r LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA FROM THE LIBRARY OF F. VON BOSCHAN f^ ^^ v^ A i / \; Si MEMOIRS OF THE COURT, ARISTOCRACY, AND DIPLOMACY OF AUSTRIA. VOL. I. LorsDon: printed by SroTxiswoonE & Co.. New-street-Square. M E M I R S OF THE COURT, AlilSTOCUACy, AND DIPLOMACY OF AUSTRIA. BY , Dli. E. VEHSE. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY PEANZ^ DEMMLEE. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. 1856. 1 PREFACE. The ''« Memoirs of the Court of Austria" are the English version of the corresponding part of the series published by Dr. E. Vehse under the title of " History of the German Courts since the Eeformation." The author, in speaking of the character which he wished to impart to his work, quotes the saying of Horace Walpole : " I am no historian ; I draw characters, I preserve anecdotes, which my supe- riors, the historians, may enchase into their weighty annals, or pass over at their pleasure." Whilst, however, pro- testing against the pedantry of the learned writers of his- tory, who, notwithstanding their profound erudition, only too frequently fall into the traps of those fables convenues with which their path is beset on all sides, he lays claim to the merit of having studiously drawn, not from the books of theoretical historians, but from those sources which men experienced in the ways of the world, and in the conduct of affairs, have left to us. " Writing," he con- tinues, " for Germans (who are so very particular concern- literary authorities), I used the caution of giving from those sources the verba ipsissima of contemporaneous nar- ratives. If a writer does that, and if it is acknowledged A 3 vi PREFACE. on all sides that he has written conscientiously and im- partially, he ought not to be expected to quote for every little fact the source or book from which he may have taken it. He who does not falsify history in its great features will surely not invent the lesser ones ; and he may fairly be supposed to have taken the latter from hundreds and hundreds of books which he read for his purpose, and many a one of which did not yield him more than, perhaps, one little item. If it were requisite to make a display of my preparatory studies (during twelve years), I might furnish a list of books, the titles of which would rather surprise even very great men of the republic of letters. I was always quite satisfied only to find some small trait ; but how many wei'e the books which I had to read with- out any remunerating result whatever ! " The principal authorities are mentioned occasionally throuorhout the book. It will not however be deemed out of place here to say a few words on three of the writers whom Dr. Vehse has most frequently quoted. The fol- lowing notices are taken from various parts of the work. Count Francis Christopher Khevenhliller, born in 1589, was since 1616, for an aggregate period of fourteen years, under three Emperors, Matthias, Ferdinand II., and Fer- dinand III., ambassador ordinary and extraordinary at Madrid. There he was made a knight of the Gulden Fleece, He had likewise some diplomatic missions to Florence, Turin, and Mantua ; to the court of Paris ; to Archduke Albert at Brussels ; to the courts of the three spiritual Electors; and to Munich. Khevenhiiller was one of the first gallants at court, but withal one of the most learned nobles, and most able men of business in the whole PREFACE. Vll monarchy. Like Sir Christopher Ilattori, he was cele- brated for his skill in dancings and, moreover, for his horsemanship. Much greater fame, however, was gained for him by the records of his life so rich in experience. His Annales Ferdinandei are the most important of all German works of history from the Reformation down to Frederic the Great. He published them after his return from Spain, in 1640 — 1646, at Ratisbon, in an edition of not more than forty copies, intended for "great lords," among whom they were distributed^ It is a work similar to that which De Thou wrote for France — a contempo- raneous history of all the European states, in which he himself had been an important actor. The work had been calculated to fill twelve folios, of which nine only were published at the time. When his heirs wished to publish a new and complete edition, permission was refused by Leopold I. ; in 1721, Charles VL at last granted it. The Annals comprise the period from the birth of Ferdinand II., in 1578, to his death in 1637. They contain the most varied and important state papers, resolutions, despatches, relations, and such like.* Elizabeth Charlotte Duchess of Orleans, born in 1652, was the daughter of Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, and granddaughter of the " Winter-king" of Bohemia. Having married, in 1671, the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV., she became a widow in 1701 ; and died, in 1722, as the mother of the notorious regent. Although unfortu- nately ugly, she kept her own at the French court by her strong sense and by her powers of mind ; even Louis XIV. * Count Ivhevcnlilillcr died in 1650, at Baden near Vienna, as governor of Croatia. A 4 Vlll PREFACE. did not disdain to consult her, not only in affairs of the royal family, but also in those of the state. Her father lived in morganatic marriage — in his case, a specious term for bigamy — with a Countess Degenfeklt. Most of the letters of the duchess were written to a half-sister of hers by that morganatic union, and the correspondence passed to the family archives of the Counts Degenfeklt at Eibach in Wiirtemberg, from which it was published by Wolf- gang Menzel. The collection, as far as printed until now (1853), comprises the correspondence with that half-sister Louisa, and with Caroline of Ansbach, the Queen of George II. The letters are most remarkable for their plain spoken naivete, and for the unconcern with which the writer does not shrink from telling everything. The most hidden secrets of the German courts (and also of the court of William III. of England), are laid bare in them. Joseph von Hormayr, born in 1782, in the Tyrol, was descended from an ancient Tyrolese family, which became extinct at his death. He was an extraordinary character from a child, and he published his first book at the age of twelve. His memory was truly wonderful, such as has been possessed only by a very few learned men, by Julius Scaliger or Pico de Mirandola. He would, for instance, repeat in order the names of a collection of 9000 portraits in the possession of his father; he knew by heart some hundreds of dramas, and ten or twelve thousand verses from the classics of all nations ; he, moreover, was able to recite the first three books of the JEneid, not only straight on, but also backwards. With equal facility he retained names, dates, and numbers ; he had a very keen eye in discern- ing handwritings and physiognomies, and after any length PREFACE. IX of time lie would most accurately recognise and identify them again. Having entered the Austrian public ser- vice in 1797, he became, in 1803, director of the Im- perial Family an(J State Archives, which post he held upwards of twenty-five years. In 1828, King Louis of Bavaria called him into his service. In 1832, he became Bavarian minister at Hanover, then at Bremen ; after which he returned to Munich as director of the Archives and Councillor of State. He lived to see the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848, In which year he died. Hormayr, besides his eminent natural talents, had the advantage of his position as keeper of the Vienna archives, — perhaps the richest in the world, — and moreover of his personal and intimate acquaintance with the most distinguished persons of the highest society in the Imperial capital. His views of tlie duties of the historian he laid down when answering the reproach of Indiscretion which was made to him, by quoting the saying of Cicero : " Prima historice lex est, ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri nou audeaty Even Count Mailath, Hormayr's most bitter opponent, is obliged himself to confirm many of his state- ments. F. D. March 15. 1856. CONTENTS OP THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER I. Page Maximilian I. - - - - - - -l 1. His Parentage and Character. — The " Felix Austria Nube" - 1 2. The Emperor Maximilian's Family - - - - 27 CHAPTER II. Charles V. ....... 33 1. His Youth and Education in the Netherlands - - - ^3 2. Accession in the Netherlands and in Sp&m, and Election as Emperor - - - - - - -44 3. The French Wars. — Battle of Pavia. — Assault of Rome. — Challenge between Charles and Francis I — Siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1529 - - - - - 50 4. The Sickingen Feud, and the Peasants' War - - - 74 5. The Diet of Augsburg, and the French Wars to the Peace of Crespy, 1544 - - - - - - 94 6 The Sinalkalde War. — Battle of Miihlberg - - - 110 7. Maurice s Expedition against Charles - - - - 128 8. Resignation of Charles V. — His Death in Spain - - 165 9. Personal Notices of Charles V. - - - - 174 10. The Family of Charles V. - - - - - 193 Xll CONTENTS OF CHAPTER III. Pago Ferdinand I. - - - - - - -198 1. Personal Notice of the Emperor - - - - 198 2. Position of the Nobility under Ferdinand I. in Austria. — The First Protestant " Chain " of the Nobles - - - 202 3. Ferdinand's Family. — Philippina Welser and her Children - 209 CHAPTER IV. Maximilian II. - - - - - - - 217 1 . Personal Notices of the Emperor - - - - 2 1 7 2. State of Religion. — The Army — The Austrian Nobility is made, bj- the Matriculation of 1572, a close Corporation - 220 3. The Family of the Emperor Maximilian II. - . - 227 CHAPTER V. RODOLPH II. - - - - - - ' - 230 1. His Court at Prague. — His Antiquarian, Alchemical, and Magic Hobbies - - - - - - - 230 2. The Italians at the Imperial Court. — First Beginnings of Mili- tary Rule. — The First Camarilla of Clerks and Valets - 240 3. Reformation and Counter-reformation in Austria - - 248 4. State of Hungary. — The Bohemian "Eoyal Letter." — Rupture ■with Matthias. — Deposition of Rodolph. — Latter Days and Death of Rodolph II. ..... 257 5. Rodolph's Natural Children - - - - - 265 CHAPTER VL Matthias ----- ... 267 1. Personal Notices of the Emperor ... - 267 2. The Thirty Years' War.' — " Defenestratio Pragensis." — Cha- racteristics of the Actors in it - - - - 270 3. Downfall of Cardinal Clesel. — Death of Matthias - - 278 THE FIRST VOLUME. Xlll CHAPTER Vir. Page Ferdinand II. - , - - - - - - 284 1. Personal Notices of the Emperor. — The Three Steins (Stones), the Three Bergs (Mounts), and the Dorf (Thorp) - - 284 2. Count Thurn before Vienna. — " Nandy," Thonradtel, and Danipierre's Cuirassiers in the Hof burg. — Election of Fer- dinand as Emperor of the Romans, and of the Elector Palatine Frederic as King of Bohemia ..... 293 3. Frederic's hopeless Situation at Prague. — The Bohemian Aristocracy, and Calvinist Outrages . - - - 300 4. The Expedition of Tilly and of the Duke of Bavaria to Bo- hemia. — The Battle of the White Mountain, and the Execu- tions in the Ring at Prague . . - . SOS 5. The New Catholic Aristocracy of Austria, and the Great Creation of Counts and Princes ... - 328 6. The Protestant Partisans Mansfeld, Brunswick, &c. - - 330 7. Wallenstein and his Plans for the Establishment of the Abso- lute Sovereignty of the Emperor .... 3:37 8. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and the Battles of Breitenfeld and Liitzea. — Wallenstein Generalissimo in ahsolutissima Forma - - - - - - - 301 9. Wallenstein's Downfall. — - Rewards bestowed on his Betrayers and Murderers. — Piccolomini, Aldringer, CoUoredo, Butler, Lesley, &c. - - - - - - - 395 10. Duke Bernard of Weimar - - - - - 424 11. Death of Ferdinand IL — His Family - - - 431 CHAPTER VIIL Ferdinand III. ------- 435 1. Personal Notices of the^ Emperor. — The Premier Maximilian Von Trautraannsdorf - - - - - • 435 2. The Last Teriod of the Thirty Years' War, and the last Papist Generals of the Emperor, Gallas and Piccolomini. — The last Protestant Generals of the Empei-or, Hoik, Gotz, and Melander. — Holzapfel. — Austrian! Plans for seducing the Hessian and Bavarian Armies. — Bauer's and Torstensou's Campaigns . - . ~ - - 43 XIV CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. Page The Peace of Westphalia, and the new Position of the Imperial Court with regard to the German Princes and to the Aristo- cracy in the Austrian Dominions - . - . 457 4. Diet of Ratisbon. — Death of Ferdinand III. — His Family - 468 CHAPTER IX. Lkopolu I. - - - ~ - - - -471 1. The Election of the Empei'or at Frankfort - - - 471 2. Leopold's Ministers Portia, Auersperg, Lobkowitz, Montecu- culi, Sinzendorf, Lamberg, Schwartzenberg, Hocher, &c. - 477 3. Wedding Festivities at the Marriage of Leopold I. with the Spanish Infanta, 1666. — The Great Equestrian Ballet during the Carnival of 1667 - - - - - 494 MEMOIR S OF THE COURT OE AUSTRIA. CHAPTER 1. MAXIMILIAN I. 1493—1519. Ills PAKENTAGE AND OHAUACTER. NUBE." The foundev of the Austrian monarchy as an European power was the Emperor Maxuiiilian I. Rodolph of Ilabs- burg, the first of the dynasty, had Laid tlie foundation of the family estate of the House of Austria; under Maximi- lian it was, by three "fortunate marriages, raised to the rank of the first empire of the civilised world. Rodolph of Habsburg was j)0ssessed only of the dukedom of Austria "with its capital Vienna, and of the two Alpine countries, Styria and Carniola. In the course of the fourteenth century, the third Alpine country, Carinthia, and the fourth and most important one, Tyrol, besides Austria beyond the Inn, and the possessions in Swabia and Alsace, VOL. I. *B 2 MAXIMH.IAN I. were added. Maximilian afterwards acquired, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the rich Burgundian Nether- lands, and, moreover, the vast Spanish monarchy ; and, lastly, secured to his House, by the act of settlement con- cluded at Vienna in the year 1515, the eventual acquisition of the two crowns, the Magyaric of Hungary, and the Sclavonic of Bohemia. An organised and permanent court did not exist at Vienna under Maximilian. His immediate successor (Charles V.) mostly resided in Spain and the Netherlands, the following Emperors alternately at Prague and Vienna. Rodolph 11. remained constantly at Pi'ague, and never once, as Emperor, entered Vienna. It was not until the Thirty Years' War, under Matthias, and especially under Ferdinand II., that Vienna became the fixed and ordinary residence of the Austrian monarchs. Maximilian was the son of the pompous, pedantic Emperor Frederic III., who had lost a leg, and who died of a surfeit of melons in 1493, at the age of eighty-eight. His mother was the beautiful and lively Eleanor of Por- tugal. He was born in 1458, became Emperor at the age of thirty- five, and reigned during more than a quarter of a century, from 1493 — 1519. His mother he lost when a boy ; at the time of her death she had scarcely completed her thirtieth year. In childhood, Maximilian gave but little promise. He was five years old before he learned to speak even a few words. Until his twelfth year he was tongue-tied, so that most people considered him an idiot. After that time, however, his mind expanded with singular quickness ; not, indeed, by the study of theology, medicine, and the black art, in which his father caused him to be instructed, but by the reading of knightly adventures and of the chro- nicles, as well as by the study of what was then called the science of mining ; of war and artillery ; and of archi- tecture, painting, and music ; towards which pleasanter HIS FIRST MARRIAGE. 