History of Friedrich II of Prussia, vol 3 | Page 5

laws obeyed without mutiny, see well that they be pieces of
God Almighty's Law: otherwise all the artillery in the world will not
keep down mutiny.
Friedrich "travelled much over Brandenburg;" looking into everything
with his own eyes;--making, I can well fancy, innumerable crooked
things straight. Reducing more and more that famishing dog-kennel of
a Brandenburg into a fruitful arable field. His portraits represent a
square headed, mild-looking solid gentleman, with a certain twinkle of
mirth in the serious eyes of him. Except in those Hussite wars for
Kaiser Sigismund and the Reich, in which no man could prosper, he
may be defined as constantly prosperous. To Brandenburg he was, very
literally, the blessing of blessings; redemption out of death into life. In
the ruins of that old Friesack Castle, battered down by Heavy Peg,
Antiquarian Science (if it had any eyes) might look for the tap-root of

the Prussian Nation, and the beginning of all that Brandenburg has
since grown to under the sun.
Friedrich, in one capacity or another, presided over Brandenburg near
thirty years. He came thither first of all in 1412; was not completely
Kurfurst in his own right till 1415; nor publicly installed, "with 100,000
looking on from the roofs and windows," in Constance yonder, till
1417,--age then some forty-five. His Brandenburg residence, when he
happened to have time for residing or sitting still, was Tangermunde,
the Castle built by Kaiser Karl IV. He died there, 21st September, 1440;
laden tolerably with years, and still better with memories of hard work
done. Rentsch guesses by good inference he was born about 1372. As I
count, he is seventh in descent from that Conrad, Burggraf Conrad I.,
Cadet of Hohenzollern, who came down from the Rauhe Alp, seeking
service with Kaiser Redbeard, above two centuries ago: Conrad's
generation and six others had vanished successively from the
world-theatre in that ever-mysterious manner, and left the stage clear,
when Burggraf Friedrich the Sixth came to be First Elector. Let three
centuries, let twelve generations farther come and pass, and there will
be another still more notable Friedrich,--our little Fritz, destined to be
Third King of Prussia, officially named Friedrich II., and popularly
Frederick the Great. This First Elector is his lineal ancestor, twelve
times removed. [Rentsch, pp. 349-372; Hubner, t. 176.]

Chapter II.
MATINEES DU ROI DE PRUSSE.
Eleven successive Kurfursts followed Friedrich in Brandenburg. Of
whom and their births, deaths, wars, marriages, negotiations and
continual multitudinous stream of smaller or greater adventures, much
has been written, of a dreary confused nature; next to nothing of which
ought to be repeated here. Some list of their Names, with what
rememberable human feature or event (if any) still speaks to us in them,
we must try to give. Their Names, well dated, with any actions,
incidents, or phases of life, which may in this way get to adhere to them

in the reader's memory, the reader can insert, each at its right place, in
the grand Tide of European Events, or in such Picture as the reader may
have of that. Thereby with diligence he may produce for himself some
faint twilight notion of the Flight of Time in remote Brandenburg,--
convince himself that remote Brandenburg was present all along, alive
after its sort, and assisting, dumbly or otherwise, in the great
World-Drama as that went on.
We have to say in general, the history of Brandenburg under the
Hohenzollerns has very little in it to excite a vulgar curiosity, though
perhaps a great deal to interest an intelligent one. Had it found
treatment duly intelligent;--which, however, how could it, lucky
beyond its neighbors, hope to do! Commonplace Dryasdust, and
voluminous Stupidity, not worse here than elsewhere, play their Part.
It is the history of a State, or Social Vitality, growing from small to
great; steadily growing henceforth under guidance: and the contrast
between guidance and no-guidance, or mis- guidance, in such matters,
is again impressively illustrated there. This we see well to be the fact;
and the details of this would be of moment, were they given us: but
they are not;--how could voluminous Dryasdust give them? Then, on
the other hand, the Phenomenon is, for a long while, on so small a scale,
wholly without importance in European politics and affairs, the
commonplace Historian, writing of it on a large scale, becomes
unreadable and intolerable. Witness grandiloquent Pauli our fatal friend,
with his Eight watery Quartos; which gods and men, unless driven by
necessity, have learned to avoid! [Dr. Carl Friedrich Pauli,
Allgemeine Preussische Staats-Geschichte, often enough cited here.]
The Phenomenon of Brandenburg is small, remote; and the essential
particulars, too delicate for the eye of Dryasdust, are mostly wanting,
drowned deep in details of the unessential. So that we are well content,
my readers and I,