History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 2

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Prepared by D.R. Thompson

Carlyle's "History of Friedrich II of Prussia"
Vol II

BOOK II.

OF BRANDENBURG AND THE HOHENZOLLERNS.
928-1417.

Chapter I.

BRANNIBOR: HENRY THE FOWLER.

The Brandenburg Countries, till they become related to the
Hohenzollern Family which now rules there, have no History that
has proved memorable to mankind. There has indeed been a good deal
written under that title; but there is by no means much known,
and of that again there is alarmingly little that is worth knowing
or remembering.

Pytheas, the Marseilles Travelling Commissioner, looking out for
new channels of trade, somewhat above 2,000 years ago, saw the
country actually lying there; sailed past it, occasionally
landing; and made report to such Marseillese "(Chamber of
Commerce" as there then was:--report now lost, all to a few
indistinct and insignificant fractions. [ Memoires de
l'Academie des Inscriptions, t. xix. 46, xxxvii.
439, &c.] This was "about the year 327 before Christ," while
Alexander of Macedon was busy conquering India. Beyond question,
Pytheas, the first WRITING or civilized creature that ever saw
Germany, gazed with his Greek eyes, and occasionally landed,
striving to speak and inquire, upon those old Baltic Coasts,
north border of the now Prussian Kingdom; and reported of it to
mankind we know not what. Which brings home to us the fact that it
existed, but almost nothing more: A Country of lakes and woods,
of marshy jungles, sandy wildernesses; inhabited by bears, otters,
bisons, wolves, wild swine, and certain shaggy Germans of the
Suevic type, as good as inarticulate to Pytheas. After which all
direct notice of it ceases for above three hundred years. We can
hope only that the jungles were getting cleared a little, and the
wild creatures hunted down; that the Germans were increasing in
number, and becoming a thought less shaggy. These latter, tall
Suevi Semnones, men of blond stern aspect (oculi truces
coerulei) and great strength of bone, were known to
possess a formidable talent for fighting: [Tacitus, De
Moribus Germanorum, c. 45.] Drusus Germanicus, it has
been guessed, did not like to appear personally among them: some
"gigantic woman prophesying to him across the Elbe" that it might
be dangerous, Drusus contented himself with erecting some
triumphal pillar on his own safe side of the Elbe, to say that
they were conquered.

In the Fourth Century of our era, when the German populations, on
impulse of certain "Huns expelled from the Chinese frontier," or
for other reasons valid to themselves, began flowing universally
southward, to take possession of the rich Roman world, and so
continued flowing for two centuries more; the old German frontiers
generally, and especially those Northern Baltic countries, were
left comparatively vacant; so that new immigrating populations
from the East, all of Sclavic origin, easily obtained footing and
supremacy there. In the Northern parts, these immigrating Sclaves
were of the kind called Vandals, or Wends: they spread themselves
as far west as Hamburg and the Ocean, south also far over the Elbe
in some quarters; while other kinds of Sclaves were equally busy
elsewhere. With what difficulty in settling the new boundaries,
and what inexhaustible funds of quarrel thereon, is still visible
to every one, though no Historian was there to say the least word
of it. "All of Sclavic origin;" but who knows of how many kinds:
Wends here in the North, through the Lausitz (Lusatia) and as far
as Thuringen; not to speak of Polacks, Bohemian Czechs, Huns,
Bulgars, and the other dim nomenclatures, on the Eastern frontier.
Five hundred years of violent unrecorded fighting, abstruse
quarrel with their new neighbors in settling the marches.
Many names of towns in Germany ending in ITZ (Meuselwitz,
Mollwitz), or bearing the express epithet Windisch italic> (Wendish), still give indication of those old sad
circumstances; as does the word SLAVE, in all our Western
languages, meaning captured SCLAVONIAN. What long-drawn echo of
bitter rage and hate lies in that small etymology!

