History of Friedrich II of Prussia, vol 2 | Page 6

innumerable Markgraves, Marquises, and
such like, of modern times: titles now become chimerical, and more or
less mendacious, as most of our titles are,--like so many BURGS
changed into "Boroughs," and even into "Rotten Boroughs," with
Defensive BURGhers of the known sort: very mournful to discover.
Once Norroy was not all pasteboard! At the heart of that huge
whirlwind of his, with its dusty heraldries, and phantasmal
nomenclatures now become mendacious, there lay, at first, always an
earnest human fact. Henry the Fowler was so happy as to have the fact
without any mixture of mendacity: we are in the sad reverse case;

reverse case not yet altogether COMPLETE, but daily becoming
so,--one of the saddest and strangest ever heard of, if we thought of
it!--But to go on with business.
Markgraviates there continued to be ever after,--Six in Henry's
time:--but as to the number, place, arrangement of them, all this varied
according to circumstances outward and inward, chiefly according to
the regress or the reintrusion of the circumambient hostile populations;
and underwent many changes. The sea-wall you build, and what main
floodgates you establish in it, will depend on the state of the outer sea.
Markgraf of SLESWIG grows into Markgraf of DITMARSCH and
STADE; retiring over the Elbe, if Norse Piracy get very triumphant.
ANTWERP falls obsolete; so does MEISSEN by and by. LAUSITZ
and SALZWEDEL, in the third century hence, shrink both into
BRANDENBURG; which was long only a subaltern station, managed
by deputy from one or other of these. A Markgraf that prospered in
repelling of his Wends and Huns had evidently room to spread himself,
and could become veiy great, and produce change in boundaries:
observe what OESTERREICH (Austria) grew to, and what
BRANDENBURG; MEISSEN too, which became modern Saxony, a
state once greater than it now is.
In old Books are Lists of the primitive Markgraves of Brandenburg,
from Henry's time downward; two sets, "Markgraves of the Witekind
race," and of another: [Hubner, Genealogische Tabellen italic> (Leipzig, 1725-1728), i. 172, 173. A Book of rare excellence in
its kind.] but they are altogether uncertain, a shadowy intermittent set
of Markgraves, both the Witekind set and the Non-Witekind; and truly,
for a couple of centuries, seem none of them to have been other than
subaltern Deputies, belonging mostly to LAUSITZ or SALZWEDEL;
of whom therefore we can say nothing here, but must leave the first two
hundred years in their natural gray state,--perhaps sufficiently
conceivable by the reader.
But thus, at any rate, was Brandenburg (BOT or Burg of the BRENNS,
whatever these are) first discovered to Christendom, and added to the
firm land of articulate History: a feat worth putting on record. Done by

Henry the Fowler, in the Year of Grace 928,--while (among other
things noticeable in this world) our Knut's great- grandfather, GORMO
DURUS, "Henry's Tributary," was still King of Denmark; when Harald
BLUETOOTH (Blaatand) was still a young fellow, with his teeth of the
natural color; and Swen with the Forked Beard (TVAESKAEG,
Double-beard, "TWA-SHAG") was not born; and the Monks of Ely had
not yet (by about a hundred years) begun that singing, [Without note or
comment, in the old, BOOK OF ELY date before the Conquest) is
preserved this stave;--giving picture, if we consider it, of the Fen
Country all a lake (as it was for half the year, till drained, six centuries
after), with Ely Monastery rising like an island in the distance; and the
music of its nones or vespers sounding soft and far over the solitude,
eight hundred years ago and more.
Merie sungen the Muneches binnen Ely Tha Cnut ching rew therby:
Roweth enites near the lant, And here we thes Muneches saeng.
Merry (genially) sang the Monks in Ely
As Knut King rowed (rew) there-by: Row, fellows
(knights), near the land, And hear we these
Monks's song. See Bentham's History of Ely italic> (Cambridge, 1771), p, 94.] nor the tide that refusal to retire, on
behalf of this Knut, in our English part of his dominions.
That Henry appointed due Wardenship in Brannibor was in the
common course. Sure enough, some Markgraf must take charge of
Brannibor, --he of the Lausitz eastward, for example, or he of
Salzwedel westward:--that Brannibor, in time, will itself be found the
fit place, and have its own Markgraf of Brandenburg; this, and what in
the next nine centuries Brandenburg will grow to, Henry is far from
surmising. Brandenburg is fairly captured across the frozen bogs, and
has got a warden and ninth-man garrison settled in it: Brandenburg, like
other things, will grow to what it can.
Henry's son and successor, if not himself, is reckoned to have founded
the Cathedral and Bishopric of Brandenburg,--his