Produced by D.R. Thompson

HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. OF PRUSSIA

FREDERICK THE GREAT

By Thomas Carlyle

BOOK III. -- THE HOHENZOLLERNS IN BRANDENBURG. - 1412-1718

Chapter I. -- KURFURST FRIEDRICH I.

Burggraf Friedrich, on his first coming to Brandenburg, found but a cool
reception as Statthalter. [_"Johannistage"_ (24 June) "1412," he first
set foot in Brandenburg, with due escort, in due state; only Statthalter
(Viceregent) as yet: Pauli, i. 594, ii. 58; Stenzel, _Geschichte des
Preussischen Staats_ (Hamburg, 1830, 1851), i. 167-169.] He came as
the representative of law and rule; and there had been many helping
themselves by a ruleless life, of late. Industry was at a low ebb,
violence was rife; plunder, disorder everywhere; too much the habit for
baronial gentlemen to "live by the saddle," as they termed it, that is
by highway robbery in modern phrase.

The Towns, harried and plundered to skin and bone, were glad to see
a Statthalter, and did homage to him with all their heart. But the
Baronage or Squirearchy of the country were of another mind. These, in
the late anarchies, had set up for a kind of kings in their own right:
they had their feuds; made war, made peace, levied tolls, transit-dues;
lived much at their own discretion in these solitary countries;--rushing
out from their stone towers ("walls fourteen feet thick"), to seize
any herd of "six hundred swine," any convoy of Lubeck or Hamburg
merchant-goods, that had not contented them in passing. What were
pedlers and mechanic fellows made for, if not to be plundered when
needful? Arbitrary rule, on the part of these Noble Robber-Lords! And
then much of the Crown-Domains had gone to the chief of them,--pawned
(and the pawn-ticket lost, so to speak), or sold for what trifle
of ready money was to be had, in Jobst and Company's time. To these
gentlemen, a Statthalter coming to inquire into matters was no welcome
phenomenon. Your EDLE HERR (Noble Lord) of Putlitz, Noble Lords of
Quitzow, Rochow, Maltitz and others, supreme in their grassy solitudes
this long while, and accustomed to nothing greater than themselves in
Brandenburg, how should they obey a Statthalter?

Such was more or less the universal humor in the Squirearchy of
Brandenburg; not of good omen to Burggraf Friedrich. But the chief seat
of contumacy seemed to be among the Quitzows, Putlitzes, above spoken
of; big Squires in the district they call the Priegnitz, in the Country
of the sluggish Havel River, northwest from Berlin a fifty or forty
miles. These refused homage, very many of them; said they were
"incorporated with Bohmen;" said this and that;--much disinclined to
homage; and would not do it. Stiff surly fellows, much deficient in
discernment of what is above them and what is not:--a thick-skinned
set; bodies clad in buff leather; minds also cased in ill habits of long
continuance.

Friedrich was very patient with them; hoped to prevail by gentle
methods. He "invited them to dinner;" "had them often at dinner for a
year or more:" but could make no progress in that way. "Who is this we
have got for a Governor?" said the noble lords privately to each other:
"A NURNBERGER TAND (Nurnberg Plaything,--wooden image, such as they
make at Nurnberg)," said they, grinning, in a thick-skinned way: "If it
rained Burggraves all the year round, none of them would come to luck
in this Country;"--and continued their feuds, toll-levyings, plunderings
and other contumacies. Seeing matters come to this pass after waiting
above a year, Burggraf Friedrich gathered his Frankish men-at-arms;
quietly made league with the neighboring Potentates, Thuringen and
others; got some munitions, some artillery together--especially one huge
gun, the biggest ever seen, "a twenty-four pounder" no less; to which
the peasants, dragging her with difficulty through the clayey roads,
gave the name of FAULE GRETE (Lazy, or Heavy Peg); a remarkable piece
of ordnance. Lazy Peg he had got from the Landgraf of Thuringen, on loan
merely; but he turned her to excellent account of his own. I have often
inquired after Lazy Peg's fate in subsequent times; but could never
learn anything distinct:--the German Dryasdust is a dull dog, and seldom
carries anything human in those big wallets of his!--

Equipped in this way, Burggraf Friedrich (he was not yet Kurfurst,
only coming to be) marches for the Havel Country (early days of 1414);
[Michaelis, i. 287; Stenzel, i. 168 (where, contrary to wont, is an
insignificant error or two). Pauli (ii. 58) is, as usual, lost in
water.] makes his appearance before Quitzow's strong-house of Friesack,
walls fourteen feet thick: "You Dietrich von Quitzow, are you prepared
to live as a peaceable subject henceforth: to do homage to the Laws and
me?"--"Never!" answered Quitzow, and pulled up his drawbridge. Whereupon
Heavy Peg opened upon him, Heavy Peg and other guns; and, in some
eight-and-forty hours, shook Quitzow's impregnable Friesack about his
ears. This was in the month of February, 1414, day not given: Friesack
was the name of the impregnable Castle (still discoverable in our
time); and it ought to be memorable and venerable to every Prussian man.
Burggraf Friedrich VI., not yet quite become Kurfurst Friedrich I.,
but in a year's space to become so, he in person was the beneficent
operator; Heavy Peg, and steady Human Insight, these were clearly the
chief implements.

Quitzow being settled,--for the country is in military occupation of
Friedrich and his allies, and except in some stone castle a man has no
chance,--straightway Putlitz or another mutineer, with his drawbridge
up, was battered to pieces, and his drawbridge brought slamming down.
After this manner, in an incredibly short period, mutiny was quenched;
and it became apparent to Noble Lords, and to all men, that here at
length was a man come who would have the Laws obeyed again, and could
and would keep mutiny down.

Friedrich showed no cruelty; far the contrary. Your mutiny once ended,
and a little repented of, he is ready to be your gracious Prince again:
Fair-play and the social wine-cup, or inexorable war and Lazy Peg, it
is at your discretion which. Brandenburg submitted; hardly ever rebelled
more. Brandenburg, under the wise Kurfurst it has got, begins in a small
degree to be cosmic again, or of the domain of the gods; ceases to be
chaotic and a mere cockpit of the devils. There is no doubt but this
Friedrich also, like his ancestor Friedrich III., the First Hereditary
Burggraf, was an excellent citizen of his country: a man conspicuously
important in all German business in his time. A man setting up for no
particular magnanimity, ability or heroism, but unconsciously exhibiting
a good deal; which by degrees gained universal recognition. He did
not shine much as Reichs-Generalissimo, under Kaiser Sigismund, in his
expeditions against Zisca; on the contrary, he presided over huge defeat
and rout, once and again, in that capacity; and indeed had represented
in vain that, with such a species of militia, victory was impossible. He
represented and again represented, to no purpose; whereupon he
declined the office farther; in which others fared no better. [Hormayr,
_OEsterreichischer Plutarch_ vii. 109-158, ? Zisca.]

The offer to be Kaiser was made him in his old days; but he wisely
declined that too. It was in Brandenburg, by what he silently founded
there, that he did his chief benefit to Germany and mankind. He
understood the noble art of governing men; had in him the justice,
clearness, valor and patience needed for that. A man of sterling
probity, for one thing. Which indeed is the first requisite in said
art:--if you will have your laws obeyed without mutiny, see well that
they be pieces of God Almighty's Law: otherwise all the artillery in the
world will not keep down mutiny.

Friedrich "travelled much over Brandenburg;" looking into everything
with his own eyes;--making, I can well fancy, innumerable crooked
things straight. Reducing more and more that famishing dog-kennel of
a Brandenburg into a fruitful arable field. His portraits represent a
square headed, mild-looking solid gentleman, with a certain twinkle
of mirth in the serious eyes of him. Except in those Hussite wars for
Kaiser Sigismund and the Reich, in which no man could prosper, he may be
defined as constantly prosperous. To Brandenburg he was, very literally,
the blessing of blessings; redemption out of death into life. In
the ruins of that old Friesack Castle, battered down by Heavy Peg,
Antiquarian Science (if it had any eyes) might look for the tap-root of
the Prussian Nation, and the beginning of all that Brandenburg has since
grown to under the sun.

Friedrich, in one capacity or another, presided over Brandenburg near
thirty years. He came thither first of all in 1412; was not completely
Kurfurst in his own right till 1415; nor publicly installed, "with
100,000 looking on from the roofs and windows," in Constance yonder,
till 1417,--age then some forty-five. His Brandenburg residence, when
he happened to have time for residing or sitting still, was Tangermunde,
the Castle built by Kaiser Karl IV. He died there, 21st September, 1440;
laden tolerably with years, and still better with memories of hard work
done. Rentsch guesses by good inference he was born about 1372. As I
count, he is seventh in descent from that Conrad, Burggraf Conrad I.,
Cadet of Hohenzollern, who came down from the Rauhe Alp, seeking service
with Kaiser Redbeard, above two centuries ago: Conrad's generation and
six others had vanished successively from the world-theatre in that
ever-mysterious manner, and left the stage clear, when Burggraf
Friedrich the Sixth came to be First Elector. Let three centuries, let
twelve generations farther come and pass, and there will be another
still more notable Friedrich,--our little Fritz, destined to be Third
King of Prussia, officially named Friedrich II., and popularly Frederick
the Great. This First Elector is his lineal ancestor, twelve times
removed. [Rentsch, pp. 349-372; Hubner, t. 176.]

Chapter II. -- MATINEES DU ROI DE PRUSSE.

Eleven successive Kurfursts followed Friedrich in Brandenburg. Of whom
and their births, deaths, wars, marriages, negotiations and continual
multitudinous stream of smaller or greater adventures, much has been
written, of a dreary confused nature; next to nothing of which ought to
be repeated here. Some list of their Names, with what rememberable human
feature or event (if any) still speaks to us in them, we must try to
give. Their Names, well dated, with any actions, incidents, or phases
of life, which may in this way get to adhere to them in the reader's
memory, the reader can insert, each at its right place, in the grand
Tide of European Events, or in such Picture as the reader may have
of that. Thereby with diligence he may produce for himself some faint
twilight notion of the Flight of Time in remote Brandenburg,--convince
himself that remote Brandenburg was present all along, alive after its
sort, and assisting, dumbly or otherwise, in the great World-Drama as
that went on.

We have to say in general, the history of Brandenburg under the
Hohenzollerns has very little in it to excite a vulgar curiosity,
though perhaps a great deal to interest an intelligent one. Had it found
treatment duly intelligent;--which, however, how could it, lucky
beyond its neighbors, hope to do! Commonplace Dryasdust, and voluminous
Stupidity, not worse here than elsewhere, play their Part.

It is the history of a State, or Social Vitality, growing from small
to great; steadily growing henceforth under guidance: and the contrast
between guidance and no-guidance, or mis-guidance, in such matters, is
again impressively illustrated there. This we see well to be the fact;
and the details of this would be of moment, were they given us: but they
are not;--how could voluminous Dryasdust give them? Then, on the other
hand, the Phenomenon is, for a long while, on so small a scale, wholly
without importance in European politics and affairs, the commonplace
Historian, writing of it on a large scale, becomes unreadable and
intolerable. Witness grandiloquent Pauli our fatal friend, with his
Eight watery Quartos; which gods and men, unless driven by necessity,
have learned to avoid! [Dr. Carl Friedrich Pauli, _Allgemeine
Preussische Staats-Geschichte_, often enough cited here.] The Phenomenon
of Brandenburg is small, remote; and the essential particulars, too
delicate for the eye of Dryasdust, are mostly wanting, drowned deep in
details of the unessential. So that we are well content, my readers and
I, to keep remote from it on this occasion.

On one other point I must give the reader warning. A rock of offence on
which if he heedlessly strike, I reckon he will split; at least no help
of mine can benefit him till he be got off again. Alas, offences must
come; and must stand, like rocks of offence, to the shipwreck of many!
Modern Dryasdust, interpreting the mysterious ways of Divine Providence
in this Universe, or what he calls writing History, has done uncountable
havoc upon the best interests of mankind. Hapless godless dullard that
he is; driven and driving on courses that lead only downward, for him
as for us! But one could forgive him all things, compared with this
doctrine of devils which he has contrived to get established, pretty
generally, among his unfortunate fellow-creatures for the time!--I must
insert the following quotation, readers guess from what author:--

"In an impudent Pamphlet, forged by I know not whom, and published in
1766, under the title of _Matinees du Roi de Prusse,_ purporting to
be 'Morning Conversations' of Frederick the Great with his Nephew the
Heir-Apparent, every line of which betrays itself as false and spurious
to a reader who has made any direct or effectual study of Frederick
or his manners or affairs,--it is set forth, in the way of exordium to
these pretended royal confessions, that _'notre maison,'_ our Family
of Hohenzollern, ever since the first origin of it among the Swabian
mountains, or its first descent therefrom into the Castle and Imperial
Wardenship of Nurnberg, some six hundred years ago or more, has
consistently travelled one road, and this a very notable one. 'We, as I
myself the royal Frederick still do, have all along proceeded,' namely,
'in the way of adroit Machiavelism, as skilful gamblers in this world's
business, ardent gatherers of this world's goods; and in brief as devout
worshippers of Beelzebub, the grand regulator and rewarder of mortals
here below. Which creed we, the Hohenzollerns, have found, and I still
find, to be the true one; learn it you, my prudent Nephew, and let all
men learn it. By holding steadily to that, and working late and early in
such spirit, we are come to what you now see;--and shall advance still
farther, if it please Beelzebub, who is generally kind to those that
serve him well.' Such is the doctrine of this impudent Pamphlet;
'original Manuscripts' of which are still purchased by simple
persons,--who have then nobly offered them to me, thrice over, gratis
or nearly so, as a priceless curiosity. A new printed edition of which,
probably the fifth, has appeared within few years. Simple persons,
consider it a curious and interesting Document; rather ambiguous in
origin perhaps, but probably authentic in substance, and throwing
unexpected light on the character of Frederick whom men call the Great.
In which new light they are willing a meritorious Editor should share.

