and "all the Scythe-smiths turned out," fire-breathing, deaf to a
poor Tutor's pleadings and explainings; and how the Tutor, who had
ridden forth in calm humor with two Princes, came galloping home
with only one,--the Smiths having driven another into boggy
ground, and there caught and killed him; [Rentsch, p. 306 (Date
not given; guess, about 1270).] with the Burggraf's commentary on
that sad proceeding (the same Friedrich III. who had married
Meran's Sister); and the amends exacted by him, strict and severe,
not passionate or inhuman. Or again how the Nurnbergers once, in
the Burggraf's absence, built a ring-wall round his Castle;
entrance and exit now to depend on the Nurnbergers withal! And how
the Burggraf did not fly out into battle in consequence, but
remedied it by imperturbable countenance and power of driving.
With enough of the like sort; which readers can conceive.


BURGGRAF FRIEDRICH III.; AND THE ANARCHY OF NINETEEN YEARS.

This same Friedrich III., Great-grandson of Conrad the first
Burggraf, was he that got the Burggraviate made hereditary in his
family (A.D. 1273); which thereby rose to the fixed rank of
Princes, among other advantages it was gaining. Nor did this
acquisition come gratis at all, but as the fruit of good service
adroitly done; service of endless importance as it proved.
Friedrich's life had fallen in times of huge anarchy; the
Hohenstauffen line gone miserably out,--Boy Conradin, its last
representative, perishing on the scaffold even (by a desperate
Pope and a desperate Duke of Anjou); [At Naples, 25th October,
1268.] Germans, Sicilian Normans, Pope and Reich, all at daggers-
drawn with one another; no Kaiser, nay as many as Three at once!