The Crown of Wild Olive Part 32

Not your modern way of affecting conversion! Too illiberal, you think; and what would Mr. J. S. Mill say?

But if Triglaph _had_ been verily "three whales' cubs combined by boiling," you would yourself have promoted attack upon him for the sake of his oil, would not you? The Teutsch Ritters, fighting him for charity, are they so much inferior to you?

They built, and burnt, innumerable stockades for and against; built wooden forts which are now stone towns. They fought much and prevalently; galloped desperately to and fro, ever on the alert. In peaceabler ulterior times, they fenced in the Nogat and the Weichsel with dams, whereby unlimited quagmire might become gra.s.sy meadow--as it continues to this day. Marienburg (Mary's Burg), with its grand stone Schloss still visible and even habitable: this was at length their headquarter. But how many Burgs of wood and stone they built, in different parts; what revolts, surprisals, furious fights in woody, boggy places they had, no man has counted.

But always some preaching by zealous monks, accompanied the chivalrous fighting. And colonists came in from Germany; trickling in, or at times streaming. Victorious Ritterdom offers terms to the beaten heathen: terms not of tolerant nature, but which _will be punctually kept by Ritterdom_. When the flame of revolt or general conspiracy burnt up again too extensively, high personages came on crusade to them. Ottocar, King of Bohemia, with his extensive far-s.h.i.+ning chivalry, "conquered Samland in a month;" tore up the Romova where Adalbert had been ma.s.sacred, and burned it from the face of the earth. A certain fortress was founded at that time, in Ottocar's presence; and in honor of him they named it King's Fortress, "Konigsberg." Among King Ottocar's esquires, or subaltern junior officials, on this occasion, is one Rudolf, heir of a poor Swiss lords.h.i.+p and gray hill castle, called Hapsburg, rather in reduced circ.u.mstances, whom Ottocar likes for his prudent, hardy ways; a stout, modest, wise young man, who may chance to redeem Hapsburg a little, if he lives.

Conversion, and complete conquest once come, there was a happy time for Prussia; ploughshare instead of sword: busy sea-havens, German towns, getting built; churches everywhere rising; gra.s.s growing, and peaceable cows, where formerly had been quagmire and snakes, and for the Order a happy time. On the whole, this Teutsch Ritterdom, for the first century and more, was a grand phenomenon, and flamed like a bright blessed beacon through the night of things, in those Northern countries. For above a century, we perceive, it was the rallying place of all brave men who had a career to seek on terms other than vulgar. The n.o.ble soul, aiming beyond money, and sensible to more than hunger in this world, had a beacon burning (as we say), if the night chanced to overtake it, and the earth to grow too intricate, as is not uncommon. Better than the career of stump-oratory, I should fancy, and its Hesperides apples, golden, and of gilt horse-dung. Better than puddling away one's poor spiritual gift of G.o.d (loan, not gift), such as it may be, in building the lofty rhyme, the lofty review article, for a discerning public that has sixpence to spare! Times alter greatly.[143]

We must pause here again for a moment to think where we are, and who is _with us_. The Teutsch Ritters have been fighting, independently of all states, for their own hand, or St. Adalbert's; partly for mere love of fight, partly for love of order, partly for love of G.o.d. Meantime, other Riders have been fighting wholly for what they could get by it; and other persons, not Riders, have not been fighting at all, but in their own towns peacefully manufacturing and selling.

Of Henry the Fowler's Marches, Austria has become a military power, Flanders a mercantile one, pious only in the degree consistent with their several occupations. Prussia is now a practical and farming country, more Christian than its longer-converted neighbors.

Towns are built, Konigsberg (King Ottocar's town), Th.o.r.en (Thorn, City of the Gates), with many others; so that the wild population and the tame now lived tolerably together, under Gospel and Lubeck law; and all was ploughing and trading.

But Brandenburg itself, what of it?

The Ascanien Markgraves rule it on the whole prosperously down to 1320, when their line expires, and it falls into the power of Imperial Austria.

IX.

1320-1415.--_Brandenburg under the Austrians._

A century--the fourteenth--of miserable anarchy and decline for Brandenburg, its Kurfursts, in deadly succession, making what they can out of it for their own pockets. The city itself and its territory utterly helpless. Read pp. 180, 181 (129, 130). "The towns suffered much, any trade they might have had going to wreck. Robber castles flourished, all else decayed, no highway safe. What are Hamburg pedlars made for but to be robbed?"

X.

1415-1440.--_Brandenburg under Friedrich of Nuremberg._

This is the fourth of the men whom you are to remember as creators of the Prussian monarchy, Henry the Fowler, St. Adalbert, Albert the Bear, of Ascanien, and Friedrich of Nuremberg; (of Hohenzollern, by name, and by country, of the Black Forest, north of the Lake of Constance).

Brandenburg is sold to him at Constance, during the great Council, for about 200,000_l._ of our money, worth perhaps a million in that day; still, with its capabilities, "dog cheap." Admitting, what no one at the time denied, the general marketableness of states as private property, this is the one practical result, thinks Carlyle (not likely to think wrong), of that oec.u.menical deliberation, four years long, of the "elixir of the intellect and dignity of Europe. And that one thing was not its doing; but a p.a.w.nbroking job, intercalated," putting, however, at last, Brandenburg again under the will of one strong man. On St.

