"But now PFALZ, in the Thirty-Years War (under our Prince Rupert's Father, whom the Germans call the `Winter-King'), got abrogated, put to the ban, so far as an indignant Kaiser could; and the vote and KUR of Pfalz was given to his Cousin of BAIERN (Bavaria),—so far as an indignant Kaiser could. However, at the Peace of Westphalia (1648) it was found incompetent to any Kaiser to abrogate PFULZ or the like of Pfalz, a Kurfurst of the Empire. So, after jargon inconceivable, it was settled, That PFALZ must be reinstated, though with territories much clipped, and at the bottom of the list, not the top as formerly; and that BAIERN, who could not stand to be balked after twenty years' possession, must be made EIGHTH Elector. The NINTH, we saw (Year 1692), was Gentleman Ernst of HANOVER. There never was any Tenth; and the Holy ROMISCHE REICH, which was a grand object once, but had gone about in a superannuated and plainly crazy state for some centuries back, was at last put out of pain, by Napoleon, '6th August, 1806,' and allowed to cease from this world." [Ms. penes me.]
None of Albert's wars are so comfortable to reflect on as those he had with the anarchic Wends; whom he now fairly beat to powder, and either swept away, or else damped down into Christianity and keeping of the peace. Swept them away otherwise; "peopling their lands extensively with Colonists from Holland, whom an inroad of the sea had rendered homeless there." Which surely was a useful exchange. Nothing better is known to me of Albert the Bear than this his introducing large numbers of Dutch Netherlanders into those countries; men thrown out of work, who already knew how to deal with bog and sand, by mixing and delving, and who first taught Brandenburg what greenness and cow-pasture was. The Wends, in presence of such things, could not but consent more and more to efface themselves,—either to become German, and grow milk and cheese in the Dutch manner, or to disappear from the world.
The Wendish Princes had a taste for German wives; in which just taste the Albert genealogy was extremely willing to indulge them. Affinities produce inheritances; by proper marriage-contracts you can settle on what side the most contingent inheritance shall at length fall. Dim but pretty certain lies a time coming when the Wendish Princes also shall have effaced themselves; and all shall be German-Brandenburgish, not Wendish any more.—The actual Inhabitants of Brandenburg, therefore, are either come of Dutch Bog-farmers, or are simple Lower SAXONS ("Anglo-Saxon," if you like that better), PLATT-TEUTSCH of the common type; an unexceptionable breed of people. Streaks of Wendish population, extruded gradually into the remoter quagmires, and more inaccessible, less valuable sedgy moors and sea-strands, are scattered about; Mecklenburg, which still subsists separately after a sort, is reckoned peculiarly Wendish. In Mecklenburg, Pommern, Pommerellen (Little Pomerania), are still to be seen physiognomies of a Wendish or Vandalic type (more of cheek than there ought to be, and less of brow; otherwise good enough physiognomies of their kind): but the general mass, tempered with such admixtures, is of the Platt-Deutsch, Saxon or even Anglish character we are familiar with here at home. A patient stout people; meaning considerable things, and very incapable of speaking what it means.
Albert was a fine tall figure himself; DER SCHONE, "Albert the Handsome," was his name as often as "Albert the Bear." That latter epithet he got, not from his looks or qualities, but merely from his heraldic cognizance: a Bear on his shield. As was then the mode of names; surnames being scant, and not yet fixedly in existence. Thus too his contemporaries, Henry THE LION of Saxony and Welfdom, William THE LION of Scotland, were not, either of them, specially leonine men: nor had the PLANTAGENETS, or Geoffrey of Anjou, any connection with the PLANT of BROOM, except wearing a twig of it in their caps on occasion. Men are glad to get some designation for a grand Albert they are often speaking of, which shall distinguish him from the many small ones. Albert "the Bear, DER BAR," will do as well as another.
