Friedrich complied, had to comply: very much chagrined, he returned home: and died next year,--it is supposed, of heartbreak from this business.

He had yielded outwardly: but to force only.

In a Codicil appended to his last Will, some months afterwards (which Will, written years ago, had treated the ERBVERBRUDERUNG as a Fact settled), he indicates, as with his last breath, that he considered the thing still valid, though overruled by the hand of power.

Let the reader mark this matter; for it will assuredly become memorable, one day.
The hand of power, namely, Ferdinand, King of the Romans, had applied in like manner to Joachim of Brandenburg to surrender his portion of the Deed, and annihilate on his side too this ERBVERBRUDERUNG.

But Joachim refused steadily, and all his successors steadily, to give up this Bit of Written Parchment: kept the same, among their precious documents, against some day that might come (and I suppose it lies in the Archives of Berlin even now): silently, or in words, asserting that the Deed of Heritage-Brothership was good, and that though some hands might have the power, no hand could have the right to abolish it on those terms.
How King Ferdinand permitted himself such a procedure?
Ferdinand, says one of his latest apologists in this matter, "considered the privileges granted by his Predecessors, in respect to rights of Sovereignty, as fallen extinct on their death." [Stenzel, i.