"Who wrote that Pamphlet I know not, and am in no condition to guess.
A certain snappish vivacity (very unlike the style of Frederick whom it
personates); a wearisome grimacing, gesticulating malice and smartness,
approaching or reaching the sad dignity of what is called 'wit' in
modern times; in general the rottenness of matter, and the epigrammatic
unquiet graciosity of manner in this thing, and its elaborately INhuman
turn both of expression and of thought, are visible characteristics
of it. Thought, we said,--if thought it can be called: thought all
hamstrung, shrivelled by inveterate rheumatism, on the part of the poor
ill-thriven thinker; nay tied (so to speak, for he is of epigrammatic
turn withal), as by cross ropes, right shoulder to left foot; and forced
to advance, hobbling and jerking along, in that sad guise: not in the
way of walk, but of saltation and dance; and this towards a false not
a true aim, rather no-whither than some-whither:--Here were features
leading one to think of an illustrious Prince de Ligne as perhaps
concerned in the affair. The Bibliographical Dictionaries, producing no
evidence, name quite another person, or series of persons, [A certain
'N. de Bonneville' (afterwards a Revolutionary spiritual-mountebank, for
some time) is now the favorite Name;--proves, on investigation, to be
an impossible one. Barbier _(Dictionnaire des Anonymes),_ in a helpless
doubting manner, gives still others.] highly unmemorable otherwise.
Whereupon you proceed to said other person's acknowledged WORKS (as they
are called); and find there a style bearing no resemblance whatever; and
are left in a dubious state, if it were of any moment. In the absence
of proof, I am unwilling to charge his Highness de Ligne with such
an action; and indeed am little careful to be acquainted with the
individual who did it, who could and would do it. A Prince of Coxcombs
I can discern him to have been; capable of shining in the eyes of
insincere foolish persons, and of doing detriment to them, not benefit;
a man without reverence for truth or human excellence; not knowing in
fact what is true from what is false, what is excellent from what is
sham-excellent and at the top of the mode; an apparently polite
and knowing man, but intrinsically an impudent, dark and merely
modish-insolent man;--who, if he fell in with Rhadamanthus on his
travels, would not escape a horse-whipping, Him we will willingly leave
to that beneficial chance, which indeed seems a certain one sooner or
later; and address ourselves to consider the theory itself, and the
facts it pretends to be grounded on.

"As to the theory, I must needs say, nothing can be falser, more
heretical or more damnable. My own poor opinion, and deep conviction on
that subject is well known, this long while. And, in fact, the summary
of all I have believed, and have been trying as I could to teach mankind
to believe again, is even that same opinion and conviction, applied to
all provinces of things. Alas, in this his sad theory about the world,
our poor impudent Pamphleteer is by no means singular at present; nay
rather he has in a manner the whole practical part of mankind on his
side just now; the more is the pity for us all!--

"It is very certain, if Beelzebub made this world, our Pamphleteer, and
the huge portion of mankind that follow him, are right. But if God made
the world; and only leads Beelzebub, as some ugly muzzled bear is led, a
longer or shorter temporary DANCE in this divine world, and always draws
him home again, and peels the unjust gains off him, and ducks him in a
certain hot Lake, with sure intent to lodge him there to all eternity at
last,--then our Pamphleteer, and the huge portion of mankind that follow
him, are wrong.

"More I will not say; being indeed quite tired of SPEAKING on that
subject. Not a subject which it concerns me to speak of; much as it
concerns me, and all men, to know the truth of it, and silently in every
hour and moment to do said truth. As indeed the sacred voice of their
own soul, if they listen, will conclusively admonish all men; and truly
if IT do not, there will be little use in my logic to them. For my own
share, I want no trade with men who need to be convinced of that fact.
If I am in their premises, and discover such a thing of them, I will
quit their premises; if they are in mine, I will, as old Samuel advised,
count my spoons. Ingenious gentlemen who believe that Beelzebub made
this world, are not a class of gentlemen I can get profit from. Let them
keep at a distance, lest mischief fall out between us. They are of the
set deserving to be called--and this not in the way of profane swearing,
but of solemn wrath and pity, I say of virtuous anger and inexorable
reprobation--the damned set. For, in very deed, they are doomed and
damned, by Nature's oldest Act of Parliament, they, and whatsoever thing
they do or say or think; unless they can escape from that devil-element.
Which I still hope they may!--

"But with regard to the facts themselves, 'DE NOTRE MAISON,' I take
leave to say, they too are without basis of truth. They are not so false
as the theory, because nothing can in falsity quite equal that. 'NOTRE
MAISON,' this Pamphleteer may learn, if he please to make study and
inquiry before speaking, did not rise by worship of Beelzebub at all in
this world; but by a quite opposite line of conduct. It rose, in fact,
by the course which all, except fools, stockjobber stags, cheating
gamblers, forging Pamphleteers and other temporary creatures of the
damned sort, have found from of old to be the one way of permanently
rising: by steady service, namely, of the Opposite of Beelzebub.
By conforming to the Laws of this Universe; instead of trying by
pettifogging to evade and profitably contradict them. The Hohenzollerns
too have a History still articulate to the human mind, if you search
sufficiently; and this is what, even with some emphasis, it will teach
us concerning their adventures, and achievements of success in the field
of life. Resist the Devil, good reader, and he will flee from you!"--So
ends our indignant friend.

How the Hohenzollerns got their big Territories, and came to what they
are in the world, will be seen. Probably they were not, any of them,
paragons of virtue. They did not walk in altogether speckless Sunday
pumps, or much clear-starched into consciousness of the moral sublime;
but in rugged practical boots, and by such roads as there were.
Concerning their moralities, and conformities to the Laws of the Road
and of the Universe, there will much remain to be argued by pamphleteers
and others. Men will have their opinion, Men of more wisdom and of less;
Apes by the Dead-Sea also will have theirs. But what man that believed
in such a Universe as that of this Dead-Sea Pamphleteer could consent
to live in it at all? Who that believed in such a Universe, and did
not design to live like a Papin's-Digester, or PORCUS EPICURI, in
an extremely ugly manner in it, could avoid one of two things: Going
rapidly into Bedlam, or else blowing his brains out? "It will not do for
me at any rate, this infinite Dog-house; not for me, ye Dryasdusts, and
omnipotent Dog-monsters and Mud-gods, whoever you are. One honorable
thing I can do: take leave of you and your Dog-establishment. Enough!"--

Chapter III. -- KURFURST FRIEDRICH II.

The First Friedrich's successor was a younger son, Friedrich II.; who
lasted till 1471, above thirty years; and proved likewise a notable
manager and governor. Very capable to assert himself, and his just
rights, in this world. He was but Twenty-seven at his accession; but the
Berlin Burghers, attempting to take some liberties with him, found he
was old enough. He got the name IRONTEETH. Friedrich FERRATIS DENTIBUS,
from his decisive ways then and afterwards. He had his share of
brabbling with intricate litigant neighbors; quarrels now and then not
to be settled without strokes. His worst war was with Pommern,--just
claims disputed there, and much confused bickering, sieging and
harassing in consequence: of which quarrel we must speak anon. It was he
who first built the conspicuous Schloss or Palace at Berlin, having got
the ground for it (same ground still covered by the actual fine Edifice,
which is a second edition of Friedrich's) from the repentant Burghers;
and took up his chief residence there. [1442-1431 (Nicolari, i. 81).]

But his principal achievement in Brandenburg History is his recovery of
the Province called the Neumark to that Electorate. In the thriftless
Sigismund times, the Neumark had been pledged, had been sold; Teutsch
Ritterdom, to whose dominions it lay contiguous, had purchased it with
money down. The Teutsch Ritters were fallen moneyless enough since
then; they offered to pledge the Neumark to Friedrich, who accepted, and
advanced the sum: after a while the Teutsch Ritters, for a small
farther sum, agreed to sell Neumark. [Michaelis, i. 301.] Into which
Transaction, with its dates and circumstances, let us cast one
glance, for our behoof afterwards. The Teutsch Ritters were an opulent
domineering Body in Sigismund's early time; but they are now come well
down in Friedrich II.'s! And are coming ever lower. Sinking steadily,
or with desperate attempts to rise, which only increase the speed
downwards, ever since that fatal Tannenberg Business, 15th July, 1410.
Here is the sad progress of their descent to the bottom; divided into
three stages or periods:--

"PERIOD FIRST is of Thirty years: 1410-1440. A peace with Poland soon
followed that Defeat of Tannenberg; humiliating peace, with mulct in
money, and slightly in territory, attached to it. Which again was soon
followed by war, and ever again; each new peace more humiliating than
its foregoer. Teutsch Order is steadily sinking,--into debt, among other
things; driven to severe finance-measures (ultimately even to 'debase
its coin'), which produce irritation enough. Poland is gradually edging
itself into the territories and the interior troubles of Preussen;
prefatory to greater operations that lie ahead there.

"SECOND PERIOD, of Fourteen years. So it had gone on, from bad to worse,
till 1440; when the general population, through its Heads, the Landed
Gentry and the Towns, wearied out with fiscal and other oppressions from
its domineering Ritterdom brought now to such a pinch, began everywhere
to stir themselves into vocal complaint. Complaint emphatic enough:
'Where will you find a man that has not suffered injury in his rights,
perhaps in his person? Our friends they have invited as guests, and
under show of hospitality have murdered them. Men, for the sake of their
beautiful wives, have been thrown into the river like dogs,'--and enough
of the like sort. [Voigt, vii. 747; quoting evidently, not an express
manifesto, but one manufactured by the old Chroniclers.] No want of
complaint, nor of complainants: Town of Thorn, Town of Dantzig, Kulm,
all manner of Towns and Baronages, proceeded now to form a BUND, or
general Covenant for complaining; to repugn, in hotter and hotter
form, against a domineering Ritterdom with back so broken; in fine,
to colleague with Poland,--what was most ominous of all. Baronage,
Burgherage, they were German mostly by blood, and by culture were wholly
German; but preferred Poland to a Teutsch Ritterdom of that nature.
Nothing but brabblings, scufflings, objurgations; a great outbreak
ripening itself. Teutsch Ritterdom has to hire soldiers; no money to
pay them. It was in these sad years that the Teutsch Ritterdom, fallen
moneyless, offered to pledge the Neumark to our Kurfurst; 1444, that
operation was consummated. [Pauli, ii. 187,--does not name the sum.] All
this goes on, in hotter and hotter form, for ten years longer.

"PERIOD THIRD begins, early in 1454, with an important special
catastrophe; and ends, in the Thirteenth year after, with a still
more important universal one of the same nature. Prussian BUND, or
Anti-Oppression Covenant of the Towns and Landed Gentry, rising in
temperature for fourteen years at this rate, reached at last the
igniting point, and burst into fire. February 4th, 1454, the Town of
Thorn, darling first-child of Teutsch Ritterdom,--child 223 years old at
this time, ['Founded 1231, as a wooden Burg, just across the river, on
the Heathen side, mainly round the stem of an immense old Oak that grew
handy there,--Seven Barges always on the river (Weichsel), to fly to
our own side if quite overwhelmed' _Oak and Seven Barges_ is still the
Town's-Arms of Thorn. See Kohler, _Munzbelustigungen,_xxii. 107; quoting
Dusburg (a Priest of the Order) and his old _Chronica Terrae Prusciae,_
written in 1326.] and grown very big, and now very angry,--suddenly took
its old parent by the throat, so to speak, and hurled him out to the
dogs; to the extraneous Polacks first of all. Town of Thorn, namely,
sent that day its 'Letter of Renunciation' to the Hochmeister over
at Marienburg; seized in a day or two more the Hochmeister's Official
Envoys, Dignitaries of the Order; led them through the streets, amid
universal storm of execrations, hootings and unclean projectiles,
straight, to jail; and besieged the Hochmeister's Burg (BASTILLE of
Thorn, with a few Ritters in it), all the artillery and all the throats
and hearts of the place raging deliriously upon it. So that the poor
Bitters, who had no chance in resisting, were in few days obliged to
surrender; [8th February, 1454, says Voigt (viii. 361); 16th, says
Kohler _ (Munzbelustigungen,_ xxii. 110).] had to come out in
bare jerkin; and Thorn ignominiously dismissed them into space
forevermore,--with actual 'kicks,' I have read in some Books, though
others veil that sad feature. Thorn threw out its old parent in this
manner; swore fealty to the King of Poland; and invited other Towns and
Knightages to follow the example. To which all were willing, wherever
able.

"War hereupon, which blazed up over Preussen at large,--Prussian
Covenant and King of Poland VERSUS Teutsch Ritterdom,--and lasted into
the thirteenth year, before it could go out again; out by lack of fuel
mainly. One of the fellest wars on record, especially for burning and
ruining; above '300,000 fighting-men' are calculated to have perished in
it; and of towns, villages, farmsteads, a cipher which makes the fancy,
as it were, black and ashy altogether. Ritterdom showed no lack of
fighting energy; but that could not save it, in the pass things were got
to. Enormous lack of wisdom, of reality and human veracity, there had
long been; and the hour was now come. Finance went out, to the last
coin. Large mercenary armies all along; and in the end not the color
of money to pay them with; mercenaries became desperate; 'besieged the
Hochmeister and his Ritters in Marienburg;'--finally sold the Country
they held; formally made it over to the King of Poland, to get their pay
out of it. Hochmeister had to see such things, and say little. Peace, or
extinction for want of fuel, came in the year 1466. Poland got to itself
the whole of that fine German Country, henceforth called 'WEST Preussen'
to distinguish it, which goes from the left bank of the Weichsel to the
borders of Brandenburg and Neumark;--would have got Neumark too, had not
Kurfurst Friedrich been there to save it. The Teutsch Order had to go
across the Weichsel, ignominiously driven; to content itself with 'EAST
Preussen,' the Konigsberg-Memel country, and even to do homage to Poland
for that. Which latter was the bitterest clause of all: but it could
not be helped, more than the others. In this manner did its revolted
children fling out Teutsch Ritterdom ignominiously to the dogs, to the
Polacks, first of all,--Thorn, the eldest child, leading off or setting
the example."

And so the Teutsch Ritters are sunk beyond retrieval; and West Preussen,
called subsequently "Royal Preussen," NOT having homage to pay as the
"Ducal" or East Preussen had, is German no longer, but Polish, Sclavic;
not prospering by the change. [What Thorn had sunk to, out of its palmy
state, see in Nanke's _Wanderungen durch Preussen_ (Hamburg & Altona,
1800), ii. 177-200:--a pleasant little Rook, treating mainly of Natural
History; but drawing you, by its innocent simplicity and geniality, to
read with thanks whatever is in it.] And all that fine German country,
reduced to rebel against its unwise parent, was cut away by the Polish
sword, and remained with Poland, which did not prove very wise either;
till--till, in the Year 1773, it was cut back by the German sword! All
readers have heard of the Partition of Poland: but of the Partition of
Preussen, 307 years before, all have not heard.

It was in the second year of that final tribulation, marked above as
Period Third, that the Teutsch Ritters, famishing for money, completed
the Neumark transaction with Kurfurst Friedrich; Neumark, already pawned
to him ten years before, they in 1455, for a small farther sum, agreed
to sell; and he, long carefully steering towards such an issue, and
dexterously keeping out of the main broil, failed not to buy. Friedrich
could thenceforth, on his own score, protect the Neumark; keep up an
invisible but impenetrable wall between it and the neighboring anarchic
conflagrations of thirteen years; and the Neumark has ever since
remained with Brandenburg, its original owner.

