of the head. These troubles and adventures lasted many years;
in the course of which, Sigismund, trying all manner of friends and
expedients, found in the Burggraves of Nuremberg, Johann and Friedrich,
with their talents, possessions, and resources, the main or almost only
sure support he got.

No end of troubles to Sigismund, and to Brandenburg through him, from
this sublime Hungarian legacy. Like a remote fabulous golden fleece,
which you have to go and conquer first, and which is worth little when
conquered. Before ever setting out (1387), Sigismund saw too clearly
that he would have cash to raise: an operation he had never done with,
all his life afterward. He pawned Brandenburg to cousin Jobst of Maehren;
got "twenty thousand Bohemian gulden"--I guess, a most slender sum, if
Dryasdust would but interpret it. This was the beginning of pawnings to
Brandenburg; of which when will the end be? Jobst thereby came into
Brandenburg on his own right for the time, not as tutor or guardian,
which he had hitherto been. Into Brandenburg; and there was no chance of
repayment to get him out again.

Jobst tried at first to do some governing; but finding all very
anarchic, grew unhopeful; took to making matters easy for himself. Took,
in fact, to turning a penny on his pawn-ticket; alienating crown
domains, winking hard at robber barons, and the like--and after a few
years, went home to Moravia, leaving Brandenburg to shift for itself,
under a Statthalter (Viceregent, more like a hungry land-steward), whom
nobody took the trouble of respecting. Robber castles flourished; all
else decayed. No highway not unsafe; many a Turpin with sixteen
quarters, and styling himself Edle Herr (noble gentleman), took to
"living from the saddle": what are Hamburg pedlers made for but to be
robbed?

The towns suffered much; any trade they might have had, going to wreck
in this manner. Not to speak of private feuds, which abounded _ad
libitum_. Neighboring potentates, Archbishop of Magdeburg and others,
struck in also at discretion, as they had gradually got accustomed to
do, and snapped away some convenient bit of territory, or, more
legitimately, they came across to coerce, at their own hand, this or the
other Edle Herr of the Turpin sort, whom there was no other way of
getting at, when he carried matters quite too high. "Droves of six
hundred swine"--I have seen (by reading in those old books) certain
noble gentlemen, "of Putlitz," I think, driv