3 pursuits he was drawn by the natural bent of his own dis- position. He inherited the lively temperament of his mother. Even as a youth he would, like a keen sports- man, range the fields and woods, and cross over precipices and glaciers, hunting the wild goat, or in search of adven- tures such as the whole of his life was replete with. He became one of the boldest chamois hunters, as well as one of the most gallant lovers of the fair sex. At the ase of nineteen he hastened to the Netheidands to marry the beautiful Mary of Burgundy, the richest heiress in Europe, the otily daughter of the Duke Charles the Bold, who fell in the battle of Nancy against the united hosts of the Swiss and of the Duke of Lorraine. Mary chose Maximilian from among twelve suitors who aspired to the rich prize of her beauty and of her bound- less wealth. The States of the Netherlands had, after the death of Duke Charles, wished her to marry the Dauphin, afterwards King Charles VIII. of France ; but an embassy arrived from the Emperor Frederic, exhibiting a letter and a ring which Mary, with the consent of her father, had sent to Maximilian. This prince was considered the handsomest youth of his time ; at all events, such was Mary's opinion of him. The repute of extraordinary manliness preceded him, and he was the son of the monarch who sat on the first throne of Christendom. Mary had either made his acquaintance at a former interview, or, as is stated by others, had only seen his likeness and ever since felt an affection for liim. She, therefore, now de- clared openly and frankly that, " him she had chosen in her heart, and him she would have for licr spouse and no other." INIary's stepmother, INIargarct of York, the third and last wife of C 'Karles the Bold, sent to the son of Cajsar 100,000 guilders, to assist his straitened finances. Maxi- milian, thereupon, made a splendid entry into Ghent, clad in silver-gilt armour, and riding on a magnificent brown charger; instead of a helmet, lie wore round his golden locks B 2 4 MAXIMILIAN I. a precious wedding garland of pearls and costly jewels ; his retinue were electors, princes, bishops, and 600 noble lords. Having alighted at his quarters, he received a message from the princess, who sent to welcome him and to invite him to her. After supper, therefore, Maximilian rode by torchlight to her palace, and Mary went to meet him. When they came in sight of each other, they both knelt down in the open street, and then fell into each other's arms, Mary calling out, with tears in her eyes, " Be welcome to me, thou scion of the noble German stock, whom 1 have so long wished to see, and whom I now am rejoiced to meet." On the third day following (19th of August, 1477), the marriage was celebrated. But this happy union lasted no more than four years and a half. Mary had borne to her lord a son, Philip, who afterwards became the heir of the Spanish monarchy, and a daughter, Margaret. She was far advanced in pregnancy with a third child when, being out hawking, she was thrown from her horse, which, falling upon her, and crushing her against the stump of a tree, injured her most severely. From feelings of delicacy she concealed this, until it was too late for medical aid; and she died, 16th March, 1482, at the age of twenty-five, in the bloom of her years. " Never, as long as I live, shall I forget this bonny wife of mine," were the words with which Maximilian parted from her corpse. After Mary's death, the whole country broke out in open rebellion. Maximilian, who in his Habsburg domi- nions used to respect none but the clergy and the nobles of the land, was utterly amazed at the extraordinary liberty of the Flemish burghers in their large, industrious, and wealthy cities. He had not succeeded in making himself popular with the sturdy Netherlanders, who were by no means inclined to bow down before him, and whom he, on his part, treated with genuine Austrian harshness and superciliousness. The mercenaries of Maximilian's body- CAPTIVITY AT BRUGES. 5 guard especially had committed many acts of insolence and oppression. A rebellion broke out in Ghent. Maximilian put it down by means of executions. He then left that city to reside at Bruges. It was in vain that his jester, Conrad von der Rosen, warned him not to allow himself to be caught there. His mercenaries were one day drill- ing in the market-place of Bruges. On the captain's giving the German word of command " Stehf^ (Halt), the bystanders mistook it for the Flemish " SliW'' (Slay), and the mercenaries having at the same time lowered their lances, the citizens, believing that they were going to be attacked, marched under the fifty-two banners of their several guilds to the market-place, disarmed the troops, and put Maximilian and his councillors in durance vile (5th February, 1488). This captivity lasted four months. Conrad von der Kosen made an unsuccessful attempt to rescue his royal master. He plunged at night with two swimming belts, one for himself and another for Maximi- lian, into the ditch of the castle of Bruges, where the illustrious prisoner was confined ; but the swans attacked the faithful jester and drove him back with their wings. The Emperor Frederic was at last obliged to send an Im- perial army to liberate his captive son ; after which, Max- imilian again had forty of the most stiif -necked burghers of Bruges put to death. Maximilian, Avhen a prisoner at Bruges, had been for two years the Roman King elect. He held the regency in the Netherlands as guardian of his son Philip until 1494, when the prince, having completed his sixteenth year, undertook the government himself. Since 1490, however, ]\Iaximilian resided principally in the Tyrol, where Sigismund, a cousin of his of a younger branch of his family, ruletl. This prince was, in first wedlock, married to a daughter of James L, of Scotland, and afterwards to a daughter of the founder of the Albertine line of Saxony, both of which unions were without issue. He was a very B 3 6 MAXIMILIAN I. weak-minded and profligate, but witlial tyrannical and most eccentric, personage, and the laughing-stock of his servants, who led him at pleasure by contriving to make mysterious voices, as of ghosts, speak to him from the stoves and roofs, and other quite extraordinary places. Maximilian at last, with the consent of the States, forced him, in 1490, to resign ; and the crazy old prince was con- fined to twelve castles which he reserved to himself, and seven of which he called by his own name, as, for instance, Sigismundsburg, Sigismundskron, &c. At these castles he passed his time in the pleasures of the chase and in angHng, till his death in 1496, when the Tyrol was re- united by the lucky heir Maximilian with the family pos- sessions of the House of Habsbur^. The Tyrol became the favourite abode of Maximilian. The Habsburgers had for many years called it " the heart and the shield of their house." And, indeed, its position made it a most important political link in the dominions of Austria. It was coterminous with the powerful re« public of Venice, which, like France, was one of the prin- cipal rivals of Habsburg ; and, moreover, with the Swiss republic, which had wrested its liberty from its Austrian rulers. Too heavy a yoke might have driven the Tyro- lese into the arms of either of these two republics. The Tyrol besides connected Austria Proper with its outlying provinces near the Lake of Constance, in Svvabia, and the Alsace. In consideration of this politically important position, it was looked upon as the most precious gem of the monarchy, where the policy of the House of Habsburg continued to respect the old liberties, rights, and customs even in the days of Ferdinand II. and Leopold I., when the popular liberties were crushed in the Archdukedom itself, and in Bohemia, and were at least attempted to be crushed in Hungary. It was also very important in a commercial point of view, being the high road for all traffic to and fro across the Alps. Much money was thus drawn SPORTING ADVENTURES. 7 into the country, whose agriculture and cattle-breeding were raised by it to a state of high prosperity. The fairs at Botzen, having been established as early as the time of Frederic Barbarossa, were then most flourishing, and be- came a source of great wealth to the country. Maximi- lian used to say of the Tyrol, " it Is a coarse coat of frieze, but it keeps one warm." He liked to dress in the Tyro- lese fashion, in a green short coat, with a. broad-brimmed green hat on his head. The hills and valleys of the Tyrol are full of memorials of his sporting adventures. The most famous is that which he met Avith on the precipice called the Martinswand, and which has been celebrated by Collin's poem. On this steep rock in the Zirler moimtains, in the valley of the Upper Inn, he caused a Avooden cross, forty feet high, to be erected on the brink of the giddy height in token of his wonderful escape. An angel, or rather the Tyrolese chamois hunter, Oswald Zips, who halloed to him, and who was therefore ennobled under the name of Hollauer Von Hohenfels (High-rock), is said to have saved him there from starvino;, after his havino- remained in this perilous position for two days and two nights, beginning with Easter Monday, 1490. At another time, Maximilian, on a steep rock in the Tyrol, stood his ground against a ferocious bear. The Netherlands were likewise the scene of many of his hunting adventures. In the Brabant foi*est one day a stag met him in a narrow close path, and was going to leap over him, when Maximilian stabbed him with his sword through the heart, and thus flung the creature back. Being also passionately fond of hawking, he sent for hawks from the most distant countries, even from Tartary ; and employed for this sport a staff of up- wards of sixty persons under fifteen head falconers. Maximilian Avas bold even to temerity. At Munich he once went alone into the cage of a lion, forced open its jaws and pulled out its tongue, whilst the beast quietly B 4 8 MAXIMILIAN I. submitted to it. At Ulm, he mounted the highest ledge of the tower of the minster, and, stepping out upon the iron bar by which the beacon lantern was suspended, ba- lanced himself on one foot, poising the other into the air. Maximilian inherited very little of his father's nature and disposition ; in fact, he took much more after his mo- th er and grandmother. Like the latter, the Polish Cim- burga, he was^of extraordinary strength, and like his mother, the lively southron Eleanora of Portugal, full of sjjirit and animation. Fanciful, and romantically chival- rous, he has been called " the last Knight, with whom the Middle Ages were buried." His father died in 1493, at Linz, as Mathias Corvinus, the great king of Hungary, had taken Vienna from the Austrian monarch ; but scarcely had Maximilian succeeded to the supreme power, when he recovered the seat of his ancestors from the host left behind by Mathias. He Avas most active in war, as well as in the lists. When he held his first Diet at Worms, the French knight Claude de Barre, a man of gigantic strength, hung out his shield from the window of his inn, challenging all the Germans to single combat. Maximilian then had the arms of Austria and Burgundy hung by the side of the shield of the Frenchman, whom he conquered with the sword, after the lances of both had glanced from the cuirasses. Such was Maximilian's strength that he would wrench off iron bars merely with his hand. There was no one more skilful as an archer, no one more expert as a horseman, than he. He was the best shot, the best gunner and manager of the ordnance, as he was likewise the first in all field sports. Gunnery was one of his hobbies ; in battle he very fre- quently pointed the cannon himself, shooting as if for a match with the regular artillerymen. In the Netherlands he once landed under the fire of the French guns, and took their pieces from them. The Emperor had the four largest arsenals of that time, — at Vienna, at Innsbruck, at THE LANSQUENETS. 9 Gortz, and at Breisach. Among his famous cannons, some of what he called his sharp (saucy) wenches bore the names "the Fair Semiramis," "the Fair Helena," "the Fair Medea," " the Fair Dido," " the Fair Thisbe." Others were called " the Weckauf " (the Awakener), and " the Purlepaus." Maximilian, with the help of George of Frundsberg, his brave captain in war, organised the paid militia, which had been established since the times of the Hussite War, under the name of the German Lansque- nets.* He formed them in regiments, and they soon be- came the dread of all Europe. He knew very well how to manage them ; and on one occasion when they mutinied, growling at him for their pay, he pacified them at last, with the help of his jester, by some broad jokes. Under Maximilian the soldiery began to form a distinct class. They made war for the mere pay, without caring in the least for what object. The princes would retain these mercenaries in time of peace also, partly as body guards, and partly as garrisons in the fortified places. This caused a very material change in the political con- stitution of Europe. In ancient times the whole people had carried arms ; in the middle ages only the feudal nobles and the burghers ; yet these also now gradually left the profession of arms entirely to the soldiery. Thus the power which had formerly rested with the people, then with the nobility and the cities, was more and more exclusively transferred to the princes. Maximilian, however, Avas not yet able to accomplish great things with the help of his Lansquenets. Being a bad financier, he always lacked the money to pay them. He was therefore called, in derision, " Poco denari," (the Penniless) ; his best treasure was always in pledge with his rich subjects ; and once (see Rymer's Foidera, xiii. * Landsknechtc, from their being the militia of the land. The word Zan^knechte, •which derives their name from their being armed with lances or pikes, is a later corruption of the original term. — Translator. 10 MAXIMILIAN I. p. 234.) in 1505, being in great straits for money, he even pledged to King Henry VII. of England, at that time re- puted to be the richest prince in Christendom, the cele- brated Jleur de lys, the largest jewel of those times, which he had inherited from Mary of Burgundy. The money lent by the roj^al pawnbroker on this security amounted to 50,000 crowns, at four shillings sterling each. Maximilian was exceedingly free and open-handed, the very opposite of his stingy, avaricious father. This gener- ous disposition he showed even when a mere boy. His father having one day given him a dish with fruit, and a purse with money, he kept the fruit, and gave the money to his servants. When the father sighed, " that will be a scattergood (Streugiitlein)," Maximilian replied, "I will not be king of the money, but of the people, and of all those who possess money." Maximilian, in an Austrian " patriarchal" way, loved the people who reverenced him ; and he lived with them on very good terms, especially with the burghers of the free imperial cities, and their fair wives and daughters. Once, in the camp before Padua, he was warned against the Ita- lian viands of a sutler s wife ; but he ate the whole of his portion, saying, " Never fear ; she is an Augsburg woman, and they are very good people." Maximilian, therefore, was very popular with the German burghers ; he shared in their feasts, ensfao-ed in their shooting matches, and danced at their balls. The chronicles of Augsburg mention the magnificent dances got up in this city for him as well as for Philip of Burgundy, his not less gallant son ; in particular, how in the court-yard of the " Frohnhof," the house of the bishop, on St. John's eve, bonfires fifty feet high were lit, round which the royal guests danced the Torch-dance with the daughters of the patrician houses. It was on account of the ladies that Maximilian liked Augsburg better than any other city in the world, for which reason Louis XII. of France generally GAIETY OF THE EMPEROR. 