620 Extensions of the Mark.-Waldemar the Great [1186-1373

surrounding it. The Brandenburg towns were necessarily small and poor in comparison with those of the south-west and of the Low Countries; and there was no communal cohesion to disturb the monarchical system of government, which it is futile to regard as established for military purposes only.

The comparative remoteness of the dominions which had grown out of the Northern Mark allowed its rulers to pursue their own dynastic interests without seeking to take part in the European conflicts of the Hohenstaufen age. Nevertheless, the outlook of the Brandenburgers was always wide. The investment, at sq early a date as 1186, of Margrave Otto II by the Emperor Frederick with Pomerania created claims leading to an endless series of feuds, raids and disputes which, as has been seen in a previous volume, were not ended even by the Succession Treaty of 1529; and the complete union of Pomerania and Brandenburg was only established by the Vienna Treaties of 1815. Although, when in 1196 Margrave Otto II and his brother Albert II for ulterior purposes of their own commended all their possessions to the Archbishop of Magdeburg, this did not imply any diminution of their political power, their successors came to judge differently of the relation of dependence thus established, and it was ended in 1449 by the Hohenzollern Elector Frederick II.

Early in the thirteenth century the collapse of the Danish King Waldemar the Victorious at Bornhöved (1226) had led to the acquisition by the Margraves of the Spree district, in which the foundations of Berlin seem about this time to have been laid, and of the Ukermark. Their older possessions were about the same time multiplying their centres of civil and ecclesiastical life; it is from this period that, among other foundations, dates that of Lehnin, whose prominent position in the history of the Mark afterwards gave rise to a celebrated forged prophecy (the Vaticinium Lehninense) as to the interdependence of their destinies.

Conformably to the uncontrollable practice of German dynasties, immediate or mediate, partitions went on without ceasing in the House of Brandenburg, but with the prevailing characteristic that they were usually amicable, and always treated as revocable in the common interest of a clear-sighted dynasty. Early in the fourteenth century the power of the House had, in the person of its all but single male representative, Waldemar the Great, reached an unprecedented height, and, largely by means of a good understanding with the Church, extended from Danzig to Dresden.

But the death of the great Waldemar (1319) was followed by a period of trouble, in which the neighbours of Brandenburg fell upon the land to seize what they could of it. The victorious Emperor Lewis the Bavarian invested his son Lewis, a child eight years of age, with Brandenburg, together with Lusatia and other dependencies. For nearly half a century (1324-73) the Mark was nominally subject to the House of

1324-1402]

Bavarian and Bohemian rule

621

Wittelsbach; and it almost seemed as if the centre of gravity of the territorial possessions of that House might come to lie in those northern lands whose future relations to the Empire were so wholly unforeseen. But the Wittelsbach rule had never struck root in the Mark; under Lewis it had been devastated by a Polish invasion, blessed by the Pope (John XXII); and after the death of the Emperor Lewis (1347) his three sons had to contend not only against the statecraft of Charles IV of Bohemia, now generally acknowledged as Roman King, but against a popular current of mysterious force. The story of the False Waldemar (1348-55), in whose favour almost the entire margravate (except Treuenbrietzen) renounced its Bavarian ruler, attests a tenacious loyalty of which Brandenburg-Prussian history was to furnish many later examples, but none more remarkable than this. The Bavarian sway over Brandenburg survived this shock; but it continued to be exposed to the hostility of the Imperial House and to the feebler efforts of the spiritual power of Rome. Finally, after a terrible devastation of the margravate by the Emperor's Bohemian soldiery (1371), the Elector Otto resigned his authority; and at Tangemünde (1374) the perpetual union of the Mark Brandenburg with the Bohemian Crown was proclaimed. Brandenburg had probably been thus preserved from disruption, but with the prospect of becoming, like Silesia, a mere element in the dynastic power of Bohemia, whose furthest advance in political importance, in economic prosperity, and in intellectual activity, is marked by the reign of Charles IV.