These things were; but they have no History: why should they have
any? Enough that in those Baltic regions, there are for the time
(Year 600, and till long after Charlemagne is out) Sclaves in
place of Suevi or of Holstein Saxons and Angli; that it is now
shaggy Wends who have the task of taming the jungles, and keeping
down the otters and wolves. Wends latterly in a waning condition,
much beaten upon by Charlemagne and others; but never yet beaten
out. And so it has to last, century after century; Wends, wolves,
wild swine, all alike dumb to us. Dumb, or sounding only one
huge unutterable message (seemingly of tragic import), like the
voice of their old Forests, of their old Baltic Seas:--
perhaps more edifying to us SO. Here at last is a definite date
and event:--

"A.D. 928, Henry the Fowler, marching across the frozen bogs,
took BRANNIBOR, a chief fortress of the Wends;" [Kohler,
Reichs-Historie (Frankfurth und Leipzig, 1737),
p. 63. Michaelis, Chur-und Furstlichen Hauser in
Deutschland (Lemgo, 1759, 1760, 1785), i. 255.]--
first mention in human speech of the place now called Brandenburg:
Bor or "Burg of the Brenns" (if there ever was any TRIBE of
Brenns,--BRENNUS, there as elsewhere, being name for KING or
Leader); "Burg of the Woods," say others,--who as little know.
Probably, at that time, a town of clay huts, with dit&h and
palisaded sod-wall round it; certainly "a chief fortress of the
Wends,"--who must have been a good deal surprised at sight of
Henry on the rimy winter morning near a thousand years ago.

This is the grand old Henry, called, "the Fowler"
(Heinrich der Vogler), because he was in his
Vogelheerde (Falconry or Hawk-establishment, seeing
his Hawks fly) in the upland Hartz Country, when messengers came
to tell him that the German Nation, through its Princes and
Authorities assembled at Fritzlar, had made him King; and that he
would have dreadful work henceforth. Which he undertook; and also
did,--this of Brannibor only one small item of it,--warring right
manfully all his days against Chaos in that country, no rest for
him thenceforth till he died. The beginning of German Kings;
the first, or essentially the first sovereign of united Germany,--
Charlemagne's posterity to the last bastard having died out, and
only Anarchy, Italian and other, being now the alternative.

"A very high King," says one whose Note-books I have got,
"an authentically noble human figure, visible still in clear
outline in the gray dawn of Modern History. The Father of whatever
good has since been in Germany. He subdued his DUKES, Schwaben,
Baiern (Swabia, Bavaria) and others, who were getting too
HEREDITARY, and inclined to disobedience. He managed to get back
Lorraine; made TRUCE with the Hungarians, who were excessively
invasive at that time. Truce with the Hungarians; and then, having
gathered strength, made dreadful beating of them; two beatings,--
one to each half, for the invasive Savagery had split itself, for
better chance of plunder; first beating was at Sondershausen,
second was at Merseburg, Year 933;--which settled them
considerably. Another beating from Henry's son, and they never
came back. Beat Wends, before this,--'Brannibor through frozen
bogs' five years ago. Beat, Sclavic Meisseners (Misnians);
Bohehemian Czechs, and took Prag; Wends again, with huge
slaughter; then Danes, and made 'King Worm tributary' (King
Gorm the Hard, our KNUT'S or Canute's great-
grand-father, Year 931);--last of all, those invasive Hungarians
as above. Had sent the Hungarians, when they demanded tribute or
BLACK-MAIL of him as heretofore, Truce being now out,--a mangy
hound: There is your black-mail, Sirs; make much of that!

