Two years before the victory at Muhldorf, a bad chance befell in
Brandenburg: the ASCANIER Line of Markgraves or Electors ended.
Magniloquent Otto with the Arrow, Otto the Short, Hermann the Tall,
all the Ottos, Hermanns and others, died by course of nature; nephew
Waldemar himself, a stirring man, died prematurely (A.D. 1319), and
left only a young cousin for successor, who died few months after:
[September, 1320 (Pauli, i. 391). Michaelis, i. 260-277.] the Line of
Albert the Bear went out in Brandenburg. They had lasted there about
two hundred years. They had not been, in late times, the successfulest
Markgraves: territories much split up among younger sons, joint
Markgraves reigning, which seldom answers; yet to the last they always
made stout fight for themselves; walked the stage in a high manner; and
surely might be said to quit it creditably, leaving such a Brandenburg
behind them, chiefly of their making, during the Two Centuries that had
been given them before the night came.
There were plenty of Ascanier Cousins still extant in those parts, Saxon
dignitaries, Anhalt dignitaries, lineal descendants of Albert the Bear;
to some of whom, in usual times, Albert's inheritance would naturally
have been granted. But the times were of battle, uncertainty, contested
election: and the Ascaniers, I perceive, had rather taken Friedrich of
Austria's side, which proved the losing one. Kaiser Ludwig DER BAIER
would appoint none of these; Anti-Kaiser Friedrich's appointments, if
he made any, could be only nominal, in those distant Northern parts.
Ludwig, after his victory of Muhldorf, preferred to consider the
Electorate of Brandenburg as lapsed, lying vacant, ungoverned these
three years; and now become the Kaiser's again. Kaiser, in consequence,
gave it to his Son; whose name also is Ludwig: the date of the
Investiture is 1323 (year after that victory of Muhldorf); a date
unfortunate to Brandenburg. We come now into a Line of BAVARIAN
Markgraves, and then of LUXEMBURG ones; both of which are of fatal
significance to Brandenburg.
The Ascanier Cousins, high Saxon dignitaries some of them, gloomed mere
disappointment, and protested hard; but could not mend the matter, now
or afterwards. Their Line went out in Saxony too, in course of time;
gave place to the WETTINS, who are still there. The Ascanier had to be
content with the more pristine state of acquisitions,--high pedigrees,
old castles of Ascanien and Ballenstadt, territories of Anhalt or what
else they had;--and never rose again to the lost height, though the race
still lives, and has qualities besides its pedigree. We said the "Old
Dessauer," Leopold Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, was the head of it in
Friedrich Wilhelm's time; and to this day he has descendants. Catharine
II. of Russia was of Anhalt-Zerbst, a junior branch. Albert the Bear,
if that is of any use to him, has still occasionally notable
representatives.
Ludwig junior, Kaiser Ludwig the Bavarian's eldest son, was still under
age when appointed Kurfurst of Brandenburg in 1323: of course he had
a "STATEHOLDER" (Viceregent, STATTHALTER); then, and afterwards in
occasional absences of his, a series of such, Kaiser's Councillors,
Burggraf Friedrich IV. among them, had to take some thought of
Brandenburg in its new posture. Who these Brandenburg Statthalters were,
is heartily indifferent even to Dryasdust,--except that one of them for
some time was a Hohenzollern: which circumstance Dryasdust marks with
the due note of admiration. "What he did there," Dryasdust admits, "is
not written anywhere;"--good, we will hope, and not evil;--but only the
Diploma nominating him (of date 1346, not in Ludwig's minority, but many
years after that ended [Rentsch, p. 323.]) now exists by way of record.
A difficult problem he, like the other regents and viceregents, must
have had; little dreaming that it was intrinsically for a grandson
of his own, and long line of grandsons. The name of this temporary
Statthalter, the first Hohenzollern who had ever the least concern with
Brandenburg, is Burggraf Johann II., eldest Son of our distinguished
Muhldorf friend Friedrich IV.; and Grandfather (through another
Friedrich) of Burggraf Friedrich VI.,--which last gentleman, as will be
seen, did doubtless reap the sowings, good and bad, of all manner of
men in Brandenburg. The same Johann II. it was who purchased Plassenburg
Castle and Territory (cheap, for money down), where the Family
afterwards had its chief residence. Hof, Town and Territory, had
fallen to his Father in those parts; a gift of gratitude from Kaiser
Ludwig:--most of the Voigtland is now Hohenzollern.
Kaiser Ludwig the Bavarian left his sons Electors of
Brandenburg;--"Electors, KURFURSTS," now becomes the commoner term for
so important a Country;--Electors not in easy circumstances. But no
son of his succeeded Ludwig as Kaiser,--successor in the Reich was that
Pfaffen-Kaiser, Johann of Bohemia's son, a Luxemburger once more. No son
of Ludwig's; nor did any descendant,--except, after four hundred years,
that unfortunate Kaiser Karl VII., in Maria Theresa's time. He was a
descendant. Of whom we shall hear more than enough. The unluckiest of
all Kaisers, that Karl VII.; less a Sovereign Kaiser than a bone thrown
into the ring for certain royal dogs, Louis XV., George II. and others,
to worry about;--watch-dogs of the gods; apt sometimes to run into
hunting instead of warding.--We will say nothing more of Ludwig the
Baier, or his posterity, at present: we will glance across to Preussen,
and see, for one moment, what the Teutsch Ritters are doing in their new
Century. It is the year 1330; Johann II. at Nurnberg, as yet only coming
to be Burggraf, by no means yet administering in Brandenburg; and Ludwig
junior seven years old in his new dignity there.
The Teutsch Ritters, after infinite travail, have subdued heathen
Preussen; colonized the country with industrious German immigrants;
banked the Weichsel and the Nogat, subduing their quagmires into
meadows, and their waste streams into deep ship-courses. Towns are
built, Konigsberg (KING Ottocar's TOWN), Thoren (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, and a rich country; which had made the Teutsch
Ritters rich, and victoriously at their ease in comparison. But along
with riches and the ease of victory, the common bad consequences had
ensued. Ritters given up to luxuries, to secular ambitions; ritters no
longer clad in austere mail and prayer; ritters given up to wantonness
of mind and conduct; solemnly vowing, and quietly not doing; without
remorse or consciousness of wrong, daily eating forbidden fruit; ritters
swelling more and more into the fatted-ox condition, for whom there is
but one doom. How far they had carried it, here is one symptom that may
teach us.
In the year 1330, one Werner von Orseln was Grand-master of these
Ritters. The Grand-master, who is still usually the best man they can
get, and who by theory is sacred to them as a Grand-Lama or Pope among
Cardinal-Lamas, or as an Abbot to his Monks,--Grand-master Werner, we
say, had lain down in Marienburg one afternoon of this year 1330, to
take his siesta, and was dreaming peaceably after a moderate repast,
when a certain devil-ridden mortal, Johann von Endorf, one of his
Ritters, long grumbling about severity, want of promotion and the like,
rushed in upon the good old man; ran him through, dead for a ducat;
[Voigt, iv. 474, 482.]--and consummated a PARRICIDE at which the very
cross on one's white cloak shudders! Parricide worse, a great deal, than
that at the Ford of Reuss upon one-eyed Albert.
We leave the shuddering Ritters to settle it, sternly vengeful; whom,
for a moment, it has struck broad-awake to some sense of the very
questionable condition they are getting into.