11 used In jest to call him " the Burgomaster of Augsburg." He also liked a dance with the ladies, married and im- married, of Nuremberg. On one occasion he allowed himself to be disarmed and made captive by them to dance with them a few days longer. It is even recorded that at Ratisbon he let the light of his countenance shine upon that portion of the fair sex whom, in the language of those times, we might call the "Ladies Errant." The magistracy, well knowing the Imperial court and its Avays, had banished the whole set of them from the precincts of the city, as long as the Diet should last. They, therefore, appeared supplicating in a body before the gay Emperor, as he approached the city where he was going to take in hand the grave business of the German empire. And, indeed. His Sacred Cfesarean Majesty succeeded in smug- gling them through the gate by a most extraordinary de- vice. He smilingly ordered the frail petitioner who Avas standing near him, to catch hold of his horse by the tail, the second to seize the gown of the first, and the third that of the second, and so on to the last. In this manner the expelled beauties made their way back into Ratisbon, and were not uno;rateful. Vienna, on the other hand, Maximilian did not like. He could never forget that, when In 1462 the people of that capital besieged his father in his palace (the Hofburg), until Podiebrad of Bohemia came to his rescue, he, at that time a boy not quite five years of age, had to suffer cruelly from hunger, the pangs of which were but scantily relieved by a small supply of game from his well-beloved court tailor, Kronberger. Maximilian was most good-natured and affable, and very forgiving, even to those who might have done him jwrsonal wrons:. The nobles of his household, takino- advantao;e of this, cheated him right and left. One of them, otherwise a devoted servant of his, had once embezzled several thousand florins, when the Emperor asked him, "What 12 MAXIMILIAN I. does a thief deserve who has stolen such and such a sura ? " namino; the exact amount. The o-entleman an- swered, "^ He deserves to be hanged ;" on which the Empe- ror, tapping his shoulder, said, " By no means ; we want your services some time longer." To the clergy he showed just as much deference as his ancestor, Kodolph, had done ; he never allowed a priest to stand in his presence. To the fair sex he was so gallant and polite that he would not " thou''^ even the meanest woman. He was personally very unpretending, and one day said to a poet who was fulsome in his praise, " My dear fellow, I am sure you do not quite know me, nor any other prince." Once he caused diligent Inquiries to be made into his pedigree, when a wag wrote on the wall of the courtyard of his castle the well-known lines : — " When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? " The emperor wrote the answer underneath : — " I am a man as others be. But that the Lord exalted me." * The king of France he used to call a kino; of asses, be- cause his subjects would bear any burden he imposed upon them ; the king of Spain, a king of men, as they only obeyed him in what was reasonable ; the king of England, a king of angels, for he commanded them but what was just and fair, whereas they, on their side, obeyed him will- ingly and rightly. Himself he called a king of kings, ^' for," said he, " they obey us when they please." Maximilian was exceedingly jealous of his descent and imperial prerogative. He commissioned seven historio- graphers to find out the origin of his house, — the most brilliant, but not the true one from the cradle of his house at the small castle in the Argau. About a dozen pedigrees * Ich bin ein Mann, wie ander Mann, Nur dass mir Gott die Ehre gauu. GENEALOGY AND HERALDRY. 13 were produced in consequence, the most learned of which went back as far as Adam. Maximilian, to use his own expression, wanted in every way to *' outdo Julius Cffisar, and to be semper e familia Caroli MagnV This Carolus Magnus was, by hook or by crook, to be made his ancestor. Maximilian quartered with the arms of Spain those of Portugal and England, because his mother was a princess of Portugal, descended from the House of Lancaster. In virtue of this Lancastrian descent, he quartered also the arms of France. Besides the arms of Hungary and Bohemia, he assumed those of the Byzantine empire, as '' being only severed from the Koman empire owing to the arrogance of the Greek church, wherefore God had chas- tised it, and made it subject to the heathen, and King Maximilian or his descendants might hope in a short time to reconquer it." He pretended to be related to the imperial family of the Palaiologi. On his coins he called himself, like the Grand Turk, the shahs of Persia, the Great Mogul, and the czars of Russia, "the Puler of all the Countries of the Orient and Occident ;" or else, " The Kino: of all Christendom and of several other Provinces." * He once formed the intention, after the example of Frederic Barbarossa, to put himself, as the first warrior of Christendom, at the head of an army of crusaders, to pro- ceed down the Danube, to free Constantinople, and to drive the Turks back into Asia. For this purpose. Pope Leo X. had already given him the consecrated sword and cap; and the diet of Augsburg, in 1518, on which Luther also made his appearance, granted him for this war against the infidels, the subsidy of a poll-tax. Maximilian caused * By the countries of the Orient he meant Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia, and Dalmatia ; by those of the Occident, the Spanish kingdoms. His title ran thus : Christianitatis ac aliorum regnorum Rex Hcresque (XP. AC. A. Reg. R. HER. Q.) ; he also called himself, Plurimum Europa; provin- ciarum Rex et Princeps potentissimus. 14 MAXIMILIAN I. himself also to be elected successor to the throne of Sweden, and even put his opponents in that kingdom under the ban and double ban of the Empire. Poland was to acknow- ledge his supremacy, and to absolve the order of the Teu- tonic Knio-hts from its alleeriance, to which the latter had been subjected in the peace of Thorn ; and moreover render to him the coast of the Baltic and the mouth of the Vistula. Maximilian was the first potentate toho drew the Musco- vites into the family of the European states, co7icluding a treaty of alliance with Russia, until then an Asiatic power. He sent ambassadors, arquebusiers, gunners, gunsmiths, armourers, and miners from tlie Netherlands, Tyrol and Styria, to Ivan Vasilevitch, who broke the yoke of the Tartars, and to his son Vasilij, who retook Smolensk from the Poles. The first ambassador sent by Maximilian was the rich baron, George Schnitzenbaumer, of Carniola, who was directed, ad captandam henevolentiam, to address the czar as " Emjjeror and Autocrat of all the Hussias." But the second ambassador, the celebrated Syndic of Augsburg, Conrad Peutinger, was obliged, in the relation which he had to lay before the diet in 1514, to express a doubt whether Schnitzenbaumer had not exceeded his instruc- tions in conceding to the czar anything that might be con- trary to his Imperial Majesty's conscience, to the style and ordinances of the holy Roman empire, or to the Christian relio-ion. In 1517, the learned Sigismund von Herberstein went as ambassador to Russia ; and his voluminous work describing that embassy and another in 1526, published in 1549 in Vienna and 1557 in Basle, first introduced that country to the knowledge of the people of Europe. Maximilian, and after him Charles V., continually planned attempts at conversion, by which the eastern and western churches were to be united. Maximilian also repeatedly entertained projects of marriage with Russia. On the other hand, he was hostile in his policy against Poland, HIS SECOND MARRIAGE. 15 which at that time extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and from Posen and Cracow to Smolensk, and which then was ruled by Sigismund Jagello, one of the greatest kings of his age. Maximilian, after the death of his first wife, remained a widower for twelve years. He never as long as he lived forgot his beloved Burgundian Mary, the mere mention of whose name brought tears into his eyes. He once on his knees entreated the celebrated Abbot Tritthelm of Wiirtz- burg to conjure up before him her dear shade. Tlic abbot undertook to do so, forbidding the Emperor at his peril to address the vision which should appear before him. But Maximilian, unable to control his overflowing heart, ad- dressed the beloved form with the most endearing words, and thus destroyed the charm. Yet the proud ruler of Austria, who was so fond of surrounding himself with the halo of Carolingian descent, married in 1494, just one year after his accession, in second wedlock a lady " of no birth whatever," — Blanca Mai'ia, who, it is true, like his first wife, brougJit him great wealth, being the daughter of Duke Galeazzo Sforza of Milan, a descendant of that first Sforza whom his father, the Emperor Frederic HI., had refused to invest, as the bastard of a peasant, with the duchy of Milan. In those times, however, Blanca was not the less considered for all that ; as in Maximilian's reign the principle was still valid which is in force to the present day in England, that the wife shares the superior rank of her husband irrespective of her own. After the death of his second wife, Blanca Maria, the Emperor conceived the strange plan of becoming pope. In Maximilian's correspondence with his only daughter, Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands (published in Paj-is in 1839), we find a letter of the old Emperor, dated September 18. 1512, in which he tells Margaret, " that he did not think it meet to marry again, that he had even resolved upon living henceforth in perfect celibacy. 16 MAXIMILIAN I. He intended to send, on the day following, liis beloved Matthew Lang of Wellenburg, bishop of Gurk, to Pope Julius II., who had the ague and could not live much longer, to induce his Holiness to make him (Maximilian) his coadjutor, so that after the death of the Pontiff he might succeed to the Papal see. He would then be or- dained a priest and afterwards canonized as a saint ; his daughter, therefore, would after his death be obliged ' to worship him,'' whereat he should feel very much ^glorified.'' With 200,000 or 300,000 ducats he hoped to carry his point with the cardinals." He signed himself, " Your good father, Maximilian, Pope that is to be." The plan was not, however, carried out, although Maximilian had pledged his best jewels with the great banking house of Fugger at Augsburg, to procure the large sums requisite " to refresh the parched throats of the cardinals." Gaiety, magnificence, and pleasure reigned paramount at Maximilian's court. Whatever tends to embellish and cheer life was there to be found. Maximilian therefore cultivated science and the fine arts with the greatest assi- duity. He also devoted himself eagerly to the study of astrology, just as his father had done before him. But most fondly of all, did Maximilian love history, " that noble damsel," as Fugger, the author of " The Mirror of Honour of the Arch-Ducal House of Austria," writes, " who, under his reign, was led forth again fi'om her dark dungeon full of moths and rust, to the light of day." Maximilian himself dictated to his secretary, Treizsauer- wein, the history of his father and his own, under the alle- gorical title, " Der Weiss Kunig" (the Wise King). He also composed the plan of " Theuerdank," i. e. " The Kniijht thinkins: of Adventures," a book which describes his own chivalrous deeds and dangers, and which was worked out in German verses by Melchior Pfinzing, the Provost of St. Sebaldus of Nuremberg. Maximilian has written, on all sorts of subjects, no less than twenty-two HIS FRIENDS. 17 books, which are still extant in the Imperial library at Vienna. (Hof bibliothek.) There are also to be found there those strange questions which in 1508 he put to Abbot Trittheim. As, for instance, " Since Christendom com- prehends only a small part of the globe, should not every one who believes in a God be saved by his own religion?" " Why is Revelation in so many points obscure and con- tradictory, stating what one does not care to know, and not statins: what one would so much wish to know?" " Why should witches have power over the evil spirits, whilst an honest man cannot get anything from an angel?" In Maximilian's reign lived the poetical shoemaker of Nuremberg, Hans Sachs, and the great painter and en- graver Albert Diirer, also at Nuremberg. The latter he esteemed very highly, and repeatedly had his portrait painted by him, even at his last diet in 1518. The cele- brated friend of Albert Diirer, Willibald Pirkheimer, a learned patrician and senator of Nuremberg, likewise be- longed to the circle of the Emperor's friends, which com- prehended, besides many others, the illustrious John Reuchlin ; the famous captain, George von Frundsberg ; and the bishops Hans von Dalberg of Worms, the restorer of German learning and art ; and Christopher Stadion of Augsburg. But, notwithstanding his personal amiability, which is the most interesting feature in his history — much more in- teresting than any thing he ever performed, — he was out of his place as well in the council as in the battle field. The feats of a knight, of a hunter, of an athlete, and the achieve- ments of a patron of art and science are far from being deeds which are looked up to in an emperor. IMaximilian was a man of genius, restlessly active, always forming new plans ; but he was not a great character as a ruler. In all his thoughts, plans, and acts he was deficient in energy and greatness, in tenacity and steadfastness of purpose, in consistent and sustained application. He was more of a YOL. I. C 18 MAXIMILIAN I. preux chevalier than of an emperor. He had inherited from his father, besides his goodhumour, that petty spirit of detail and of trifling which wastes great energies on little matters. He by no means succeeded in out-doing Julius Ca3sar ; on the contrary, he was only too often him- self outdone. Like his father, he never accomplished auy- thino" great. He did not take in his own hands the reform of the Church, on which all the great interests hinged that stirred up in his time, the minds of the European world. He never accomplished