Brandenburgers

“ Thus in the German army the III. army corps is composed entirely of Brandenburgers. The infantry of the corps is stationed in ten towns, the cavalry in four and the artillery in five. In countries which adhere to voluntary recruiting, the system, depending as it does on the calculable certainty of recruiting, is not so fully developed, but in Great Britain the auxiliary forces have been reorganized in divisions of all arms on a strictly territorial basis. The advantage of the system as carried into effect in Germany is obvious. ”

“ At his accession the greater part of his territory was occupied by strangers and devastated by war, and in European politics Brandenburg was merely an appendage of the empire. Its army was useless; its soil was poor; its revenue was insignificant. At his death the state of Brandenburg-Prussia was a power to be reckoned with in all European combinations. Inferior to Austria alone among the states of the Empire, it was regarded as the head of the German Protestantism; while the fact that one-third of its territory lay outside the Empire added to its importance. ”

“ He munificently welcomed them to Brandenburg; showed really a noble piety and human self-pity, as well as judgment; nor did Brandenburg and he want their reward. Some twenty thousand nimble French souls, evidently of the best French quality, found a home there; made "waste sands about Berlin into pot-herb gardens"; and in the spiritual Brandenburg, too, did something of horticulture, which is still noticeable.
Certainly this Elector was one of the shiftiest of men; not an unjust man either; a pious, God-fearing man rather, stanch to his Protestantism and his Bible ”

“ The lord of Brandenburg now became a condottiere of ever-increasing reputation. His regiments brought security to his dominions and gold to his exchequer. In every European struggle their aid was welcome. On the frozen lagoons by the Baltic and on the shores of Torbay, on the torrid plain of Warsaw, and in the vine-clad valley of the Rhine—everywhere the men of the Mark approved themselves good soldiers and punctual allies. In 1660 the Great Elector netted his profit from the Northern war by receiving Ost-Preussen free from Polish suzerainty. ”

“ The country [219] yields plenty of corn, hemp, flax, excellent pasture for numerous flocks of sheep, and a good breed of horses.—New Brandenburg is a neat and thriving town, very agreeably situated. The inhabitants carry on a considerable trade in hops, which grow in great abundance all around.
This country, which seems to be happy in its prince and other particulars, cannot rank among its blessings the neighbourhood of so great and warlike a monarch as the King of Prussia. ”

“ The mark of Brandenburg, the mark against the Slave, has grown into the kingdom of Prussia, the Imperial state of Germany in its latest form. The Eastern mark, the mark against the Magyar, has grown into the archduchy which gave Germany so many kings, into the so-called Austrian ‘empire,’ into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of our own day. ♦Analogies between Brandenburg and other marchlands.♦ The growth of Brandenburg or Prussia again affords an instructive comparison with the growth of Wessex in England, of France in Gaul, and of Castile in Spain. ”

“ A Calvinist prince ruled a Lutheran people, and the new Elector, George William (1619–1640) , “of Christ-mild memory” but the weakest of his line, proved to be a puppet in the hands of Schwarzenburg, his Romanist prime-minister. Under such guidance did Brandenburg, ill-knit and ill-armed, become the battle-ground between Swede and Hapsburg in their struggle for faith and empire.
What Brandenburg suffered in the terrible decade 1630–1640, between the landing of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany and the accession of the Great Elector, can never be fully calculated. ”

“ The margravate of Brandenburg has grown from as small beginnings to a formidable power; and though it is late in the day to try adventurous policies, and the age of war seems ended, Fortune, we must not forget, still blindly turns her wheel for men and nations. ”

“ The Landtag of Brandenburg was not cowed so easily into submission, but an increase of revenue was obtained, and the stubborn struggle which ensued in Prussia ended in a victory for the ruler. This increased income enabled the elector to take a more considerable part in European politics. In 1663 he assisted the imperialists in their struggle with the Turks; in 1666 the dispute over Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg was finally settled, and Brandenburg were confirmed in the possession of these lands; and in the same year a reconciliation was effected with Sweden. ”

“ The present province of Brandenburg, the basis of the Prussian kingdom, was conquered by Henry in 928; and then, after a successful invasion of Bohemia, he gradually extended his annexation to the Oder. The most of the Slavonic population were slaughtered without mercy, and the Saxons and Thuringians, spreading eastward, took possession of their vacant lands. Finally, in 932, Henry conquered Lusatia (now Eastern Saxony) ; Bohemia was already tributary, and his whole eastern frontier was thereby advanced from the Baltic at Stettin to the Danube at Vienna. ”

“ And so we have now reached that point in Brandenburg history when, if some help does not come, Brandenburg will not long be a country, but will either get dissipated in pieces and stuck to the edge of others where some government is, or else go waste again and fall to the bisons and wild bears. ”

“ From this epoch dates the complete union of Brandenburg and Prussia—a union upon which a great man was able to lay the foundation of a powerful North German Kingdom!" During the next dozen years, the Great Elector was chiefly busied in establishing his authority in his dominions and curbing the power of the nobles, particularly in Prussia. {310} In 1674, when Louis XIV. of France provoked war with the German princes by his attack on the Dutch, Frederic William led 20,000 men into Alsace to join the Imperial forces. ”

“ Many branches of industry were transplanted to Brandenburg, and twenty thousand Frenchmen carried the most refined arts of civilization to the coarse population thinly scattered among the sands and firs of that sombre region. French refugees paid for the hospitality of the Elector Frederick by laying the foundation of the high destinies of Berlin, which on their arrival was still but a small city of twelve or fifteen thousand souls, and which, thenceforth, took a start which nothing was to arrest. ”