As to Friedrich's Pomeranian quarrel, this is the figure of it. Here
is a scene from Rentsch, which falls out in Friedrich's time; and which
brought much battling and broiling to him and his. Symbolical withal
of much that befell in Brandenburg, from first to last. Under
the Hohenzollerns as before, Brandenburg grew by aggregation, by
assimilation; and we see here how difficult the process often was.

Pommern (POMERANIA), long Wendish, but peaceably so since the time
of Albert the Bear, and growing ever more German, had, in good part,
according to Friedrich's notion, if there were force in human Treaties
and Imperial Laws, fallen fairly to Brandenburg,--that is to say, the
half of it, Stettin-Pommern had fairly fallen,--in the year 1464, when
Duke Otto of Stettin, the last Wendish Duke, died without heirs. In that
case by many bargains, some with bloody crowns, it had been settled, If
the Wendish Dukes died out, the country was to fall to Brandenburg;--and
here they were dead. "At Duke Otto's burial, accordingly, in the High
Church of Stettin, when the coffin was lowered into its place, the
Stettin Burgermeister, Albrecht Glinde, took sword and helmet, and threw
the same into the grave, in token that the Line was extinct. But Franz
von Eichsted," apparently another Burgher instructed for the nonce,
"jumped into the grave, and picked them out again; alleging, No, the
Dukes of WOLGAST-Pommern were of kin; these tokens we must send to his
Grace at Wolgast, with offer of our homage, said Franz von Eichsted."
[Rentsch, p. 110 (whose printer has put his date awry); Stenzel (i. 233)
calls the man "LORENZ Eikstetten, a resolute Gentleman."]--And sent they
were, and accepted by his Grace. And perhaps half-a-score of bargains,
with bloody crowns to some of them; and yet other chances, and
centuries, with the extinction of new Lines,--had to supervene, before
even Stettin-Pommern, and that in no complete state, could be got.
[1648, by Treaty of Westphalia.] As to Pommern at large, Pommern not
denied to be due, after such extinction and re-extinction of native
Ducal Lines, did not fall home for centuries more; and what struggles
and inextricable armed-litigations there were for it, readers of
Brandenburg-History too wearisomely know. The process of assimilation
not the least of an easy one!--

This Friedrich was second son: his Father's outlook for him had, at
first, been towards a Polish Princess and the crown of Poland, which
was not then so elective as afterwards: and with such view his early
breeding had been chiefly in Poland; Johann, the eldest son and
heir-apparent, helping his Father at home in the mean while. But these
Polish outlooks went to nothing, the young Princess having died; so that
Friedrich came home; possessed merely of the Polish language, and of
what talents the gods had given him, which were considerable. And now,
in the mean while, Johann, who at one time promised well in
practical life, had taken to Alchemy; and was busy with crucibles and
speculations, to a degree that seemed questionable. Father Friedrich,
therefore, had to interfere, and deal with this "Johann the Alchemist"
(JOHANNES ALCHEMISTA, so the Books still name him); who loyally
renounced the Electorship, at his Father's bidding, in favor of
Friedrich; accepted Baireuth (better half of the Culmbach Territory) for
apanage; and there peacefully distilled and sublimated at discretion;
the government there being an easier task, and fitter for a soft
speculative Herr. A third Brother, Albert by name, got Anspach, on
the Father's decease; very capable to do any fighting there might be
occasion for, in Culmbach.

As to the Burggrafship, it was now done, all but the Title. The First
Friedrich, once he was got to be Elector, wisely parted with it. The
First Friedrich found his Electorship had dreadfully real duties for
him, and that this of the Burggrafship had fallen mostly obsolete; so he
sold it to the Nurnbergers for a round sum: only the Principalities and
Territories are retained in that quarter. About which too, and their
feudal duties, boundaries and tolls, with a jealous litigious Nurnberg
for neighbor, there at length came quarrelling enough. But Albert the
third Brother, over at Anspach, took charge of all that; and nothing of
it fell in Johann's way.

The good Alchemist died,--performed his last sublimation, poor man,--six
or seven years before his Brother Friedrich; age then sixty-three. [14th
November, 1464.] Friedrich, with his Iron Teeth and faculties, only held
out till fifty-eight,--10th February, 1471. The manner of his end was
peculiar. In that War with Pommern, he sat besieging a Pomeranian town,
Uckermunde the name of it: when at dinner one day, a cannon-ball plunged
down upon the table, [Michaelis, i. 303.] with such a crash as we can
fancy;--which greatly confused the nerves of Friedrich; much injured his
hearing, and even his memory thenceforth. In a few months afterwards he
resigned, in favor of his Successor; retired to Plassenburg, and there
died in about a year more.

Chapter IV. -- KURFURST ALBERT ACHILLES, AND HIS SUCCESSOR.

Neither Friedrich nor Johann left other than daughters: so that the
united Heritage, Brandenburg and Culmbach both, came now to the third
Brother, Albert; who has been in Culmbath these many years already. A
tall, fiery, tough old gentleman, of formidable talent for fighting,
who was called the "ACHILLES OF GERMANY" in his day; being then a
very blazing far-seen character, dim as he has now grown. [Born 1414;
Kurfurst, 1471-1486.] This Albert Achilles was the Third Elector;
Ancestor he of all the Brandenburg and Culmbach Hohenzollern Princes
that have since figured in the world. After him there is no break
or shift in the succession, down to the little Friedrich now
born;--Friedrich the old Grandfather, First KING, was the Twelfth
KURFURST.

We have to say, they followed generally in their Ancestors' steps, and
had success of the like kind, more or less; Hohenzollerns all of them,
by character and behavior as well as by descent. No lack of quiet
energy, of thrift, sound sense. There was likewise solid fair-play in
general, no founding of yourself on ground that will not carry;--and
there was instant, gentle but inexorable, crushing of mutiny, if it
showed itself; which, after the Second Elector, or at most the Third, it
had altogether ceased to do. Young Friedrich II., upon whom those
Berlin Burghers had tried to close their gates, till he should sign some
"Capitulation" to their mind, got from them, and not quite in ill-humor,
that name IRONTEETH:--"Not the least a Nose-of-wax, this one! No use
trying here, then!"--which, with the humor attached to it, is itself
symbolical of Friedrich and these Hohenzollern Sovereigns. Albert, his
Brother, had plenty of fighting in his time: but it was in the Nurnberg
and other distant regions; no fighting, or hardly any, needed in
Brandenburg henceforth.

With Nurnberg, and the Ex-Burggrafship there, now when a new generation
began to tug at the loose clauses of that Bargain with Friedrich I., and
all Free-Towns were going high upon their privileges, Albert had at one
time much trouble, and at length actual furious War;--other Free-Towns
countenancing and assisting Nurnberg in the affair; numerous petty
Princes, feudal Lords of the vicinity, doing the like by Albert. Twenty
years ago, all this; and it did not last, so furious was it. "Eight
victories," they count on Albert's part,--furious successful skirmishes,
call them;--in one of which, I remember, Albert plunged in alone,
his Ritters being rather shy; and laid about him hugely, hanging by
a standard he had taken, till his life was nearly beaten out. [1449
(Rentsch, p. 399).] Eight victories; and also one defeat, wherein Albert
got captured, and had to ransom himself. The captor was one Kunz of
Kauffungen, the Nurnberg hired General at the time: a man known to some
readers for his Stealing of the Saxon Princes (PRINZENRAUB, they call
it); a feat which cost Kunz his head. [Carlyle's _Miscellanies_ (London,
1869), vi. ? PRINZENRAUB.] Albert, however, prevailed in the end, as he
was apt to do; and got his Nurnbergers fixed to clauses satisfactory to
him.

In his early days he had fought against Poles, Bohemians and others, as
Imperial general. He was much concerned, all along, in those abstruse
armed-litigations of the Austrian House with its dependencies; and
diligently helped the Kaiser,--Friedrich III., rather a weakish, but
an eager and greedy Kaiser,--through most of them. That inextricable
Hungarian-Bohemian-Polish DONNYBROOK (so we may call it) which Austria
had on hand, one of Sigismund's bequests to Austria; distressingly
tumultuous Donnybrook, which goes from 1440 to 1471, fighting in a
fierce confused manner;--the Anti-Turk Hunniades, the Anti-Austrian
Corvinus, the royal Majesties George Podiebrad, Ladislaus POSTHUMUS,
Ludwig OHNE HAUT (Ludwig NO-SKIN), and other Ludwigs, Ladislauses and
Vladislauses, striking and getting struck at such a rate:--Albert was
generally what we may call chief-constable in all that; giving a knock
here and then one there, in the Kaiser's name. [Hormayr, ii. 138, 140
(? HUNYADY CORVIN); Rentsch, pp. 389-422; Michaelis, i. 304-313.] Almost
from boyhood, he had learned soldiering, which he had never afterwards
leisure to forget. Great store of fighting he had,--say half a century
of it, off and on, during the seventy and odd years he lasted in this
world. With the Donnybrook we spoke of; with the Nurnbergers; with the
Dukes of Bavaria (endless bickerings with these Dukes, Ludwig BEARDY,
Ludwig SUPERBUS, Ludwig GIBBOSUS or Hunchback, against them and about
them, on his own and the Kaiser's score); also with the French, already
clutching at Lorraine; also with Charles the Rash of Burgundy;--lastly
with the Bishop of Bamberg, who got him excommunicated and would not
bury the dead.

Kurfurst Albert's Letter on this last emergency, to his Viceregent in
Culmbach, is a famed Piece still extant (date 1481); [Rentsch, p. 409.]
and his plan in such emergency, is a simple and likely one: "Carry the
dead bodies to the Parson's house; let him see whether he will not bury
them by and by!--One must fence off the Devil by the Holy Cross,"
says Albert,--appeal to Heaven with what honest mother-wit Heaven has
vouchsafed one, means Albert. "These fellows" (the Priests), continues
he, "would fain have the temporal sword as well as the spiritual. Had
God wished there should be only one sword, he could have contrived that
as well as the two. He surely did not want for intellect _(Er war gar
ein weiser Mann),"_--want of intellect it clearly was not!--In short,
they had to bury the dead, and do reason; and Albert hustled himself
well clear of this broil, as he had done of many.

Battle enough, poor man, with steel and other weapons:--and we see
he did it with sharp insight, good forecast; now and then in a wildly
leonine or AQUILINE manner. A tall hook-nosed man, of lean, sharp,
rather taciturn aspect; nose and look are very aquiline; and there is
a cloudy sorrow in those old eyes, which seems capable of sudden
effulgence to a dangerous extent. He was a considerable, diplomatist
too: very great with the Kaiser, Old Friedrich III. (Max's father,
Charles V.'s Great-Grandfather); [How admirable Albert is, not to say
"almost divine," to the Kaiser's then Secretary, oily-mouthed AEneas
Sylvius, afterwards Pope, Rentsch can testify (pp. 401, 586);
quoting AEneas's eulogies and gossipries (_Historia Rerum Frederici
Imperatoris,_ I conclude, though no book is named). Oily diligent
AEneas, in his own young years and in Albert's prime, had of course seen
much of this "miracle" of Arms and Art,--"miracle" and "almost divine,"
so to speak.] and managed many things for him. Managed to get the
thrice-lovely Heiress of the Netherlands and Burgundy, Daughter of that
Charles the Rash, with her Seventeen Provinces, for Max, [1477]--who was
thought thereupon by everybody to be the luckiest man alive; though the
issue contradicted it before long.

Kurfurst Albert died in 1486, March 11, aged seventy-two. It was some
months after Bosworth Fight, where our Crooked Richard got his quietus
here in England and brought the Wars of the Roses to their finale:--a
little chubby Boy, the son of poor parents at Eisleben in Saxony, Martin
Luther the name of him, was looking into this abtruse Universe, with
those strange eyes of his, in what rough woollen or linsey-woolsey
short-clothes we do not know. [Born 10th November, 1483]

Albert's funeral was very grand; the Kaiser himself, and all the
Magnates of the Diet and Reich attending him from Frankfurt to his
last resting-place, many miles of road. For he died at the Diet, in
Frankfurt-on-Mayn; having fallen ill there while busy,--perhaps too busy
for that age, in the harsh spring weather,--electing Prince Maximilian
("lucky Max,") who will be Kaiser too before long, and is already deep
in ILL-luck, tragical and other to be King of the Romans. The old Kaiser
had "looked in on him at Onolzbach" (Anspach), and brought him along;
such a man could not be wanting on such an occasion. A man who "perhaps
did more for the German Empire than for the Electorate of Brandenburg,"
hint some. The Kaiser himself, Friedrich III., was now getting old;
anxious to see Max secure, and to set his house in order. A somewhat
anxious, creaky, close-fisted, ineffectual old Kaiser; [See Kohler
(_Munzbelustigungen,_ vi. 393-401; ii. 89-96, &c.) for a vivid account
of him.] distinguished by his luck in getting Max so provided for, and
bringing the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands to his House. He is
the first of the Hapsburg Kaisers who had what has since been called
the "Austrian lip"--protrusive under-jaw, with heavy lip disinclined to
shut. He got it from his Mother, and bequeathed it in a marked manner;
his posterity to this day bearing traces of it. Mother's name was
Cimburgis, a Polish Princess, "Duke of Masovia's daughter;" a lady
who had something of the MAULTASCHE in her, in character as well as
mouth.--In old Albert, the poor old Kaiser has lost his right hand; and
no doubt muses sadly as he rides in the funeral procession.

Albert is buried at Heilsbronn in Frankenland, among his
Ancestors,--burial in Brandenburg not yet common for these new
Kurfursts:--his skull, in an after-time, used to be shown there, laid on
the lid of the tomb; skull marvellous for strength, and for "having no
visible sutures," says Rentsch. Pious Brandenburg Officiality at
length put an end to that profanation, and restored the skull to its
place,--marvellous enough, with what had once dwelt in it, whether it
had sutures or not.

JOHANN THE CICERO IS FOURTH KURFURST, AND LEAVES TWO NOTABLE SONS.

