The First Friedrich's successor was a younger son, Friedrich II.; who
lasted till 1471, above thirty years; and proved likewise a notable
manager and governor. Very capable to assert himself, and his just
rights, in this world. He was but Twenty-seven at his accession; but the
Berlin Burghers, attempting to take some liberties with him, found he
was old enough. He got the name IRONTEETH. Friedrich FERRATIS DENTIBUS,
from his decisive ways then and afterwards. He had his share of
brabbling with intricate litigant neighbors; quarrels now and then not
to be settled without strokes. His worst war was with Pommern,--just
claims disputed there, and much confused bickering, sieging and
harassing in consequence: of which quarrel we must speak anon. It was he
who first built the conspicuous Schloss or Palace at Berlin, having got
the ground for it (same ground still covered by the actual fine Edifice,
which is a second edition of Friedrich's) from the repentant Burghers;
and took up his chief residence there. [1442-1431 (Nicolari, i. 81).]
But his principal achievement in Brandenburg History is his recovery of
the Province called the Neumark to that Electorate. In the thriftless
Sigismund times, the Neumark had been pledged, had been sold; Teutsch
Ritterdom, to whose dominions it lay contiguous, had purchased it with
money down. The Teutsch Ritters were fallen moneyless enough since
then; they offered to pledge the Neumark to Friedrich, who accepted, and
advanced the sum: after a while the Teutsch Ritters, for a small
farther sum, agreed to sell Neumark. [Michaelis, i. 301.] Into which
Transaction, with its dates and circumstances, let us cast one
glance, for our behoof afterwards. The Teutsch Ritters were an opulent
domineering Body in Sigismund's early time; but they are now come well
down in Friedrich II.'s! And are coming ever lower. Sinking steadily,
or with desperate attempts to rise, which only increase the speed
downwards, ever since that fatal Tannenberg Business, 15th July, 1410.
Here is the sad progress of their descent to the bottom; divided into
three stages or periods:--
"PERIOD FIRST is of Thirty years: 1410-1440. A peace with Poland soon
followed that Defeat of Tannenberg; humiliating peace, with mulct in
money, and slightly in territory, attached to it. Which again was soon
followed by war, and ever again; each new peace more humiliating than
its foregoer. Teutsch Order is steadily sinking,--into debt, among other
things; driven to severe finance-measures (ultimately even to 'debase
its coin'), which produce irritation enough. Poland is gradually edging
itself into the territories and the interior troubles of Preussen;
prefatory to greater operations that lie ahead there.
"SECOND PERIOD, of Fourteen years. So it had gone on, from bad to worse,
till 1440; when the general population, through its Heads, the Landed
Gentry and the Towns, wearied out with fiscal and other oppressions from
its domineering Ritterdom brought now to such a pinch, began everywhere
to stir themselves into vocal complaint. Complaint emphatic enough:
'Where will you find a man that has not suffered injury in his rights,
perhaps in his person? Our friends they have invited as guests, and
under show of hospitality have murdered them. Men, for the sake of their
beautiful wives, have been thrown into the river like dogs,'--and enough
of the like sort. [Voigt, vii. 747; quoting evidently, not an express
manifesto, but one manufactured by the old Chroniclers.] No want of
complaint, nor of complainants: Town of Thorn, Town of Dantzig, Kulm,
all manner of Towns and Baronages, proceeded now to form a BUND, or
general Covenant for complaining; to repugn, in hotter and hotter
form, against a domineering Ritterdom with back so broken; in fine,
to colleague with Poland,--what was most ominous of all. Baronage,
Burgherage, they were German mostly by blood, and by culture were wholly
German; but preferred Poland to a Teutsch Ritterdom of that nature.
Nothing but brabblings, scufflings, objurgations; a great outbreak
ripening itself. Teutsch Ritterdom has to hire soldiers; no money to
pay them. It was in these sad years that the Teutsch Ritterdom, fallen
moneyless, offered to pledge the Neumark to our Kurfurst; 1444, that
operation was consummated. [Pauli, ii. 187,--does not name the sum.] All
this goes on, in hotter and hotter form, for ten years longer.
