



Produced by D.R. Thompson





HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. OF PRUSSIA

FREDERICK THE GREAT

By Thomas Carlyle

Volume II. (of XXI.)




BOOK II. -- OF BRANDENBURG AND THE HOHENZOLLERNS. - 928-1417.




Chapter I. -- BRANNIBOR: HENRY THE FOWLER.

The Brandenburg Countries, till they become related to the Hohenzollern
Family which now rules there, have no History that has proved memorable
to mankind. There has indeed been a good deal written under that
title; but there is by no means much known, and of that again there is
alarmingly little that is worth knowing or remembering.

Pytheas, the Marseilles Travelling Commissioner, looking out for new
channels of trade, somewhat above 2,000 years ago, saw the country
actually lying there; sailed past it, occasionally landing; and
made report to such Marseillese "Chamber of Commerce" as there then
was:--report now lost, all to a few indistinct and insignificant
fractions. [_Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions,_ t. xix. 46,
xxxvii. 439, &c.] This was "about the year 327 before Christ," while
Alexander of Macedon was busy conquering India. Beyond question,
Pytheas, the first WRITING or civilized creature that ever saw Germany,
gazed with his Greek eyes, and occasionally landed, striving to speak
and inquire, upon those old Baltic Coasts, north border of the now
Prussian Kingdom; and reported of it to mankind we know not what. Which
brings home to us the fact that it existed, but almost nothing more:
A Country of lakes and woods, of marshy jungles, sandy wildernesses;
inhabited by bears, otters, bisons, wolves, wild swine, and certain
shaggy Germans of the Suevic type, as good as inarticulate to Pytheas.
After which all direct notice of it ceases for above three hundred
years. We can hope only that the jungles were getting cleared a little,
and the wild creatures hunted down; that the Germans were increasing
in number, and becoming a thought less shaggy. These latter, tall Suevi
Semnones, men of blond stern aspect _(oculi truces coerulei)_ and
great strength of bone, were known to possess a formidable talent for
fighting: [Tacitus, _De Moribus Germanorum,_ c. 45.] Drusus Germanicus,
it has been guessed, did not like to appear personally among them: some
"gigantic woman prophesying to him across the Elbe" that it might be
dangerous, Drusus contented himself with erecting some triumphal pillar
on his own safe side of the Elbe, to say that they were conquered.

In the Fourth Century of our era, when the German populations, on
impulse of certain "Huns expelled from the Chinese frontier," or for
other reasons valid to themselves, began flowing universally southward,
to take possession of the rich Roman world, and so continued flowing for
two centuries more; the old German frontiers generally, and especially
those Northern Baltic countries, were left comparatively vacant; so that
new immigrating populations from the East, all of Sclavic origin, easily
obtained footing and supremacy there. In the Northern parts, these
immigrating Sclaves were of the kind called Vandals, or Wends: they
spread themselves as far west as Hamburg and the Ocean, south also
far over the Elbe in some quarters; while other kinds of Sclaves
were equally busy elsewhere. With what difficulty in settling the new
boundaries, and what inexhaustible funds of quarrel thereon, is still
visible to every one, though no Historian was there to say the least
word of it. "All of Sclavic origin;" but who knows of how many kinds:
Wends here in the North, through the Lausitz (Lusatia) and as far as
Thuringen; not to speak of <DW69>s, Bohemian Czechs, Huns, Bulgars, and
the other dim nomenclatures, on the Eastern frontier. Five hundred
years of violent unrecorded fighting, abstruse quarrel with their new
neighbors in settling the marches. Many names of towns in Germany ending
in ITZ (Meuselwitz, Mollwitz), or bearing the express epithet _Windisch_
(Wendish), still give indication of those old sad circumstances; as
does the word SLAVE, in all our Western languages, meaning captured
SCLAVONIAN. What long-drawn echo of bitter rage and hate lies in that
small etymology!

These things were; but they have no History: why should they have any?
Enough that in those Baltic regions, there are for the time (Year 600,
and till long after Charlemagne is out) Sclaves in place of Suevi or of
Holstein Saxons and Angli; that it is now shaggy Wends who have the task
of taming the jungles, and keeping down the otters and wolves. Wends
latterly in a waning condition, much beaten upon by Charlemagne and
others; but never yet beaten out. And so it has to last, century after
century; Wends, wolves, wild swine, all alike dumb to us. Dumb, or
sounding only one huge unutterable message (seemingly of tragic import),
like the voice of their old Forests, of their old Baltic Seas:--perhaps
more edifying to us SO. Here at last is a definite date and event:--

"A.D. 928, Henry the Fowler, marching across the frozen bogs, took
BRANNIBOR, a chief fortress of the Wends;" [Kohler, _Reichs-Historie_
(Frankfurth und Leipzig, 1737), p. 63. Michaelis, _Ch