![]() The extortion, slaughter and torment introduced by the warring armies as they swept back and forth would be remembered for centuries. Things were interrupted by the thirty years war (1618-48), when the German lands became the site of devastating conflict between the Habsburg emperor and Protestant forces that included Denmark, Sweden, Spain and France. Though far from powerful in that early period, the Hohenzollerns held Brandenburg together, avoiding break-up and partition at moments of succession, maintaining their neutrality in surrounding disputes, and introducing Protestant reformation at a tactfully gradual pace. In 1417 the territory, which constituted one of seven electorates of the Holy Roman Empire, was bought by Frederick Hohenzollern, who established himself as Frederick I. ![]() ![]() ![]() Landlocked and without defensible frontiers, medieval Brandenburg hardly seemed predestined to become "the heartland of a powerful European state". ![]()
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