"He had 'the image of St. Michael painted on his standard;'
contrary to wont. He makes, or RE-makes, Markgrafs (Wardens of the
Marches), to be under his Dukes,--and not too HEREDITARY. Who his
Markgraves were? Dim History counts them to the number of six;
[Kohler, Reich-Historie, p. 66. This is by
no means Kohler's chief Book; but this too is good, and does, in a
solid effective way, what it attempts. He seems to me by far the
best Historical Genius the Germans have yet, produced, though I do
not find much mention of him in their Literary Histories and
Catalogues. A man of ample learning, and also of strong cheerful
human sense and human honesty; whom it is thrice-pleasant, to meet
with in those ghastly solitudes, populous chiefly with doleful
creatures.] which take in their order:--
"1. SLESWIG, looking over into the Scandinavian countries, and the
Norse Sea-kings. This Markgraviate did not last long under that
title. I guess, it, became Stade-and-Ditmarsch italic> afterwards.
"2. SOLTWEDEL,--which grows to be Markgraviate of BRANDENBURG by
and by. Soltwedel, now called Salzwedel, an old Town still extant,
sixty miles to west and north of Brandenburg, short way south of
the Elbe, was as yet headquarters of this second Markgraf;
and any Warden we have at Brandenburg is only a deputy of him
or some other.
"3. MEISSEN (which we call Misnia), a country at that time still
full of Wends.
"4. LAUSITZ, also a very Wendish country (called in English maps
LUSATIA,--which is its name in Monk-Latin, not now a spoken
language). Did not long continue a Markgraviate; fell to Meissen
(Saxony), fell to Brandenburg, Bohemia, Austria, and had many
tos and fros. Is now (since the Thirty-Years-War time) mostly
Saxon again.
"5. AUSTRIA (OEsterreich, Eastern-Kingdom, EASTERNREY as we might
say); to look after the Hungarians, and their valuable claims to
black-mail.
"6. ANTWERP ('At-the-Wharf,' 'On-t'-Wharf,' so to speak), against
the French; which function soon fell obsolete.

"These were Henry's six Markgraviates (as my best authority
enumerates them); and in this way he had militia captains ranked
all round his borders, against the intrusive Sclavic element.
@@@@
"He fortified Towns; all Towns are to be walled and warded,--to be
BURGS in fact; and the inhabitants BURGhers, or men capable of
defending Burgs. Everywhere the ninth man is to serve as soldier
in his Town; other eight in the country are to feed and support
him: Heergeruthe (War-tackle, what is called
HERIOT in our old Books) descends to the eldest son of a fighting
man who had served, as with us. 'All robbers are made soldiers'
(unless they prefer hanging); and WEAPON-SHOWS and drill are kept
up. This is a man who will make some impression upon Anarchy,
and its Wends and Huns. His standard was St. Michael, as we have
seen,--WHOSE sword is derived from a very high quarter! A pious
man;--founded Quedlinburg Abbey, and much else in that kind,
having a pious Wife withal, Mechtildis, who took the main hand in
that of Quedlinburg; whose LIFE is in Leibnitz, [Leibnitz,
Scriptores Rerum Brunswicensium, &c.
(Hanover, 1707), i. 196.] not the legiblest of Books.--On the
whole, a right gallant King and 'Fowler.' Died, A.D. 936 (at
Memmleben, a Monastery on the Unstrut, not far from Schulpforte),
age sixty; had reigned only seventeen years, and done so much.
Lies buried in Quedlinburg Abbey:--any Tomb? I know no LIFE of him
but GUNDLING'S, which is an extremely inextricable Piece, and
requires mainly to be forgotten.--Hail, brave Henry: across the
Nine dim Centuries, we salute thee, still visible as a valiant Son
of Cosmos and Son of Heaven, beneficently sent us; as a man who
did in grim earnest 'serve God' in his day, and whose works
accordingly bear fruit to our day, and to all days!"--

So far my rough Note-books; which require again to be shut for
the present, not to abuse the reader's patience, or lead him
from his road.

