The Crown of Wild Olive Part 31

936-1000.--_History of Nascent Brandenburg._

The pa.s.sage I last desired you to read ends with this sentence: "The sea-wall you build, and what main floodgates you establish in it, will depend on the state of the outer sea."

From this time forward you have to keep clearly separate in your minds, (A) the history of that outer sea, Pagan Scandinavia, Russia, and Bor-Russia, or Prussia proper; (B) the history of Henry the Fowler's Eastern and Western Marches; a.s.serting themselves gradually as Austria and the Netherlands; and (C) the history of this inconsiderable fortress of Brandenburg, gradually becoming considerable, and the capital city of increasing district between them. That last history, however, Carlyle is obliged to leave vague and gray for two hundred years after Henry's death. Absolutely dim for the first century, in which nothing is evident but that its wardens or Markgraves had no peaceable possession of the place. Read the second paragraph in page 74 (52-3), "in old books" to "reader," and the first in page 83 (59) "meanwhile" to "substantial,"

consecutively. They bring the story of Brandenburg itself down, at any rate, from 936 to 1000.

III.

936-1000.--_State of the Outer Sea._

Read now Chapter II. beginning at page 76 (54), wherein you will get account of the beginning of vigorous missionary work on the outer sea, in Prussia proper; of the death of St. Adalbert, and of the purchase of his dead body by the Duke of Poland.

You will not easily understand Carlyle's laugh in this chapter, unless you have learned yourself to laugh in sadness, and to laugh in love.

"No Czech blows his pipe in the woodlands without certain precautions and preliminary fuglings of a devotional nature." (Imagine St. Adalbert, in spirit, at the railway station in Birmingham!)

My own main point for notice in the chapter is the purchase of his body for its "weight in gold." Swindling angels held it up in the scales; it did not weigh so much as a web of gossamer. "Had such excellent odor, too, and came for a mere nothing of gold," says Carlyle. It is one of the first commercial transactions of Germany, but I regret the conduct of the angels on the occasion. Evangelicalism has been proud of ceasing to invest in relics, its swindling angels helping it to better things, as it supposes. For my own part, I believe Christian Germany could not have bought at this time any treasure more precious; nevertheless, the missionary work itself you find is wholly vain. The difference of opinion between St. Adalbert and the Wends, on Divine matters, does not signify to the Fates. They will not have it disputed about; and end the dispute adversely, to St. Adalbert--adversely, even, to Brandenburg and its civilizing power, as you will immediately see.

IV.

1000-1030.--_History of Brandenburg in Trouble._

Book II. Chap. iii. p. 83 (59).

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' G.o.d, 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 gra.s.s. 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 pa.s.s 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."

There had been no soldier or king of note among the Ditmarsch Markgraves, so that you will do well to fix in your mind successively the three men, Henry the Fowler, St. Adalbert, and Albert the Bear. A soldier again, and a strong one. Named the Bear only from the device on his shield, first wholly definite Markgraf of Brandenburg that there is, "and that the luckiest of events for Brandenburg." Read page 93 (66) carefully, and note this of his economies.

Nothing better is known to me of Albert the Bear than 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.

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.

Now, note in all this the steady gain of soldiership enforcing order and agriculture, with St. Adalbert giving higher strain to the imagination.

Henry the Fowler establishes walled towns, fighting for mere peace.

Albert the Bear plants the country with cabbages, fighting for his cabbage-fields. And the disciples of St. Adalbert, generally, have succeeded in subst.i.tuting some idea of Christ for the idea of Triglaph.

Some idea only; other ideas than of Christ haunt even to this day those Hartz Mountains among which Albert the Bear dies so peacefully.

Mephistopheles, and all his ministers, inhabit there, commanding mephitic clouds and earth-born dreams.

VII.

1170-1320.--_Brandenburg 150 years under the Ascanien Markgraves._

Vol. I. Book II Chap. viii. p. 135 (96).

"Wholesome Dutch cabbages continued to be more and more planted by them in the waste sand: intrusive chaos, and Triglaph held at bay by them,"

till at last in 1240, seventy years after the great Bear's death, they fortify a new Burg, a "_little_ rampart," Wehrlin, diminutive of Wehr (or vallum), gradually smoothing itself, with a little echo of the Bear in it too, into Ber-lin, the oily river Spree flowing by, "in which you catch various fish;" while trade over the flats and by the dull streams, is widely possible. Of the Ascanien race, the notablest is Otto with the Arrow, whose story see, pp. 138-141 (98-100), noting that Otto is one of the first Minnesingers; that, being a prisoner to the Archbishop of Magdeburg, his wife rescues him, selling her jewels to bribe the canons; and that the Knight, set free on parole and promise of farther ransom, rides back with his own price in his hand; holding himself thereat cheaply bought, though no angelic legerdemain happens to the scales now.

His own estimate of his price--"Rain gold ducats on my war-horse and me, till you cannot see the point of my spear atop."

Emptiness of utter pride, you think?

Not so. Consider with yourself, reader, how much you dare to say, aloud, _you_ are worth. If you have _no_ courage to name any price whatsoever for yourself, believe me, the cause is not your modesty, but that in very truth you feel in your heart there would be no bid for you at Lucian's sale of lives, were that again possible, at Christie and Manson's.

Finally (1319 exactly; say 1320, for memory), the Ascanien line expired in Brandenburg, and the little town and its electorate lapsed to the Kaiser: meantime other economical arrangements had been in progress; but observe first how far we have got.

The Fowler, St. Adalbert and the Bear have established order, and some sort of Christianity; but the established persons begin to think somewhat too well of themselves. On quite honest terms, a dead saint or a living knight ought to be worth their true "weight in gold." But a pyramid, with only the point of the spear seen at top, would be many times over one's weight in gold. And although men were yet far enough from the notion of modern days, that the gold is better than the flesh, and from buying it with the clay of one's body, and even the fire of one's soul, instead of soul and body with _it_, they were beginning to fight for their own supremacy, or for their own religious fancies, and not at all to any useful end, until an entirely unexpected movement is made in the old useful direction forsooth, only by some kind ship-captains of Lubeck!

VIII.

1210-1320.--_Civil work, aiding military, during the Ascanien period._

Vol. I. Book II. Chap. vi. p. 109 (77).

In the year 1190, Acre not yet taken, and the crusading army wasting by murrain on the sh.o.r.e, the German soldiers especially having none to look after them, certain compa.s.sionate ship-captains of Lubeck, one Walpot von Ba.s.senheim taking the lead, formed themselves into an union for succor of the sick and the dying, set up canvas tents from the Lubeck ship stores, and did what utmost was in them silently in the name of mercy and heaven. Finding its work prosper, the little medicinal and weather-fending company took vows on itself, strict chivalry forms, and decided to become permanent "Knights Hospitallers of our dear Lady of Mount Zion," separate from the former Knights Hospitallers, as being entirely German: yet soon, as the German Order of St. Mary, eclipsing in importance Templars, Hospitallers, and every other chivalric order then extant; no purpose of battle in them, but much strength for it; their purpose only the helping of German pilgrims. To this only they are bound by their vow, "gelubde," and become one of the usefullest of clubs in all the Pall Mall of Europe.

Finding pilgrimage in Palestine falling slack, and more need for them on the homeward side of the sea, their Hochmeister, Hermann of the Salza, goes over to Venice in 1210. There the t.i.tular bishop of still unconverted Preussen advises him of that field of work for his idle knights. Hermann thinks well of it: sets his St. Mary's riders at Triglaph, with the sword in one hand and a missal in the other.