Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/15

Rh HISTORY.] PRUSSIA 3 of dividing the territory among the various scions of the reigning house, the Mark grew steadily in size and import- ance. Before the end of the 1 2th century the margrave was created arch-chamberlain of the German empire, an office that eventually brought in its train the privilege of belong- ing to the electoral college. Berlin became a fortified post of the margraves in 1 240 and soon began to take the place of Brandenburg as the political centre of the margraviate. Under Waldemar, who succeeded in 1309, the scattered possessions of the house were again gathered into one hand. His sway extended over the Altmark ; Priegnitz, or the Vormark ; the Middle Mark, now extending to the Oder ; the lands of Krpssen and Sternberg beyond the Oder; the Ukermark, to the north ; Upper and Lower Lusatia ; and part of Pomerania, with a feudal superiority over the rest. No other German prince of the time had a more ex- tensive territory or one less exposed to imperial interference. With Waldemar's death in 1319 the Ascanian line be- came extinct and a period of anarchy began, which lasted for a century and brought the once flourishing country to the verge of annihilation. Its neighbours took advan- tage of its masterless condition to help themselves to the outlying portions of its territory, and its resources were further wasted by intestine conflicts. In 1320 the emperor Bavarian Louis the Bavarian took possession of the Mark as a lapsed mar ~ fief, and conferred it upon his son Louis, at that time a ves ' mere child. But this connexion with the imperial house proved more of a curse than of a blessing : the younger Louis turned out a very incompetent ruler, and Branden- burg became involved in the evils brought upon the Bavarian house by its conflict with the pope. To crown all, a pretender to the name of Waldemar appeared, whose claims to Brandenburg were supported by the new emperor, Charles IV. ; and in 1351 Louis, wearied of his profitless sovereignty, resigned the margraviate to his brothers, Louis the Roman and Otho. The first of these died in 1365, and Otho soon became embroiled with Charles IV. But he was no match for the astute emperor, who in- vaded the Mark, and finally compelled the margrave to resign his territory for a sum of ready money and the Luxem- promise of an annuity. The ambition of Charles was burg directed towards the establishment of a great east German monarchy, embracing Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia, and Brandenburg, and he had the sagacity to recognize the commercial importance of the last-named as offering an outlet by the Baltic Sea. Charles, however, died in 1378, and with him perished his far-reaching plans. He was succeeded in the electorate of Brandenburg for as such it had been formally recognized in the Golden Bull of 1356 by his second son Sigismund. This prince was too greatly hampered by his other schemes to bestow much attention on Brandenburg, and in 1388 his pecuniary embarrassments were so great that he gave the electorate in pawn to his cousin Jobst or Jodocus of Moravia. The unfortunate country seemed now to have reached the lowest point consistent with its further independent existence. Jobst looked upon it merely as a source of income and made little or no attempt at government. Internal order completely disappeared, and the nobles made war on each other or plundered the more peaceful citizens without let or hindrance. Powerful neighbours again took the op- portunity of appropriating such parts of Brandenburg as lay most convenient to their own borders, and the final dissolution of the electorate seemed imminent. Jobst died in 1411 ; and Sigismund, who succeeded to the imperial throne mainly through the help of Frederick VI., burgrave of Nuremberg, conferred the electorate of Brandenburg on this stout supporter, partly in gratitude for services rendered and partly as a mortgage for money advanced. Sigismund also may possibly have recognized in Frederick the fitting mar- graves ruler to checkmate any attempt on the part of the Polish- Lithuanian power, which had just overthrown the Teutonic Order (see p. 6), to push forward the Slavonic settlements to their old frontier on the Elbe. At first Frederick was merely appointed administrator of Brandenburg; but in 1415 he was declared the actual feudal superior of the land, and two years later formally installed as elector. The Brandenburg to which Frederick succeeded was con- Interna siderably smaller than it had been in the best days of the c n ~ Ascanians, consisting merely of the Altmark, Priegnitz, g^ tl0 ^ *j the Mittelmark, part of the Ukermark, and the territory of ^urg, Sternberg. Including his family possessions of Ansbach nth to and Baireuth, he ruled over a territory of about 11,400 14th cei square miles in extent. The internal condition of Branden- turjr ' burg had declined as much as its territorial extension had decreased. The central power had become weakened and the whole inner organization relaxed, while the electorate had also lost most of the advantages that once favourably distinguished it from other imperial fiefs. Under the first margraves the official side of their position had been pro- minent, and it was not forgotten that technically they were little more than the representatives of the emperor. In the 13th century this feeling began to disappear, and Brandenburg enjoyed an independent importance and carried out an independent policy in a way not paralleled in any other German mark. The emperor was still, of course, the suzerain of the country, but his relations with it had so little influence on the course of its development that they may be practically ignored. Within the Mark the power of the margraves was at first almost unlimited. This arose in part from the fact that few great nobles had followed Albert the Bear in his crusade against the Wends, and that consequently there were few large feudal manors or lordships with their crowds of dependent vassals. The great bulk of the knights, the towns, and the rural com- munes held their lands and derived their rights directly from the margraves, who thus stood in more or less im- mediate contact with all classes of their subjects. The towns and villages were generally laid out by contractors (locatores), not necessarily of noble birth, who were installed as hereditary chief magistrates of the community and re- ceived numerous encouragements to reclaim waste lands. This mode of colonization was especially favourable to the peasantry, who seem in Brandenburg to have retained the disposal of their persons and property at a time when villainage or serfdom was the ordinary state of their class in feudal Europe. The dues paid by these contractors in return for their concessions formed the principal revenue of the margraves. As the expenses of the latter increased, chiefly in consequence of the calls of war, lavish donations to the clergy, and the attempt to maintain court establish- ments for all the members of the reigning house, they were frequently driven to pawn these dues for sums of ready money. This gave the knights or barons an opportunity to buy out the village magistrates and replace them with creatures of their own ; and the axe was laid at the root of the freedom of the peasants when Louis the Bavarian formally recognized the patrimonial or manorial juris- diction of the noblesse. Henceforth the power of the nobles steadily increased at the expense of the peasants, who were gradually reduced to a state of feudal servitude. Instead of communicating directly with the margrave through his burgraves and vogts (bailiffs), the village com- munities came to be represented solely by the knights who had obtained feudal possession of their lands. Many of the towns followed in their wake. Others were enabled to maintain their independence, and also made use of the pecuniary needs of the margraves, until many of them practically became municipal republics. Their strength, however, was perhaps more usefully shown in their ability