now, right willingly, quit Sigismund and the Reichs-History, leave
Kaiser Sigismund to sink or swim at his own will henceforth. His grand
feat in life, the wonder of his generation, was this same Council of
Constance; which proved entirely a failure; one of the largest wind-eggs
ever dropped with noise and travail in this world. Two hundred thousand
human creatures, reckoned and reckoning themselves the elixir of the
intellect and dignity of Europe. Two hundred thousand--nay some,
counting the lower menials and numerous unfortunate females, say four
hundred thousand--were got congregated into that little Swiss town; and
there as an Ecumenic Council, or solemnly distilled elixir of what pious
intellect and valor could be scraped together in the world, they labored
with all their select might for four years' space. That was the Council
of Constance. And except this transfer of Brandenburg to Friedrich of
Hohenzollern, resulting from said council, in the quite reverse and
involuntary way, one sees not what good result it had.

They did, indeed, burn Huss; but that could not be called a beneficial
incident; that seemed to Sigismund and the council a most small and
insignificant one. And it kindled Bohemia, and kindled Rhinoceros Ziska,
into never-imagined flame of vengeance; brought mere disaster, disgrace,
and defeat on defeat to Sigismund, and kept his hands full for the rest
of his life, however small he had thought it. As for the sublime four
years' deliberations and debates of this Sanhedrim of the
Universe--eloquent debates, conducted, we may say, under such extent of
wig as was never seen before or since--they have fallen wholly to the
domain of Dryasdust; and amount, for mankind at this time, to zero plus
the burning of Huss. On the whole, Burggraf Friedrich's Electorship, and
the first Hohenzollern to Brandenburg, is the one good result.

Burggraf Friedrich, on his first coming to Brandenburg, found but a cool
reception as Statthalter. He came as the representative of law and rule;
and there had been many helping themselves by a ruleless life, of late.
Industry was at a low ebb, violence was rife; plunder, disorder,
everywhere; too much the habit for baronial gentlemen to "live by the
saddle," as they termed it, that is, by highway robbery in modern
phrase.

The towns, harried and plundered to skin and bone, were glad to see a
Statthalter, and did homage to him with all their heart. But the
baronage or squirearch