TMARSH (in the oldest form of the name
_Thiatmaresgaho_, Dietmar's Gau), a territory between the Eider, the Elbe
and the North Sea, forming the western part of the old duchy of Holstein,
and now included in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein. It
contains about 550 sq. m. with 90,000 inhabitants. The territory consists
to the extent of one half of good pasture land, which is preserved from
inroads of the sea by banks and dams, the other half being mostly waste.
It was originally colonized mainly from Friesland and Saxony. The district
was subjugated and Christianized by Charlemagne in 804, and ranked as a
separate _Gau_, included perhaps in the countship of Stade, or _Comitalus
utriusque ripae_. From the same century, according to one opinion, or from
the year 1182, when the countship was incorporated with their see,
according to another, the archbishops of Bremen claimed supremacy over the
land; but the inhabitants, who had developed and consolidated a systematic
organism for self-government, made obstinate resistance, and rather
attached themselves to the bishop of Schleswig. Ditmarsken, to use the
Scandinavian form of the name, continued part of the Danish dominions till
the disastrous battle of Bornhoved in 1227, when its former independence
was regained. The claims of the archbishop of Bremen were now so far
recognized that he exercised the royal rights of _Heerbann_ and
_Blutbann_,[1] enjoyed the consequent emoluments, and was represented
first by a single _advocatus_, or _Vogt_, and afterwards by one for each
of the five Doffts, or marks, into which the land was divided after the
establishment of Meldorf. The community was governed by a _Landrath_ of
forty-eight elective consuls, or twelve from each of the four marks; and
even in the 14th century the power of the episcopal _advocati_ was so
slight that a chronicler quoted by Conrad von Maurer says, _De Ditmarschen
leven sunder Heren und Hovedt unde dohn wadt se willen_, "the Ditmarschen
live without lord and head, and do what they will." In 1319 and in 1404
they succeeded in defeating the invasions of the Holstein nobles; and
though in 1474 the land was nominally incorporated with the duchy by the
emperor Frederick III., the attempt of the Danish king Hans and the duke
of Gottorp to enforce the decree in 1500 resulted only in their complete
rout in the marshes of the Dussend-Duwels-Warf. During the early part of
the century which began with such prestige for