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The exact relationship of the Burggraf to the town on the one hand, and to the Empire on the other, is somewhat obscure. Originally, it would appear, he was merely an Imperial officer, administering Imperial estates, and looking after Imperial interests.
The elder of them was already Sigismund's Brother-in-law; married to Sigismund's and Wenzel's sister, by such predestination as we saw. Burggraf Johann III. was the name of this one: a stout fighter and manager for many years; much liked, and looked to, by Sigismund. As indeed were both the Brothers, for that matter; always, together or in succession, a kind of right-hand to Sigismund.
The Castle had further been put into the charge of Ladislas von Gara, the Queen's cousin, and Ban, or hereditary commander, of the border troops, and he had given it over to a Burggraf, or seneschal, who had placed his bed in the chamber where was the door leading to the vaults.
Whereupon Heavy Peg opened upon him, Heavy Peg and other guns; and, in some eight-and-forty hours, shook Quitzow's impregnable Friesack about his ears. Burggraf Friedrich VI., not yet quite become Kurfurst Friedrich I., but in a year's space to become so, he in person was the beneficent operator; Heavy Peg, and steady Human Insight, these were clearly the chief implements.
We already saw Conrad first Burggraf, among the magnates of the country, denouncing Henry the Lion. A flourishing extensive City, this old Nurnberg, with valuable adjacent territory, civic and imperial, intricately intermixed; full of commercial industries, opulences, not without democratic tendencies.
Such was more or less the universal humor in the Squirearchy of Brandenburg; not of good omen to Burggraf Friedrich. But the chief seat of contumacy seemed to be among the Quitzows, Putlitzes, above spoken of; big Squires in the district they call the Priegnitz, in the Country of the sluggish Havel River, northwest from Berlin a fifty or forty miles.
But the Kaiser did not live. He went to Italy, our Burggraf of Nurnberg and many more along with him, to pull the crooked Guelf-Ghibelline Facts and Avignon Pope a little straight, if possible; and was vigorously doing it, when he died on a sudden; "poisoned in sacramental wine," say the Germans! One of the crowning summits of human scoundrelism, which painfully stick in the mind.
Brandenburg, torn to ruins in the way we saw, is a sorrowful matter; and, except the title of it, as a feather in one's cap, is worth nothing to Sigismund. And he is still short of money; and will forever be. Why could not he give up Brandenburg altogether; since, instead of paying, he is still making new loans from Burggraf Friedrich; and the hope of ever paying were mere lunacy!
He had for Empress a Sister of Burggraf Friedrich's; which high lady, unknown to us otherwise, except by her Tomb at Heidelberg, we remember for her Brother's sake. Kaiser Rupert great-grandson of that Kur-Pfalz who was Kaiser Ludwig's elder brother is the culminating point of the Electors Palatine; the Highest that Heidelberg produced.
As I count, he is seventh in descent from that Conrad, Burggraf Conrad I., Cadet of Hohenzollern, who came down from the Rauhe Alp, seeking service with Kaiser Redbeard, above two centuries ago: Conrad's generation and six others had vanished successively from the world-theatre in that ever-mysterious manner, and left the stage clear, when Burggraf Friedrich the Sixth came to be First Elector.
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