For more than a generation Brandenburg was subject to a Government which had been imposed upon it by methods as unscrupulous as those of Ferdinand of Aragon or of Louis XIV, but which gave to the province a fair share in the order and prosperity prevailing in the kingdom of Bohemia. The neighbours were pacified; and at home the insolence of some of the nobles was curbed, while at the same time the privileges of their order and of the towns were extended. Unfortunately, after the death of Charles IV (1378) the excellent intentions of his second son Sigismund, who succeeded in Brandenburg, were frustrated by his ambition; and, though in 1382 he ascended the Hungarian throne, he aimed at the succession both in Bohemia and to the Imperial Crown. In Brandenburg, under his lieutenants, the old dangers revived on the north-western frontier, and the old turbulence within. Being always in want of money, he in 1385 mortgaged the Old Mark to his kinsmen, Margraves Jodocus and Procopius of Moravia, in spite of the opposition. of the Estates of the land, both spiritual and temporal; and three years later he threw into the mortgage his electoral dignity and the entire margravate with the exception of the New Mark, which, having been bequeathed to his younger brother John by their father, could not be alienated till John's death in 1402, when it was mortgaged to the German Order. Margrave Jodocus, although in time he became

622 The Quitzows. The first Hohenzollern Elector [1402-20

owner of the greater part of Brandenburg, only appeared within its borders for the purpose of extorting money. The close of the fourteenth and the early years of the fifteenth century were evil times for Brandenburg more especially by reason of the irrepressible turbulence of the native nobility, typified by the Old Mark family of the Quitzows, whose name has sometimes been given to the whole period in question. They took the lead in systematising - if the expression may be used—an anarchy by which the authority of State and Church, and the last remnants of prosperity in the towns, were threatened with utter collapse. In turn champions of native independence against the encroachments of neighbouring potentates, and leaders of a combination of native and foreign opposition to the authority of the Margraves, which at times they actually usurped,1 these protagonists of the Junkertum were not deposed from their ascendancy till after the advent of the Hohenzollerns.

With the investment of Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nürnberg, with the margravate of Brandenburg (he was appointed vicar and captain-general of it in 1411, made his first appearance there in 1412, practically settled matters with the Quitzows in 1416, and was finally invested in April, 1417), a new chapter begins in the history of the land.

Burgrave Frederick VI of Nürnberg, now Elector Frederick I of Brandenburg, was a descendant of the Alemannic Counts of Zollern, who are mentioned as early as the tenth century, and who soon afterwards had reached a prominent position among the magnates of Swabia. Early in the thirteenth century (1210), Count Frederick of Hohenzollern is proved by documentary evidence to have been Burgrave of Nürnberg; from his second son and namesake sprang the Swabian Hohenzollerns, whose rights as territorial Princes were resigned by them into the hands of their Prussian kinsmen more than six centuries afterwards (1849); to his eldest son Conrad II passed the newly acquired Franconian dominions. These latter would by partitions and donations to the Church have been reduced to almost nothing, but for the marriage of Burgrave Frederick III to the heiress of Meran, whose possessions included Baireuth and probably Culmbach. He was the right hand of Rudolf of Habsburg; and it should be added that the burgravate itself, as involving the guardianship of a large body of Imperial domains, was an important trust, by their loyal fulfilment of which the Franconian Hohenzollerns endeared themselves to the Habsburg Emperors, and no doubt greatly contributed to their own advancement. In 1420 Baireuth and Ansbach were once more united in the hands of Burgrave Frederick VI, the founder of the power of the House of Brandenburg.

1 Bötzow on the Havel, afterwards renamed Oranienburg in honour of the good Electress Louisa Henrietta, daughter of Frederick Henry of Orange, was a castle of the Margraves held by the Quitzows for nearly a decade.

1412-71] The Electors Frederick I and Frederick II 623

Frederick I, a soldier and a scholar, and gifted, as it would seem, with the supreme political faculty of distinguishing between things essential and non-essential, and suiting his action to this perception, knew how to bide his time. The services which he had rendered to Sigismund both in the field and in finally securing his election as Roman King sufficiently account for his being in flagranti Caesaris gratiâ, and for the transfer to him of the Electoral Mark Brandenburg on easy and practically (though perhaps not technically) permanent terms. Frederick's undertaking to renounce the fief, should he ever attain to the dignity of Roman King, at all events proves Sigismund's estimate of the importance of his friend in the affairs of the Empire.

