But all that Hohenstaufen-Hohenzollern genealogy is mythical history. The real history of the Hohenzollern is of recent date, and begins in 1640 with the advent of the Great Elector (1640-1688). Compared with the ancient House of Habsburg or of Bourbon, the Hohenzollern may well be called the “parvenus” of royalty. Until the seventeenth century the Electors of Brandenburg were twice vassals—lieges of the Holy Roman Empire and vassals of the Kings of Poland; and when in 1701 the first Hohenzollern King promoted himself to royal rank and ascended the throne, he made ceaseless and humiliating attempts to secure recognition. The old Houses refused to accept his title, and would not acknowledge the upstart royal “brother.” But the very fact that the Hohenzollern are the “parvenus” of European royalty has spurred them on to more strenuous endeavours and to still higher ambitions. Their sole endeavour was to raise their position: _sich considerable machen_, as the Great Elector said in his quaint pidgin German. They were not born to the royal dignity. They had to make it. They were not accepted as Kings. They had to assert themselves and to impose their claims. The good sword of Frederick the Great asserted his claims with such results that, except Napoleon, no ruler ever since has disputed the right of the Hohenzollern to rank amongst the dynasts of Europe. V.—PRUSSIA AS AN UPSTART STATE. Even as the Hohenzollern are an upstart dynasty, so the Prussian State may be called an upstart State. It has not, like France, Great Britain, or Spain, two thousand years of history behind it. Until the end of the Middle Ages Christian civilization was bounded by the Elbe. The Prussian populations were the last in Europe to be converted to Christianity, and recent history has proved only too conclusively that the conversion never struck deep roots. Until the end of the Middle Ages the religious and military Order of the Teutonic Knights had to wage war against the Prussian heathen, and the magnificent ruin of Marienburg, the stately seat of the Teutonic Knights, still testifies to the achievements of the Order. Marienburg is the only historic city of Prussia; Berlin is but a mushroom growth of modern days. Whilst London and Paris go back to the beginning of European history, Berlin only three hundred years ago was a mean village inhabited by Wendish savages.