This of Markgrafs (GRAFS of the Marches, MARKED Places,
or Boundaries) was a natural invention in that state of
circumstances. It did not quite originate with Henry;
but was much perfected by him, he first recognizing how essential
it was. On all frontiers he had his GRAF (Count, REEVE, G'REEVE,
whom some think to be only GRAU, Gray, or SENIOR, the hardiest,
wisest steel-GRAY man he could discover) stationed on the MARCK,
strenuously doing watch and ward there: the post of difficulty,
of peril, and naturally of honor too, nothing of a sinecure by any
means. Which post, like every other, always had a tendency to
become hereditary, if the kindred did not fail in fit men.
And hence have come the innumerable Markgraves, Marquises,
and such like, of modern times: titles now become chimerical, and
more or less mendacious, as most of our titles are,--like so many
BURGS changed into "Boroughs," and even into "Rotten Boroughs,"
with Defensive BURGhers of the known sort: very mournful to
discover. Once Norroy was not all pasteboard! At the heart of that
huge whirlwind of his, with its dusty heraldries, and phantasmal
nomenclatures now become mendacious, there lay, at first, always
an earnest human fact. Henry the Fowler was so happy as to have
the fact without any mixture of mendacity: we are in the sad
reverse case; reverse case not yet altogether COMPLETE, but daily
becoming so,--one of the saddest and strangest ever heard of,
if we thought of it!--But to go on with business.

Markgraviates there continued to be ever after,--Six in Henry's
time:--but as to the number, place, arrangement of them, all this
varied according to circumstances outward and inward, chiefly
according to the regress or the reintrusion of the circumambient
hostile populations; and underwent many changes. The sea-wall you
build, and what main floodgates you establish in it, will depend
on the state of the outer sea. Markgraf of SLESWIG grows into
Markgraf of DITMARSCH and STADE; retiring over the Elbe, if Norse
Piracy get very triumphant. ANTWERP falls obsolete; so does
MEISSEN by and by. LAUSITZ and SALZWEDEL, in the third century
hence, shrink both into BRANDENBURG; which was long only a
subaltern station, managed by deputy from one or other of these.
A Markgraf that prospered in repelling of his Wends and Huns had
evidently room to spread himself, and could become veiy great,
and produce change in boundaries: observe what OESTERREICH
(Austria) grew to, and what BRANDENBURG; MEISSEN too, which
became modern Saxony, a state once greater than it now is.

In old Books are Lists of the primitive Markgraves of Brandenburg,
from Henry's time downward; two sets, "Markgraves of the Witekind
race," and of another: [Hubner, Genealogische Tabellen
(Leipzig, 1725-1728), i. 172, 173. A Book of rare
excellence in its kind.] but they are altogether uncertain, a
shadowy intermittent set of Markgraves, both the Witekind set and
the Non-Witekind; and truly, for a couple of centuries, seem none
of them to have been other than subaltern Deputies, belonging
mostly to LAUSITZ or SALZWEDEL; of whom therefore we can say
nothing here, but must leave the first two hundred years in
their natural gray state,--perhaps sufficiently conceivable by
the reader.

But thus, at any rate, was Brandenburg (BOT or Burg of the BRENNS,
whatever these are) first discovered to Christendom, and added to
the firm land of articulate History: a feat worth putting on
record. Done by Henry the Fowler, in the Year of Grace 928,--while
(among other things noticeable in this world) our Knut's great-
grandfather, GORMO DURUS, "Henry's Tributary," was still King of
Denmark; when Harald BLUETOOTH (Blaatand) was still a young
fellow, with his teeth of the natural color; and Swen with the
Forked Beard (TVAESKAEG, Double-beard, "TWA-SHAG") was not born;
and the Monks of Ely had not yet (by about a hundred years) begun
that singing, [Without note or comment, in the old, BOOK OF ELY
date before the Conquest) is preserved this stave;--giving
picture, if we consider it, of the Fen Country all a lake (as it
was for half the year, till drained, six centuries after), with
Ely Monastery rising like an island in the distance; and the music
of its nones or vespers sounding soft and far over the solitude,
eight hundred years ago and more.

Merie sungen the Muneches binnen Ely
Tha Cnut ching rew therby:
Roweth enites near the lant,
And here we thes Muneches saeng.

Merry (genially) sang the Monks in Ely
As Knut King rowed (rew) there-by:
Row, fellows (knights), near the land,
And hear we these Monks's song.
See Bentham's History of Ely (Cambridge,
1771), p, 94.] nor the tide that refusal to retire, on behalf of
this Knut, in our English part of his dominions.

