Another power which arose in the marchland of Saxon and Slave, to the north of Saxony in the later sense, was the land known specially as the _Mark_, the groundwork of the power which has in our own day risen to the head of Germany. The _North Mark_ of Saxony became the _Mark of Brandenburg_. ♦Reign of Albert the Bear, 1134-1170.♦ In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under Albert the Bear and his house, the Mark greatly extended itself at the expense of the Slaves. ♦Union with Bohemia, 1373-1415. | House of Hohenzollern, 1415.♦ United for a time with the kingdom of Bohemia, it passed into the house of the Burgraves of _Nürnberg_, that House of Hohenzollern which has grown step by step till it has reached Imperial rank in our own day. The power thus formed presently acquired a special character by the acquisition of what may be called a German land out of Germany, a land which gave them in the end a higher title, and which by its geographical position led irresistibly to a further increase of territory. ♦Union of Brandenburg and Prussia, 1611-1618.♦ Early in the seventeenth century the Electors of Brandenburg acquired by inheritance the _Duchy of Prussia_, that is merely Eastern Prussia, a fief, not of the Empire but of the crown of Poland, and which lay geographically apart from their strictly German dominions. ♦Prussia independent of Poland, 1656; becomes kingdom, 1701.♦ The common sovereign of Brandenburg and Prussia was thus the man of two lords; but the Great Elector Frederick William became a wholly independent sovereign in his duchy, and his son Frederick took on himself the kingly title for the land which was thus freed from all homage. Both before and after the union with Prussia, the Electors of Brandenburg continued largely to increase their German dominions. ♦1523-1623.♦ A temporary possession of the principality of _Jägerndorf_ in Silesia, unimportant in itself, led to great events in later times. ♦Westfalian possessions of Brandenburg, 1614-1666. | 1702-1744.♦ The acquisition, at various times in the seventeenth century, of _Cleve_ and other outlying Westfalian lands, which were further increased in the next century, led in the same way to the modern dominion of Prussia in western Germany. ♦Acquisitions in Pomerania, 1638-1648. | 1713-1719.♦ But the most solid acquisition of Brandenburg in this age was that of _Eastern Pomerania_, to which the town of Stettin, with a further increase of territory, was added after the wars of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. The events of the Thirty Years’ War also increased the dominions both of Brandenburg and Saxony at the expense of the neighbouring ecclesiastical princes. ♦Later acquisitions of Prussia.♦ The later acquisitions of the House of Hohenzollern, after the Electors of Brandenburg had taken the kingly title from their Prussian duchy, concern Prussia as an European power at least as much as they concern Brandenburg as a German power. ♦German character of