It was this one first that made Brandenburg peaceable and notable. We might call him the second founder of Brandenburg; he, in the middle of the Twelfth Century, completed for it what Henry the Fowler had begun early in the Tenth. After two hundred and fifty years of barking and worrying, the Wends are now finally reduced to silence; their anarchy well buried, and wholesome Dutch cabbage planted over it: Albert did several great things in the world; but, this, for posterity, remains his memorable feat. Not done quite easily; but, done: big destinies of Nations or of Persons are not founded GRATIS in this world. He had a sore toilsome time of it, coercing, warring, managing among his fellow-creatures, while his day's work lasted,—fifty years or so, for it began early. He died in his Castle of Ballenstadt, peaceably among the Hartz Mountains at last, in the year 1170, age about sixty-five. It was in the time while Thomas a Becket was roving about the world, coming home excommunicative, and finally getting killed in Canterbury Cathedral;—while Abbot Samson, still a poor little brown Boy, came over from Norfolk, holding by his mother's hand, to St. Edmundsbury; having seen "SANTANAS s with outspread wings" fearfully busy in this world.
Chapter V. — CONRAD OF HOHENZOLLERN; AND KAISER BARBAROSSA.
It was in those same years that a stout young fellow, Conrad by name, far off in the southern parts of Germany, set out from the old Castle of Hohenzollern, where he was but junior, and had small outlooks, upon a very great errand in the world. From Hohenzollern; bound now towards Gelnhausen, Kaiserslautern, or whatever temporary lodging the great Kaiser Barbarossa might be known to have, who was a wandering man, his business lying everywhere over half the world, and needing the master's eye. Conrad's purpose is to find Barbarossa, and seek fortune under him.
This is a very indisputable event of those same years. The exact date, the figure, circumstances of it were, most likely, never written anywhere but on Conrad's own brain, and are now rubbed out forevermore; but the event itself is certain; and of the highest concernment to this Narrative. Somewhere about the year 1170, likeliest a few years before that, [Rentsch, Brandenburgischer Ceder-Hein (Baireuth, 1682), pp. 273-276.—See also Johann Ulrich Pregitzern, Teutscher Regierungs-und Ehren-Spiegel, vorbildend &c. des Hauses Hohenzollern (Berlin, 1703), pp. 90-93. A learned and painful Book: by a Tubingen Professor, who is deeply read in the old Histories, and gives Portraits and other Engravings of some value.] this Conrad, riding down from Hohenzoliern, probably with no great stock of luggage about, him,—little dreams of being connected with Brandenburg on the other side of the world; but IS unconsciously more so than any other of the then sons of Adam. He is the lineal ancestor, twentieth in direct ascent, of the little Boy now sleeping in his cradle at Berlin; let him wait till nineteen generations, valiantly like Conrad, have done their part, and gone out, Conrad will find he is come to this! A man's destiny is strange always; and never wants for miracles, or will want, though it sometimes may for eyes to discern them.
Hohenzollern lies far south in SCHWABEN (Suabia), on the sunward slope of the Rauhe-Alp Country; no great way north from Constance and its Lake; but well aloft, near the springs of the Danube; its back leaning on the Black Forest; it is perhaps definable as the southern summit of that same huge old Hercynian Wood, which is still called the SCHWARZWALD (Black Forest), though now comparatively bare of trees. ["There are still considerable spottings of wood (pine mainly, and 'black' enough); HOLZ-HANDEL (timber-trade) still a considerable branch of business there;—and on the streams of the country are cunning contrivances noticeable, for floating down the article into the Neckar river, and thence into the Rhine and to Holland." (Tourist's Note.)] Fanciful Dryasdust, doing a little etymology, will tell you the name ZOLLERN is equivalent to TOLLERY or Place of Tolls. Whereby HOHENZOLLERN comes to mean the HIGH or Upper TOLLERY;—and gives one the notion of antique pedlers climbing painfully, out of Italy and the Swiss valleys, thus far; unstrapping their pack-horses here, and chaffering in unknown dialect about TOLL. Poor souls;—it may be so, but we do not know, nor shall it concern us. This only is known: That a human kindred, probably of some talent for coercing anarchy and guiding mankind, had, centuries ago, built its BURG there, and done that function in a small but creditable way ever since;—kindred possibly enough derivable from "Thassilo," Charlemagne, King Dagobert, and other Kings, but certainly from Adam and the Almighty Maker, who had given it those qualities;—and that Conrad, a junior member of the same, now goes forth from it in the way we see. "Why should a young fellow that has capabilities," thought Conrad, "stay at home in hungry idleness, with no estate but his javelin and buff jerkin, and no employment but his hawks, when there is a wide opulent world waiting only to be conquered?" This was Conrad's thought; and it proved to be a very just one.