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Otto went about, sieging much the same, with the iron in his head;and is called Otto MIT DEM PFOILE, Otto SAGITTARIUS, or Otto with the Arrow, in consequence. A Markgraf who writes Madrigals;who does sieges with an arrow in his head; who lies in a wooden cage, jeered by the Magdeburgers, and proposes such a cone of ducats: I thought him the memorablest of those forgotten Markgraves; and that his jolting Life-pilgrimage might stand as the general sample. Multiply a year of Otto by 200, you have, on easy conditions, some imagination of a History of the Ascanier Markgraves. Forgettable otherwise; or it can be read in the gross, darkened with endless details, and thrice-dreary, half-intelligible traditions, in Pauli's fatal Quartos, and elsewhere, if any one needs.--The year of that Magdeburg speech about the cone of ducats is 1278: King Edward the First, in this country, was walking about, a prosperous man of forty, with very LONGSHANKS, and also with a head of good length.
Otto, as had been the case in the former Line, was a frequent name among those Markgraves: "Otto the Pious" (whom we saw crusading once in Preussen, with King Ottocar his Brother-in-law), "Otto the Tall," "Otto the Short (PARVUS);" I know not how many Ottos besides him "with the Arrow." Half a century after this one of the ARROW (under his Grand-Nephew it was), the Ascanier Markgraves ended, their Line also dying out.
Not the successfulest of Markgraves, especially in later times.
Brandenburg was indeed steadily an Electorate, its Markgraf a KURFURST, or Elector of the Empire; and always rather on the increase than otherwise. But the Territories were apt to be much split up to younger sons; two or more Markgraves at once, the eldest for Elector, with other arrangements; which seldom answer.
They had also fallen into the habit of borrowing money; pawning, redeeming, a good deal, with Teutsch Ritters and others. Then they puddled considerably,--and to their loss, seldom choosing the side that proved winner,--in the general broils of the Reich, which at that time, as we have seen, was unusually anarchic. None of the successfulest of Markgraves latterly. But they were regretted beyond measure in comparison with the next set that came; as we shall see.
Chapter IX.
BURGGRAF FRIEDRICH IV.
Brandenburg and the Hohenzollern Family of Nurnberg have hitherto no mutual acquaintanceship whatever: they go, each its own course, wide enough apart in the world;--little dreaming that they are to meet by and by, and coalesce, wed for better and worse, and become one flesh. As is the way in all romance. "Marriages," among men, and other entities of importance, "are, evidently, made in Heaven."Friedrich IV. of Nurnberg, Son of that Friedrich III., Kaiser Rudolf's successful friend, was again a notable increaser of his House; which finally, under his Great-grandson, named Friedrich VI., attained the Electoral height. Of which there was already some hint. Well; under the first of these two Friedrichs, some slight approximation, and under his Son, a transient express introduction (so to speak) of Brandenburg to Hohenzollern took place, without immediate result of consequence; but under the second of them occurred the wedding, as we may call it, or union "for better or worse, till death do us part."--How it came about?
Easy to ask, How! The reader will have to cast some glances into the confused REICHS-History of the time;--timid glances, for the element is of dangerous, extensive sort, mostly jungle and shaking bog;--and we must travel through this corner of it, as on shoes of swiftness, treading lightly.
CONTESTED ELECTIONS IN THE REICH: KAISER ALBERT I.;AFTER WHOM SIX NON-HAPSBURG KAISERS.
The Line of Rudolf of Hapsburg did not at once succeed continuously to the Empire, as the wont had been in such cases, where the sons were willing and of good likelihood. After such a spell of anarchy, parties still ran higher than usual in the Holy Roman Empire; and wide-yawning splits would not yet coalesce to the old pitch. It appears too the posterity of Rudolf, stiff, inarticulate, proud men, and of a turn for engrossing and amassing, were not always lovely to the public. Albert, Rudolf's eldest son, for instance, Kaiser Albert I.,--who did succeed, though not at once, or till after killing Rudolf's immediate successor, [Adolf of Nassau; slain by Albert's own hand; "Battle"of Hasenbuhel "near Worms, 2d July, 1298" (Kohler, p. 265).]--Albert was by no means a prepossessing man, though a tough and hungry one. It must be owned, he had a harsh ugly character;and face to match: big-nosed, loose-lipped, blind of an eye:
not Kaiser-like at all to an Electoral Body. "Est homo monoculus, et vultu rustico; non potest esse Imperator (A one-eyed fellow, and looks like a clown; he cannot be Emperor)!" said Pope Boniface VIII., when consulted about him.
[Kohler, pp. 267-273; and Muntzbelustigungen, xix.
156-160.]
Enough, from the death of Rudolf, A.D. 1291, there intervened a hundred aud fifty years, and eight successive Kaisers singly or in line, only one of whom (this same Albert of the unlovely countenance) was a Hapsburger,--before the Family, often trying it all along, could get a third time into the Imperial saddle.
Where, after that, it did sit steady. Once in for the third time, the Hapsburgers got themselves "elected" (as they still called it)time after time; always elected,--with but one poor exception, which will much concern my readers by and by,--to the very end of the matter. And saw the Holy Roman Empire itself expire, and as it were both saddle and horse vanish out of Nature, before they would dismount. Nay they still ride there on the shadow of a saddle, so to speak; and are "Kaisers of AUSTRIA" at this hour. Steady enough of seat at last, after many vain trials!