In 1411 the Emperor borrowed one hundred thousand florins of Frederick of Hohenzollern, the Burgrave, or "Count of the Castle," of Nuremburg, direct descendant from that first Hohenzollern who helped to found the Hapsburg dynasty. For this loan Sigismund gave his creditor a mortgage on the territory of Brandenburg. Frederick at once took up his residence there, and subsequently made an offer of three hundred thousand gold florins more to purchase the territory. The Emperor accepted the terms, so the then small state was thereafter the home of the Hohenzollerns, and was on its way to become Prussia. Sigismund and his brother Wenceslas belonged to another dynasty, that of Luxemburg. But after the death of the former, in 1440, the Hapsburgs succeeded again to the crown, which they wore until it was taken off at the bidding of Napoleon in 1806. Just before the issuance of the Golden Bull, there had occurred that most revolutionary event, the discovery of gunpowder. When a man in leathern jacket could do more than a knight in armor, when safety depended upon quickness and lightness, and ponderous iron and steel were fatal--then a momentous change in conditions was at hand! The destruction of feudalism was involved in this discovery of 1344. Under Frederick III., that Hapsburg who came to the throne in 1440, the Empire seemed to have reached a climax of disorder. Old things were passing away, and the new had not yet come to take their place. On the eastern shore of the Baltic the march of German civilization had received an almost fatal check. The "German Order," an organization of knights intended to keep back the Slavonic tide, had failed to do so. Holland was becoming estranged from the German Empire. France had obtained possession of Flanders. Luxemburg, Lorraine, and Burgundy were becoming practically independent; while it began to seem as if Switzerland were forever lost to Germany. And now the Hungarians were setting up their new king, the valiant Hunyadi; and the Bohemians theirs, George of Podjebrod. Not only were these kingdoms and principalities slipping away, but the peasants in the cantons of the Alps, and elsewhere in revolt, were some of them led by great nobles. Still another, and perhaps the gravest of all these dangers, was one which yet darkens our horizon in this closing nineteenth century! In the year 1250 the Turks had commenced their existence in Asia Minor, with one little clan, led by one obscure chieftain. This clan had grown as if by miracle into a great empire in the East, rivaling in power that of the Saracens, whose successors they were as the head of the Mahomedan Empire. The Turks had been steadily encroaching upon Germany; had made havoc in Hungary; had devastated Austria, and were now insolently pressing on toward their goal, the Imperial palace at Vienna.