A former kingdom of Germany, which grew from a small country on the south-east shores of the Baltic to an extensive domain covering much of modern north-east Germany and Poland. The forested area to the east of the Vistula, originally inhabited by a Baltic people known as the Prussians, was taken in the 13th century by the Teutonic Knights, and in the 16th century it became a duchy of the Hohenzollerns, passing in 1618 to the electors of Brandenburg. The kingdom of Prussia, proclaimed in 1701, with its capital at Berlin, grew in the 18th century under Frederick the Great to become a dominant power. After victory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, Prussia under Wilhelm I became the nucleus of the new German Empire created by Bismarck. With Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Prussian monarchy was abolished and Prussia’s supremacy came to an end.