anything of the least importance against the Turks, at that time the principal enemies of the western world. Under him Italy was lost. As early as 1494, in the second year after his accession, Charles VIII. made his great victorious campaign into that country ; and at the death of Maximilian, Milan and Grenoa were in French hands. Under Maximilian, Sicitzer- land, this important bulwark in the south, completed its separation from the German empire, by refusing to acknoiv- ledge the Imperial Court of Chancery. The Swiss now be- came more and more subject to the influence of France, and their country was thenceforth the nursery of merce- naries for France, in her wars of defence against the threat- ening supremacy of the House of Habsburg, and at a later period, under Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., in their v.ars of conquest at the expense of the German empire. Maxi- milian never succeeded in making himself truly respected, either by his own countrymen the Germans, nor even, in his French, Swiss, and Venetian wars, by the foreigner. He was very often the " Knight of the Rueful Coun- tenance," and was laughed at and ridiculed. Machiavelli, the greatest political genius of his, and one of the greatest of all times, said of him, " Maximilian thinks always to act independently, and yet he follows the^rst impulse only ; he has a rich stock of plans, but they all in the execu- tion turn out differently from his first intention." Even his jester, Conrad von der Kosen, used to tease him about THE "GENERAL PEACE." _ 19 the strange devices which he often formed. One day when playing at cards with him, he said to him, " Look here, Maxey, as such a king of cards thy princes do consider thee." In very many things Maximilian did not follow the best counsel, for he always followed his own. He had for his chancellor Cyprian Sernteiner von Nordheim, of an ancient Tyrolese fiimily, a man of sound common sense spotless fidelity, and so simple that, for the conclusion of the treaty of Blois in 1505, he rode from Innsbruck on liorseback as courier, day and night, all the way to Blois, carrying his only silk suit behind him on his horse. This chancellor wrote from Duisburg (January, 1509), to Paul von Lichtenstein, " Plis Majesty can never be quiet, and that's why such as we can do so little." With Maximilian, as we have said before, the middle ages were buried. He put down the disgraceful club law (Fatistrecht), by proclaiming at the Diet of Worms in 1495, the celebrated " General Peace of the Empire" (^Land- frieden); with, and through which, a new era is ushered in. By virtue of this enactment, every attempt of taking the law in one's own hand, as well as of waylaying and of levying black mail in the Empire was thenceforth to cease. But it was much easier to pass the law than to enforce it. A long time after, the highways remained unsafe, and people could not travel without taking from one town to the other an escort of horsemen or of arquebusicrs who went in waggons. It way one of the principal objects of the *' General Peace," that the feuds of the members of the Empire should no longer be settled by force of arms, but by the legal, peaceful decision of the Imperial Court of Chancery (the Rdchskammergericht). The Empire thus entered into one general confederation, whereas formerly, for the maintenance of peace, a number of particular and provincial confederations of the princes and the nobles on the one hand, and of the towns and cities on the other, had existed. These particular and provincial federations were c 2 20 MAXIMILIAN I. now to be abolished. The Imperial Court of Chancery, being the general federal tribunal, was empowered in the name of the Emperor to put the contending and refractory lieges under the ban of the Empire. The judge in chan- cery (Kammerrichter), the person who presided over this court, was appointed by the Emperor. Its fifty assessors were elected by the members of the diet. The Imperial Court of Chancery held its first sitting on the 3rd November, 1495, at Frankfort, presided over by the Imperial High Steward, Count Eitelfried of Zollern, to whom, as to the first judge in chancery, the Emperor delegated his sceptre, as the wand of office. At first the Court of Chancery was itinerant, following Maximilian even into the Nether- lands; but in 1527 it was permanently established at Spires, until in 1693, during the French wars under Louis XIV., it was removed from the Rhine farther into the interior of Germany, to Wetzlar in Westphalia. A second Imperial court, the Aulic Council {Beichshofrath), was established at Vienna. This rule of the law and law courts, substituted by Maximilian for the old law of arms, seemed, however, to the members of the Empire, to the powerful princes, as well as to the great number of the smaller barons and knights, a hardship and a disgrace. They wished to re- main warlike knights as before, and for a long time kicked against the new order of things ; for the new judges, the councillors of the Imperial Court of Chancery, were no longer, as heretofore, the peers of those who were to be judged by them. They were some of them lawyers and doctors, and the barons only called them " the writers." They were salaried, and the barons showed a particu- lar aversion to paying for the law. It is true that, be- cause the lawyers were to be feed, law suits became more and more tedious; and as the proceedings were no longer carried on orally, but in writing, — no longer pub- licly, but in close chambers, — they became interminable. THE IMPERIAL COURT OF CHANCERY. 21 In Gothe's " G'utz von Berlichingen " the antagonism of the old kniglits of the sword and the lance against these new knights of pen and paper is sketched with masterly skill. Sickingen's downfall only reduced the barons to obedience. The greatest misfortune, however, was that the court was utterly wanting in power to enforce its de- crees against the more powerful princes of the Empire, who altogether refused to obey them. These, being neither more nor less than the first vassals of the Empire, quite systematically arrogated to themselves the sovereignty over the territories which they held as fiefs of the Empire ; and, establishing, in imitation of the Imperial Court of Chancery, territorial courts of their own, they presumed henceforth to treat Imperial cities which happened to lie within their territories, or counts and lords, holding their fiefs from the Empire, but whose possessions were enclosed in theirs, as their own vassals. This mode of taking the law in their own hands they even continued to employ against the Emperor himself. The Smalcalde war, indeed, very nearly brought them to ruin ; but the expedition of the Elector Maurice against Charles V. again made the power of the princes triumph de facto, until the peace of Westphalia estal)lished it also dejure. Under Maximilian the new bureaucratical element already began to make its power to be felt. The lawyers now became, like the soldiers, a particular and most influ- ential class in the state. Everything was henceforth set- tled according to the Roman law, written in a language which was unintelligible to the illiterate. The differences of the Justinian codex from the old common law were made use of to raise the power of the princes to a still higher pitch. The sophistry of the lawyers became a for- midable tool in the hands of the princes, and soon a traffic was carried on with the law, just as until then had been carried on by the priests with indulgences. As early as at that time the Italian Patricius wrote : " The German c 3 22 MAXIMILIAN I. jui'ists turn and twist everythins; according to their own pleasure. It is their greatest pride, at the diets, to give their oracular verdicts as the councillors of the princes. They foster litigations for their own purposes, to obtain the sovereign power for their princes." To Maximilian is owing the division of Germany into circles, which was settled at the Diet of Cologne in 1512. He formed ten circles of the Empire. These were the following : — 1. The Swabian circle ; comprising Wiirtemberg, Baden, and Alsace, all the country to the Lech, between the Neckar and the Lake of Constance, with the exception of the West-Austrian possessions in Alsace and in Swabia, which were reckoned with the Austrian circle. 2. The Bavarian circle ; comprising the country from the Lech to the frontiers of Austria and Bohemia, and from the archbishopric of Salzburg to the territories of Nuremberg, Bamberg, Anspach, and Baireuth. 3. The Austrian circle ; consisting of all the Austrian countries, the outlying provinces in Alsace and Swabia, as well as the Tyrol and Austria proper. 4. The Franconian circle ; from the country of Henne- berg, which it included, to the territories of Nuremberg, Bamberg, Anspach, and Baireuth, which it likewise in- cluded ; and from the frontiers of the Saxon Vogtland to the bishopric of Wiirtzburg, the latter also included. 5. The Upper Saxon circle, with the electorate and the duchies of Saxony, Thuringia, Misnia, besides Anhalt, the electorate of Brandenburg, and Pomerania. 6. The Lower Saxon circle ; comprising all the Bruns- wick possessions, the archbishopric of Magdeburg, and the duchies of Mecklenburg and Holstein. 7. The Westphalian circle ; all the country from the Weser to the Rhine ; the Westphalian bishoprics and the duchies of Berg, Nassau, and Oldenburg ; and besides, on the left bank of the Rhine, the duchies of Juliers, Cleves, THE CIRCLES OF THE EMPIRE. 23 and Gueklerland, and the bishoprics of Liege and Utrecht ; Guelderhind and Utrecht were, however, separated again under Charles V., in 1548, from the Westphalian circle, and embodied with the Netherlandish provinces. 8. The Electoral Rhenish circle ; comprising the arch- bishopric of Cologne, with the duchy of Westphalia ; the archbishopric of Mayence, with the county of Eichsfeld in Thuringia; the archbishopric of Treves ; and, lastly, the Electoral Palatinate, with Heidelberg. 9. The Upper lihenish circle ; comprising, on the right bank of the Rhine, the Wetterau, the whole of Hesse and the bishoprics of Hcrsfeld and Fulda ; on the left bank, the possessions of the junior branches of the Palatine houses Simmern and Zweibriicken (Deux-Ponts); the bishoprics of Worms, Spires, and Strassburg ; and Lor- raine. 10. The Burgundian circle; consisting of the newly acquired Netherlandish provinces of Austria, to which in 1548 Guelderland and Utrecht were added ; seventeen provinces in all. On the other hand, there were excluded, as no longer belonging to the German empire> — 1. Switzerland. 2. Bohemia (at that time in the possession of the Jagel- lons, althou<2;h beino; still enumerated in the Golden Bull as an electorate), with Moravia and Lusatia. 3. The possessions of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, on the shores of the Baltic and on the banks of the Vistula, which, in the peace of Thorn, in 1466, had become subject to the sovereignty of Poland. Bohemia, which, since the days of Podiebrad in 1462, had sent no moi'e representatives to the German diet, was reintroduced into the deliberative body only in 1708. The unity brought about by this organisation of circles was, however, only a formal one, linked together by very c 4 24 MAXIMILIAN I. feeble and loose ties. What Germany most wanted in the times of Maximilian was the restoration of the old imperial rule, the establishment of a paramount central power, by which alone might have been cemented a strong and close union of the scattered members of the Germanic body. An attempt to bring this about had already been made during the lust years of the reign of Frederic III., and at the beginning of Maximilian's, by the first digni- tary of the Church of Germany, the Elector Primate of Mayence, Berthold, of the house of the counts of Henne- berg. He planned a representation of the Empire by a perma- nent council, somewhat after the fashion of the English parliament. This representative body, according to his scheme, was to be divided into two chambers, one, the Upper House, as an assembly of the princes ; the other, the House of Commons, in which the deputies of the lower nobility and gentry, and those of the cities were to sit. An imperial tax was to be levied for the maintenance of an army of the Empire, dependent on the diet. In this manner the principle would have been esta- blished, that the high aristocracy were to look upon the peasantry as their tenants, but not as their subjects ; as by imposing a direct tax the Empii-e claimed the exclusive rio-ht of sovereignty over all the lieges within its territory. The imperial tax was to be paid by all without exception ; by clergy as well as laity, by high and low, by the prince and the day labourer. Had the idea been carried out, the subsequent destruc- tive riots of the peasantry would have been crushed in the bud ; and so likewise would the new constitution, when once firmly established, have prevented the schism in the German Church, by a national reform of the existing ec- clesiastical abuses. A united Germany might have suc- cessfully made head against the Pope, who would as little have denied his assent to the accomplished fact of enacted THE "FELIX AUSTRIA NUBE." 25 decrees In this instance, as he did in the case of those of the Council of Basle. No opposition was at that time to be apprehended from the princes of the Empire against Berthold's plans, which, on the other hand, would have been even supported by the representatives of the moneyed interest, the cities; and also by the peasantry, whose power was as yet unbroken. But it was Maximilian himself who in every possible way crossed the plans of Berthold and opposed the scheme of a pai'liamentary constitution. All he cared for was the old policy of increasing the family possessions of the reigning House of Austria, and of raising it by great marriages to the rank of a European power. The constitution would have fettered Maximilian's hands ; by giving it his royal assent he would have had to renounce the advantage of being able to increase the family estate by the help of the Empire. The idea of placing himself by a parliamentary German constitution at the head of the most powerful, best organised, and freest state of Europe did not enter his " Austrian patri- archal" mind. And yet the sacrifice would have been so small for the prize! And yet, the hereditary succession would not have been refused to an emperor, had he only consented to restrain by his own accord the power of his crown ! Berthold died in 1504. He was the last great primate of the German Church, as German Church correlative with the German empire. His successors, especially the third one, Albert of Brandenburg, who lived during the Reformation, had no idea of reconstructing the Empire ; on the contrary, a servile tool of the Bishop of Rome, he as- sisted in destroying it. The greatest event which happened during Maximili- an's reign was undoubtedly the commencement of the Re- formation. The Emperor survived Luther's placarding his ninety-five theses on the palace chapel of Wittenberg 26 MAXIMILIAN I. somewhat more than a year. The last act of his govern- ment Avas the Diet of Augsburg, where Luther presented himself before the Cardinal Legate Cajetan. The aged, in- firm Emperor, who had arrived there before Lent, to be able to share in the feasts of the carnival, opened this diet on the 1st of August, 1518. He wished to bring about at it the election of his grandson Charles as King of the Romans, and then to resign his crown, to spend the re- mainder of his days at Naples, under whose beautiful sky his physicians had led him to hope he would recover his health. Yet the election did not come to pass, neither did the projected war against the Turks. On the con- trary, it was remarked by some of the members of the diet, that the Tm'k most to be feared had better be looked for in Italy. All complained to Maximilian of the scandalous sale of Romish indulgences. The Emperor himself very likely leaned towards the opinion that the immoderate pretensions of the Pope might be somewhat lowered by Luther. He said to the Elector of Saxony, Frederic the Wise, " We must save this monk for future occasions, maybe we shall want him ; " and to the Saxon councillor Pfeffinger, "How is your monk? indeed, his positiones are by no means to be despised. He will have fine sport among the parsons." Yet Maximilian was not the man to open his mind to the momentous signs of the times. He died without in the least suspecting what a mighty future was dawning before him. Maximilian left Augsburg in October with a foreboding of his approaching death. On arriving at the pillar called " the Rennsiiule," in the valley of the Lech, he once more turned towards the city, crossed himself, and said, " Well, the Lord bless thee, my own fair Augsburg ; we have had many a joyous day in thee, and now we shall never see thee again." He rode by way of Fiissen to his country of Tyrol ; first to Ehrenberg to enjoy the noble sport of hawking. From thence he went to Innsbruck, carrying HIS FAMILY. 