cause was saved by the assistance of a
Hohenzollern--Frederick of Nuremberg.

The Hohenzollerns made fortunate marriages and shrewd
purchases and the descendants of Frederick I, succeeding to
his burggravate, in the course of time acquired great
estates in Franconia, Moravia, and Burgundy. Through their
increasing wealth--whereby in the fifteenth century they had
gained a position similar to that of the present
Rothschilds--and by use of their political abilities, they
attained commanding influence in the councils of the German
princes.

Such was the eminence of this powerful family at the time
when they acquired the electorate of Brandenburg, the
nucleus of the present kingdom of Prussia. Brandenburg was a
district formerly inhabited by the Wends, a Slavic people,
from whom it was taken in 926 by Henry the Fowler, King of
Germany, of which kingdom it afterward became a margravate.
Its first margrave was Albert the Bear, under whom, about
1150, it was made an electorate; from Albert's line it
passed to Louis the Bavarian, in 1319; and in 1371 it was
transferred to Charles (Karl) IV. On the death of Charles,
his son and successor Wenzel (Wenceslaus) relinquished
Brandenburg to his brothers, as told by Carlyle, who in his
own pictorial manner describes the subsequent complications
which finally resulted in giving that possession to the
ancestors of the present ruling house of Germany.

Karl[74] left three young sons, Wenzel, Sigismund, Johann; and also a
certain nephew much older; all of whom now more or less concern us in
this unfortunate history.

Wenzel, the eldest son, heritable Kurfuerst of Brandenburg as well as
King of Bohemia, was as yet only seventeen, who nevertheless got to be
kaiser--and went widely astray, poor soul. The nephew was no other than
Margrave Jobst of Moravia, now in the vigor of his years and a stirring
man: to him, for a time, the chief management in Brandenburg fell, in
these circumstances. Wenzel, still a minor, and already Kaiser and King
of Bohemia, gave up Brandenburg to his two younger brothers, most of it
to Sigismund, with a cutting for Johann, to help their appanages; and
applied his own powers to govern the Holy Roman Empire, at that early
stage of life.

To govern the Holy Roman Empire, poor soul--or rather "to drink beer and
dance with the girls"; in which, if defective in other things, Wenzel
had an eminent talent. He was o