Those were rare times, Mr.Rigmarole.
The same Otto, besieging some stronghold of his Magdeburg or other enemies, got an arrow shot into the skull of him; into, not through; which no surgery could extract, not for a year to come.

Otto went about, sieging much the same, with the iron in his head; and is called Otto MIT DEM PFOILE, Otto SAGITTARIUS, or Otto with the Arrow, in consequence.
A Markgraf who writes Madrigals; who does sieges with an arrow in his head; who lies in a wooden cage, jeered by the Magdeburgers, and proposes such a cone of ducats: I thought him the memorablest of those forgotten Markgraves; and that his jolting Life-pilgrimage might stand as the general sample.

Multiply a year of Otto by 200, you have, on easy conditions, some imagination of a History of the Ascanier Markgraves.
Forgettable otherwise; or it can be read in the gross, darkened with endless details, and thrice-dreary, half-intelligible traditions, in Pauli's fatal Quartos, and elsewhere, if any one needs .-- The year of that Magdeburg speech about the cone of ducats is 1278: King Edward the First, in this country, was walking about, a prosperous man of forty, with very LONG SHANKS, and also with a head of good length.
Otto, as had been the case in the former Line, was a frequent name among those Markgraves: "Otto the Pious" (whom we saw crusading once in Preussen, with King Ottocar his Brother-in-law), "Otto the Tall," "Otto the Short (PARVUS);" I know not how many Ottos besides him "with the Arrow." Half a century after this one of the ARROW (under his Grand-Nephew it was), the Ascanier Markgraves ended, their Line also dying out.
Not the successfulest of Markgraves, especially in later times.
Brandenburg was indeed steadily an Electorate, its Markgraf a KURFURST, or Elector of the Empire; and always rather on the increase than otherwise.

But the Territories were apt to be much split up to younger sons; two or more Markgraves at once, the eldest for Elector, with other arrangements; which seldom answer.

They had also fallen into the habit of borrowing money; pawning, redeeming, a good deal, with Teutsch Ritters and others.