27 with him a chest, which he had caused to be made three years before, and in which was enclosed his coffin, with all the requisite funeral fittings. At Innsbruck the towns- people refused to take in his carriages and horses, as, by the dishonesty of the Imperial servants, some debts still re- mained unpaid from former occasions. The animals and equipages were, therefore, left during the night in the open street. Maximilian, who heard of it in the morning, was thrown into a fever by his anger at the insult. He, notwithstanding, embarked in the cold of January on the Inn for Upper Austria, on his way to Vienna. But he only reached Wels, where he died, 12th of January, 1519, in the sixtieth year of his age. 2. THE EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN'S FAMILY. Maximilian left, by Mary of Burgundy, his first wife, one son and one daughter. The latter, the Princess JNIargaret, had been chosen in 1483, when still in her cradle, to reconcile, by a marriage with Cimrles VIII. of France, the growing jealousy be- tween the Houses of Habsburg and Valois. But Charles VIII. having married Anne, the heiress of Brittany, whom Maximilian had intended for his own second wife, Margaret was in 1497 married, at the age of seventeen, to the son of Ferdinand the Catholic, the Infant^ Juan, who died in the same year of his marriage. She then married in 1501 Duke Philibert II. of Savoy, who died in 1504. Both marriages having proved very unhappy, Margaret did not intend to marry again ; not- withstanding which, a new match was at least contemplated, from political motives, with Henry VII. of England, con- cerning which a remarkable correspondence is quoted in Rymer's Foedera, XIII. p. 173. Margaret afterwards went to the Netherlands to superintend the education of her 28 MAXIMILIAN I. nephew Charles V.; and after the death of her brother Philip, in 15U6, she was appointed by her father regent of the Low Countries, and died there, at the age of fifty, in 1530. Maximilian's only son by Mary of Burgundy was Philip the Handsome, or, as he was also called, Philip of Austria, who died before his father. According to the accounts of the times, he was a remarkably good-looking man, with beautiful golden hair, but very fond of pleasure and dis- sipation. He was in 1496, at the age of eighteen, married to the heiress of the Spanish monarchy, the jealous and afterwards melancholy Infanta Juana (Jane the Insane), the daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella. The bride was at that time in her eighteenth year. Philip the Handsome died, after being married for ten years, in 1506, at Burgos, poisoned by his own jealous wife. From the memoirs of Frederic II. Elector Palatine, written by his secretary Thomas of Liege, and lately pub- lished in a new edition by Edward von Biilow, it appears that the gay Philip used to go out with the equally gay Prince Palatine in search of nocturnal adventures among the fair ladies of Barcelona. Philip left two sons, who became the founders of the two great branches of the Habsburg dynasty, the Spanish and the Austrian. They were the two Emperors Charles V. and Ferdinand I. Besides them, Philip left four daughters. Of these, Eleanora was married in first wedlock at the age of twenty-one, in 1519, to Emmanuel, King of Por- tugal, who was more than double her age, and the second time to Francis I., King of France, again with a view to reconcile the houses of Habsburs; and of Valois. Having been again left a widow in 1547, she went in 1556 with her brother Charles V. to Spain, where she died in 1558. Before her being forced into the first of these two political marriages with the old and ugly King of Portugal, there had been between her and the just mentioned Count Pala- HIS FAMILY. 29 tine Frederic an attacliment, Avhich was, however, abruptly broken off by her proud brother Charles. After the death of the King of Portugal in 1521, Frederic again enter- tained sanguine hopes of an alliance with the young royal dowajrer : but he had at last to content himself with mar- rying one of her nieces, the daughter of her sister Isabella. Tills Isabella, the second daughter of Philip, was married in 1515, at the age of fourteen, to the King of Denmark, Christian II., surnamed the Bad, who was expelled his kingdom in 1523. She died in 1525. The third princess, Mary, married in 1521, at the age of sixteen, Louis II., King of Hungary and Bohemia, the last of the Jagellons, who was killed in 1526, in the battle of Mohacz, against the Turks. Mary, after INIargaret's death, in 1530, became regent of the Netherlands; from whence she went with her brother to Spain, where she died in a convent in 1558, one month after her brother. Mary was the favourite sister of her brother Charles, and the only person in the imperial family well inclined towards Luther and the Reformation. De Thou states her to have been a rigid and even " austere moralist, of a courage far above her sex, and the most severe judge of everything like impurity. Our people," he says, " mortified by the frequent invasions which during her regency were made in France, imputed to her, by all sorts of impertinent in- sinuations and licentious soldier's ditties, a connection with Monsieur de Braben9on (the first Prince of Aremberg), a man still in his prime, but who was even more distin- guished by his bravery and loyalty than by his personal advantages. But she had such a horror of every such criminality that she obstinately refused the Emperor's en- treaties to forgive one of his favourites, a young man of the highest nobility who had brought one of her maids of honour to shame. She publicly threatened that she would have the oflfender executed on the spot if she should ever meet him, even if it were at the court of her own brother." 30 MAXIMILIAN I. The fourth daughter of Philip the Fair was Catharine, born in 1507, after the death of her father; she married, in 1525, John III., King of Portugal, and, after being left a widow by him in 1557, she died likewise in Spain, 1578. She was the princess whom Charles V., in 1520, before his election as Emperor, promised to the Elector Frederic the Wise, for his nephew John Frederic the Magnanimous, who was afterwards outlawed by him. The match was sedulously urged on by the Emperor's brother Ferdinand, and the Ambassador Hannaert ; but the plan failed, owing to the spread of the Lutheran doctrine in Saxony. It was, however, even at a very late period, recommended to the Emperor by the Councillor of State Breda. This match might possibly have prevented the bloody conflict of the two religions. It is rather remarkable that just this mar- riao-e which would have been most auspicious for the interests of Germany was not concluded by Austria. The gay and gallant Emperor Maximilian had a con- siderable number of illegitimate children of both sexes. Four sons and five daughters are known with certainty. Four sons rose in the Church ; three of them, however, without attaining any great celebrity. These three were, George, Archbishop of Valencia, after having been from l525"to 1539 Bishop of Trent, and from 1544 to 1557 Bishop of Liege ; Leopold, the Provost of Cordova; and Maximilian of Amberg. George is only remarkable for havinw been the first illegitimate scion of the House of Habsburg who bore the name " Ab Austria.''^ The most celebrated natural son of the Emperor Maxi- milian was Matthew Lang von Wellenburg, the son of the fair patrician lady Margaret Lang, of the Sulzer family of Augsburg. Tiie Emperor ennobled him, and procured for him the bishopric of Gurk, and always treated him as a favourite and as his most confidential minister. In 1508 Lang went to Cambray, and there joined, in Maximilian's name, the alliance against Venice. niS FAMILY. 31 In 1510 the Emperor sent hira to France to Louis XII., with whom he concluded the treaty against Pope Julius II. and the Holy League. In 1511 and 1512 he was sent to Italy, and succeeded in bringing about the reconciliation of the Pope with the Emperor. In 1515, at the great Vienna meeting with the two kings of Hungary-Bohemia, and of Poland, he secured to Austria, by the well-known act of settlement, the reversion of the first-named twin crowns. At the outbreak of the Reformation he became one of its most bitter enemies. In 1519 he was appointed Archbishop of Salzburg, and the Pope gave him tiie car- dinal's hat. Lang was an exceedingly eloquent and adroit man, yet he was just as famous for his elasticity of con- science as for cleverness. He surpassed in splendour all the cardinals and archbishops of his time, and in this respect certainly did not belie his Cassarean descent. He died, as Cardinal Archbishop of Salzburg, in the reign of his nephew Chayles V., 1540. A striking likeness to the Emperor, and the parental affection received at his hands by Sigismund von Die- trichstein, caused the latter to be considered likewise as an illegitimate scion of Maximilian's. The mother, the beautiful Countess Barbara von Thurn, married Pancras, • the first baron of the name of Dietrichstein, the founder of the still existing princely house of that name. At that meeting with the kings of Hungary and Poland in Vienna, in 1575, Maximilian had the marriage of his beloved Sigisnmnd Dietrichstein with Barbara von Pothal, Ba- roness of Thalberg, celebrated ; and such splendour and magnificence was displayed at the wedding, that all the contemporaries spoke of it with the highest admiration. Maximilian requested, even in his last will, that Sigismund should be buried at his feet at Wienerisch-Neustadt. Count Ludwig von Helfenstein, the same whom in 1525 the rioters in the peasants' war forced to run the gauntlet through their spears, was likewise thought by some 32 MAXIMILIAN I. to have been a son of the " Last Knight of the Middle Ages ; " but, according to other and more reliable accounts, he was the husband of one of the natural daughters of the Emperor.* The number of these daughters, as we have said before, is known to have been five. Their husbands, as far as they have been ascertained, were, Count Jolm of East Friesland, married to Dorothea ; and Louis von Herleraont, a Netherlandish lord, married to Anna. One of the daughters is known by her full name, Ottilia Lang von Wellenburg, a sister of the Cardinal Archbishop of Salz- burg ; she was wedded to the patrician of Ulm, John von Schad, to whom she brought the noble estate of Wellenburg.f * The Helfensteins were a very old Swatian family. The connection of Ludwig with the Emperor Maximilian was through the lady who undoubt- edly was his natural daughter. The fact is established among others by Sattler's Chronicle. — Translator. t See Appendix A. for samples of the style and courtesy used in Maxi- milian's and diplomatic private correspondence. 33 CHAPTER IL CHARLES V. 1519 — 1556. 1. ins YOUTH AND EDUCATION IN THE NETHERLANDS. Maximilian was succeeded by his grandson — the son of the King and Archduke Philip — Charles V., undoubtedly the greatest prince whom the House of Habsburg has produced. Whilst the romantic, chivalrous Maximilian entirely belonged to the middle ages, which terminated with him, Charles V. is in evei'y sense a man of a new era, a deep ])olitician, and a true disciple of the statescraft of Machiavelli. Maximilian was all his life restless, im- petuous, and adventurous : Charles as quiet and circum- spect as a man could be. Maximilian was the very type of imaginative enthusiasm, frequently overshooting its own mai'k : Charles the man of calm, quietly reasoning common sense, and of most cautious political wisdom. Maximilian's form fades away in the bright evening sun of the expiring poetical middle ages : Charles meets our eye, stern and melancholy, in the dawn of a new, matui-ed, and coolly calculating age. The greatest question of the sixteenth century, the lleformation, was looked upon by the grandfather as a mere parson's quarrel : to the other it appeared as a dangerous rebellion ; and he op})osed the movement of the new religious spirit, against which tlie VOL. I. D 34 CHARLES V. Pope had liurled the sjuritual thunderbolt of his anathema, with the ban of the Empire, and with all the worldly expedients of the new system of polity. Neither Maxi- milian nor Charles have comprehended the true importance of the religious question, and recognised the necessity of placing themselves at the head of the movement, to guide it, and to carry it out in a national German spirit, and for the interests of Germany. Maximilian, in his gay carelessness, underrated its importan-^e : Charles, in his melancholy scruples, overrated it. He saw in the new heresy only the great danger to the ancient political system of the German empire ; and on this ground he tried to wage a war of extermination against it. Neither of them was equal to the idea that a new system was to be Introduced, a compact unity of Germany, a unity in that form which England alone, of all the states of Europe, has succeeded in establishing. Just as Enijland, on the basis of the unity which was centred in its parliament, separated herself from the Pope, and made head against him, so Germany also ought to have done. But Charles aimed at sovereignty after the example of France, and his plan was to keep up the connection with the Roman Pontiff. As this plan was baffled by the Elector Maurice, the Emperor succumbed under the old aristocracy of princes. He was obliged to consent to a religious com- promise. This completely altered his position, and his new position was a false one. He could no longer be looked upon as the secular protector of the Church, in which light he wished to be considered, according to the old political system of the Empire ; for he had forfeited this title after having allowed another church besides the old one to be tolerated in Germany, The very thing which he had tried to prevent was brought about, notwith- standing all his endeavours to the contrary. The old system in which Church and state, hierarchy and feudality, had been most closely interwoven, was now dissolved ; Ills YOUTH AND EDUCATION. 