United States or Bhutan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The management was good; the opportunity also was good. 'In one sitting, the Prussian Agent, arbitrating between Embden and the Ritters, settled their controversy, which had lasted fifty years. The poor Country felt grateful, which it might well do; as if for the laying of goblins, for the ending of long-continued local typhoon!
Preussen is to be the place for these people; Tilsit and Memel region, same where the big Fight of Tannenberg and ruin of the Teutsch Ritters took place: in that fine fertile Country there are homes got ready for this Emigration out of Salzburg. Long ago, at the beginning of this History, did not the reader hear of a pestilence in Prussian Lithuania?
Her first husband was the Duke of Courland; to him she brought an heir, who became Duke in his turn, and was the final Duke, LAST of the "Kettler" or native Line of Dukes there. The Kettlers had been Teutsch Ritters, Commandants in Courland; they picked up that Country, for their own behoof, when the Ritterdom went down; and this was the last of them.
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. Parricide worse, a great deal, than that at the Ford of Reuss upon one-eyed Albert.
And as for the children why, as far as the Baltic shore and the land of the last Ritters, mothers frightened their bairns with the Black Duke of the Wolfsberg and his Red Axe. So now the Duke and the Red Axe were to be in conference as indeed had happened nearly every day and night since I could remember.
Add, on both sides, pride and want of sense, with mutual anger going on CRESCENDO; and we have the sad phenomenon now visible: A Duke fled to Dantzig, anarchic Ritters none the better for his going; Duke perhaps threatening to return, and much flurrying his poor interim Brother, and stirring up the Anarchies: in brief, Mecklenburg become a house on fire, for behoof of neighbors and self.
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. But along with riches and the ease of victory, the common bad consequences had ensued.
The Ritters would not pay; the Duke would compel them: Ritters appeal to Kaiser in Reichshofrath, who proves favorable to the Ritters.
One thing not suspected by the Teutsch Ritters, and least of all by their young Hochmeister, was, That the Teutsch Ritters had well deserved that terrible down-come at Tannenberg, that ignominious dismissal out of West-Preussen with kicks. Their insolence, luxury, degeneracy had gone to great lengths. Nor did that humiliation mend them at all; the reverse rather.
He had a Son, and then two Grandsons, who were successively Kaisers, after a sort; making up the "Luxemburg Four" we spoke of. He did Crusades, one or more, for the Teutsch Ritters, in a shining manner; unhappily with loss of an eye; nay ultimately, by the aid of quack oculists, with loss of both eyes.
Word Of The Day