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Ducal Prussia was a fief of Poland between 1525–1657. It was created as a result of a war (1520–1525) between Poland and the Teutonic Order. "Ducal Prussia" is a synonym for the Duchy of Prussia ( (), 1525–1701), emphasizing that two Prussias existed beside each other: "Royal Prussia" and "Ducal Prussia". Royal Prussia, Poland was held by the king of Poland, who also was the feudal lord of Ducal Prussia. Royal Prussia and Ducal Prussia correspond roughly to what later (1772) became West Prussia and East Prussia, respectively. During the Reformation endemic religious upheavals and wars occurred, and in 1525, the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert of Prussia, a member of a cadet branch of the house of Hohenzollern, resigned his position, became a Protestant and received the title "Duke of Prussia" from the Polish king Sigismund I the Old in the act called Prussian Homage. In a deal partially brokered by Martin Luther (under imperial ban since 1521), Ducal Prussia became the first Protestant state, along the lines of the later religious Peace of Augsburg. When Duke Albert of Prussia died in 1569, his son Albert Frederick inherited it. At this point Ducal Prussia should have been incorporated into Poland, because the Hohenzollerns from the Brandenburg branch were not included in the list of possible inheritors. However Margrave John Sigismund of Brandenburg was able first to ensure the regency and then the inheritance of the duchy, despite the protests of pro-Polish opposition (which at one point proposed Polish king division of Ducal Prussia into three voivodshipd and inclusion of it into kingdom of Poland). The Peace of Toruń (1466) left eastern Prussia as a fief of the Polish crown. In 1660, after the Second Northern War between Sweden, Poland, and Brandenburg, the Treaty of Welawa (Wehlau) granted full sovereignty to Frederick William, the "Great Elector", of the Brandenburg Hohenzollerns, as "Duke of Prussia". Ducal Prussia lost its status as a Polish fief and became a part of Brandenburg-Prussia, but not part of the Holy Roman Empire. This allowed Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg to become "king in Prussia" without offending the Holy Roman Emperor. After Germany was defeated in World War II and sanctioned by the Potsdam Conference, the southern two thirds of East Prussia were assigned to Poland and the northern third to the Soviet Union. Most of its ethnic German population had then already fled westwards in the last winter of the war, and the remaining population was expelled after the war. Poles and Russians resettled the territory.
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