uer it from
Satanas for themselves, it would be well for all parties. Hermann, a man
of sagacious clear head, listens attentively. The notion is perhaps not
quite new to him: at all events, he takes up the notion; negotiates
upon it, with Titular Bishop, with Pope, Kaiser, Duke of Poland, Teutsch
Order; and in brief, about two years afterwards (A.D. 1228), having
done the negotiatings to the last item, he produces his actual Teutsch
Ritters, ready, on Prussian ground.

Year 1225, thinks Dryasdust, after a struggle. Place where, proves
also at length discoverable in Dryasdust,--not too far across the north
Polish frontier, always with "Masovia" (the now Warsaw region) to fall
back upon. But in what number; how; nay almost when, to a year,--do not
ask poor Dryasdust, who overwhelms himself with idle details, and by
reason of the trees is unable to see the wood. [Voigt, ii. 177, 184,
192.]--The Teutsch Ritters straightway build a Burg for headquarters,
spread themselves on this hand and that; and begin their great task.
In the name of Heaven, we may still say in a true sense; as they, every
Ritter of them to the heart, felt it to be in all manner of senses.

The Prussians were a fierce fighting people, fanatically Anti-Christian:
the Teutsch Ritters had a perilous never-resting time of it, especially
for the first fifty years. They built and burnt innumerable stockades
for and against; built wooden Forts which are now stone Towns. They
fought much and prevalently; galloped desperately to and fro, ever on
the alert. In peaceabler ulterior times, they fenced in the Nogat and
the Weichsel with dams, whereby unlimited quagmire might become grassy
meadow,--as it continues to this day. Marienburg (MARY'S Burg), still
a town of importance in that same grassy region, with its grand stone
Schloss still visible and even habitable; this was at length their
Headquarter. But how many Burgs of wood and stone they built, in
different parts; what revolts, surprisals, furious fights in woody boggy
places, they had, no man has counted. Their life, read in Dryasdust's
newest chaotic Books (which are of endless length, among other ill
qualities), is like a dim nightmare of unintelligible marching and
fighting: one feels as if the mere amount of galloping they had would
have carried the Order several times round the Globe. What multiple
of the Equator was it, then, O Dryasdust? The Herr Professor, little
studious of abridgment, does not say.