The adventures of Brandenburg in contest with Pagan Prussia, irritated, rather than amended, by St. Adalbert. In 1023, roughly, a hundred years after Henry the Fowler's death, Brandenburg is taken by the Wends, and its first line of Markgraves ended; its population mostly butchered, especially the priests; and the Wends' God, Triglaph, "something like three whales' cubs combined by boiling," set up on the top of St. Mary's Hill.
Here is an adverse "Doctrine of the Trinity" which has its supporters! It is wonderful,—this Tripod and Triglyph—three-footed, three-cut faith of the North and South, the leaf of the oxalis, and strawberry, and clover, fostering the same in their simple manner. I suppose it to be the most savage and natural of notions about Deity; a prismatic idol-shape of Him, rude as a triangular log, as a trefoil grass. I do not find how long Triglaph held his state on St. Mary's Hill. "For a time," says Carlyle, "the priests all slain or fled—shadowy Markgraves the like—church and state lay in ashes, and Triglaph, like a triple porpoise under the influence of laudanum, stood, I know not whether on his head or his tail, aloft on the Harlungsberg, as the Supreme of this Universe for the time being."
V.
1030-1130.—Brandenburg under the Ditmarsch Markgraves, or Ditmarsch-Stade Markgraves.
Book II. Chap. iii. p. 85 (60).
Of Anglish, or Saxon breed. They attack Brandenburg, under its Triglyphic protector, take it—dethrone him, and hold the town for a hundred years, their history "stamped beneficially on the face of things, Markgraf after Markgraf getting killed in the business. 'Erschlagen,' 'slain,' fighting with the Heathen—say the old books, and pass on to another." If we allow seven years to Triglaph—we get a clear century for these—as above indicated. They die out in 1130.
VI.
1130-1170.—Brandenburg under Albert the Bear.
Book II. Chap iv. p. 91 (64).
He is the first of the Ascanien Markgraves, whose castle of Ascanica is on the northern slope of the Hartz Mountains, "ruins still dimly traceable."