Part 31 (1/2)

936-1000.--_History of Nascent Brandenburg._

The pa.s.sage I last desired you to read ends with this sentence: ”The sea-wall you build, and what main floodgates you establish in it, will depend on the state of the outer sea.”

From this time forward you have to keep clearly separate in your minds, (A) the history of that outer sea, Pagan Scandinavia, Russia, and Bor-Russia, or Prussia proper; (B) the history of Henry the Fowler's Eastern and Western Marches; a.s.serting themselves gradually as Austria and the Netherlands; and (C) the history of this inconsiderable fortress of Brandenburg, gradually becoming considerable, and the capital city of increasing district between them. That last history, however, Carlyle is obliged to leave vague and gray for two hundred years after Henry's death. Absolutely dim for the first century, in which nothing is evident but that its wardens or Markgraves had no peaceable possession of the place. Read the second paragraph in page 74 (52-3), ”in old books” to ”reader,” and the first in page 83 (59) ”meanwhile” to ”substantial,”

consecutively. They bring the story of Brandenburg itself down, at any rate, from 936 to 1000.

III.

936-1000.--_State of the Outer Sea._

Read now Chapter II. beginning at page 76 (54), wherein you will get account of the beginning of vigorous missionary work on the outer sea, in Prussia proper; of the death of St. Adalbert, and of the purchase of his dead body by the Duke of Poland.

You will not easily understand Carlyle's laugh in this chapter, unless you have learned yourself to laugh in sadness, and to laugh in love.

”No Czech blows his pipe in the woodlands without certain precautions and preliminary fuglings of a devotional nature.” (Imagine St. Adalbert, in spirit, at the railway station in Birmingham!)

My own main point for notice in the chapter is the purchase of his body for its ”weight in gold.” Swindling angels held it up in the scales; it did not weigh so much as a web of gossamer. ”Had such excellent odor, too, and came for a mere nothing of gold,” says Carlyle. It is one of the first commercial transactions of Germany, but I regret the conduct of the angels on the occasion. Evangelicalism has been proud of ceasing to invest in relics, its swindling angels helping it to better things, as it supposes. For my own part, I believe Christian Germany could not have bought at this time any treasure more precious; nevertheless, the missionary work itself you find is wholly vain. The difference of opinion between St. Adalbert and the Wends, on Divine matters, does not signify to the Fates. They will not have it disputed about; and end the dispute adversely, to St. Adalbert--adversely, even, to Brandenburg and its civilizing power, as you will immediately see.

IV.

1000-1030.--_History of Brandenburg in Trouble._

Book II. Chap. iii. p. 83 (59).

The adventures of Brandenburg in contest with Pagan Prussia, irritated, rather than amended, by St. Adalbert. In 1023, roughly, a hundred years after Henry the Fowler's death, Brandenburg is taken by the Wends, and its first line of Markgraves ended; its population mostly butchered, especially the priests; and the Wends' G.o.d, Triglaph, ”something like three whales' cubs combined by boiling,” set up on the top of St. Mary's Hill.

Here is an adverse ”Doctrine of the Trinity” which has its supporters!

It is wonderful,--this Tripod and Triglyph--three-footed, three-cut faith of the North and South, the leaf of the oxalis, and strawberry, and clover, fostering the same in their simple manner. I suppose it to be the most savage and natural of notions about Deity; a prismatic idol-shape of Him, rude as a triangular log, as a trefoil gra.s.s. I do not find how long Triglaph held his state on St. Mary's Hill. ”For a time,” says Carlyle, ”the priests all slain or fled--shadowy Markgraves the like--church and state lay in ashes, and Triglaph, like a triple porpoise under the influence of laudanum, stood, I know not whether on his head or his tail, aloft on the Harlungsberg, as the Supreme of this Universe for the time being.”

V.

1030-1130.--_Brandenburg under the Ditmarsch Markgraves, or Ditmarsch-Stade Markgraves._

Book II. Chap. iii. p. 85 (60).

Of Anglish, or Saxon breed. They attack Brandenburg, under its Triglyphic protector, take it--dethrone him, and hold the town for a hundred years, their history ”stamped beneficially on the face of things, Markgraf after Markgraf getting killed in the business.

'Erschlagen,' 'slain,' fighting with the Heathen--say the old books, and pa.s.s on to another.” If we allow seven years to Triglaph--we get a clear century for these--as above indicated. They die out in 1130.

VI.

1130-1170.--_Brandenburg under Albert the Bear._

Book II. Chap iv. p. 91 (64).

He is the first of the Ascanien Markgraves, whose castle of Ascanica is on the northern slope of the Hartz Mountains, ”ruins still dimly traceable.”