Albert's eldest Son, the Fourth Kurfurst, was Johannes Cicero
(1486-1499): Johannes was his natural name, to which the epithet "Cicero
of Germany (CICERO GERMANIAE)" was added by an admiring public. He had
commonly administered the Electorate during his Father's absences; and
done it with credit to himself. He was an active man, nowise
deficient as a Governor; creditably severe on highway robbers, for one
thing,--destroys you "fifteen baronial robber-towers" at a stroke; was
also concerned in the Hungarian-Bohemian DONNYBROOK, and did that also
well. But nothing struck a discerning public like the talent he had
for speaking. Spoke "four hours at a stretch in Kaiser Max's Diets, in
elegantly flowing Latin;" with a fair share of meaning, too;--and had
bursts of parliamentary eloquence in him that were astonishing to hear.
A tall, square-headed man, of erect, cheerfully composed aspect, head
flung rather back if anything: his bursts of parliamentary eloquence,
once glorious as the day, procured him the name "Johannes CICERO;" and
that is what remains of them: for they are sunk now, irretrievable he
and they, into the belly of eternal Night; the final resting-place, I do
perceive, of much Ciceronian ware in this world. Apparently he had,
like some of his Descendants, what would now be called "distinguished
literary talents,"--insignificant to mankind and us. I find he was
likewise called DER GROSSE, "John the GREAT;" but on investigation it
proves to be mere "John the BIG," a name coming from his tall stature
and ultimate fatness of body.

For the rest, he left his family well off, connected with high
Potentates all around; and had increased his store, to a fair degree,
in his time. Besides his eldest Son who followed as Elector, by name
Joachim I., a burly gentleman of whom much is written in Books, he left
a second Son, Archbishop of Magdeburg, who in time became Archbishop
of Mainz and Cardinal of Holy Church, [Ulrich van Hutten's grand
"Panegyric" upon this Albert on his first Entrance into Mainz (9th
October, 1514),--"entrance with a retinue of 2,000 horse, mainly
furnished by the Brandenburg and Culmbach kindred," say the old
Books,--is in _Ulrichi ab Hutten Equitis Germani Opera_ (Munch's
edition; Berlin, 1821), i. 276-310.]--and by accident got to be forever
memorable in Church-History, as we shall see anon. Archbishop of Mainz
means withal KUR-MAINZ, Elector of Mainz; who is Chief of the Seven
Electors, and as it were their President or "Speaker." Albert was the
name of this one; his elder Brother, the then Kur-Brandenburg, was
called Joachim. Cardinal Albert Kur-Mainz, like his brother Joachim
Kur-Brandenburg, figures much, and blazes widely abroad, in the busy
reign of Karl V., and the inextricable Lutheran-Papal, Turk-Christian
business it had.

But the notable point in this Albert of Mainz was that of Leo X. and
the Indulgences. [Pauli, v. 496-499; Rentsch, p. 869.] Pope Leo had
permitted Albert to retain his Archbishopric of Magdeburg and other
dignities along with that of Mainz; which was an unusual favor. But the
Pope expected to be paid for it,--to have 30,000 ducats (15,000 pounds),
almost a King's ransom at that time, for the "Pallium" to Mainz;
PALLIUM, or little Bit of woollen Cloth, on sale by the Pope, without
which Mainz could not be held. Albert, with all his dignities, was
dreadfully short of money at the time. Chapter of Mainz could or
would do little or nothing, having been drained lately; Magdeburg,
Halberstadt, the like. Albert tried various shifts; tried a little
stroke of trade in relics,--gathered in the Mainz district "some
hundreds of fractional sacred bones, and three whole bodies," which he
sent to Halle for pious purchase;--but nothing came of this branch.
The 15,000 pounds remained unpaid; and Pope Leo, building St. Peter's,
"furnishing a sister's toilet," and doing worse things, was in extreme
need of it. What is to be done? "I could borrow the money from
the Fuggers of Augsburg," said the Archbishop hesitatingly; "but
then--?"--"I could help you to repay it." said his Holiness: "Could
repay the half of it,--if only we had (but they always make such clamor
about these things) an Indulgence published in Germany!"--"Well; it must
be!" answered Albert at last, agreeing to take the clamor on himself,
and to do the feat; being at his wits'-end for money. He draws out his
Full-Power, which, as first Spiritual Kurfurst, he has the privilege
to do; nominates (1516) one Tetzel for Chief Salesman, a Priest whose
hardness of face, and shiftiness of head and hand, were known to him;
and--here is one Hohenzollern that has a place in History! Poor man,
it was by accident, and from extreme tightness for money. He was by no
means a violent Churchman; he had himself inclinations towards Luther,
even of a practical sort, as the thing went on. But there was no help
for it.

Cardinal Albert, Kur-Mainz, shows himself a copious dexterous public
speaker at the Diets and elsewhere in those times; a man intent on
avoiding violent methods;--uncomfortably fat in his later years, to
judge by the Portraits. Kur-Brandenburg, Kur-Mainz (the younger now
officially even greater than the elder), these names are perpetually
turning up in the German Histories of that Reformation-Period; absent
on no great occasion; and they at length, from amid the meaningless
bead-roll of Names, wearisomely met with in such Books, emerge into
Persons for us as above.

Chapter V. -- OF THE BAIREUTH-ANSPACH BRANCH.

Albert Achilles the Third Elector had, before his accession, been
Margraf of Anspach, and since his Brother the Alchemist's death, Margraf
of Baireuth too, or of the whole Principality,--"Margraf of Culmbach" we
will call it, for brevity's sake, though the bewildering old Books
have not steadily any name for it. [A certain subaltern of this express
title, "Margraf of Culmbach" (a Cadet, with some temporary appanage
there, who was once in the service of him they call the Winter-King,
and may again be transiently heard of by us here), is the altogether
Mysterious Personage who prints himself "MARQUIS DE LULENBACH" in
Bromley's _Collection of Royal Letters_ (London, 1787), pp. 52,
&c.:--one of the most curious Books on the Thirty-Years War; "edited"
with a composed stupidity, and cheerful infinitude of ignorance, which
still farther distinguish it. The BROMLEY Originals well worth a real
editing, turn out, on inquiry, to have been "sold as Autographs, and
dispersed beyond recovery, about fifty years ago."] After his accession,
Albert Achilles naturally held both Electorate and Principality during
the rest of his life. Which was an extremely rare predicament for the
two Countries, the big and the little.

No other Elector held them both, for nearly a hundred years; nor then,
except as it were for a moment. The two countries, Electorate and
Principality, Hohenzollern both, and constituting what the Hohenzollerns
had in this world, continued intimately connected; with affinity and
clientship carefully kept, up, and the lesser standing always under the
express protection and as it were COUSINSHIP of the greater. But they
had their separate Princes, Lines of Princes; and they only twice, in
the time of these Twelve Electors, came even temporarily under the
same head. And as to ultimate union, Brandenburg-Baireuth and
Brandenburg-Anspach were not incorporated with Brandenburg-Proper, and
its new fortunes, till almost our own day, namely in 1791; nor then
either to continue; having fallen to Bavaria, in the grand Congress
of Vienna, within the next five-and-twenty years. All which, with the
complexities and perplexities resulting from it here, we must, in some
brief way, endeavor to elucidate for the reader.

TWO LINES IN CULMBACH OR BAIREUTH-ANSPACH: THE GERA BOND OF 1598.

Culmbach the Elector left, at his death, to his Second Son,--properly
to two sons, but one of them soon died, and the other became sole
possessor;--Friedrich by name; who, as founder of the Elder Line of
Brandenburg-Culmbach Princes, must not be forgotten by us. Founder of
the First or Elder Line, for there are two Lines; this of Friedrich's
having gone out in about a hundred years; and the Anspach-Baireuth
territories having fallen home again to Brandenburg;--where, however,
they continued only during the then Kurfurst's life. Johann George
(1525-1598), Seventh Kurfurst, was he to whom Brandenburg-Culmbach fell
home,--nay, strictly speaking, it was but the sure prospect of it that
fell home, the thing itself did not quite fall in his time, though the
disposal of it did, ["Disposal," 1598; thing itself, 1603, in his Son's
time.]--to be conjoined again with Brandenburg-Proper. Conjoined for the
short potential remainder of his own life; and then to be disposed of
as an apanage again;--which latter operation, as Johann George had
three-and-twenty children, could be no difficult one.

Johann George, accordingly (Year 1598), split the Territory in two;
Brandenburg-Baireuth was for his second son, Brandenburg-Anspach for
his third: hereby again were two new progenitors of Culmbach Princes
introduced, and a New Line, Second or "Younger Line" they call it (Line
mostly split in two, as heretofore); which--after complex adventures
in its split condition, Baireuth under one head, Anspach under
another--continues active down to our little Fritz's time and farther.
As will become but too apparent to us in the course of this History!--

From of old these Territories had been frequently divided: each has
its own little capital, Town of Anspach, Town of Baireuth, [Populations
about the same; 16,000 to 17,000 in our time.] suitable for such
arrangement. Frequently divided; though always under the closest
cousinship, and ready for reuniting, if possible. Generally under the
Elder Line too, under Friedrich's posterity, which was rather numerous
and often in need of apanages, they had been in separate hands. But
the understood practice was not to divide farther; Baireuth by itself,
Anspach by itself (or still luckier if one hand could get hold of
both),--and especially Brandenburg by itself, uncut by any apanage:
this, I observe, was the received practice. But Johann George, wise
Kurfurst as he was, wished now to make it surer; and did so by a famed
Deed, called the Gera Bond (GERAISCHE VERTRAG), dated 1598, [Michaelis,
i. 345.] the last year of Johann George's life.

Hereby, in a Family Conclave held at that Gera, a little town in
Thuringen, it was settled and indissolubly fixed, That their Electorate,
unlike all others in Germany, shall continue indivisible; Law of
Primogeniture, here if nowhere else, is to be in full force; and only
the Culmbach Territory (if otherwise unoccupied) can be split off for
younger sons. Culmbach can be split off; and this again withal can be
split, if need be, into two (Baireuth and Anspach); but not in any case
farther. Which Household-Law was strictly obeyed henceforth. Date of it
1598; principal author, Johann George, Seventh Elector. This "Gera Bond"
the reader can note for himself as an excellent piece of Hohenzollern
thrift, and important in the Brandenburg annals. On the whole,
Brandenburg keeps continually growing under these Twelve Hohenzollerns,
we perceive; slower or faster, just as the Burggrafdom had done, and by
similar methods. A lucky outlay of money (as in the case of Friedrich
Ironteeth in the Neumark) brings them one Province, lucky inheritance
another:--good management is always there, which is the mother of good
luck.

And so there goes on again, from Johann George downwards, a new stream
of Culmbach Princes, called the Younger or New Line,--properly two
contemporary Lines, of Baireuthers and Anspachers;--always in close
affinity to Brandenburg, and with ultimate reversion to Brandenburg,
should both Lines fail; but with mutual inheritance if only one. They
had intricate fortunes, service in foreign armies, much wandering about,
sometimes considerable scarcity of cash: but, for a hundred and fifty
years to come, neither Line by any means failed,--rather the contrary,
in fact.

Of this latter or New Culmbach Line, or split Line, especially of the
Baireuth part of it, our little Wilhelmina, little Fritz's Sister,
who became Margravine there, has given all the world notice. From the
Anspach part of it (at that time in sore scarcity of cash) came Queen
Caroline, famed in our George the Second's time. [See a Synoptic Diagram
of these Genealogies, infra, p. 388a.] From it too came an unmomentous
Margraf, who married a little Sister of Wilhelmina's and Fritz's; of
whom we shall hear. There is lastly a still more unmomentous Margraf,
only son of said Unmomentous and his said Spouse; who again combined
the two Territories, Baireuth having failed of heirs; and who, himself
without heirs, and with a frail Lady Craven as Margravine,--died at
Hammersmith, close by us, in 1806; and so ended the troublesome affair.
He had already, in 1791, sold off to Prussia all temporary claims of
his; and let Prussia have the Heritage at once without waiting farther.
Prussia, as we noticed, did not keep it long; and it is now part of the
Bavarian Dominion;--for the sake of editors and readers, long may it so
continue!

Of this Younger Line, intrinsically rather insignificant to mankind, we
shall have enough to write in time and place; we must at present direct
our attention to the Elder Line.

THE ELDER LINE OF CULMBACH: FRIEDRICH AND HIS THREE NOTABLE SONS THERE.

Kurfurst Albert Achilles's second son, Friedrich (1460-1536), [Rentsch,
pp. 593-602.] the founder of the Elder Culmbach Line, ruled his country
well for certain years, and was "a man famed for strength of body and
mind;" but claims little notice from us, except for the sons he had.
A quiet, commendable, honorable man,--with a certain pathetic dignity,
visible even in the eclipsed state he sank into. Poor old gentleman,
after grand enough feats in war and peace, he fell melancholy, fell
imbecile, blind, soon after middle life; and continued so for twenty
years, till he died. During which dark state, say the old Books, it
was a pleasure to see with what attention his Sons treated him, and how
reverently the eldest always led him out to dinner. [Ib. p. 612.] They
live and dine at that high Castle of Plassenburg, where old Friedrich
can behold the Red or White Mayn no more. Alas, alas, Plassenburg is now
a Correction-House, where male and female scoundrels do beating of
hemp; and pious Friedrich, like eloquent Johann, has become a
forgotten object. He was of the German Reichs-Array, who marched to the
Netherlands to deliver Max from durance; Max, the King of the Romans,
whom, for all his luck, the mutinous Flemings had put under lock-and-key
at one time. [1482 (Pauli, ii. 389): his beautiful young Wife, "thrown
from her horse," had perished in a thrice-tragic way, short while
before; and the Seventeen Provinces were unruly under the guardianship
of Max.] That is his one feat memorable to me at present.

He was Johann Cicero's HALF-brother, child by a second wife. Like his
Uncle Kurfurst Friedrich II., he had married a Polish Princess; the
sharp Achilles having perhaps an eye to crowns in that direction, during
that Hungarian-Bohemian-Polish Donnybrook. But if so, there again came
nothing of a crown with it; though it was not without its good results
for Friedrich's children by and by.

He had eight Sons that reached manhood; five or six of whom came to
something considerable in the world, and Three are memorable down to
this day. One of his daughters he married to the Duke of Liegnitz in
Silesia; which is among the first links I notice of a connection that
grew strong with that sovereign Duchy, and is worth remarking by my
readers here. Of the Three notable Sons it is necessary that we say
something. Casimir, George, Albert are the names of these Three.