“ Detached from the central mass lay the duchy of east Prussia beyond the Vistula and the scattered districts of Cleves and Mark upon the Rhine and of Ravensberg and Minden upon the Weser. Inferior in prestige and military power to Sweden, inferior in extent to Poland, Brandenburg nevertheless emerged from the Thirty Years’ War stronger, both actually and relatively, than she was when the struggle began. There was no German power in north Germany her equal in strength, and no power in north Europe her superior in government. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Brandenburg saw its towns sieged and sacked, its country populations driven to despair, by the one party and the other. Three times,—first in the Wallenstein Mecklenburg period, while fire and sword were the weapons, and again, twice over, in the ultimate stages of the struggle, when starvation had become the method—Brandenburg fell to be the principal theatre of conflict, where all forms of the dismal were at their height. ”

“ The color of the cottages and farm-houses harmonizes or contrasts beautifully with the landscape. Roofs of brown weather-beaten thatch or of dull red tiles, in the midst of embowering trees and shrubbery, formed for us pictures of beauty long to be remembered. Frienwalde, to the northeast, has mineral springs in the most attractive part of Brandenburg, and is growing as a place of summer resort. The fine old monastery, and the ruined early Gothic abbey-church of Chorin on the Stettin Railway, the burial-place of the Margraves of Brandenburg, are interesting to all students of architecture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking circumstances. Political significance Brandenburg had none—a mere Protestant appendage dragged about by a Papist Kaiser. His Father's Prime Minister was in the interest of his enemies; not Brandenburg's servant, but Austria's. The very Commandants of his Fortresses, Commandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey Friedrich Wilhelm on his accession—"were bound to obey the Kaiser in the first place." ”

“ The frontier state of Brandenburg had been originally founded by Charlemagne to defend his eastern possessions against raids of the wild Saxon tribes. The Wends, a Slavic tribe which inhabited that region, were subjugated during the tenth century and their market-place, by the name of Brennabor, became the centre of and gave its name to the new province of Brandenburg.
During the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a succession of noble families exercised the functions of imperial governor in this frontier state. ”

“ Brandenburg was ravaged impartially by both parties, and in 1627 George William attacked his brother-in-law, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who was using Prussia as a base of operations for his war against Poland. This campaign was short and inglorious for Brandenburg, and the elector was soon compelled to make peace. Although alarmed by the edict of restitution of 1629, George William took no steps to help the Protestants. In 1631, however, Gustavus Adolphus marched on Berlin, compelled the elector to cede the fortress of Spandau, and to aid him with men and money. ”

“ It is a strange feeling thus to enjoy, thanks to our lofty point of outlook, an extended view far over the level March of Brandenburg with its teeming population all below us, a view which, old as the world is, has been vouchsafed to few mortal men. The city, with all its human life and activity, lies far below us. ”

“ The Prussian people, by which I mean the people of Brandenburg and its vicinity, were conscious that Nature had not favoured them excessively, and that they could prosper only by the action of their government. ”

“ The power of the house grew slowly. In one age it got Brandenburg, in another the great districts of Ost and West Preussen; now it was possessions in Silesia, now again territory on the Rhine. Power came sometimes through imperial gift, sometimes through marriage, sometimes through purchase or diplomacy or blows. From poor soldiers of fortune to counts, from counts to princes, from princes to electors, and at last kings. Sometimes they are unscrupulous, sometimes feeble, sometimes nobly heroic and faithful; more often strong than weak in brain and hand. ”

“ These morning excursions allowed me to explore a great deal of the neighbourhood, which I should otherwise have been unable to see. All this district of Holstein is rather flat, but beautifully wooded, with many lakes which add a wistful calm beauty to the sleepy landscape. There is something reminiscent of England in the farm-houses and the hedgerows, which are never seen in Brandenburg, where the fields are unfenced.
At one o’clock I was at the Schloss for luncheon, where I had to talk English with the Prince and his cadets—charming boys, some of whom I had met in Potsdam, where they lived. ”

“ Duke Albert died in 1618; and Brandenburg and Prussia were then united under the Elector John Sigismund. It was well that the Duchy had been secured before the storm which was already gathering over the Empire had burst. ... During the long struggle of the Thirty Years' War, the history of Brandenburg is that of a sufferer rather than an actor. ... George William, who died in 1640, bequeathed a desert to his successor. That successor was Frederick William, to be known in history as the Great Elector. ”

“ In Brandenburg itself, where the advantages of centralisation under so able and keen-sighted a ruler were quickly seen, the opposition was never formidable, and in 1653, the very year of the annexation of eastern Pomerania, the ancient diet went quietly into perpetual sleep for want of being summoned. In east Prussia and in Cleves the work was far more difficult, and [181] the Elector had to content himself for a time with crushing all serious opposition by the employment of Brandenburg soldiers to keep order, a proceeding which although illegal was extremely effective. ”

“ There was perhaps also something remarkable in the racial character of the Brandenburg people, in which princes and subjects shared alike. Down to Frederick's time, the Prussian districts had given to Germany relatively few scholars, writers, and artists. Even the passionate zeal of the Reformation seemed to be subdued there. The people who inhabited the border land, mostly of the Lower Saxon strain, with a slight tinge of Slavic blood, were a tough, sturdy race, not specially graceful in social manners, but with unusual keenness of understanding and clearness of judgment. ”