United States or Philippines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


On grand occasions the Duke of Saxony is to carry the sword; the Count Palatine, the globe; the Margrave of Brandenburg, the sceptre. In celebrating mass before the Emperor, the benedictions are to be pronounced by the senior spiritual elector present. All persons conspiring against the lives of the electors are declared guilty of leze-majesty, and shall forfeit their lives and possessions.

Pious Brandenburg Officiality at length put an end to that profanation, and restored the skull to its place, marvellous enough, with what had once dwelt in it, whether it had sutures or not. He had commonly administered the Electorate during his Father's absences; and done it with credit to himself.

Nothing better is known to me of Albert the Bear than this his introducing large numbers of Dutch Netherlanders into those countries; men thrown out of work, who already knew how to deal with bog and sand, by mixing and delving, and who first taught Brandenburg what greenness and cow-pasture was.

This March of Brandenburg was won from the Slays in the first instance by the Saxons and Franks of the Saxon plain. When the burgrave, Frederick of Hohenzollern, came to take possession of his new territory he was received with the jesting remark: "Were it to rain burgraves for a whole year, we should not allow them to grow in the march."

Brandenburg had sunk very low under the Tenth Elector, in the unutterable troubles of the times, but it was gloriously raised up again by his Son Friedrich Wilhelm, who succeeded in 1640.

Relying on the attachment of the magistracy and inhabitants of Brandenburg, and excited by chimerical hopes, he thought himself able to surmount all the obstacles which the vote of the chapter, the competition of two powerful rivals, and the Edict of Restitution opposed to his restoration. He went to Sweden, and, by the promise of a diversion in Germany, sought to obtain assistance from Gustavus.

Scarcely had Tilly commenced his retrograde movement, when suddenly breaking up his camp at Schwedt, the king marched his whole force against Frankfort on the Oder. This town, badly fortified, was defended by a garrison of 8,000 men, mostly composed of those ferocious bands who had so cruelly ravaged Pomerania and Brandenburg.

I saw one May morning the grey walls of the old nest high on its cliff at the junction of the red and white Main, threatening still, for it is now a Bavarian prison. 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.

Some of the finest German troops were included in these armies, such as the Third Brandenburg Corps and the Fifteenth Corps.

The like, with still more emphasis, did Sigismund, or Burggraf Friedrich acting for him: "Sigismund, sure, is Kur-Brandenburg though under pawn!" argued Friedrich, and, I almost guess, though that is not said, produced from his own purse, at some stage of the business, the actual money for Jobst, to close his Brandenburg pretension.