Brandenburg is sold to him at Constance, during the great Council, for about 200,000l. 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 œcumenical deliberation, four years long, of the "elixir of the intellect and dignity of Europe. And that one thing was not its doing; but a pawnbroking 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 Kurfürst, begins to be cosmic again." The story of Heavy Peg, pages 195-198 (138, 140), is one of the most brilliant and important passages 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 noble 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 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 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 Kurfürsts.

Book III.

Who the Hohenzollerns were, and how they came to power in Nüremberg, 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 Nüremberg),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