35 a holy Romau empire was henceforth an anachronism and a nonentity. Napoleon took a very correct view of the position of Charles V. Accordino; to the reminiscences of Chancellor Miiller of Weimar, he expressed himself, in 1813, during a ride from Weimar to Eckardsberge, to the following effect : " Charles V. would have acted wisely and well to have placed himself at the head of the Reformation. As the temper of the people then was, it would have been an easy thing for him to obtain by its means absolute rule over the whole of Germany." The ci'adle of the Habsburg dynasty had been in the mountains of southern Germany, and near the lakes of Switzerland, liodolph had transferred It eastward to the valley of the Danube, and there the foundation of the power of the house was laid. The meteor Charles, which shed the greatest lustre on that house, rose from the west, from the German Ocean. Charles V. was born 24th February, 1500, at Ghent. The man who was to become the ruler of two hemispheres came into the world quite unexpectedly; his Spanish mother being surprised by the pangs of labour in a privy during a festivity at court. Ann Sterel, the wife of a German gentleman at Philip's court, a lady of good sense, of an excellent heart, and of great knowledge of the world, became his nurse. After the prince was weaned she remained in charge of him whilst his j)arcnts travelled to Spain. Charles's brother Ferdinand was born in 1503 in Spain. The chief gover- ness of Charles was the Countess de Chimay. This lady was from the same Netherlandish family of Croy, to which also Charles de Croy, his governor, and Wiliiani de Chievres, his governor-in-chief and lieutenant-general of the Netherlands, belonged, whom Charles's father Philip appointed when he went to Spain. Charles was surrounded by princely splendour even in D 2 36 CHARLES V. his cradle. His father made him at his christening, 8th April, 1500, a present of the duchy of Luxemburg, from Avhich the prince had his first title, until, in 1506, he in- herited, on the death of his father, that of King of Spain. His old great grandmother, the widow of Charles the Bold, Margaret of York, who had been a contemporary of the Avars of the Roses, presented to him the figure of a child in massive silver, carrying, on a golden salver, a set of jewels. His aunt Margaret, Duchess of Savoy, the sister of his father, and afterwards regent of the Netherlands, gave him a golden plate, likewise spread with pearls and precious stones ; William de Chievres, a suit of silver armour inlaid with gold, the breastplate of which was de- corated with a large phoenix ; the Loi'd John of Berghen, a golden sword ; the city of Ghent, a most ingeniously wrought ship of silver ; several abbots, the Old and New Testaments, the binding of which was of massive gold, studded with pearls and jewels. But, with all this princely magnificence, Charles' youth in the Netherlands, where he was reared, was very cheerless and gloomy. No parents' love exercised its genial influence over the tender years of his infancy and boyhood. When he was six years old his father Philip died suddenly in Spain, far away from him, after having lain on a sick bed only seven days, 26th September, 1506. His mother Joan, daughter of Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabella of Castile, likewise lived in Spain, and a deep gloom had settled on her mind. Jealousy of her husband had made her melancholy. Tliis jealousy, indeed, was so violent, that she poisoned him ; a fact which has only recently been fully ascertained from a letter of one of Philip's generals. This account has been published by Hormayer in the Historical Annual for the year 1849, the last which he edited. The writer of the letter very pi'obably was that Count von Fiirstenberg who commanded the 3000 German sol- diers with whom Philip, in the spring of 1506, embarked HIS YOUTH AND EDUCATION. 37 for Spain. Hormayer had before published In the " Aus- trian Plutarch " a letter of his to the Emperor Maximilian, dated 12th May, 1506, in which the following passage occurs : " The worst enemy whom my gracious lord of Castile (Philip) has besides the King of Arragon, — his father-in-law Ferdinand, after Isabella's death, 1504, quar- relled with him about the regency of Castile, — is the queen, his Highness's spouse; she is more wicked than 1 can write to your Imperial Majesty, and I have no doubt your Majesty has found that out much better than I am able to do. Her Highness will send to-morrow all the ladies, married and unmarried, back to Brabant whom the king has brought with her; she does not wish to have them about her except one old woman, and her she keeps." The letter of a later date by the same writer, commu- nicated by Hormayer in the Historical Annual of 1849, runs thus : '' The good King Philip was suspected by his queen of an amour, and that without reason, as Avas after- wards discovered ; but she took it so much and grievously to heart, that she at last resolved to kill her lord and husband in revenge for it. As women are easily moved and impelled, according to the old adage, ' that they have long robes but short counsels,' thus it also happened that she got so utterly beside herself as to poison her good and innocent husband, although it was to her own loss. Shortly after, she found out that she had been wrong, and that she had allowed her quick temper to get the better of her : then she began to rue what she had done, and found no rest, tormented as she was by the furies of remorse ; and, as she had her husband no more, and could not get him back, she began to love him twice as well as before, and grieved and fretted so vehemently, that at last she went out of her mind altogether, and became quite childish. People did not dare at first to inform the Emperor Maxi- milian of this nuirdcr, nor even of the death of his son ; but, when he had been dead for some time, accounts were sent D 3 38 CHARLES V. from one post to another, announcing his illness, and that he was getting worse and worse, until at last the whole secret was disclosed." Having thus lost her beloved husband by her own fault, in the tenth year of their married life, grief for his death reduced her more and more to a state of insanity, as all her passionate love for him had now revived. She ordered his body to be taken from the tomb, and had him placed in her chamber, splendidly attired, and encased in a glass coffin. Here she looked at him for hours, embraced his embalmed remains, and watched day and night over him. Still possessed by her inveterate jealousy, she would not allow any one of her own sex to enter the room. At last she was with difficulty prevailed upon to allow the body to be placed in a vault in the Charterhouse of Millaflores, near Burgos. But as soon as this was done her mind com- pletely gave way. Her father Ferdinand, during a former absence of her husband in the Netherlands, had shut her up as a prisoner at Medina del Campo. She now fancied that she was again a prisoner and kept away from her be- loved one. Her people were at last obliged to urge her to have the vault opened once more, that she might con- vince herself of Philip's death. She had it done, but took the coffin now with her in her travels. She travelled at night with burning torches, the corpse of her husband being driven before her on a bier. Strange to say, a prophecy had foretold to Philip, " that he should travel in his kingdom longer after his death than during his life." Joan continued to console herself with a tale which a Carthusian friar had once told her, " that there had once been a king who had come to life again after fourteen years." She Waited like a child for that happy day; but when it came at last, and she found herself bitterly dis- appointed, she fell into hopeless insanity, and had to be confined in a tower. Here she passed the remainder of her days, surrounded by cats, with which she amused her- HIS YOUTH AND EDUCATION. 39 self. She survived her husband fifty years, dying about nine months before the abdication of her son Charles, who, properly speaking, during her lifetime reigned in Spain only in her name, all the royal decrees being headed by the joint names of Donna Juaua and Don Carlos. Charles V. was likewise separated from his brother Ferdinand, who was educated in Spain. His sisters only, especially his favouiite sister Mary, were brought up with him. Their education was, as has been said before, super- intended by their aunt Margaret, the Duchess Dowager of Savoy, whom her father the Emperor Maximilian had, in 1506, made liegent of the Netherlands. There was ap- pointed under her, as "Lieutenant-General" of the Nether- lands and chief governor of Prince Charles, wdio was then six years old, William de Croy, Baron de Chicvres and Arschott, whose nephew, Charles de Croy, acted as under- governor. William de Chicvres had, of all persons, the greatest influence upon the disposition of Charles ; from his bringing up, as many lights as shades have resulted in the character of this remarkable prince, who appeared upon the world's stage at one of the most critical periods of the history of Germany. Some very interesting letters are extant from the time of Charles' earliest boyhood. Charles de Croy wrote from Mechlin, 7th October, 1506, very shortly after Philip's death, to the old Emperor Maximilian in Germany: " Sire, — Pour vous aucunnement resconforter je vous certi- fie que monseigneur votre petit filz et mes dammes vos filles sont au tres-bonpoint, et font bonne chore scelonc leur fortune. Je leur ay dit I'infortune, dont ilz ont mene deul selon leur anfanse, et plus que je ne pansois ; et autre aultre chose, qu'ilz ont bien affaire d'un leal pere que vous et qu'il fault que Ic soyez deux fois. Sire je vous les recommande, et fault bien que an eux votre amour soit redoublee, comme raison le veult et que bonne nature an Votre Majeste n'y chance jamais ne defaillireut." ' On 9th April, D 4 40 CHARLES V. 1507, the Emperor writes to' his daughter Margaret (in French) : "lam very glad that you find our children so pretty, and that they long after me ; tell them that I shall soon come, but that I am now prevented from being of any service to them. To-day I issue letters to the whole Empire, calling it to arms, and 1 promise help to the Pope. The King of Arragon is going to Spain immediately with his wife, whom the devil has got with child. She is about four months gone.* The plan is to make war against the King of Castile (Charles V.) and others, to drive them out of the country and then to take possession of it. For the Queen his daughter is and remains fantastica — brulez ma chere fille cette lettre de votre bon pere Maximilien." On the 19th September, 1508, Chievres writes (in French) : '* Your Majesty's grandson, and the princesses his sisters, are coming on very well indeed, and it is really astonishing how beautiful they grow up. In obedience to your Majesty's wishes, I will take care that he shall learn the Brabantian language as soon as his tongue is sufficiently pliant for it, and that he shall learn how to read it." The principal instructor of the prince in the languages, and especially the classical ones, as also in religion, was the learned Dean of Louvain, Adrian Florentius of Utrecht, who, after the death of Leo X., was raised by his pupil to the papal chair, which he occupied from the 9th January, 1522, to the 15th September, 1523, as Adrian VI. Adrian had the greatest difficulty in inculcating into his pupil the rudiments of Latin. In vain he represented to the prince that the Emperor his grandfather insisted above every- thing upon his speedily acquiring this language. Charles answered, with boyish warmth, " But my grandfather has * Germaine de Foix, Ferdinand's last wife, shortly afterwards miscarried, ■whereby Ferdinand the Catholic was baffled in his wish of excluding his grandson Charles through a son. HIS YOUTH AND EDUCATION. 41 not surely ordered you to make a schoolmaster of me." This aversion, however, vanished when the mind of the prince was sufficiently matured to comprehend what treasures the language of the Romans contained. Adrian had no less difficulty in inducing the prince to get through the whole of the Bible. The boy wanted to have to do with nothing but the heroic books. Judges, Kings, and Mac- cabees. Thucydides, of all authors, became his greatest favourite, although he only read him in the French trans- lation of Bishop Claude of Marseilles. He used to keep him under his pillow as Alexander did the Iliad, and this Greek historian afterwards always accompanied him to the camp. Even before his accession, at the age of sixteen, Charles spoke six languages with great fluency. He used to say, when still a youth, " That he learned Italian to speak with the Pope ; Spanish, to speak with his mother ; English, to speak with liis aunt (Catharine of Arragon, queen of Henry VIII. of England); Flemish, to speak with his friends and playfellows; French, to speak with himself; and German, in order to be quahfied to become Emperor." His two other instructors appointed by De Chievres, besides Adrian of Utrecht, were Charles Cernio, a Nether- lander, who infused into him that love of travelling which during the whole of his life remained a prominent feature of his character; and the Castilian Antonio Vacca, a learned lawvcr. The prince at an early age showed great proficiency m all manly and chivalrous si)orts, being in this respect a perfect counterpart of his grandsire, whom he also emulated in gallantry towards the fair sex, only that he carried on his intrigues with much greater secrecy. William de Chievres was an exceedingly rigorous go- vernor, insisting with inexorable tenacity upon the prince's doino- cvcrvthini; to acquire business habits. Charles was not once allowed to stay away from the sittings of the 42 CHARLES V. Council of State, where he generally had to act as secre- tary. Chievres slept in the prince's room, who was obliged by him immediately to open the despatches which might arrive at any hour of the night ; and, whether they were important or not, briefly to state his opinion in the margin. Whilst thus introducing Charles into the routine of business, he broke his wayward and restless disposition. The liveliness of the youth changed into gravity, and all the passions of his ardent soul became subordinate to one — the ambition of showing himself worthy of his princely calling. An instance is recorded of Charles's uncommon liveliness, which happened when his grandfather brought with him to Mechlin the celebrated painter Lucas Cranach, who was to paint for the Emperor the portrait of his grand- son. The prince, at that time in his eighth year, at first baffled every endeavour of the artist to take his likeness, and would not keep quiet for one moment. At last his tutor Adrian hit upon the plan of suspending against the Avail opposite a s[)lendid set of arms by the side of the por- trait of the King of France. From that moment the prince kept his keen glance steadily fixed upon the lineaments of the hereditary enemy of the House of Burgundy and upon the arms. Charles had not yet completed his fifteenth year when he was told that the Count of Angouleme, afterwards King Francis L, had taken away by force Claude, the daughter of Louis XIL of France, to whom he was himself affianced. He merely remarked : " Well, do you think that I ought to be angry at it ? On the contrary, I am very glad. Now, as I am no longer bound to the French by any tie, I may hope one day to make war against them to my heart's content." Ambition at an early age threw Charles' mind back on its own resources. A profound reserve, a spirit entirely living within itself, independent of all but its own intrinsic energy, soon showed itself as the groundwork of his cha- racter. The gloomy sadness of his mother, which in a HIS YOUTH AND EDUCATIOjST. 