Casimir, the eldest, [1481-1527.] whose share of heritage is Baireuth,
was originally intended for the Church; but inclining rather to secular
and military things, or his prospects of promotion altering, he early
quitted that; and took vigorously to the career of arms and business.
A truculent-looking Herr, with thoughtful eyes, and hanging
under-lip:--HAT of enviable softness; loose disk of felt flung
carelessly on, almost like a nightcap artificially extended, so
admirably soft;--and the look of the man Casimir, between his cataract
of black beard and this semi-nightcap, is carelessly truculent. He had
much fighting with the Nurnbergers and others; laid it right terribly
on, in the way of strokes, when needful. He was especially truculent
upon the Revolt of Peasants in their BAUERNKRIEG (1525). Them in their
wildest rage he fronted; he, that others might rally to him: "Unhappy
mortals, will you shake the world to pieces, then, because you have much
to complain of?" and hanged the ringleaders of them literally by the
dozen, when quelled and captured. A severe, rather truculent Herr. His
brother George, who had Anspach for heritage, and a right to half
those prisoners, admonished and forgave his half; and pleaded hard with
Casimir for mercy to the others, in a fine Letter still extant; [In
Rentsch, p. 627.] which produced no effect on Casimir. For the dog's
sake, and for all sakes, "let not the dog learn to eat LEATHER;" (of
which his indispensable leashes and muzzles are made)! That was a
proverb often heard on the occasion, in Luther's mouth among the rest.

Casimir died in 1527, age then towards fifty. For the last dozen
years or so, when the Father's malady became hopeless, he had governed
Culmbach, both parts of it; the Anspach part, which belonged to his
next brother George, going naturally, in almost all things, along with
Baireuth; and George, who was commonly absent, not interfering, except
on important occasions. Casimir left one little Boy, age then only six,
name Albert; to whom George, henceforth practical sovereign of Culmbach,
as his Brother had been, was appointed Guardian. This youth, very full
of fire, wildfire too much of it, exploded dreadfully on Germany by and
by (Albert ALCIBIADES the name they gave him); nay, towards the end of
his nonage, he had been rather sputtery upon his Uncle, the excellent
Guardian who had charge of him.

FRIEDRICH'S SECOND SON, MARGRAF GEORGE OF ANSPACH.

Uncle George of Anspach, Casimir's next Brother, had always been of a
peaceabler disposition than Casimir; not indeed without heat of temper,
and sufficient vivacity of every kind. As a youth, he had aided Kaiser
Max in two of his petty wars; but was always rather given "to reading
Latin," to Learning, and ingenious pursuits. His Polish Mother, who, we
perceive, had given "Casimir" his name, proved much more important to
George. At an early age he went to his Uncle Vladislaus, King of Hungary
and Bohemia: for--Alas, after all, we shall have to cast a glance into
that unbeautiful Hungarian-Bohemian scramble, comparable to an "Irish
Donnybrook," where Albert Achilles long walked as Chief-Constable. It
behooves us, after all, to point out some of the tallest heads in
it; and whitherward, bludgeon in hand, they seem to be swaying and
struggling.--Courage, patient reader!

George, then, at an early age went to his Uncle Vladislaus, King of
Hungary and Bohemia: for George's Mother, as we know, was of royal kin;
daughter of the Polish King, Casimir IV. (late mauler of the Teutsch
Ritters); which circumstance had results for George and us. Daughter
of Casimir IV. the Lady was; and therefore of the Jagellon blood by her
father, which amounts to little; but by her mother she was Granddaughter
of that Kaiser Albert II. who "got Three Crowns in one year, and died
the next;" whose posterity have ever since,--up to the lips in trouble
with their confused competitive accompaniments, Hunniades, Corvinus,
George Podiebrad and others, not to speak of dragon Turks coiling ever
closer round you on the frontier,--been Kings of Hungary and Bohemia;
TWO of the crowns (the HERITABLE two) which were got by Kaiser Albert in
that memorable year. He got them, as the reader may remember, by having
the daughter of Kaiser Sigismund to wife,--Sigismund SUPER-GRAMMATICAM,
whom we left standing, red as a flamingo, in the market-place of
Constance a hundred years ago. Thus Time rolls on in its many-colored
manner, edacious and feracious.

It is in this way that George's Uncle, Vladislaus, Albert's daughter's
son, is now King of Hungary and Bohemia: the last King Vladislaus they
had; and the last King but one, of any kind, as we shall see anon.
Vladislaus was heir of Poland too, could he have managed to get it;
but he gave up that to his brother, to various younger brothers in
succession; having his hands full with the Hungarian and Bohemian
difficulty. He was very fond of Nephew George; well recognizing the
ingenuous, wise and loyal nature of the young man. He appointed George
tutor of his poor son Ludwig; whom he left at the early age of ten, in
an evil world, and evil position there. "Born without Skin," they say,
that is, born in the seventh month;--called Ludwig OHNE HAUT (Ludwig
NO-Skin), on that account. Born certainly, I can perceive, rather thin
of skin; and he would have needed one of a rhinoceros thickness!

George did his function honestly, and with success: Ludwig grew up
a gallant, airy, brisk young King, in spite of difficulties,
constitutional and other; got a Sister of the great Kaiser Karl V.
to wife;--determined (A.D. 1526) to have a stroke at the Turk dragon;
which, was coiling round his frontier, and spitting fire at an
intolerable rate. Ludwig, a fine young man of twenty, marched away
with much Hungarian chivalry, right for the Turk (Summer 1526); George
meanwhile going busily to Bohemia, and there with all his strength
levying troops for reinforcement. Ludwig fought and fenced, for some
time, with the Turk outskirts; came at last to a furious general battle
with the Turk (29th August, 1526), at a place called Mohacz, far east in
the flats of the Lower Donau; and was there tragically beaten and ended.
Seeing the Battle gone, and his chivalry all in flight, Ludwig too had
to fly; galloping for life, he came upon bog which proved bottomless,
as good as bottomless; and Ludwig, horse and man, vanished in it
straightway from this world. Hapless young man, like a flash of
lightning suddenly going down there--and the Hungarian Sovereignty
along with him. For Hungary is part of Austria ever since; having,
with Bohemia, fallen to Karl V.'s Brother Ferdinand, as now the nearest
convenient heir of Albert with his Three Crowns. Up to the lips in
difficulties to this day!--

George meanwhile, with finely appointed reinforcements, was in full
march to join Ludwig; but the sad news of Mohacz met him: he withdrew,
as soon as might be, to his own territory, and quitted Hungarian
politics. This, I think, was George's third and last trial of war. He
by no means delighted in that art, or had cultivated it like Casimir and
some of his brothers.--

George by this time had considerable property; part of it important to
the readers of this History. Anspach we already know; but the Duchy of
Jagerndorf,--that and its pleasant valleys, fine hunting-grounds and
larch-clad heights, among the Giant Mountains of Silesia,--that is to us
the memorable territory. George got it in this manner:--

Some ten or fifteen years ago, the late King Vladislaus, our Uncle of
blessed memory, loving George, and not having royal moneys at command,
permitted him to redeem with his own cash certain Hungarian Domains,
pledged at a ruinously cheap rate, but unredeemable by Vladislaus.
George did so; years ago, guess ten or fifteen. George did not like the
Hungarian Domains, with their Turk and other inconveniences; he proposed
to exchange them with King Vladislaus for the Bohemian-Silesian Duchy
of Jagerndorf; which had just then, by failure of heirs, lapsed to the
King. This also Vladislaus, the beneficent cashless Uncle, liking George
more and more, permitted to be done. And done it was; I see not in what
year; only that the ultimate investiture (done, this part of the affair,
by Ludwig OHNE HAUT, and duly sanctioned by the Kaiser) dates 1524, two
years before the fatal Mohacz business.

From the time of this purchase, and especially till Brother Casimir's
death, which happened in 1527, George resided oftener at Jagerndorf than
at Anspach. Anspach, by the side of Baireuth, needed no management; and
in Jagerndorf much probably required the hand of a good Governor to put
it straight again. The Castle of Jagerndorf, which towers up there in
a rather grand manner to this day, George built: "the old Castle of the
Schellenbergs" (extinct predecessor Line) now gone to ruins, "stands
on a Hill with larches on it, some miles off." Margraf George was much
esteemed as Duke of Jagerndorf. What his actions in that region were, I
know not; but it seems he was so well thought of in Silesia, two smaller
neighboring Potentates, the Duke of Oppeln and the Duke of Ratibor, who
had no heirs of their body, bequeathed, with the Kaiser's assent, these
towns and territories to George: [Rentsch, pp. 623, 127-131. Kaiser is
Ferdinand, Karl V.'s Brother,--as yet only KING of Bohemia and Hungary,
but supreme in regard to such points. His assent is dated "17th June,
1531" in Rentsch.]--in mere love to their subjects (Rentsch intimates),
that poor men might be governed by a wise good Duke, in the time coming.
The Kaiser would have got the Duchies otherwise.

Nay the Kaiser, in spite of his preliminary assent, proved extortionate
to George in this matter; and exacted heavy sums for the actual
possession of Oppeln and Ratibor. George, going so zealously ahead in
Protestant affairs, grew less and less a favorite with Kaisers. But
so, at any rate, on peaceable unquestionable grounds, grounds valid as
Imperial Law and ready money, George is at last Lord of these two little
Countries, in the plain of South-Silesia, as of Jagerndorf among the
Mountains hard by. George has and holds the Duchy of Jagerndorf, with
these appendages (Jagerndorf since 1524, Ratibor and Oppeln since some
years later); and lives constantly, or at the due intervals, in his own
strong Mountain-Castle of Jagerndorf there,--we have no doubt, to the
marked benefit of good men in those parts. Hereby has Jagerndorf joined
itself to the Brandenburg Territories: and the reader can note the
circumstance, for it will prove memorable one day.

In the business of the Reformation, Margraf George was very noble.
A simple-hearted, truth-loving, modestly valiant man; rising
unconsciously, in that great element, into the heroic figure. "George
the Pious (DER FROMME)," "George the Confessor (BEKENNER)," were
the names he got from his countrymen. Once this business had become
practical, George interfered a little more in the Culmbach Government;
his brother Casimir, who likewise had Reformation tendencies, rather
hanging back in comparison to George.

In 1525 the Town-populations, in the Culmbach region, big Nurnberg in
the van, had gone quite ahead in the new Doctrine; and were becoming
irrepressibly impatient to clear out the old mendacities, and have the
Gospel preached freely to them. This was a questionable step; feasible
perhaps for a great Elector of Saxony;--but for a Margraf of Anspach?
George had come home from Jagerndorf, some three hundred miles away, to
look into it for himself; found it, what with darkness all round, what
with precipices menacing on both hands, and zealous, inconsiderate
Town-populations threatening to take the bit between their teeth, a
frightfully intricate thing. George mounted his horse, one day this
year, day not dated farther, and "with only six attendants" privately
rode off, another two hundred miles, a good three days' ride, to
Wittenberg; and alighted at Dr. Martinus Lutherus's door. [Rentsch,
p. 625.] A notable passage; worth thinking of. But such visits of high
Princes, to that poor house of the Doctor's, were not then uncommon.
Luther cleared the doubts of George; George returned with a resolution
taken; "Ahead then, ye poor Voigtland Gospel populations! I must lead
you, we must on!"--And perils enough there proved to be, and precipices
on each hand: BAUERNKRIEG, that is to say Peasants'-War, Anabaptistry
and Red-Republic, on the one hand; REICHS-ACHT, Ban of Empire, on the
other. But George, eagerly, solemnly attentive, with ever new light
rising on him, dealt with the perils as they came; and went steadily on,
in a simple, highly manful and courageous manner.

He did not live to see the actual Wars that followed on Luther's
preaching:--he was of the same age with Luther, born few months later,
and died two years before Luther; [4th March, 1484,--27th Dec., 1543,
George; 10th November, 1483--18th February, 1546, Luther.]--but in all
the intermediate principal transactions George is conspicuously present;
"George of Brandenburg," as the Books call him, or simply "Margraf
George."

At the Diet of Augsburg (1530), and the signing of the Augsburg
Confession there, he was sure to be. He rode thither with his Anspach
Knightage about him, "four hundred cavaliers,"--Seckendorfs, Huttens,
Flanses and other known kindreds, recognizable among the lists;
[Rentsch, p. 633.]--and spoke there, notbursts of parliamentary
eloquence, but things that had meaning in them. One speech of his, not
in the Diet, but in the Kaiser's Lodging (15th June, 1530; no doubt, in
Anton Fugger's house, where the Kaiser "lodged for year and day" this
time but WITHOUT the "fires of cinnamon" they talk of on other occasions
[See Carlyle's _Miscellanies_ (iii. 259 n.). The House is at present an
Inn, _"Gasthaus zu den drei Mohren;"_where tourists lodge, and are still
shown the room which the Kaiser occupied on such visits.]), is still
very celebrated. It was the evening of the Kaiser Karl Fifth's arrival
at the Diet; which was then already, some time since, assembled there.
And great had been the Kaiser's reception that morning; the flower of
Germany, all the Princes of the Empire, Protestant and Papal alike,
riding out to meet him, in the open country, at the Bridge of the Lech.
With high-flown speeches and benignities, on both sides;--only that the
Kaiser willed all men, Protestant and other, should in the mean while
do the Popish litanyings, waxlight processionings and idolatrous
stage-performances with him on the morrow, which was CORPUS-CHRISTI
Day; and the Protestants could not nor would. Imperial hints there had
already been, from Innspruck; benign hopes, of the nature of commands,
That loyal Protestant Princes would in the interim avoid open
discrepancies,--perhaps be so loyal as keep their chaplains, peculiar
divine-services, private in the interim? These were hints;--and now this
of the CORPUS-CHRISTI, a still more pregnant hint! Loyal Protestants
refused it, therefore; flatly declined, though bidden and again bidden.
They attended in a body, old Johann of Saxony, young Philip of Hessen,
and the rest; Margraf George, as spokesman, with eloquent simplicity
stating their reasons,--to somewhat this effect:--

Invinciblest all-gracious Kaiser, loyal are we to your high Majesty,
ready to do your bidding by night and by day. But it is your bidding
under God, not against God. Ask us not, O gracious Kaiser! I cannot, and
we cannot; and we must not, and dare not. And "before I would deny my
God and his Evangel," these are George's own words, "I would
rather kneel down here before your Majesty, and have my head struck
off,"--hitting his hind-head, or neck, with the edge of his hand, by
way of accompaniment; a strange radiance in the eyes of him, voice
risen into musical alt: _"Ehe Ich wolte meinen Gott und sein Evangelium
verlaugnen, ehe wolte Ich hier vor Eurer Majestat niderknien, und mir
den Kopf abhauen lassen."--"Nit Kop ab, lover Forst, nit Kop ab!"_
answered Charles in his Flemish-German; "Not head off, dear Furst, not
head off!" said the Kaiser, a faint smile enlightening those weighty
gray eyes of his, and imperceptibly animating the thick Austrian
under-lip. [Rentsch, p. 637. Marheineke, _Geschichte der Teutschen
Reformation _ (Berlin, 1831), ii. 487.]

