1323: of course he had a "STATEHOLDER" (Viceregent, STATTHALTER); then, and afterwards in occasional absences of his, a series of such, Kaiser's Councillors, Burggraf Friedrich IV. among them, had to take some thought of Brandenburg in its new posture. Who these Brandenburg Statthalters were, is heartily indifferent even to Dryasdust—except that one of them for some time was a Hohenzollern: which circumstance Dryasdust marks with the due note of admiration. "What he did there," Dryasdust admits, "is not written anywhere;"—good, we will hope, and not evil;—but only the Diploma nominating him (of date 1346, not in Ludwig's minority, but many years after that ended [Rentsch, p. 323.]) now exists by way of record. A difficult problem he, like the other regents and viceregents, must have had; little dreaming that it was intrinsically for a grandson of his own, and long line of grandsons. The name of this temporary Statthalter, the first Hohenzollern who had ever the least concern with Brandenburg, is Burggraf Johann II., eldest Son of our distinguished Muhldorf friend Friedrich IV.; and Grandfather (through another Friedrich) of Burggraf Friedrich VI.—which last gentleman, as will be seen, did doubtless reap the sowings, good and bad, of all manner of men in Brandenburg. The same Johann II. it was who purchased Plassenburg Castle and Territory (cheap, for money down), where the Family afterwards had its chief residence. Hof, Town and Territory, had fallen to his Father in those parts; a gift of gratitude from Kaiser Ludwig:—most of the Voigtland is now Hohenzollern.
Kaiser Ludwig the Bavarian left his sons Electors of Brandenburg;—"Electors, KURFURSTS," now becomes the commoner term for so important a Country;—Electors not in easy circumstances. But no son of his succeeded Ludwig as Kaiser—successor in the Reich was that Pfaffen-Kaiser, Johann of Bohemia's son, a Luxemburger once more. No son of Ludwig's; nor did any descendant—except, after four hundred years, that unfortunate Kaiser Karl VII., in Maria Theresa's time. He was a descendant. Of whom we shall hear more than enough. The unluckiest of all Kaisers, that Karl VII.; less a Sovereign Kaiser than a bone thrown into the ring for certain royal dogs, Louis XV., George II. and others, to worry about;—watch-dogs of the gods; apt sometimes to run into hunting instead of warding.—We will say nothing more of Ludwig the Baier, or his posterity, at present: we will glance across to Preussen, and see, for one moment, what the Teutsch Ritters are doing in their new Century. It is the year 1330; Johann II. at Nurnberg, as yet only coming to be Burggraf, by no means yet administering in Brandenburg; and Ludwig junior seven years old in his new dignity there.
The Teutsch Ritters, after infinite travail, have subdued heathen Preussen; colonized the country with industrious German immigrants; banked the Weichsel and the Nogat, subduing their quagmires into meadows, and their waste streams into deep ship-courses. Towns are built, Konigsberg (KING Ottocar's TOWN), Thoren (Thorn, CITY of the GATES), with many others: so that the wild population and the tame now lived tolerably together, under Gospel and Lubeck Law; and all was ploughing and trading, and a rich country; which had made the Teutsch Ritters rich, and victoriously at their ease in comparison. But along with riches and the ease of victory, the common bad consequences had ensued. Ritters given up to luxuries, to secular ambitions; ritters no longer clad in austere mail and prayer; ritters given up to wantonness of mind and conduct; solemnly vowing, and quietly not doing; without remorse or consciousness of wrong, daily eating forbidden fruit; ritters swelling more and more into the fatted-ox condition, for whom there is but one doom. How far they had carried it, here is one symptom that may teach us.
In the year 1330, one Werner von Orseln was Grand-master of these Ritters. The Grand-master, who is still usually the best man they can get, and who by theory is sacred to them as a Grand-Lama or Pope among Cardinal-Lamas, or as an Abbot to his Monks—Grand-master Werner, we say, had lain down in Marienburg one afternoon of this year 1330, to take his siesta, and was dreaming peaceably after a moderate repast, when a certain devil-ridden mortal, Johann von Endorf, one of his Ritters, long grumbling about severity, want of promotion and the like, rushed in upon the good old man; ran him through, dead for a ducat; [Voigt, iv. 474, 482.]—and consummated a PARRICIDE at which the very cross on one's white cloak shudders! Parricide worse, a great deal, than that at the Ford of Reuss upon one-eyed Albert.
