Burggraf Frederick on his first coming to Brandenburg found but a cool reception as Statthalter. He came as a representative of law and rule; and there had been many noble gentlemen of the Turpin profession helping themselves by a ruleless life of late. Industry was at a low ebb, violence was rife; plunder and disorder everywhere; trade wrecked, private feuds abounding; too much the habit of baronial gentlemen to live by the saddle, as they termed it; that is by highway robbery in modern phrase. At first the Burggraf tried gentle methods, but when he found the noble lords scoffed at him, calling him a "Nürnberger Tand" (Nuremberg Toy), and continued their plunderings and other contumacies, then with the aid of his Frankish men-at-arms, neighbouring potentates and artillery--one huge gun, a twenty-four pounder, called Lazy Peg (_Faule Grete_), is mentioned--he set to work, and in a remarkably short period established comparative peace and order.[13] That was a piece of work highly acceptable, we may be sure, to the merchants of Nuremberg. Were they not concerned in bringing fish and wool from the North, to exchange them in Italy and Venice for the silks and spices of the East? In 1414 we catch a glimpse of the sombre figure of John Huss, the reformer, the Bohemian successor of Wiclif, passing through Nuremberg. The people here seem to have sympathised with his views. He explained his position to the clergy and council, and they invited him to return to them if he fared successfully at Kostnitz. But there he met his martyrdom. His supporters, the down-trodden peasantry of Bohemia, thereupon rose in a revolt, which Empire for a long while utterly failed to suppress. Nuremberg had exhibited no great enthusiasm against heretics. Though, in 1399, she had burnt six women and a man for heresy, yet she had given Huss a warm welcome. But the devastation wrought by the Hussite army alienated all sympathy, and on the suppression of the "heretics," Nuremberg joined in the universal rejoicings of all steady-going merchants. She had taken occasional part in the Hussite wars; but chiefly through paying money instead of sending a proper contingent of men--a fact which illustrates the narrow, selfish and lazy policy of the town communities where the Empire was concerned. It was impossible for the Emperor to keep order with insufficient means of police. For the Emperor got not a foot of German territory with his Imperial crown. He was merely the feudal head, and as such found it very hard to get troops or money from the German people. Most of the members of the Empire--petty princes and Imperial towns alike--were concerned chiefly not with the ordering of the Empire but with becoming sovereign in their own territories. There was very little feeling of Imperial unity. If the Empire did not do its duty by the towns, the towns did very little for the Empire, beyond supplying money.