Speaker and company attended again on the morrow; Margraf George still
more eloquent. Whose Speech flew over Germany, like fire over dry
flax; and still exists,--both Speeches now oftenest rolled into one by
inaccurate editors. [As by Rentsch, ubi supra.] And the CORPUS-CHRISTI
idolatries were forborne the Margraf and his company this time;--the
Kaiser himself, however, walking, nearly roasted in the sun, in heavy
purple-velvet cloak, with a big wax-candle, very superfluous, guttering
and blubbering in the right hand of him, along the streets of Augsburg.
Kur-Brandenburg, Kur-Mainz, high cousins of George, were at this Diet of
Augsburg; Kur-Brandenburg (Elector Joachim I., Cicero's son, of whom
we have spoken, and shall speak again) being often very loud on the
conservative side; and eloquent Kur-Mainz going on the conciliatory
tack. Kur-Brandenburg, in his zeal, had ridden on to Innspruck, to meet
the Kaiser there, and have a preliminary word with him. Both these high
Cousins spoke, and bestirred themselves, a good deal, at this Diet.
They had met the Kaiser on the plains of the Lech, this morning; and, no
doubt, gloomed unutterable things on George and his Speech. George could
not help it.

Till his death in 1543, George is to be found always in the front line
of this high Movement, in the line where Kur-Sachsen, John the Steadfast
(DER BESTANDIGE), and young Philip the Magnanimous of Hessen were,
and where danger and difficulty were. Readers of this enlightened
gold-nugget generation can form to themselves no conception of the
spirit that then possessed the nobler kingly mind. "The command of God
endures through Eternity, _ Verbum Dei Manet In AEternum,"_ was the
Epigraph and Life-motto which John the Steadfast had adopted for
himself; "V. D. M. I. AE.," these initials he had engraved on all the
furnitures of his existence, on his standards, pictures, plate, on the
very sleeves of his lackeys,--and I can perceive, on his own deep heart
first of all. V. D. M. I. E.:--or might it not be read withal, as Philip
of Hessen sometimes said (Philip, still a young fellow, capable of sport
in his magnanimous scorn), _"Verbum Diaboli Manet In Episcopis,_ The
Devil's Word sticks fast in the Bishops"?

We must now take leave of Margraf George and his fine procedures in that
crisis of World-History. He had got Jugerndorf, which became important
for his Family and others: but what was that to the Promethean conquests
(such we may call them) which he had the honor to assist in making for
his Family, and for his Country, and for all men;--very unconscious he
of "bringing fire from Heaven," good modest simple man! So far as I can
gather, there lived, in that day, few truer specimens of the Honest Man.
A rugged, rough-hewn, rather blunt-nosed physiognomy: cheek-bones high,
cheeks somewhat bagged and wrinkly; eyes with a due shade of anxiety and
sadness in them; affectionate simplicity, faithfulness, intelligence,
veracity looking out of every feature of him. Wears plentiful white
beard short-cut, plentiful gold-chains, ruffs, ermines;--a hat not to
be approved of, in comparison with brother Casimir's; miserable
inverted-colander of a hat; hanging at an angle of forty-five degrees;
with band of pearls round the top not the bottom of it; insecure upon
the fine head of George, and by no means to its embellishment.

One of his Daughters he married to the Duke of Liegnitz, a new link
in that connection. He left one Boy, George Friedrich; who came under
ALCIBIADES, his Cousin of Baireuth's tutelage; and suffered much by that
connection, or indeed chiefly by his own conspicuously Protestant turn,
to punish which, the Alcibiades connection was taken as a pretext. In
riper years, George Friedrich got his calamities brought well under; and
lived to do good work, Protestant and other, in the world. To which we
may perhaps allude again. The Line of Margraf George the Pious ends in
this George Friedrich, who had no children; the Line of Margraf George,
and the Elder Culmbach Line altogether (1603), Albert Alcibiades,
Casimir's one son, having likewise died without posterity.

"Of the younger Brothers," says my Authority, "some four were in the
Church; two of whom rose to be Prelates;--here are the four:--

"1. One, Wilhelm by name, was Bishop of Riga, in the remote Prussian
outskirts, and became Protestant;--among the first great Prelates who
took that heretical course; being favored by circumstances to cast out
the 'V. D. _(Verbum Diaboli),'_ as Philip read it. He is a wise-looking
man, with magnificent beard, with something of contemptuous patience
in the meditative eyes of him. He had great troubles with his Riga
people,--as indeed was a perennial case between their Bishop and them,
of whatever creed he might be.

"2. The other Prelate held fast by the Papal Orthodoxy: he had got upon
the ladder of promotion towards Magdeburg; hoping to follow his Cousin
KUR-MAINZ, the eloquent conciliatory Cardinal, in that part of his
pluralities. As he did,--little to his comfort, poor man; having
suffered a good deal in the sieges and religious troubles of his
Magdeburgers; who ended by ordering him away, having openly declared
themselves Protestant, at length. He had to go; and occupy himself
complaining, soliciting Aulic-Councils and the like, for therest of his
life.

"3. The PROBST of Wurzburg (PROVOST, kind of Head-Canon there); orthodox
Papal he too; and often gave his Brother George trouble.

"4. A still more orthodox specimen, the youngest member of the family,
who is likewise in orders: Gumbrecht ('Gumbertus, a Canonicus of'
Something or other, say the Books); who went early to Rome, and became
one of his Holiness Leo Tenth's Chamberlains;--stood the 'Sack of Rome'
(Constable de Bourbon's), and was captured there and ransomed;--but died
still young (1528). These three were Catholics, he of Wurzburg a rather
virulent one."

Catholic also was JOHANNES, a fifth Brother, who followed the soldiering
and diplomatic professions, oftenest in Spain; did Government-messages
to Diets, and the like, for Karl V.; a high man and well seen of his
Kaiser;--he had wedded the young Widow of old King Ferdinand in Spain;
which proved, seemingly, a troublous scene for poor Johannes. What we
know is, he was appointed Commandant of Valencia; and died there, still
little turned of thirty,--by poison it is supposed,--and left his young
Widow to marry a third time.

These are the Five minor Brothers, four of them Catholic, sons of
old blind Friedrich of Plassenburg; who are not, for their own sake,
memorable, but are mentionable for the sake of the three major Brothers.
So many orthodox Catholics, while Brother George and others went into
the heresies at such a rate! A family much split by religion:--and blind
old Friedrich, dim of intellect, knew nothing of it; and the excellent
Polish Mother said and thought, we know not what. A divided Time!--

Johannes of Valencia, and these Chief Priests, were all men of mark;
conspicuous to the able editors of their day: but the only Brother
now generally known to mankind is Albert, Hochmeister of the Teutsch
Ritterdom; by whom Preussen came into the Family. Of him we must now
speak a little.

Chapter VI. -- HOCHMEISTER ALBERT, THIRD NOTABLE SON OF FRIEDRICH.

Albert was born in 1490; George's junior by six years, Casimir's by
nine. He too had been meant for the Church; but soon quitted that, other
prospects and tendencies opening. He had always loved the ingenuous
arts; but the activities too had charms for him. He early shone in his
exercises spiritual and bodily; grew tall above his fellows, expert in
arts, especially in arms;--rode with his Father to Kaiser Max's Court;
was presented by him, as the light of his eyes, to Kaiser Max; who
thought him a very likely young fellow; and bore him in mind, when the
Mastership of the Teutsch Ritterdom fell vacant. [Rentsch, pp. 840-863.]

The Teutsch Ritterdom, ever since it got its back broken in that Battle
of Tannenberg in 1410, and was driven out of West-Preussen with such
ignominious kicks, has been lying bedrid, eating its remaining revenues,
or sprawling about in helpless efforts to rise again, which require
no notice from us. Hopeless of ever recovering West-Preussen, it had
quietly paid its homage to Poland for the Eastern part of that Country;
quietly for some couple of generations. But, in the third or fourth
generation after Tannenberg, there began to rise murmurs,--in the Holy
Roman Empire first of all. "Preussen is a piece of the Reich," said hot,
inconsiderate people; "Preussen could not be alienated without consent
of the Reich!" To which discourses the afflicted Ritters listened only
too gladly; their dull eyes kindling into new false hopes at sound
of them. The point was, To choose as Hochmeister some man of German
influence, of power and connection in the Country, who might help
them to their so-called right. With this view, they chose one and then
another of such sort;--and did not find it very hopeful, as we shall
see.

Albert was chosen Grand-Master of Preussen, in February, 1511; age then
twenty-one. Made his entry into Konigsberg, November next year; in grand
cavalcade, "dreadful storm of rain and wind at the time,"--poor Albert
all in black, and full of sorrow, for the loss of his Mother, the good
Polish Princess, who had died since he left home. Twenty months of
preparation he had held since his Election, before doing anything: for
indeed the case was intricate. He, like his predecessor in office, had
undertaken to refuse that Homage to Poland; the Reich generally, and
Kaiser Max himself, in a loose way of talk, encouraging him: "A piece of
the Reich," said they all; "Teutsch Ritters had no power to give it away
in that manner." Which is a thing more easily said, than made good in
the way of doing.

Albert's predecessor, chosen on this principle, was a Saxon Prince,
Friedrich of Meissen; cadet of Saxony; potently enough connected, he
too; who, in like manner, had undertaken to refuse the Homage. And
zealously did refuse it, though to his cost, poor man. From the Reich,
for all its big talking, he got no manner of assistance; had to stave
off a Polish War as he could, by fair-speaking, by diplomacies and
contrivances; and died at middle age, worn down by the sorrows of that
sad position.

An idea prevails, in ill-informed circles, that our new Grand-Master
Albert was no better than a kind of cheat; that he took this
Grand-Mastership of Preussen; and then, in gayety of heart,
surreptitiously pocketed Preussen for his own behoof. Which is an idle
idea; inconsistent with the least inquiry, or real knowledge how the
matter stood. [Voigt, ix. 740-749; Pauli, iv. 404-407.] By no means in
gayety of heart, did Albert pocket Preussen; nor till after as tough a
struggle to do other with it as could have been expected of any man.

One thing not suspected by the Teutsch Ritters, and least of all by
their young Hochmeister, was, That the Teutsch Ritters had well deserved
that terrible down-come at Tannenberg, that ignominious dismissal out of
West-Preussen with kicks. Their insolence, luxury, degeneracy had gone
to great lengths. Nor did that humiliation mend them at all; the reverse
rather. It was deeply hidden from the young Hochmeister as from
them, That probably they were now at length got to the end of their
capability: and ready to be withdrawn from the scene, as soon as any
good way offered!--Of course, they Were reluctant enough to fulfil their
bargain to Poland; very loath they to do Homage now for Preussen, and
own themselves sunk to the second degree. For the Ritters had still
their old haughtiness of humor, their deepseated pride of place, gone
now into the unhappy CONSCIOUS state. That is usually the last thing
that deserts a sinking House: pride of place, gone to the conscious
state;--as if, in a reverse manner, the House felt that it deserved to
sink.

For the rest, Albert's position among them was what Friedrich of
Sachsen's had been; worse, not better; and the main ultimate difference
was, he did not die of it, like Friedrich of Sachsen; but found an
outlet, not open in Friedrich's time, and lived. To the Ritters, and
vague Public which called itself the Reich, Albert had promised he would
refuse the Homage to Poland; on which Ritters and Reich had clapt their
hands: and that was pretty much all the assistance he got of them. The
Reich, as a formal body, had never asserted its right to Preussen, nor
indeed spoken definitely on the subject: it was only the vague Public
that had spoken, in the name of the Reich. From the Reich, or from any
individual of it, Kaiser or Prince, when actually applied to, Albert
could get simply nothing. From what, Ritters were in Preussen, he might
perhaps expect promptitude to fight, if it came to that; which was not
much as things stood. But, from the great body of the Ritters, scattered
over Germany, with their rich territories (BALLEYS, bailliwicks), safe
resources, and comfortable "Teutschmeister" over them, he got flat
refusal: [The titles HOCHMEISTER and TEUTSCHMEISTER are defined, in many
Books and in all manner of Dictionaries, as meaning the same thing. But
that is not quite the case. They were at first synonymous, so far as I
can see; and after Albert's time, they again became so; but at the date
where we now are, and for a long while back, they represent different
entities, and indeed oftenest, since the Prussian DECLINE began,
antagonistic ones. Teutschmeister, Sub-president over the GERMAN affairs
and possessions of the Order, resides at Mergentheim in that Country:
Hochmeister is Chief President of the whole, but resident at Marienburg
in Preussen, and feels there acutely where the shoe pinches,--much
too acutely, thinks the Teutschmeister in his soft list-slippers, at
Mergentheim in the safe Wurzburg region.] "We will not be concerned in
the adventure at all; we wish you well through it!" Never was a spirited
young fellow placed in more impossible position. His Brother Casimir
(George was then in Hungary), his Cousin Joachim Kur-Brandenburg,
Friedrich Duke of Liegnitz, a Silesian connection of the Family, ["Duke
Friedrich II.:" comes by mothers from Kurfurst Friedrich I.; marries
Margraf George's Daughter even now, 1519 (Hubner, tt. 179, 100, 101).]
consulted, advised, negotiated to all lengths, Albert's own effort was
incessant. "Agree with King Sigismund," said they; "Uncle Sigismund,
your good Mother's Brother; a King softly inclined to us all!"--"How
agree?" answered Albert: "He insists on the Homage, which I have
promised not to give!" Casimir went and came, to Konigsberg, to Berlin;
went once himself to Cracow, to the King, on this errand: but it was a
case of "Yes AND No;" not to be solved by Casimir.

As to King Sigismund, he was patient with it to a degree; made the
friendliest paternal professions;--testifying withal, That the claim
was undeniable; and could by him, Sigismund, never be foregone with the
least shadow of honor, and of course never would: "My dear Nephew can
consider whether his dissolute, vain-minded, half-heretical Ritterdom,
nay whether this Prussian fraction of it, is in a condition to take
Poland by the beard in an unjust quarrel; or can hope to do Tannenberg
over again in the reverse way, by Beelzehub's help?"--

For seven years, Albert held out in this intermediate state, neither
peace nor war; moving Heaven and Earth to raise supplies, that he might
be able to defy Poland, and begin war. The Reich answers, "We have
really nothing for you." Teutschmeister answers again and again, "I
tell you we have nothing!" In the end, Sigismund grew impatient; made
(December, 1519) some movements of a hostile nature. Albert did not
yield; eager only to procrastinate till he were ready. By superhuman
efforts, of borrowing, bargaining, soliciting, and galloping to and fro,
Albert did, about the end of next year, get up some appearance of an
Army: "14,000 German mercenaries horse and foot," so many in theory;
who, to the extent of 8,000 in actual result, came marching towards him
(October, 1520); to serve "for eight months." With these he will besiege
Dantzig, besiege Thorn; will plunge, suddenly, like a fiery javelin,
into the heart of Poland, and make Poland surrender its claim. Whereupon
King Sigismund bestirred himself in earnest; came out with vast clouds
of Polish chivalry; overset Albert's 8,000;--who took to eating the
country, instead of fighting for it; being indeed in want of all things.
One of the gladdest days Albert had yet seen, was when he got the 8,000
sent home again.