"PERIOD THIRD begins, early in 1454, with an important special
catastrophe; and ends, in the Thirteenth year after, with a still
more important universal one of the same nature. Prussian BUND, or
Anti-Oppression Covenant of the Towns and Landed Gentry, rising in
temperature for fourteen years at this rate, reached at last the
igniting point, and burst into fire. February 4th, 1454, the Town of
Thorn, darling first-child of Teutsch Ritterdom,--child 223 years old at
this time, ['Founded 1231, as a wooden Burg, just across the river, on
the Heathen side, mainly round the stem of an immense old Oak that grew
handy there,--Seven Barges always on the river (Weichsel), to fly to
our own side if quite overwhelmed' _Oak and Seven Barges_ is still the
Town's-Arms of Thorn. See Kohler, _Munzbelustigungen,_xxii. 107; quoting
Dusburg (a Priest of the Order) and his old _Chronica Terrae Prusciae,_
written in 1326.] and grown very big, and now very angry,--suddenly took
its old parent by the throat, so to speak, and hurled him out to the
dogs; to the extraneous Polacks first of all. Town of Thorn, namely,
sent that day its 'Letter of Renunciation' to the Hochmeister over
at Marienburg; seized in a day or two more the Hochmeister's Official
Envoys, Dignitaries of the Order; led them through the streets, amid
universal storm of execrations, hootings and unclean projectiles,
straight, to jail; and besieged the Hochmeister's Burg (BASTILLE of
Thorn, with a few Ritters in it), all the artillery and all the throats
and hearts of the place raging deliriously upon it. So that the poor
Bitters, who had no chance in resisting, were in few days obliged to
surrender; [8th February, 1454, says Voigt (viii. 361); 16th, says
Kohler _ (Munzbelustigungen,_ xxii. 110).] had to come out in
bare jerkin; and Thorn ignominiously dismissed them into space
forevermore,--with actual 'kicks,' I have read in some Books, though
others veil that sad feature. Thorn threw out its old parent in this
manner; swore fealty to the King of Poland; and invited other Towns and
Knightages to follow the example. To which all were willing, wherever
able.
"War hereupon, which blazed up over Preussen at large,--Prussian
Covenant and King of Poland VERSUS Teutsch Ritterdom,--and lasted into
the thirteenth year, before it could go out again; out by lack of fuel
mainly. One of the fellest wars on record, especially for burning and
ruining; above '300,000 fighting-men' are calculated to have perished in
it; and of towns, villages, farmsteads, a cipher which makes the fancy,
as it were, black and ashy altogether. Ritterdom showed no lack of
fighting energy; but that could not save it, in the pass things were got
to. Enormous lack of wisdom, of reality and human veracity, there had
long been; and the hour was now come. Finance went out, to the last
coin. Large mercenary armies all along; and in the end not the color
of money to pay them with; mercenaries became desperate; 'besieged the
Hochmeister and his Ritters in Marienburg;'--finally sold the Country
they held; formally made it over to the King of Poland, to get their pay
out of it. Hochmeister had to see such things, and say little. Peace, or
extinction for want of fuel, came in the year 1466. Poland got to itself
the whole of that fine German Country, henceforth called 'WEST Preussen'
to distinguish it, which goes from the left bank of the Weichsel to the
borders of Brandenburg and Neumark;--would have got Neumark too, had not
Kurfurst Friedrich been there to save it. The Teutsch Order had to go
across the Weichsel, ignominiously driven; to content itself with 'EAST
Preussen,' the Konigsberg-Memel country, and even to do homage to Poland
for that. Which latter was the bitterest clause of all: but it could
not be helped, more than the others. In this manner did its revolted
children fling out Teutsch Ritterdom ignominiously to the dogs, to the
Polacks, first of all,--Thorn, the eldest child, leading off or setting
the example."
And so the Teutsch Ritters are sunk beyond retrieval; and West Preussen,
called subsequently "Royal Preussen," NOT having homage to pay as the
"Ducal" or East Preussen had, is German no longer, but Polish, Sclavic;
not prospering by the change. [What Thorn had sunk to, out of its palmy
state, see in Nanke's _Wanderungen durch Preussen_ (Hamburg & Altona,
1800), ii. 177-200:--a pleasant little Rook, treating mainly of Natural
History; but drawing you, by its innocent simplicity and geniality, to
read with thanks whatever is in it.] And all that fine German country,
reduced to rebel against its unwise parent, was cut away by the Polish
sword, and remained with Poland, which did not prove very wise either;
till--till, in the Year 1773, it was cut back by the German sword! All
readers have heard of the Partition of Poland: but of the Partition of
Preussen, 307 years before, all have not heard.
It was in the second year of that final tribulation, marked above as
Period Third, that the Teutsch Ritters, famishing for money, completed
the Neumark transaction with Kurfurst Friedrich; Neumark, already pawned
to him ten years before, they in 1455, for a small farther sum, agreed
to sell; and he, long carefully steering towards such an issue, and
dexterously keeping out of the main broil, failed not to buy. Friedrich
could thenceforth, on his own score, protect the Neumark; keep up an
invisible but impenetrable wall between it and the neighboring anarchic
conflagrations of thirteen years; and the Neumark has ever since
remained with Brandenburg, its original owner.