That Henry appointed due Wardenship in Brannibor was in the common
course. Sure enough, some Markgraf must take charge of Brannibor,
--he of the Lausitz eastward, for example, or he of Salzwedel
westward:--that Brannibor, in time, will itself be found the fit
place, and have its own Markgraf of Brandenburg; this, and what in
the next nine centuries Brandenburg will grow to, Henry is far
from surmising. Brandenburg is fairly captured across the frozen
bogs, and has got a warden and ninth-man garrison settled in it:
Brandenburg, like other things, will grow to what it can.

Henry's son and successor, if not himself, is reckoned to have
founded the Cathedral and Bishopric of Brandenburg,--his Clergy
and he always longing much for the conversion of these Wends and
Huns; which indeed was, as the like still is, the one thing
needful to rugged heathens of that kind.

Chapter II.

PREUSSEN: SAINT ADALBERT.

Five hundred miles, and more, to the east of Brandenburg, lies a
Country then as now called PREUSSEN (Prussia Proper), inhabited
by Heathens, where also endeavors at conversion are-going on,
though without success hitherto. Upon which we are now called to
cast a glance.

It is a moory flat country, full of lakes and woods, like
Brandenburg; spreading out into grassy expanses, and bosky
wildernesses humming with bees; plenty of bog in it, but plenty
also of alluvial mud; sand too, but by no means so high a ratio of
it as in Brandenburg; tracts of Preussen are luxuriantly grassy,
frugiferous, apt for the plough; and the soil generally is
reckoned fertile, though lying so far northward. Part of the great
plain or flat which stretches, sloping insensibly, continuously,
in vast expanse, from the Silesian Mountains to the amber-regions
of the Baltic; Preussen is the seaward, more alluvial part of
this,--extending west and east, on both sides of the Weichsel
(VISTULA), from the regions of the Oder river to the main stream
of the Memel. BORDERING-ON-RUSSIA its name signifies: BOR-RUSSIA,
B'russia, Prussia; or --some say it was only on a certain
inconsiderable river in those parts, river REUSSEN, that it
"bordered" and not on the great Country, or any part of it,
which now in our days is conspicuously its next neighbor.
Who knows?--

In Henry the Fowler's time, and long afterwards, Preussen was a
vehemently Heathen country; the natives a Miscellany of rough
Serbic Wends, Letts, Swedish Goths, or Dryasdust knows not what;--
very probably a sprinkling of Swedish Goths, from old time,
chiefly along the coasts. Dryasdust khows only that these PREUSSEN
were a strong-boned, iracund herdsman-and-fisher people; highly
averse to be interfered with, in their religion especially.
Famous otherwise, through all the centuries, for the AMBER they
had been used to fish, and sell in foreign parts.

Amber, science declares, is a kind of petrified resin, distilled
by pines that were dead before the days of Adam; which is now
thrown up, in stormy weather, on that remote coast, and is there
fished out by the amphibious people,--who can likewise get it by
running mine-shafts into the sandhills on their coast;--by whom it
is sold into the uttermost parts of the Earth, Arabia and beyond,
from a very early period of time. No doubt Pytheas had his eye
upon this valuable product, when he ventured into survey of those
regions,--which are still the great mother of amber in our world.
By their amber-fishery, with the aid of dairy-produce and plenty
of beef and leather, these Heathen Preussen, of uncertain
miscellaneous breed, contrived to support existence in a
substantial manner; they figure to us as an inarticulate, heavy-
footed, rather iracund people. Their knowledge of Christianity was
trifling, their aversion to knowing anything of it was great.