What then is to be done? "Armistice for four years," Sigismund was still
kind enough to consent to that: "Truce for four years: try everywhere,
my poor Nephew; after that, your mind will perhaps become pliant."
Albert tried the Reich again: "Four years, O Princes, and then I must
do it, or be eaten!" Reich, busy with Lutheran-Papal, Turk-Christian
quarrels, merely shrugged its shoulders upon Albert. Teutschmeister did
the like; everybody the like. In Heaven or Earth, then, is there no hope
for me? thought Albert. And his stock of ready money--we will not speak
of that!

Meanwhile Dr. Osiander of Anspach had come to him; and the pious young
man was getting utterly shaken in his religion. Monkish vows, Pope, Holy
Church itself, what is one to think, Herr Doctor? Albert, religious
to an eminent degree, was getting deep into Protestantism. In his many
journeyings, to Nurnberg, to Brandenburg, and up and down, he had
been at Wittenberg too: he saw Luther in person more than once there;
corresponded with Luther; in fine believed in the truth of Luther. The
Culmbach Brothers were both, at least George ardently was, inclined to
Protestantism, as we have seen; but Albert was foremost of the three
in this course. Osiander and flights of zealous Culmbach Preachers made
many converts in Preussen. In these circumstances the Four Years came to
a close.

Albert, we may believe, is greatly at a loss; and deep deliberations,
Culmbach, Berlin, Liegnitz, Poland all called in, are held:--a case
beyond measure intricate. You have given your word; word must be
kept,--and cannot, without plain hurt, or ruin even, to those that took
it of you. Withdraw, therefore; fling it up!--Fling it up? A valuable
article to fling up; fling it up is the last resource. Nay, in fact, to
whom will you fling it up? The Prussian Ritters themselves are getting
greatly divided on the point; and at last on all manner of points,
Protestantism ever more spreading among them. As for the German
Brethren, they and their comfortable Teutschmeister, who refused to
partake in the dangerous adventure at all; are they entitled to have
much to say in the settlement of it now?--

Among others, or as chief oracle of all, Luther was consulted. "What
would you have me do towards reforming the Teutsch Order?" inquired
Albert of his oracle. Luther's answer was, as may be guessed, emphatic.
"Luther," says one reporter, "has in his Writings declared the Order to
be 'a thing serviceable neither to God nor man,' and the constitution
of it 'a monstrous, frightful, hermaphroditish, neither secular nor
spiritual constitution.'" [C. J. Weber, _Daa Ritterwessen_ (Stuttgard,
1837), iii. 208.] We do not know what Luther's answer to Albert
was;--but can infer the purport of it: That such a Teutsch Ritterdom was
not, at any rate, a thing long for this world; that white cloaks with
black crosses on them would not, of themselves, profit any Ritterdom;
that solemn vows and high supramundane professions, followed by such
practice as was notorious, are an afflicting, not to say a damnable,
spectacle on God's Earth;--that a young Herr had better marry; better
have done with the wretched Babylonian Nightmare of Papistry altogether;
better shake oneself awake, in God's name, and see if there are not
still monitions in the eternal sky as to what it is wise to do, and wise
not to do!--This I imagine to have been, in modern language, the
purport of Dr. Luther's advice to Hochmeister Albrecht on the present
interesting occasion.

It is certain, Albert, before long, took this course; Uncle Sigismund
and the resident Officials of the Ritterdom having made agreement to
it as the one practicable course. The manner as follows: 1. Instead
of Elected Hochmeister, let us be Hereditary Duke of Preussen, and
pay homage for it to Uncle Sigismund in that character. 2. Such of the
resident Officials of the Ritterdom as are prepared to go along with us,
we will in like manner constitute permanent Feudal Proprietors of what
they now possess as Life-rent, and they shall be Sub-vassals under us
as Hereditary Duke. 3. In all which Uncle Sigismund and the Republic of
Poland engage to maintain us against the world.

That is, in sum, the Transaction entered into, by King Sigismund I.
of Poland, on the one part, and Hochmeister Albert and his Ritter
Officials, such as went along with him, (which of course none could do
that were not Protestant), on the other part: done at Cracow, 8th April,
1525. [Rentsch, p. 850.--Here, certified by Rentsch, Voigt and others,
is a worn-out patch of Paper, which is perhaps worth printing:--

     1490, May 17, Albert is born.
     1511, February 14, Hochmeister.
     1519, December, King Sigismund's first hostile movements.
     1520, October, German Mercenaries arrive.
     1520, November, try Siege of Dantzig.
     1520, November 17, give it up.
     1521, April 10, Truce for Four Years.
     1523, June, Albert consults Luther.
     1524, November, sees Luther.
     1525, April 8, Peace of Cracow, and Albert to be Duke of
     Prussia.] Whereby Teutsch Ritterdom, the Prussian part of it,
     vanished from the world; dissolving itself, and its "hermaphrodite
     constitution," like a kind of Male Nunnery, as so many female ones
     had done in those years. A Transaction giving rise to endless
     criticism, then and afterwards. Transaction plainly not
     reconcilable with the letter of the law; and liable to have logic
     chopped upon it to any amount, and to all lengths of time.
     The Teutschmeister and his German Brethren shrieked murder;
     the whole world, then, and for long afterwards, had much to say
     and argue.

To us, now that the logic-chaff is all laid long since, the question is
substantial, not formal. If the Teutsch Ritterdom was actually at this
time DEAD, actually stumbling about as a mere galvanized Lie beginning
to be putrid,--then, sure enough, it behooved that somebody should
bury it, to avoid pestilential effects in the neighborhood. Somebody or
other;--first flaying the skin off, as was natural, and taking that
for his trouble. All turns, in substance, on this latter question! If,
again, the Ritterdom was not dead--?

And truly it struggled as hard as Partridge the Almanac-maker to rebut
that fatal accusation; complained (Teutschmeister and German-Papist part
of it) loudly at the Diets; got Albert and his consorts put to the Ban
(GEACHTET), fiercely menaced by the Kaiser Karl V. But nothing came of
all that; nothing but noise. Albert maintained his point; Kaiser Karl
always found his hands full otherwise, and had nothing but stamped
parchments and menaces to fire off at Albert. Teutsch Ritterdom,
the Popish part of it, did enjoy its valuable bailliwicks, and very
considerable rents in various quarters of Germany and Europe, having
lost only Preussen; and walked about, for three centuries more, with
money in its pocket, and a solemn white gown with black cross on its
back,--the most opulent Social Club in existence, and an excellent
place for bestowing younger sons of sixteen quarters. But it was, and
continued through so many centuries, in every essential respect, a
solemn Hypocrisy; a functionless merely eating Phantasm, of the nature
of goblin, hungry ghost or ghoul (of which kind there are many);--till
Napoleon finally ordered it to vanish; its time, even as Phantasm, being
come.

Albert, I can conjecture, had his own difficulties as Regent in
Preussen. [1525-1568.] Protestant Theology, to make matters worse
for him, had split itself furiously into 'DOXIES; and there was an
OSIANDERISM (Osiander being the Duke's chaplain), much flamed upon by
the more orthodox ISM. "Foreigners," too, German-Anspach and other, were
ill seen by the native gentlemen; yet sometimes got encouragement. One
Funccius, a shining Nurnberg immigrant there, son-in-law of Osiander,
who from Theology got into Politics, had at last (1564) to be
beheaded,--old Duke Albert himself "bitterly weeping" about him; for it
was none of Albert's doing. Probably his new allodial Ritter gentlemen
were not the most submiss, when made hereditary? We can only hope the
Duke was a Hohenzollern, and not quite unequal to his task in this
respect. A man with high bald brow; magnificent spade-beard; air
much-pondering, almost gaunt,--gaunt kind of eyes especially, and a
slight cast in them, which adds to his severity of aspect. He kept his
possession well, every inch of it; and left all safe at his decease
in 1568. His age was then near eighty. It was the tenth year of our
Elizabeth as Queen; invincible Armada not yet built; but Alba very busy,
cutting off high heads in Brabant; and stirring up the Dutch to such
fury as was needful for exploding Spain and him.

This Duke Albert was a profoundly religious man, as all thoughtful men
then were. Much given to Theology, to Doctors of Divinity; being
eager to know God's Laws in this Universe, and wholesomely certain of
damnation if he should not follow them. Fond of the profane Sciences
too, especially of Astronomy: Erasmus Reinhold and his _Tabulae
Prutenicae_ were once very celebrated; Erasmus Reinhold proclaims
gratefully how these his elaborate Tables (done according to the latest
discoveries, 1551 and onwards) were executed upon Duke Albert's high
bounty; for which reason they are dedicated to Duke Albert, and called
"PRUTENICAE," meaning PRUSSIAN. [Rentsch, p. 855.] The University of
Konigsberg was already founded several years before, in 1544.

Albert had not failed to marry, as Luther counselled: by his first Wife
he had only daughters; by his second, one son, Albert Friedrich,
who, without opposition or difficulty, succeeded his Father. Thus was
Preussen acquired to the Hohenzollern Family; for, before long, the
Electoral branch managed to get MITBELEHNUNG (Co-infeftment), that is
to say, Eventual Succession; and Preussen became a Family Heritage, as
Anspach and Baireuth were.

Chapter VII. -- ALBERT ALCIBIADES.

One word must be spent on poor Albert, Casimir's son, [1522-1557]
already mentioned. This poor Albert, whom they call ALCIBIADES, made a
great noise in that epoch; being what some define as the "Failure of
a Fritz;" who has really features of him we are to call "Friedrich the
Great," but who burnt away his splendid qualities as a mere temporary
shine for the able editors, and never came to anything.

A high and gallant young fellow, left fatherless in childhood; perhaps
he came too early into power:--he came, at any rate, in very volcanic
times, when Germany was all in convulsion; the Old Religion and the New
having at length broken out into open battle, with huge results to
be hoped and feared; and the largest game going on, in sight of an
adventurous youth. How Albert staked in it; how he played to immense
heights of sudden gain, and finally to utter bankruptcy, I cannot
explain here: some German delineator of human destinies, "Artist" worth
the name, if there were any, might find in him a fine subject.

He was ward of his Uncle George; and the probable fact is, no guardian
could have been more faithful. Nevertheless, on approaching the years
of majority, of majority but not discretion, he saw good to quarrel with
his Uncle; claimed this and that, which was not granted: quarrel lasting
for years. Nay matters ran so high at last, it was like to come to war
between them, had not George been wiser. The young fellow actually sent
a cartel to his Uncle; challenged him to mortal combat,--at which George
only wagged his old beard, we suppose, and said nothing. Neighbors
interposed, the Diet itself interposed; and the matter was got quenched
again. Leaving Albert, let us hope, a repentant young man. We said he
was full of fire, too much of it wildfire.

His profession was Arms; he shone much in war; went slashing and
fighting through those Schmalkaldic broils, and others of his time; a
distinguished captain; cutting his way towards something high, he saw
not well what. He had great comradeship with Moritz of Saxony in the
wars: two sworn brothers they, and comrades in arms:--it is the same
dexterous Moritz, who, himself a Protestant, managed to get his too
Protestant Cousin's Electorate of Saxony into his hand, by luck of the
game; the Moritz, too, from whom Albert by and by got his last defeat,
giving Moritz his death in return. That was the finale of their
comradeship. All things end, and nothing ceases changing till it end.

He was by position originally on the Kaiser's side; had attained great
eminence, and done high feats of arms and generalship in his service.
But being a Protestant by creed, he changed after that Schmalkaldic
downfall (rout of Muhlberg, 24th April, 1547), which brought Moritz an
Electorate, and nearly cost Moritz's too Protestant Cousin his life as
well as lands. [Account of it in De Wette, _Lebensgeschichte der Herzoge
zu Sachsen_(Weimar, 1770), pp. 32-35.] The victorious Kaiser growing
now very high in his ways, there arose complaints against him from all
sides, very loud from the Protestant side; and Moritz and Albert took to
arms, with loud manifestos and the other phenomena.

This was early in 1552, five years after Muhlberg Rout or Battle. The
there victorious Kaiser was now suddenly almost ruined; chased like a
partridge into the Innspruck Mountains,--could have been caught, only
Moritz would not; "had no cage to hold so big a bird," he said. So the
Treaty of Passau was made, and the Kaiser came much down from his lofty
ways. Famed TREATY OF PASSAU (22d August, 1552), which was the finale of
these broils, and hushed them up for a Fourscore years to come. That was
a memorable year in German Reformation History.

Albert, meanwhile, had been busy in the interior of the country; blazing
aloft in Frankenland, his native quarter, with a success that astonished
all men. For seven months he was virtually King of Germany; ransomed
Bamberg, ransomed Wurzburg, Nurnberg (places he had a grudge at);
ransomed all manner of towns and places,--especially rich Bishops and
their towns, with VERBUM DIABOLI sticking in them,--at enormous sums.
King of the world for a brief season;--must have had some strange
thoughts to himself, had they been recorded for us. A pious man, too;
not in the least like "Alcibiades," except in the sudden changes of
fortune he underwent. His Motto, or old rhymed Prayer, which he would
repeat on getting into the saddle for military work,--a rough rhyme of
his own composing,--is still preserved. Let us give it, with an English
fac-simile, or roughest mechanical pencil-tracing,--by way of glimpse
into the heart of a vanished Time and its Man-at-arms: [Rentsch, p.
644.]

     Das Walt der Herr Jesus Christ,
     Mit dem Vater, der uber uns ist:
     Wer starker ist als dieser Mann,
     Der komm und thu' ein Leid mir an.

     Guide it the Lord Jesus Christ, [Read "Chris"
               or "Chriz," for the rhyme's sake.]
     And the Father, who over us is:
     He that is stronger than that Man, [Sic.]
     Let him do me a hurt when he can.