John's day, 1412, he first set foot in his town, "and Brandenburg, under its wise Kurfurst, begins to be cosmic again." The story of Heavy Peg, pages 195-198 (138, 140), is one of the most brilliant and important pa.s.sages of the first volume; page 199, specially to our purpose, must be given entire:--

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 n.o.ble art of governing men; had in him the justness, 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 G.o.d 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 famis.h.i.+ng 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 taproot of the Prussian nation, and the beginning of all that Brandenburg has since grown to under the sun.

Which growth is now traced by Carlyle in its various budding and withering, under the succession of the twelve Electors, of whom Friedrich, with his heavy Peg, is first, and Friedrich, first King of Prussia, grandfather of Friedrich the Great, the twelfth.

XI.

1416-1701.--_Brandenburg under the Hohenzollern Kurfursts._

Book III.

Who the Hohenzollerns were, and how they came to power in Nuremberg, is told in Chap. v. of Book II.

Their succession in Brandenburg is given in brief at page 377 (269). I copy it, in absolute barrenness of enumeration, for our momentary convenience, here:

Friedrich 1st of Brandenburg (6th of Nuremberg), 1412-1440 Friedrich II., called "Iron Teeth," 1440-1472 Albert, 1472-1486 Johann, 1486-1499 Joachim I., 1499-1535 Joachim II., 1535-1571 Johann George, 1571-1598 Joachim Friedrich, 1598-1608 Johann Sigismund, 1608-1619 George Wilhelm, 1619-1640 Friedrich Wilhelm (the Great Elector), 1640-1688 Friedrich, first King; crowned 18th January, 1701

Of this line of princes we have to say they followed generally in their ancestor's steps, and had success of the like kind more or less; Hohenzollerns all of them, by character and behaviour 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 crus.h.i.+ng of mutiny_, if it showed itself, which after the Second Elector, or at most the Third, it had altogether ceased to do.

This is the general account of them; of special matters note the following:--

II. Friedrich, called "Iron-teeth," from his firmness, proves a notable manager and governor. Builds the palace at Berlin in its first form, and makes it his chief residence. Buys Neumark from the fallen Teutsch Ritters, and generally establishes things on securer footing.

III. Albert, "a fiery, tough old Gentlemen," called the Achilles of Germany in his day; has half-a-century of fighting with his own Nurembergers, with Bavaria, France, Burgundy, and its fiery Charles, besides being head constable to the Kaiser among any disorderly persons in the East. His skull, long shown on his tomb, "marvellous for strength and with no visible sutures."

IV. John, the orator of his race; (but the orations unrecorded). His second son, Archbishop of Maintz, for whose piece of memorable work see page 223 (143) and read in connection with that the history of Margraf George, pp. 237-241 (152-154), and the 8th chapter of the third book.

V. Joachim I., of little note; thinks there has been enough Reformation, and checks proceedings in a dull stubbornness, causing him at least grave domestic difficulties.--Page 271 (173).

VI. Joachim II. Again active in the Reformation, and staunch,

though generally in a cautious, weighty, never in a rash, swift way, to the great cause of Protestantism and to all good causes. He was himself a solemnly devout man; deep, awe-stricken reverence dwelling in his view of this universe. Most serious, though with a jocose dialect, commonly having a cheerful wit in speaking to men. Luther's books he called his Seelenschatz, (soul's treasure); Luther and the Bible were his chief reading. Fond of profane learning, too, and of the useful or ornamental arts; given to music, and "would himself sing aloud" when he had a melodious leisure hour.

VII. Johann George, a prudent thrifty Herr; no mistresses, no luxuries allowed; at the sight of a new-fas.h.i.+oned coat he would fly out on an unhappy youth and pack him from his presence. Very strict in point of justice; a peasant once appealing to him in one of his inspection journeys through the country--

"Grant me justice, Durchlaucht, against so and so; I am your Highness's born subject." "Thou shouldst have it, man, wert thou a born Turk!" answered Johann George.

Thus, generally, we find this line of Electors representing in Europe the Puritan mind of England in a somewhat duller, but less dangerous, form; receiving what Protestantism could teach of honesty and common sense, but not its anti-Catholic fury, or its selfish spiritual anxiety.

Pardon of sins is not to be had from Tetzel; neither, the Hohenzollern mind advises with itself, from even Tetzel's master, for either the buying, or the asking. On the whole, we had better commit as few as possible, and live just lives and plain ones.

A conspicuous thrift, veracity, modest solidity, looks through the conduct of this Herr; a determined Protestant he too, as indeed all the following were and are.

VIII. Joachim Friedrich. Gets hold of Prussia, which hitherto, you observe, has always been spoken of as a separate country from Brandenburg. March 11, 1605--"squeezed his way into the actual guardians.h.i.+p of Preussen and its imbecile Duke, which was his by right."

For my own part, I do not trouble myself much about these rights, never being able to make out any single one, to begin with, except the right to keep everything and every place about you in as good order as you can--Prussia, Poland, or what else. I should much like, for instance, just now, to hear of any honest Cornish gentleman of the old Drake breed taking a fancy to land in Spain, and trying what he could make of his rights as far round Gibraltar as he could enforce them. At all events, Master Joachim has somehow got hold of Prussia; and means to keep it.