We leave the shuddering Ritters to settle it, sternly vengeful; whom, for a moment, it has struck broad-awake to some sense of the very questionable condition they are getting into.
Chapter XI. — BAYARIAN KURFURSTS IN BRANDENBURG.
Young Ludwig Kurfurst of Brandenburg, Kaiser Ludwig's eldest son, having come of years, the Tutors or Statthalters went home—not wanted except in cases of occasional absence henceforth;—and the young man endeavored to manage on his own strength. His success was but indifferent; he held on, however, for a space of twenty years, better or worse. "He helped King Edward III. at the Siege of Cambray (A.D. 1339);" [Michaelis, i. 279.] whose French politics were often connected with the Kaiser's: it is certain, Kurfurst Ludwig "served personally with 600 horse [on good payment, I conclude] at that Siege of Cambray;"—and probably saw the actual Black Prince, and sometimes dined with him, as English readers can imagine. In Brandenburg he had many checks and difficult passages, but was never quite beaten out, which it was easy to have been.
A man of some ability, as we can gather, though not of enough: he played his game with resolution, not without skill; but from the first the cards were against him. His Father's affairs going mostly ill were no help to his, which of themselves went not well. The Brandenburgers, mindful of their old Ascanier sovereigns, were ill affected to Ludwig and the new Bavarian sort. The Anhalt Cousinry gloomed irreconcilable; were never idle, digging pitfalls, raising troubles. From them and others Kurfurst Ludwig had troubles enough; which were fronted by him really not amiss; which we wholly, or all but wholly, omit in this place.
A RESUSCITATED ASCANIER; THE FALSE WALDEMAR.
The wickedest and worst trouble of their raising was that of the resuscitated Waldemar (A.D. 1345): "False Waldemar," as he is now called in Brandenburg Books. Waldemar was the last, or as good as the last, of the Ascanier Markgraves; and he, two years before Ludwig ever saw those countries, died in his bed, twenty-five good years ago; and was buried, and seemingly ended. But no; after twenty-five years, Waldemar reappears: "Not buried or dead, only sham-buried, sham-dead; have been in the Holy Land all this while, doing pilgrimage and penance; and am come to claim my own again—which strangers are much misusing!" [Michaelis, i. 279.]
Perkin Warbeck, POST-MORTEM Richard II., Dimitri of Russia, Martin Guerre of the CAUSES CELEBRES: it is a common story in the world, and needs no commentary now. POST-MORTEM Waldemar, it is said, was a Miller's Man, "of the name of Jakob Rehback;" who used to be about the real Waldemar in a menial capacity, and had some resemblance to him. He showed signets, recounted experiences, which had belonged to the real Waldemar. Many believed in his pretension, and took arms to assert it; the Reich being in much internal battle at the time; poor Kaiser Ludwig, with his Avignon Popes and angry Kings Johann, wading in deep waters. Especially the disaffected Cousinry, or Princes of Anhalt, believed and battled for POST-MORTEM Waldemar; who were thought to have got him up from the first. Kurfurst Ludwig had four or five most sad years with him;—all the worse when the PFAFFEN-KAISER (King Johann's son) came on the stage, in the course of them (A.D. 1346), and Kaiser Ludwig, yielding not indeed to him, but to Death, vanished from it two years after; [Elected, 1314; Muhldorf, and Election COMPLETE, 1322; died, 1347, age 60.] leaving Kurfurst Ludwig to his own shifts with the Pfaffen-Kaiser. Whom he could not now hinder from succeeding to the Reich. He tried hard; set up, he and others, an Anti-Kaiser (GUNTHER OF SCHWARTZBURG, temporary Anti-Kaiser, whom English readers can forget again): he bustled, battled, negotiated, up and down; and ran across, at one time, to Preussen to the Teutsch Ritters—presumably to borrow money:—but it all would not do. The Pfaffen-Kaiser carried it, in the Diet and out of the Diet: Karl IV. by title; a sorry enough Kaiser, and by nature an enemy of Ludwig's.
It was in this whirl of intricate misventures that Kurfurst Ludwig had to deal with his False Waldemar, conjured