Here is a scene from Rentsch, which falls out in Friedrich's time; and which brought much battling and broiling to him and his.

Symbolical withal of much that befell in Brandenburg, from first to last.

Under the Hohenzollerns as before, Brandenburg grew by aggregation, by assimilation; and we see here how difficult the process often was.
Pommern (POMERANIA), long Wendish, but peaceably so since the time of Albert the Bear, and growing ever more German, had, in good part, according to Friedrich's notion, if there were force in human Treaties and Imperial Laws, fallen fairly to Brandenburg,--that is to say, the half of it, Stettin-Pommern had fairly fallen,--in the year 1464, when Duke Otto of Stettin, the last Wendish Duke, died without heirs.

In that case by many bargains, some with bloody crowns, it had been settled, If the Wendish Dukes died out, the country was to fall to Brandenburg;--and here they were dead.

"At Duke Otto's burial, accordingly, in the High Church of Stettin, when the coffin was lowered into its place, the Stettin Burgermeister, Albrecht Glinde, took sword and helmet, and threw the same into the grave, in token that the Line was extinct.