History of Friedrich II of Prussia, vol 2 | Page 7

Clergy and he always
longing much for the conversion of these Wends and Huns; which
indeed was, as the like still is, the one thing needful to rugged heathens

of that kind.

Chapter II.
PREUSSEN: SAINT ADALBERT.
Five hundred miles, and more, to the east of Brandenburg, lies a
Country then as now called PREUSSEN (Prussia Proper), inhabited by
Heathens, where also endeavors at conversion are-going on, though
without success hitherto. Upon which we are now called to cast a
glance.
It is a moory flat country, full of lakes and woods, like Brandenburg;
spreading out into grassy expanses, and bosky wildernesses humming
with bees; plenty of bog in it, but plenty also of alluvial mud; sand too,
but by no means so high a ratio of it as in Brandenburg; tracts of
Preussen are luxuriantly grassy, frugiferous, apt for the plough; and the
soil generally is reckoned fertile, though lying so far northward. Part of
the great plain or flat which stretches, sloping insensibly, continuously,
in vast expanse, from the Silesian Mountains to the amber-regions of
the Baltic; Preussen is the seaward, more alluvial part of
this,--extending west and east, on both sides of the Weichsel
(VISTULA), from the regions of the Oder river to the main stream of
the Memel. BORDERING-ON-RUSSIA its name signifies:
BOR-RUSSIA, B'russia, Prussia; or --some say it was only on a certain
inconsiderable river in those parts, river REUSSEN, that it "bordered"
and not on the great Country, or any part of it, which now in our days is
conspicuously its next neighbor. Who knows?--
In Henry the Fowler's time, and long afterwards, Preussen was a
vehemently Heathen country; the natives a Miscellany of rough Serbic
Wends, Letts, Swedish Goths, or Dryasdust knows not what;-- very
probably a sprinkling of Swedish Goths, from old time, chiefly along
the coasts. Dryasdust khows only that these PREUSSEN were a
strong-boned, iracund herdsman-and-fisher people; highly averse to be
interfered with, in their religion especially. Famous otherwise, through

all the centuries, for the AMBER they had been used to fish, and sell in
foreign parts.
Amber, science declares, is a kind of petrified resin, distilled by pines
that were dead before the days of Adam; which is now thrown up, in
stormy weather, on that remote coast, and is there fished out by the
amphibious people,--who can likewise get it by running mine-shafts
into the sandhills on their coast;--by whom it is sold into the uttermost
parts of the Earth, Arabia and beyond, from a very early period of time.
No doubt Pytheas had his eye upon this valuable product, when he
ventured into survey of those regions,--which are still the great mother
of amber in our world. By their amber-fishery, with the aid of
dairy-produce and plenty of beef and leather, these Heathen Preussen,
of uncertain miscellaneous breed, contrived to support existence in a
substantial manner; they figure to us as an inarticulate, heavy- footed,
rather iracund people. Their knowledge of Christianity was trifling,
their aversion to knowing anything of it was great.
As Poland, and the neighbors to the south, were already Christian, and
even the Bohemian Czechs were mostly Converted, pious wishes as to
Preussen, we may fancy, were a constant feeling: but no effort hitherto,
if efforts were made, had come to anything. Let some daring
missionary go to preach in that country, his reception is of the worst, or
perhaps he is met ou the frontier with menaces, and forbidden to preach
at all; except sorrow and lost labor, nothing has yet proved attainable. It
was very dangerous to go;--and with what likelihood of speeding?
Efforts, we may suppose, are rare; but the pious wish being continual
and universal, efforts can never altogether cease. From Henry the
Fowler's capture of Brannibor, count seventy years, we find Henry's
great-grandson reigning as Elective Kaiser,--Otto III., last of the direct
"Saxon Kaisers," Otto Wonder of the World;--and alongside of Otto's
great transactions, which were onoe called MIRABILIA MUNDI and
are now fallen so extinct, there is the following small transaction, a new
attempt to preach in Preussen, going on, which, contrariwise, is still
worth taking notice of.
About the year 997 or 996, Adalbert, Bishop of Prag, a very zealous,

most devout man, but evidently of hot temper, and liable to get into
quarrels, had determined, after many painful experiences of the
perverse ungovernable nature of corrupt mankind, to give up his
nominally Christian flock altogether; to shake the dust off his feet
against Prag, and devote himself to converting those Prussian Heathen,
who, across the frontiers, were living in such savagery, and express
bondage to the Devil, worshipping mere stocks and stones. In this
enterprise he was encouraged by the Christian potentates who lay
contiguous; especially by the Duke of Poland, to whom such
next-neighbors, for all