scufflings, objurgations; a great outbreak ripening itself.
Teutsch Ritterdom has to hire soldiers; no money to pay them.
It was in these sad years that the Teutsch Ritterdom, fallen
moneyless, offered to pledge the Neumark to our Kurfurst; 1444,
that operation was consummated. [Pauli, ii. 187,--does not name
the sum.] All this goes on, in hotter and hotter form, for ten
years longer.

"PERIOD THIRD begins, early in 1454, with an important special
catastrophe; and ends, in the Thirteenth year after, with a still
more important universal one of the same nature. Prussian BUND, or
Anti-Oppression Covenant of the Towns and Landed Gentry, rising in
temperature for fourteen years at this rate, reached at last the
igniting point, and burst into fire. February 4th, 1454, the Town
of Thorn, darling first-child of Teutsch Ritterdom,--child 223
years old at this time, ["Founded 1231, as a wooden Burg, just
across the river, on the Heathen side, mainly round the stem of an
immense old Oak that grew handy there,--Seven Barges always on the
river (Weichsel), to fly to our own side if quite overwhelmed"
Oak and Seven Barges is still the Town's-
Arms of Thorn. See Kohler, Munzbelustigungen, italic> xxii. 107; quoting Dusburg (a Priest of the Order) and his
old Chronica Terrae Prusciae, written in
1326.] and grown very big, and now very angry,--suddenly took its
old parent by the throat, so to speak, and hurled him out to the
dogs; to the extraneous Polacks first of all. Town of Thorn,
namely, sent that day its 'Letter of Renunciation' to the
Hochmeister over at Marienburg; seized in a day or two more the
Hochmeister's Official Envoys, Dignitaries of the Order; led them
through the streets, amid universal storm of execrations, hootings