He was at the Siege of Metz (end of that same 1552), and a principal
figure there. Readers have heard of the Siege of Metz: How Henry II.
of France fished up those "Three Bishoprics" (Metz, Toul, Verdun,
constituent part of Lorraine, a covetable fraction of Teutschland) from
the troubled sea of German things, by aid of Moritz now KUR-SACHSEN, and
of Albert; and would not throw them in again, according to bargain, when
Peace, the PEACE OF PASSAU came. How Kaiser Karl determined to have them
back before the year ended, cost what it might; and Henry II. to keep
them, cost what it might. How Guise defended, with all the Chivalry of
France; and Kaiser Karl besieged, [19th October, 1552, and onwards.]
with an Army of 100,000 men, under Duke Alba for chief captain. Siege
protracted into midwinter; and the "sound of his cannon heard at
Strasburg," which is eighty miles off, "in the winter nights." [Kohler,
_Reichs-Historie,_ p. 453;--and more especially _Munzbelustigungen_
(Nurnberg, 1729-1750), ix. 121-129. The Year of this Volume, and of the
Number in question, is 1737; the MUNZE or Medal "recreated upon" in of
Henri II.]

It had depended upon Albert, who hung in the distance with an army of
his own, whether the Siege could even begin; but he joined the Kaiser,
being reconciled again; and the trenches opened. By the valor of Guise
and his Chivalry,--still more perhaps by the iron frosts and by the
sleety rains of Winter, and the hungers and the hardships of a hundred
thousand men, digging vainly at the ice-bound earth, or trampling
it when sleety into seas of mud, and themselves sinking in it, of
dysentery, famine, toil and despair, as they cannonaded day and
night,--Metz could not be taken. "Impossible!" said the Generals with
one voice, after trying it for a couple of months. "Try it one other ten
days," said the Kaiser with a gloomy fixity; "let us all die, or else
do it!" They tried, with double desperation, another ten days; cannon
booming through the winter midnight far and wide, four score miles
round: "Cannot be done, your Majesty! Cannot,--the winter and the mud,
and Guise and the walls; man's strength cannot do it in this season. We
must march away!" Karl listened in silence; but the tears were seen to
run down his proud face, now not so young as it once was: "Let us march,
then!" he said, in a low voice, after some pause.

Alcibiades covered the retreat to Diedenhof (THIONVILLE they now call
it): outmanoeuvred the French, retreated with success; he had already
captured a grand Due d'Aumale, a Prince of the Guises,--valuable ransom
to be looked for there. It was thought he should have made his bargain
better with the Kaiser, before starting; but he had neglected that.
Albert's course was downward thenceforth; Kaiser Karl's too. The French
keep these "Three Bishoprics (TROIS EVECHES)," and Teutschland laments
the loss of them, to this hour. Kaiser Karl, as some write, never smiled
again;--abdicated, not long after; retired into the Monastery of St.
Just, and there soon died. That is the siege of Metz, where Alcibiades
was helpful. His own bargain with the Kaiser should have been better
made beforehand.

Dissatisfied with any bargain he could now get; dissatisfied with the
Treaty of Passau, with such a finale and hushing-up of the Religious
Controversy, and in general with himself and with the world, Albert
again drew sword; went loose at a high rate upon his Bamberg-Wurzburg
enemies, and, having raised supplies there, upon Moritz and those
Passau-Treatiers. He was beaten at last by Moritz, "Sunday, 9th July,
1553," at a place called Sievershausen in the Hanover Country, where
Moritz himself perished in the action.--Albert fled thereupon to France.
No hope in France. No luck in other small and desperate stakings of his:
the game is done. Albert returns to a Sister he had, to her Husband's
Court in Baden; a broken, bare and bankrupt man;--soon dies there,
childless, leaving the shadow of a name. [Here, chiefly from Kohler
_(Munzbelustigungen,_ iii. 414-416), is the chronology of Albert's
operations:--Seizure of Nurnberg &c., 11th May to 22d June, 1552;
Innspruck (with Treaty of Passau) follows. Then Siege of Metz, October
to December, 1552; Bamberg, Wurzburg and Nurnberg ransomed again, April,
1553; Battle of Sievershausen, 9th July, 1553. Wurzburg &c. explode
against him; Ban of the Empire, 4th May, 1554. To France thereupon;
returns, hoping to negotiate, end of 1556; dies at Pforzheim, at his
Sister's, 8th January, 1557.--See Pauli, iii. 120-138. See also Dr.
Kapp, _Erinnerungen an diejenigen Markgrafen &c._ (a reprint from
the _Archiv fur Geschichte und Alterthumskunde in Ober-Franken,_ Year
1841).]

His death brought huge troubles upon Baireuth and the Family
Possessions. So many neighbors, Bamberg, Wurzburg and the rest, were
eager for retaliation; a new Kaiser greedy for confiscating. Plassenburg
Castle was besieged, bombarded, taken by famine and burnt; much was
burnt and torn to waste. Nay, had it not been for help from Berlin, the
Family had gone to utter ruin in those parts. For this Alcibiades had,
in his turn, been Guardian to Uncle George's Son, the George Friedrich
we once spoke of, still a minor, but well known afterwards; and it was
attempted, by an eager Kaiser Ferdinand, to involve this poor youth in
his Cousin's illegalities, as if Ward and Guardian had been one person.
Baireuth which had been Alcibiades's, Anspach which was the young man's
own, nay Jagerndorf with its Appendages, were at one time all in the
clutches of the hawk,--had not help from Berlin been there. But in the
end, the Law had to be allowed its course; George Friedrich got his own
Territories back (all but some surreptitious nibblings in the Jagerndorf
quarter, to be noticed elsewhere), and also got Baireuth, his poor
Cousin's Inheritance;--sole heir, he now, in Culmbath, the Line of
Casimir being out.

One owns to a kind of love for poor Albert Alcibiades. In certain sordid
times, even a "Failure of a Fritz" is better than some Successes that
are going. A man of some real nobleness, this Albert; though not with
wisdom enough, not with good fortune enough. Could he have continued
to "rule the situation" (as our French friends phrase it); to march the
fanatical Papistries, and Kaiser Karl, clear out of it, home to Spain
and San Justo a little earlier; to wave the coming Jesuitries away, as
with a flaming sword; to forbid beforehand the doleful Thirty-Years War,
and the still dolefuler spiritual atrophy (the flaccid Pedantry, ever
rummaging and rearranging among learned marine-stores, which thinks
itself Wisdom and Insight; the vague maunderings, flutings; indolent,
impotent daydreaming and tobacco-smoking, of poor Modern Germany) which
has followed therefrom,--ACH GOTT, he might have been a "SUCCESS of a
Fritz" three times over! He might have been a German Cromwell; beckoning
his People to fly, eagle-like, straight towards the Sun; instead
of screwing about it in that sad, uncertain, and far too spiral
manner!--But it lay not in him; not in his capabilities or
opportunities, after all: and we but waste time in such speculations.

Chapter VIII. -- HISTORICAL MEANING OF THE REFORMATION.

The Culmbach Brothers, we observe, play a more important part in that
era than their seniors and chiefs of Brandenburg. These Culmbachers,
Margraf George aud Albert of Preussen at the head of them, march
valiantly forward in the Reformation business; while KUR-BRANDENBURG,
Joachim I., their senior Cousin, is talking loud at Diets, galloping to
Innspruck and the like, zealous on the Conservative side; and Cardinal
Albert, KUR-MAINZ, his eloquent brother, is eager to make matters smooth
and avoid violent methods.

The Reformation was the great Event of that Sixteenth Century; according
as a man did something in that, or did nothing and obstructed doing, has
he much claim to memory, or no claim, in this age of ours. The more it
becomes apparent that the Reformation was the Event then transacting
itself, was the thing that Germany and Europe either did or refused to
do, the more does the historical significance of men attach itself to
the phases of that transaction. Accordingly we notice henceforth that
the memorable points of Brandenburg History, what of it sticks naturally
to the memory of a reader or student, connect themselves of their own
accord, almost all, with the History of the Reformation. That has proved
to be the Law of Nature in regard to them, softly establishing itself;
and it is ours to follow that law.

Brandenburg, not at first unanimously, by no means too inconsiderately,
but with overwhelming unanimity when the matter became clear, was lucky
enough to adopt the Reformation;--and stands by it ever since in
its ever-widening scope, amid such difficulties as there might be.
Brandenburg had felt somehow, that it could do no other. And ever
onwards through the times even of our little Fritz and farther, if we
will understand the word "Reformation," Brandenburg so feels; being,
at this day, to an honorable degree, incapable of believing
incredibilities, of adopting solemn shams, or pretending to live
on spiritual moonshine. Which has been of uncountable advantage to
Brandenburg:--how could it fail? This was what we must call obeying the
audible voice of Heaven. To which same "voice," at that time, all that
did not give ear,--what has become of them since; have they not signally
had the penalties to pay!

"Penalties:" quarrel not with the old phraseology, good reader; attend
rather to the thing it means. The word was heard of old, with a right
solemn meaning attached to it, from theological pulpits and such places;
and may still be heard there with a half-meaning, or with no meaning,
though it has rather become obsolete to modern ears. But the THING
should not have fallen obsolete; the thing is a grand and solemn truth,
expressive of a silent Law of Heaven, which continues forever valid. The
most untheological of men may still assert the thing; and invite all
men to notice it, as a silent monition and prophecy in this Universe;
to take it, with more of awe than they are wont, as a correct reading of
the Will of the Eternal in respect of such matters; and, in their modern
sphere, to bear the same well in mind. For it is perfectly certain, and
may be seen with eyes in any quarter of Europe at this day.

Protestant or not Protestant? The question meant everywhere: "Is there
anything of nobleness in you, O Nation, or is there nothing? Are there,
in this Nation, enough of heroic men to venture forward, and to battle
for God's Truth VERSUS the Devil's Falsehood, at the peril of life
and more? Men who prefer death, and all else, to living under
Falsehood,--who, once for all, will not live under Falsehood; but
having drawn the sword against it (the time being come for that rare
and important step), throw away the scabbard, and can say, in pious
clearness, with their whole soul: 'Come on, then! Life under Falsehood
is not good for me; and we will try it out now. Let it be to the death
between us, then!'"

Once risen into this divine white-heat of temper, were it only for a
season and not again, the Nation is thenceforth considerable through all
its remaining history. What immensities of DROSS and crypto-poisonous
matter will it not burn out of itself in that high temperature, in
the course of a few years! Witness Cromwell and his Puritans,--making
England habitable even under the Charles-Second terms for a couple of
centuries more. Nations are benefited, I believe, for ages, by being
thrown once into divine white-heat in this manner. And no Nation that
has not had such divine paroxysms at any time is apt to come to much.

That was now, in this epoch, the English of "adopting Protestantism;"
and we need not wonder at the results which it has had, and which the
want of it has had. For the want of it is literally the want of loyalty
to the Maker of this Universe. He who wants that, what else has he,
or can he have? If you do not, you Man or you Nation, love the Truth
enough, but try to make a Chapman-bargain with Truth, instead of giving
yourself wholly soul and body and life to her, Truth will not live with
you, Truth will depart from you; and only Logic, "Wit" (for example,
"London Wit"), Sophistry, Virtu, the AEsthetic Arts, and perhaps (for a
short while) Bookkeeping by Double Entry, will abide with you. You will
follow falsity, and think it truth, you unfortunate man or nation. You
will right surely, you for one, stumble to the Devil; and are every day
and hour, little as you imagine it, making progress thither.

Austria, Spain, Italy, France, Poland,--the offer of the Reformation was
made everywhere; and it is curious to see what has become of the nations
that would not hear it. In all countries were some that accepted; but in
many there were not enough, and the rest, slowly or swiftly, with fatal
difficult industry, contrived to burn them out. Austria was once full of
Protestants; but the hide-bound Flemish-Spanish Kaiser-element presiding
over it, obstinately, for two centuries, kept saying, "No; we, with our
dull obstinate Cimburgis under-lip and lazy eyes, with our ponderous
Austrian depth of Habituality and indolence of Intellect, we prefer
steady Darkness to uncertain new Light!"--and all men may see where
Austria now is. Spain still more; poor Spain, going about, at this time,
making its "PRONUNCIAMIENTOS;" all the factious attorneys in its
little towns assembling to PRONOUNCE virtually this, "The Old IS a
lie, then;--good Heavens, after we so long tried hard, harder than
any nation, to think it a truth!--and if it be not Rights of Man, Red
Republic and Progress of the Species, we know not what now to believe or
to do; and are as a people stumbling on steep places, in the darkness
of midnight!"--They refused Truth when she came; and now Truth knows
nothing of them. All stars, and heavenly lights, have become veiled to
such men; they must now follow terrestrial IGNES FATUI, and think them
stars. That is the doom passed upon them.

Italy too had its Protestants; but Italy killed them; managed to
extinguish Protestantism. Italy put up silently with Practical Lies
of all kinds; and, shrugging its shoulders, preferred going into
Dilettantism and the Fine Arts. The Italians, instead of the sacred
service of Fact and Performance, did Music, Painting, and the
like:--till even that has become impossible for them; and no noble
Nation, sunk from virtue to VIRTU, ever offered such a spectacle before.
He that will prefer Dilettantism in this world for his outfit, shall
have it; but all the gods will depart from him; and manful veracity,
earnestness of purpose, devout depth of soul, shall no more be his. He
can if he like make himself a soprano, and sing for hire;--and probably
that is the real goal for him.

But the sharpest-cut example is France; to which we constantly return
for illustration. France, with its keen intellect, saw the truth and saw
the falsity, in those Protestant times; and, with its ardor of generous
impulse, was prone enough to adopt the former. France was within a
hair's-breadth of becoming actually Protestant. But France saw good
to massacre Protestantism, and end it in the night of St. Bartholomew,
1572. The celestial Apparitor of Heaven's Chancery, so we may speak,
the Genius of Fact and Veracity, had left his Writ of Summons; Writ was
read;--and replied to in this manner. The Genius of Fact and Veracity
accordingly withdrew;--was staved off, got kept away, for two hundred
years. But the writ of Summons had been served; Heaven's Messenger could
not stay away forever. No; he returned duly; with accounts run up, on
compound interest, to the actual hour, in 1792;--and then, at last,
there had to be a "Protestantism;" and we know of what kind that was!--

Nations did not so understand it, nor did Brandenburg more than the
others; but the question of questions for them at that time, decisive of
their history for half a thousand years to come, was, Will you obey the
heavenly voice, or will you not?

Chapter IX. -- KURFURST JOACHIM I.

Brandenburg, in the matter of the Reformation, was at first--with Albert
of Mainz, Tetzel's friend, on the one side, and Pious George of Anspach,
"NIT KOP AB," on the other--certainly a divided house. But, after the
first act, it conspicuously ceased to be divided; nay Kur-Brandenburg