43 wonderful manner was blended in him with the levity of his gay father, grew more and more upon him the more his mind became matured. There was evidently more of the Spaniard than of the German in him. The grave bu- siness to which he was kept when still a youth, and his isohition within the cold barriers of royal pomp, with no loving parents near him to cheer his tender yeai's, brought out even more forcibly the natural melancholy of his dis- position. Charles, at the age of scarcely eighteen, one day made his appearance at a great tournament in Valladolid. On his blank shield only the word " Nondu77i" was written. Afterwards his motto was " Plus ultra ! " Ludovico JMurliano, who had suggested it to him, got the cardinal's hat for it. The '' Plus ultra,'' with the pillars of Hercules, was placed by Charles on his coins and his seals, with the legend underneath : " Sohrie, juste, et pie. He also used the motto : " / and the right moment against any two of them."" His coat of arms was charged with two spheres. Yet all his royal splendour left him unsatisfied. The monarch whom a Persian ambassador once addressed as "the king who had the sun for his hat" passed through life joyless. This feeling of void grew so intense towards the end of his life, that, having with most bitter mortifica- tion arrived at the conviction of the vanity of all human ambition, tired of the greatness of this world and of the pomp of royalty, he resigned all his lustrous crowns to retire into the devotional solitude of a small monastery of Jeromites in Spain. Charles, after being all his life a poli- tician, ended as a hermit. He exchano;ed his two favourite authors, the old heathen Thucydides, and the modern heathen Machiavelli, one of whose books he constantly carried about him in his pocket, for St. Augustine and St. Bernard. His ardint ambition was cooled down ; but the fundamental type of his nature, melancholy, outlasted the passion which had gnawed him during the whole of his worldly career. 44 CHARLES V. 2. ACCESSION IN THE NETHERLANDS AND IN SPAIN, AND ELEC- TION AS EMPEROR. At the age of fifteen, in 1515, Charles undertook the government in the Netherlands, which, being the land of his birth, he all his life continued to prefer to any other. The 23rd January, 1516, marked the death of Ferdinand the Catholic, his grandfather on the mother's side, who had until now carried on the regency of Castile. Charles now set out (12th August, 1517) for his newly inherited kingdom, — the country of the strictest Roman orthodoxy, the country of the Inquisition, whose king bore the em- phatic title of " The Catholic." He embarked at ]\liddle- burg, in company with his sister Eleanora and of William de Chievres, who was now placed at the head of his court as lord chanibex'lain. On the 20th September, 1517, Charles landed at Villa Viciosa in Asturia ; but, on ac- count of the plague having broken out there, he returned to Santander ; from whence he went by Burgos and Va- lencia to Tordesillas near Valladolid, to his mother, who, notwithstanding her derangement, was exceedingly re- joiced to see him. The first governmental act of Charles in Spain was the removal of his brother the Infant Ferdinand, at that time not more than fourteen yeai's old, and who had until then been brought up at Valladolid. He was sent to the Netherlands, because Charles had ascertained that the young prince had been egged on to intrigues against him, the king. The motives which caused him to remove his brother guided him also in the dismissal of the aged Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo and Grand Inquisitor Ximenes, who had succeeded Ferdinand the Catholic in the regency of Spain, and had reduced the Spanish grandees to obedience by a militia of 30,000 burghers. Charles, at the suggestion of Chievres, sent word to the Cardinal to Valladolid, that his merits were so great, that ACCESSION — NETHERLANDS AND SPAIN. 45 Heaven only could reward them ; and that he therefore allowed him to end his days in quiet on his see. The cardinal was so chacjrined at this sarcastic messaire, that he died a few hours after having received it, 8th Novem- ber, 1517, witliout having seen Charles. He had reached the advanced age of eighty-one years. On the 4th Ja- nuary, 1518, the young king held at Valladolid his first Castilian diet ; and in May, at Saragossa, the first for Arragon. After this he remained in Spain until the spring of 1520. In the meanwhile his other grandfather, INIaximilian, the German Emperor, had died. Charles was just staying at Barcelona when, in the beginning of the year 1519, he received the news of his death ; on which he immediately took measures for obtaining the imperial crown of Germany, for which Francis I., the French king, Avas his rival competitor. Charles accordingl}- sent his ambassadors to Frankfort, where the election was to take place. He availed himself for this purpose of his connec- tion with the celebrated bankers Fugger at Antwerp, who were a branch of the o;reat Augsburo- firm : his a2;ents were ordered to do as the delejxates of the French Kino; did — they bribed the electors. The election cost 852,989 flo- rins.* The German princes, who so bitterly reviled the Pope for having sent to them the hateful vendor of indul- gences Tetzel, to extort money for " the Roman Grace," now took money themselves. The Elector Palatine was paid 40,000 florins for his vote. Frederic the Wise of Saxony alone did not debase himself; he returned the considerable sum of money which the Spanish ambassadors sent to him. They then begged him that he would allow them to distribute part of it among his courtiers. Frede- ric, however, answered, " I cannot forbid them to accept * Annual pensions to the amount of 70,400 florins, and a round sum of 504,06 florins, to be paid down at theelectinon, had been promised by Maxi- milian as earlv as in October, 1815.— Zanz, State Papers of Charles V. 46 CHARLES V. what is offered to them, but whoever takes even one florin will leave my house to-morrow." Charles could not pre- vail upon Frederic the Wise to take anything for his vote but the promise of giving one of his own sisters to Frede- ric's nephew, the same who was afterwards known as John Frederic the Magnanimous, and who lost his electorate In the battle of Muhlberg. The Fuggers did then what the Rothschilds are In the habit of doing in our days ; they promoted as much as possible the election of Charles by protesting the French bills of exchange, and honouring none but the Spanish ones. At first the German electorshad hit upon the expedient of offering the crown, not to either of the two powerful rivals, but to Frederic the Wise. He, however, declined it. He was fifty-six years of age, and, being a really wise man, he felt diffident of the sufficiency of his own strength for carrying such a heavy burden as the crown of Germany. There- upon the King of Spain was proclaimed on the 28th June, 1519. But the Spanish ambassadors had, for the security of the princes, to sign In the name of their master the first "Electoral Capitulation." The goodnatured Germans quite seriously expected to tie down by a sheet of parchment a power of such magnitude as was at the command of Charles. None of the Emperors before him had possessed those immense territorial resources which were at the disposal of the heir of the crowns of Burgundy and Spain. The "Ca- pitulation " contained the provisions : — that the Emperor should conclude no alliance with foreign powers nor de- clare any war without the consent of the German electors and princes; that he should introduce no foreign soldiery into Germany ; that, moreover, no member of the Empire was to be put under the Emperor's ban without the assent of the princes in council, and without being heard in his defence ; that Charles as soon as possible should in person make his appearance in the Empire, and should reside there for the greater part of his time , t.:c.t all the business of the ELECTION AS EMPEKOR. 47 Empire should be conducted in the German or Latin lano-uage ; and, lastly, that all the offices in the Empire or the court should only be filled by native Germans. The powerful heir of the crowns of Burgundy and Spain broke every one of these stipulations. On the 20th May, 1520, the newly elected Emperor left Spain with the fleet sent to him from Flanders. After paying a visit to Catherine of Arragon in England, he went to the Netherlands, landing at Flushing, and then proceeded to Bruges, where his aunt Margaret and his brother Ferdinand received him. On the 22nd October Charles rode into Aix la Chapelle, Avherc according to ancient usage, the head of the Holy Roman Empire was to be crowned. He there appeared pale, grave, taciturn, and melancholy. He had, as it were, as his symbol, a hollow figure to precede him, in which a man was walking. This figure represented Charlemagne, the prince who first established the Roman empire of the German nation. The entry lasted from between two and three o'clock in the afternoon to eight o'clock in the evening, there being 5,000 horses and 3,000 men-at- arms in five divisions, picked troops, under the command of Francis de Castilalt. The procession was headed by the servants and the baggage ; after which followed the princes, lords, counts, and barons, nearly 1,000 horses, all of them dressed, as an old account states, in the king's colours, and most of them in raiments of silk velvet, and fold brocade, and also otherwise embroidered with pearls and precious stones. They were followed in their turn by the twenty-four pages of the Emperor, on horse- back, dressed in party-coloured suits ; one side, crimson satin, trimmed with gold and silver brocade ; and the other, gold and silver brocade trimmed with crimson satin. After them came the master of the horse, the kettle-drums, and twelve trumpets; six persons who flung silver and gold coin to the people ; the herald with a silver-gilt staff 48 CHAELES V. surmounted by an eagle : then followed the electors, the princes, and bishops ; the Earl Marshal of the Empire, Von Pappenheim, with a drawn sword : and then the Spanish King Charles, clad in a suit of armour, over which he wore a coat of gold brocade. He was mounted on a magnificent charger, beautifully caparisoned and decked out with gold brocade. He showed his horsemanship to great advantage. On his right rode the Archbishop of Cologne, and on his left the Cardinal of Mayence. After Charles came, riding alone, the ambassador of the King of Bohemia and Hungary, who represented his master also as an elector of the Empire. Then came the ambassadors of England and of Poland, the cardinals of Sitten, Sidzburg, and Toledo. All these princes were surrounded by their body-guards on foot. The Emperor had a hundred Germans dressed in velvet and in the kino's colours, and a hundred archers in coats of silver brocade, both of these bodies wearing halberds. Charles took his oath on the '' Capitulation." On the following day he was crowned with great pomp and magnifi- cence. He ah'eady then began to carry matters with a very high hand ; he declared that he was resolved to raise the Imperial dignity to its old splendour, and that it was by no means his will and intention that there should be many masters, but one alone. He completely overawed the German princes by his proud, taciturn, Spanish gran- dezza. The old etiquette of the Empire left it optional to address the Emperor by the courtesy of " Imperial High- ness," or " Imperial Grace," or " Imperial INIajesty ;" but he strictly insisted upon that of " Imperial Majesty." From Aix la Chapelle Charles betook himself to Cologne, where he summoned his first diet to meet on the next Epiphany to Worms. All the six electors and many princes of the Empire, secular and spiritual, were present here in person. They looked somewhat poor by the side of the magnificent Netherlandish, Spanish, and Italian lords, DIET OF WOEMS. 49 whom Charles had brought with him. The poorest of all in appearance was that humble monk of Wittenberg, who had likewise been summoned to the assembly of the great. But Luther's spirit at Worms conquered the spirit of Charles, and stamped upon the history of the world the new era which dates from that diet. The day appointed for the opening of the diet was the 28th January, 1521. Not without a meaning had the fifth Charles selected for it the fete of Charlemagne, the first Charles. Luther arrived at Worms on the 16th April. On the 18th he delivered his celebrated declaration, which will live for ever in the annals of the world, " Con- cerning Holy Writ, and the public, distinct, and clear reasons and causes," &c. On the 26th April he left Worms, and on the 8th May Charles issued the famous Edict of AYorms, in which he enhanced the papal anathema against the humble monk by the ban of the Empire, just as the Swabian empei'ors had done against Arnold of Brescia, and those of the house of Luxemburg against the Hussites. On this Charles returned from the diet to Spain, taking the same road by which he had come, through Flanders and England. At Dover, where he landed, he was re- ceived by Cardinal Wolsey. Henry Vlll. entertained the Emperor with great magnificence at Greenwich, at Wolsey's palace in London, and at Windsor. At the latter place Charles was created Knight of the Garter, and a contract of marriage was concluded between Charles and Henry's daughter, then in her seventh year. The betrothal was to liave been acted upon as soon as the princess should have completed her twelfth year. This infant bride was no other than the " bloody jNIary," who afterwards, at the age of thirty-eight, married the Em- peror's son Don Philip, who was her junior by eleven years. The fleet with which Charles sailed from Southampton to Spain consisted of 180 Netherlandish ships; as ally of VOL. I. E 50 CHARLES V the King of England, he very discreetly appointed the admiral of the English fleet, the Earl of Surrey, as an Impeinal admiral. For nine years Germany did not again see her imperial master. Charles abided his time, true to his motto, " nondumy Charles left in Germany a regency, under his brother the Archduke Ferdinand, with whom the Elector Frederic the Wise of Saxony succeeded in acquiring great influence. Whilst the religious movement was going on in Germany, Charles thought of nothing but of carrying out his vast political plans. First of all it was requisite to reduce Spain to obedience, and then to begin the contest against his principal rival for the object which has remained the keystone of the Habshurg policy to this very day, — THE CONQUEST OF Italy, — which the founder of the dynasty, in order to raise the Siciss baron to the head of the Germano- Moman Empire, had in former times himself made over to the French. 