But although Frederick, with the co-operation of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, with the aid of his own new artillery, and by judicious concessions to the main body of the Brandenburg nobles, pacified the Mark, his services to Emperor and Empire failed to secure a continuance of confidence between them. Frederick, although Brandenburg had suffered terribly from the Hussites, supported the policy of making terms with them; on the other hand, his design of becoming possessed of the Saxon in addition to the Brandenburg electorate, could not commend itself to the House of Austria. Still, the old feeling of loyalty, united no doubt to the sense of inadequate power, ranged him on the side of those who, after acquiescing in the election of Albert II as Roman King, agreed to that of Frederick III, whose long and impotent reign lasted for more than half a century (1440-93). Thus the founder of the new House of Brandenburg cannot be said to have either effectively promoted or vigorously resisted the beginning of an occupation of the Imperial throne by the House of Austria, which was to continue till 1740, just three centuries after his death.

The founder of the greatness of the Hohenzollerns necessarily moved within the limits of his own political horizon; and the testamentary disposition which he made of his dominions, although partly explained by personal considerations, fails to indicate that he was intent on securing a great future to his electorate, or even on preserving its territorial integrity. While his eldest son (John "the Alchemist ") succeeded in Baireuth, it was to the second, Frederick II, that he left the inheritance of Brandenburg. The new Elector had, like his contemporary, Louis XI, to wage a hard struggle with a still disaffected nobility; but he also had to hold his own against the towns, sufficiently awake to their own interests to confederate themselves with the great Hanseatic League whose system was extended over northern Germany. Finally, he had to meet the claims of a Church naturally inclined Romewards; but, while he put a decisive stop on the feudal dependence of part of his dominions on the archbishopric of Magdeburg, he contrived to secure, in the spirit of his own age and in good time for the opportunities which that of the Reformation was to bring, the right

624

The Dispositio Achillea

[1454-1598 of nomination to episcopal sees within his electorate. Amidst all these internal difficulties Frederick II did not lose sight of the duty, present to so many of his line, of augmenting his dominions. In 1454 the New Mark, which had been pledged to the German Order, was repledged by it to the Elector, and conditions were soon added which in 1517 resulted in the renunciation of all rights to these territories hitherto reserved by the Order. He withstood, however, the temptation towards more remote gains (West Prussia and Bohemia); and his claim on the inheritance of the last Duke (Otto III) of Pomerania-Stettin, and the hope of thus extending the dominions of his House to the shores of the Baltic, were frustrated by King Casimir IV of Poland. Thus his prudent and on the whole prosperous reign ended in disappointment; and a year before his death he transferred the government to his brother Albert Achilles, who already ruled the Franconian principalities of the House.

Albert Achilles (1470-86) - his cognomen, like those of some of his successors, is redolent of the Renaissance sympathies of the age-was in certain other respects a Prince on the pattern of Maximilian I, who owed to the hereditary attachment of the Brandenburger his own election as Roman King. At home Albert Achilles conducted the government of his electorate with vigour, while he enlarged his dominions by the acquisition of parts of Silesia, and was definitely invested with Pome rania-Stettin, though he obtained no immediate possession of the duchy. The steady support which he gave to the decadent Empire was important, inasmuch as he was probably, at the time, its most powerful Prince. But, though, following in his father's footsteps, he contrived to assert his authority as supreme in Brandenburg, his heart was in his Franconian possessions; and the task of consolidating his inheritance weighed heavily on him, as it did on so many German Princes of his times. Thus his famous testamentary disposition-known hereafter as the Dispositio Achillea was at once a compromise and an enduring fiat. It laid down in perpetuum the principle that, while his whole inheritance should at no future time be divided into more than three parts, the margravate of Brandenburg should henceforth never be subjected to partition. Thus Albert Achilles, in different circumstances, corroborated the critical action of Albert the Bear.

A prolonged tranquillity along their frontiers enabled the successors of Albert Achilles to give security to their territorial authority, which neither Poland nor Hungary, alike preoccupied by conflicts with the Turks, was disposed to menace. But the Elector John Cicero (148699) and his successors Joachim I and II and John George, whose reigns covered the ensuing century (1499-1598), were strong rulers as well as intelligent patrons of learning. (The foundation of the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, 1505, was almost contemporary with that of the University of Wittenberg, whose importance overshadowed that of her younger foster-sister.) John Cicero had to suppress a revolt of the