As Poland, and the neighbors to the south, were already Christian,
and even the Bohemian Czechs were mostly Converted, pious wishes
as to Preussen, we may fancy, were a constant feeling: but no
effort hitherto, if efforts were made, had come to anything.
Let some daring missionary go to preach in that country, his
reception is of the worst, or perhaps he is met ou the frontier
with menaces, and forbidden to preach at all; except sorrow and
lost labor, nothing has yet proved attainable. It was very
dangerous to go;--and with what likelihood of speeding? Efforts,
we may suppose, are rare; but the pious wish being continual and
universal, efforts can never altogether cease. From Henry the
Fowler's capture of Brannibor, count seventy years, we find
Henry's great-grandson reigning as Elective Kaiser,--Otto III.,
last of the direct "Saxon Kaisers," Otto Wonder of the World;--and
alongside of Otto's great transactions, which were onoe called
MIRABILIA MUNDI and are now fallen so extinct, there is the
following small transaction, a new attempt to preach in Preussen,
going on, which, contrariwise, is still worth taking notice of.

About the year 997 or 996, Adalbert, Bishop of Prag, a very
zealous, most devout man, but evidently of hot temper, and liable
to get into quarrels, had determined, after many painful
experiences of the perverse ungovernable nature of corrupt
mankind, to give up his nominally Christian flock altogether;
to shake the dust off his feet against Prag, and devote himself
to converting those Prussian Heathen, who, across the frontiers,
were living in such savagery, and express bondage to the Devil,
worshipping mere stocks and stones. In this enterprise he was
encouraged by the Christian potentates who lay contiguous;
especially by the Duke of Poland, to whom such next-neighbors,
for all reasons, were an eye-sorrow.

Adalbert went, accordingly, with staff and scrip, two monks
attending him, into that dangerous country: not in fear, he;
a devout high-tempered man, verging now on fifty, his hair getting
gray, and face marred with innumerable troubles and provocations
of past time. He preached zealously, almost fiercely,--though
chiefly with his eyes and gestures, I should think, having no
command of the language. At Dantzig, among the Swedish-Goth kind
of Heathen, he had some success, or affluence of attendance;
not elsewhere that we hear of. In the Pillau region, for example,
where he next landed, an amphibious Heathen lout hit him heavily
across the shoulders with the flat of his oar; sent the poor
Preacher to the ground, face foremost, and suddenly ended his
salutary discourse for that time. However, he pressed forward,
regardless of results, preaching the Evangel to all creatures who
were willing or unwilling;--and pressed at last into the Sacred
Circuit, the ROMOVA, or Place of Oak-trees, and of Wooden or Stone
Idols (Bangputtis, Patkullos, and I know not what diabolic dumb
Blocks), which it was death to enter. The Heathen Priests, as we
may conceive it, rushed out; beckoned him, with loud
unintelligible bullyings and fierce gestures, to begone;
hustled, shook him, shoved him, as he did not go; then took to
confused striking, struck finally a death-stroke on the head of
poor Adalbert: so that "he stretched out both his arms ('Jesus,
receive me thou!') and fell with his face to the ground, and lay
dead there,--in the form of a crucifix," say his Biographers:
only the attendant monks escaping to tell.

Attendant monks, or Adalbert, had known nothing of their being on
forbidden ground. Their accounts of the phenomenon accordingly
leave it only half explained: How he was surprised by armed
Heathen Devil's-servants in his sleep; was violently set upon,
and his "beautiful bowels ( pulchra viscera )
were run through with seven spears:" but this of the ROMOVA, or
Sacred Bangputtis Church of Oak-trees, perhaps chief ROMOVA of the
Country, rashly intruded into, with consequent strokes, and fall
in the form of a crucifix, appears now to be the intelligible
account. [Baillet, Vies des Saints (Paris,
1739), iii. 722. Bollandus, Acta Sanetorum, Aprilis
tom. iii (DIE 23; in Edition venetiis,
1738), pp. 174-205. Voigt, Geschichte Preussens italic> (Konigsberg, 1827-1839), i. 266-270.] We will take it for
the real manner of Adalbert's exit;--no doubt of the essential
transaction, or that it was a very flaming one on both sides.
The date given is 23d April, 997; date famous in the Romish
Calendar since.

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