As to Friedrich's Pomeranian quarrel, this is the figure of it. Here
is a scene from Rentsch, which falls out in Friedrich's time; and which
brought much battling and broiling to him and his. Symbolical withal
of much that befell in Brandenburg, from first to last. Under
the Hohenzollerns as before, Brandenburg grew by aggregation, by
assimilation; and we see here how difficult the process often was.
Pommern (POMERANIA), long Wendish, but peaceably so since the time
of Albert the Bear, and growing ever more German, had, in good part,
according to Friedrich's notion, if there were force in human Treaties
and Imperial Laws, fallen fairly to Brandenburg,--that is to say, the
half of it, Stettin-Pommern had fairly fallen,--in the year 1464, when
Duke Otto of Stettin, the last Wendish Duke, died without heirs. In that
case by many bargains, some with bloody crowns, it had been settled, If
the Wendish Dukes died out, the country was to fall to Brandenburg;--and
here they were dead. "At Duke Otto's burial, accordingly, in the High
Church of Stettin, when the coffin was lowered into its place, the
Stettin Burgermeister, Albrecht Glinde, took sword and helmet, and threw
the same into the grave, in token that the Line was extinct. But Franz
von Eichsted," apparently another Burgher instructed for the nonce,
"jumped into the grave, and picked them out again; alleging, No, the
Dukes of WOLGAST-Pommern were of kin; these tokens we must send to his
Grace at Wolgast, with offer of our homage, said Franz von Eichsted."
[Rentsch, p. 110 (whose printer has put his date awry); Stenzel (i. 233)
calls the man "LORENZ Eikstetten, a resolute Gentleman."]--And sent they
were, and accepted by his Grace. And perhaps half-a-score of bargains,
with bloody crowns to some of them; and yet other chances, and
centuries, with the extinction of new Lines,--had to supervene, before
even Stettin-Pommern, and that in no complete state, could be got.
[1648, by Treaty of Westphalia.] As to Pommern at large, Pommern not
denied to be due, after such extinction and re-extinction of native
Ducal Lines, did not fall home for centuries more; and what struggles
and inextricable armed-litigations there were for it, readers of
Brandenburg-History too wearisomely know. The process of assimilation
not the least of an easy one!--
This Friedrich was second son: his Father's outlook for him had, at
first, been towards a Polish Princess and the crown of Poland, which
was not then so elective as afterwards: and with such view his early
breeding had been chiefly in Poland; Johann, the eldest son and
heir-apparent, helping his Father at home in the mean while. But these
Polish outlooks went to nothing, the young Princess having died; so that
Friedrich came home; possessed merely of the Polish language, and of
what talents the gods had given him, which were considerable. And now,
in the mean while, Johann, who at one time promised well in
practical life, had taken to Alchemy; and was busy with crucibles and
speculations, to a degree that seemed questionable. Father Friedrich,
therefore, had to interfere, and deal with this "Johann the Alchemist"
(JOHANNES ALCHEMISTA, so the Books still name him); who loyally
renounced the Electorship, at his Father's bidding, in favor of
Friedrich; accepted Baireuth (better half of the Culmbach Territory) for
apanage; and there peacefully distilled and sublimated at discretion;
the government there being an easier task, and fitter for a soft
speculative Herr. A third Brother, Albert by name, got Anspach, on
the Father's decease; very capable to do any fighting there might be
occasion for, in Culmbach.
As to the Burggrafship, it was now done, all but the Title. The First
Friedrich, once he was got to be Elector, wisely parted with it. The
First Friedrich found his Electorship had dreadfully real duties for
him, and that this of the Burggrafship had fallen mostly obsolete; so he
sold it to the Nurnbergers for a round sum: only the Principalities and
Territories are retained in that quarter. About which too, and their
feudal duties, boundaries and tolls, with a jealous litigious Nurnberg
for neighbor, there at length came quarrelling enough. But Albert the
third Brother, over at Anspach, took charge of all that; and nothing of
it fell in Johann's way.
The good Alchemist died,--performed his last sublimation, poor man,--six
or seven years before his Brother Friedrich; age then sixty-three. [14th
November, 1464.] Friedrich, with his Iron Teeth and faculties, only held
out till fifty-eight,--10th February, 1471. The manner of his end was
peculiar. In that War with Pommern, he sat besieging a Pomeranian town,
Uckermunde the name of it: when at dinner one day, a cannon-ball plunged
down upon the table, [Michaelis, i. 303.] with such a crash as we can
fancy;--which greatly confused the nerves of Friedrich; much injured his
hearing, and even his memory thenceforth. In a few months afterwards he
resigned, in favor of his Successor; retired to Plassenburg, and there
died in about a year more.