated by no great interval of time from a double demonstration of the insignificance of Brandenburg when confronted with states of the first order. The Emperor flatly refused to admit the claim of the Elector to portions of Silesia. The King of France dashed from his lips the cup of triumph over the Swedes. In an age when rivers were of even greater value than at present, the great waterway of Brandenburg was the Oder. Ere she could draw full profit from the Oder, Stettin, with its splendid harbourage and strong strategic position, must be wrested from alien hands. At Fehrbellin hope sprang up that the time was come. With all the tenacity of his nature the Great Elector clung to the task. In 1677 Stettin fell, after enduring one of the most desolating bombardments in history. Before the close of 1678 the Swedes were driven from all Western Pomerania. They descended upon Ost-Preussen, but Frederick William set at naught the winter cold and his own infirmity, hurried from Cleves to the Vistula, put his troops on sledges, and dashed at the enemy across the frozen sea (January, 1679). The triumph of the Elector was complete, but at the Peace of S. Germain (1679) he was compelled to surrender all his conquests at the behest of Louis XIV.
In spite of some failures, however, Frederick William by dogged perseverance accomplished enough to justify his reputation as the founder of the Prussian State. He is still a force in Germany. Frederick the Great and all the later Hohenzollerns of renown have paid homage to his memory. William II. embittered the downfall of Bismarck by applauding a drama which represented the Great Elector deposing Schwarzenburg, the hated counsellor of his father. Throughout Prussia the imperious features of the little hero of Fehrbellin are as familiar to the people as his deeds.