terdom having made agreement to
it as the one practicable course. The manner as follows: 1. Instead
of Elected Hochmeister, let us be Hereditary Duke of Preussen, and
pay homage for it to Uncle Sigismund in that character. 2. Such of the
resident Officials of the Ritterdom as are prepared to go along with us,
we will in like manner constitute permanent Feudal Proprietors of what
they now possess as Life-rent, and they shall be Sub-vassals under us
as Hereditary Duke. 3. In all which Uncle Sigismund and the Republic of
Poland engage to maintain us against the world.

That is, in sum, the Transaction entered into, by King Sigismund I.
of Poland, on the one part, and Hochmeister Albert and his Ritter
Officials, such as went along with him, (which of course none could do
that were not Protestant), on the other part: done at Cracow, 8th April,
1525. [Rentsch, p. 850.--Here, certified by Rentsch, Voigt and others,
is a worn-out patch of Paper, which is perhaps worth printing:--

1490, May 17, Albert is born.
1511, February 14, Hochmeister.
1519, December, King Sigismund's first hostile movements.
1520, October, German Mercenaries arrive.
1520, November, try Siege of Dantzig.
1520, November 17, give it up.
1521, April 10, Truce for Four Years.
1523, June, Albert consults Luther.
1524, November, sees Luther.
1525, April 8, Peace of Cracow, and Albert to be Duke of
Prussia.] Whereby Teutsch Ritterdom, the Prussian part of it,
vanished from the world; dissolving itself, and its "hermaphrodite
constitution," like a kind of Male Nunnery, as so many female ones
had done in those years. A Transaction giving rise to endless
criticism, then and afterwards. Transaction plainly not
reconcilable with the letter of the law; and liable to have logic
chopped upon it to any amount, and to all lengths of time.
The Teutschmeister and his German Brethren shrieked murder;
the whole world, then, and for long afterwards, had much to say
and argue.

To us, now that the logic-chaff is all laid long since, the question is
substantial, not formal. If the Teutsch Ritterdom was actually at this
time DEAD, actually stumbling about as a mere galvanized Lie beginning
to be putrid,--then, sure enough, it behooved that somebody should
bury it, to avoid pestilential effects in the neighborhood. Somebody or
other;--first flaying the skin off, as was natural