3. THE FRENCH WARS. — BATTLE OF PAVIA. ASSAULT OF ROME. CHALLENGE BETWEEN CHARLES AND FRANCIS I. SIEGE OF VIENNA BY THE TURKS IN 1529. As soon as the Emperor had gone to Germany for the coronation, a rebellion broke out in Spain, caused by the avarice of the Netherlandish councillors whom he had there appointed, and by the* heavy taxes exacted by them. This rebellion Charles very adroitly availed himself of to introduce into Spain an absolute government, after the pattern of that which Francis had before him established in France. The Communeros of the Santa Junta of Castile had been conquered already, during Charles' absence, near Villalar, by the royal troops, with the help of the nobility ; and the head of the Junta, Don Juan de Padilla THE FRENCH WARS. 51 of Toledo, had been executed. Charles, on his return to Spain, 1522, cut down the liberties of the Cortes to such a limit, that they could no longer interfere with his ab- solutist tendencies. He then launched with all his might into the war against France ; for which purpose he allied himself with England. Francis I. was to be forced to evacuate Milan and Genoa, and to leave Charles sole master of Italy, where Naples and Sicily already obeyed the Emperor's sway. Charles had the good fortune of being aided by excellent commanders in war. He was one of the first modern princes who succeeded in securing for himself the services of able generals. The Spanish army was commanded by Prosper Colonna, of the ancient celebrated Ghibeline Roman house, one of whom, in the days of Philip le Bel of France, had boxed the ears of tlie Pope. Colonna was Viceroy of Naples. He had serving under him the man who became the first captain of his age, Fernando de Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, the husband of the beautiful Vittoria Colonna, to whom Pescara had been affianced since his third year, and who after his early death celebrated his memory in a spirited heroic poem. Pescara was a prudent and brave, but at the same time most stately and gallant man ; in his suit of red, with a short, sleeveless black coat over it, and wearing a lansquenet's hat surmounted by large waving plumes, he made a most imposing figure at the head of his Spanish arquebusiers, whom he knew riglit well how to command, and whom, in fact, he had made an invincible troop. This Spanish army under Colonna and Pescara was now joined by the burly old George of Frundsberg with his German lansquenets, for whom he had caused 2,000 peasants to cut a road over the roughest Alps of the Valteline. Colonna, Pescara, and Frundsberg jointly defeated, in 1522, the French and their allies, the Swiss, near Biccocca, not far from Milan. By this battle, which Charles won, and by that of Marignano, which E 2 52 CHARLES V. Francis I. had won seven years before, the power of the Swiss was broken for ever. They henceforth became the mere mei-cenaries and praetorians of foreign princes; and the horn of Uri no longer resounded but to call the herds of cattle on the Alpine meadows. In 1523 the consta- ble Charles Duke of Bourbon, Count of Montpensier, a cousin of the King of France, was induced, by a provoca- tion received from the latter, to go over to the Emperor ; and in 1524 Charles V. with an Imperial army invaded Provence, and laid siege to Marseilles; but without result, as the English fleet did not arrive, and the Emperor's admiral, Hugo de Moncada, could not keep the sea against the French squadron, which was commanded by the celebi'ated Andrew Doria. In the following year we find Francis I. in Italy, whither he had led, across Mount Cenis, a numei'ous French army, supported by 8,000 Swiss and 5,000 German lansquenets, the so-called Black Guard, which dated from the times of Matthias Corvinus. After the conquest of Milan by Francis the two armies encountered on the banks of the Ticino, near Pavia, which town was garrisoned by Imperial troops under Antonio de Leyva. The King of France had taken a strong position in the park of Pavia. Here he was attacked by Pescara, Frunds- berg, Bourbon, and Charles de Lannoy, since the death of Prosper Colonna, Viceroy of Naples, and ancestor of the present Princes of Rheina-Wolbek in Prussia. Frunds- berg gathered his twenty troops of lansquenets round him, and spoke to them : " My dear brothers and sons, we have a proud enemy before us, but we have always beaten his men and captains ; and now also, with the help of God, you will do your duty as honest Germans !" Upon this all the men and officers cheerfully raised their hands and called out " that he was a father to all of them, and that they would willingly lay down their lives for him." In the night of the 23rd February, 1525, Pescara ordered BATTLE or PAVIA. 53 the wall of the park to be battered. The morning dawned before the breach was yet made. It was the Emperor's birth- day. The breach being opened, Pescara marched against the small palace of Mirabella, whicli his nephew, the Marquis del Vorsto, speedily took by a spirited assault. The balance of the victory, however, remained long undecided, until at last Pescara threw out, as skirmishers, his Spanish arque- buslers, with their matchlocks, which were still rested on forks. Not one of them missed his man ; and the French cavalry, the gendarmes of the king, were thrown into confusion, which grew worse when the Imperial garrison of Pavia came out and took them in the rear. All now fled, even the Swiss, quite contrary to their usual custom ; and also the Black Guard, which Frundsberg caused to be cut down nearly to the last man, as a chastisement for their having, as Germans, enlisted under the French king. In that forest-garden of Pavia the flower of the French chivalry fell round their chivalrous King Francis, who, conspicuous by his glittering shirt of silver mail and his waving plume, made a desperate resistance. All pressed round him to protect him ; four marshals fell by his side, and after them his grand equerry, St. Severin, w^hose duty it was to ward off the strokes which were aimed at the kino;. The crowd was so close, that there was no room for shooting. Francis, still in his saddle, was as if wedged in by a wall of corpses. He was just going to cross a bridge, when his horse, struck by a shot, fell, and rolled over him. The Spaniards and Germans now began to quarrel as to which of the two nations should have him for a prisoner. But Francis, although bleeding in his forehead, his hands, and his legs, continued to fight on foot, striking down two more of his foes. Nicholas, Count of Salin, who had attacked him with his cuirassiers, and wounded him in the right hand, was stabbed through the thigh. All now called upon the king to surrender, when Pompcrant, a knight of the Constable of Bourbon, E 3 54 CHARLES V. came up, and, although Francis was disfigured by blood and dust, recognised the King of France from his chivalrous defence. Falling on his knees before Francis, he adjured him to surrender to Bourbon. The king, however, called out, " I know of no Duke of Bourbon but myself; I'll rather die than surrender to the traitor Bourbon ; let the Viceroy of Naples be summoned." As Lannoy made his appearance the king pledged him- self to him as his prisoner, offering in token the gauntlet of his right hand. After this, Lannoy on his knees re- ceived the bloody sword of Francis, to whom he returned his own, with the words, " It is unseemly that such a great king should stand without arms before a subject of the Emperor." Francis was now led to the neighbouring Carthusian con- vent at Pavia, where he wished to pi'ay. The first thing that met his eyes on entering the chapel was an inscription on a side altar taken from the Psalms : "It is good for me that I have been afilicted ; that I might learn thy statutes." Francis, smiling, pointed out the words to Lannoy. He then was led to a tent, from whence he wrote to his mother those famous words, " Madame, tout est perdu, sauf Thonneur.^'' His person was entrusted to the safe keeping of the Spanish Colonel Alar^on, and he was taken to the fortress of Pizzio-lietone. The Emperor Charles was in Spain, in his palace at Madrid. There he received, through the commander De Penalosa, who was sent as a courier, the news of the great victory of Pavia, of the captivity of the king, and of the complete conquest of Italy. A fortnight after the day of Pavia not a Frenchman was to be seen in Italy. Charles, after having heard the news, and received the sword of Francis, remained speechless for some moments ; after which he was heard saying to himself, " The king in my power, the battle won for me." Then, going to an adjoining room, he knelt down in prayer before an image BATTLE or PA VIA. 55 of the Virgin. The Emperor wrote to Lannoy : '' Ce qu'aves le plus a diligenter est d'assembler argent, car a tout il vient a point ; je feray le semblable du coste de de9a, etc. Je vois que ne me s^aurois oil employer, si ce n'est contra les infidelles ; j'en ay toujours eu volonte, et a ceste heure ne I'ay moindre. Aydes a bien dresser les affaires, afin qu'avant que je deviene beaucoup plus vieux, je face chose par ou Dieu peust estre servy et que je ne sois a blasmer. Je me diet vieil pour ce qu'en ce cas le temps passe me semble long et Tadvenir loing." Henry VIII. of England, the Emperor's ally, demanded neither more nor less but that Francis should be deposed and himself crowned king of France. On the other hand, all that had been alienated from the territory of the Ger- man empire, and especially the old duchy of Burgundy, was to be ceded to the Emperor. But Charles would not enter upon such a treaty of partition, and England sepa- rated from his alliance and sided with France, whereupon the projected marriage between Charles and Mary Tudor was given up. The Pope now, after England, became Charles' worst enemy. The Bishop of Home, remembering the time of the Hohenstaufen, was more afraid than any one of the excessive power of the Emperor. The Holy Father therefore allied himself with all the Italian powers against Charles in the so-called Holy League of Cognac. Cle- ment VII. even tried to gain over Charles' best gene- ral, the Marchese Pescara, by the offer of the crowns of Naples and Sicily. But Pescara remained true to his master, and soon after died, being not more than thirty-six years of age, on the 29tli of November, 1525, and was succeeded in the chief command of the Emperor's army by the Constable of Bourbon. Francis had requested to be conducted to Spain, where he hoped in person to receive better conditions from Charles. During the passage, the ships having sailed E 4 56 CHARLES V. from Genoa in June, 1525, Doria with his galleys met the squadron iu the Gulf of Lyons. But the Viceroy of Naples, who escorted the king, called out to Doria, that " it would be death to the king if he dared to make an attack." Upon this the Spanish squadron proceeded on its way, and reached the coast of Spain without any further molestation. Francis landed in Valencia, and he hoped now to have an interview with Charles. But Charles came not. Francis then wrote to him the two following letters, which have been lately communicated in the " Papier s d'Etatdu Cardinal de Gra?iveUe :^' — I. "Si plus tost ma liberte par mon cousin le vice-roy de Naples m'eust ete donne, je n'eusse si longuement tarde vous faire mon debvoir comme le temps et lieu ou je suis le merite. N'aiant autre comfort a mon infortune que I'esperance de vosti'e bonte, la quelle, si luy plaist, par son honestete usera a moy le fruictz d'estre vainqueur de sa victoire, aiant ferme esperance que vostre vertu ne vouldroit me contraindre de chose qui ne fust honneste ; vous suppliant jugier a vostre propre cueur ce qu'il vous plaira faire de moy : estant seur que la volonte d'ung tel prince que vous estes ne peut estre accompaignee que d'honneur et magnanimite. Par quoy si vous plaist avoir cette honestete et pitie de moy, avec la seurete que merite la prison d'ung roy de France, lequel I'on doibt rendre amy et non desespere, vous pourrez estre seur de faire un acquest, au lieu d'un prisonnier inutile, de rendre un roy m a jamais esclave. Par quoy, pour ne vous ennuyer plus I lono-ueraent de ma facheuse lettre, fera fin, avec ses 1 humbles recommandations a vostre bonne grace, celuy qui n'a aultre aise que d'attendre que vous plaise vouloir nom- mer au lieu d'un prisonnier. " Votre bon frere et amy " Francoys." CHARLES AND FRANCIS I. 57 II. "Pour ce que depuis la lettre que je vous ay escript 11 vous a pleu m'envoyer le sieur de Reux, lequel s'cn re- tourne par devers vous, j'ay pense vous escrire ceste lettre afin qu'il vous plaise cognoistre le debvoir en quoy je me veux mettre, ayant mandc a madame ma mere [Louise the Kegent of France] la resolution de ce qu'il me seinble que je doibs faire pour ma delivrance ; vous suppliant la vouloir recevoir et jugier en cueur d'empereur, qui desire plutost se faire lionneur que honte a celuy qui espere taut de misericorde et de bonte en vous, que de son esclave sera a jamais son bon frere, amy, et trop oblige " Francoys." To this Charles made answer as follows : — " J'ay re9eu deux vos lettres, etc. et le tout bien en- tendu ; ce sont tant de bons propos et d'honnestetez, que de la vertu d'un tel prince que vous estes se doit espcrer. Mais de vostre part, ny de celle de madame la regente, a la quelle vous m'ecrivez que vous estes remis, ne m'a este repondu aux moyens que j'avais mis avant, ny aussy m'a este foist autre ouverture ; que n'est pas le chemia pour parvenir a la paix, laquelle je desire generale et durable pour le service de Dieu et bien de la chrestiente, y gardant mon honneur sans souiller le vostre, conservant mes amys et aussy desirant de vous veoir dclivre, que lors connoistrez le bon vouloir que j'ay de vous estre et demeurer vray bon frere et amy " Charles." Charles for a long time made no preparation whatever to see his illustrious prisoner, although he had him brought, in the month of August, to the neighbourhood of Madrid for better security. Francis, in September, fell sick with 58 CHARLES Y. vexation. His sister Margaret, Duchess of Alen^on, the poetess, and friend of Calvin, came to see him, and paved the way for negociations. At last Charles came, and tried to console the captive king by courteously holding out to him a prospect of a speedy arrangement. Francis re- covered his health, but not his liberty ; at least not for some time, as his captivity lasted upwards of a year. In Charles' council opinions differed as to what should be done with the royal prisoner. One party, to which the Chancellor Gattinara belonged, advised the Emperor to treat Francis with generosity, which very likely might destroy for ever the seeds of dissension. The other party, comprising Lannoy, the Duke of Alva, Count Henry of Nassau (uncle of William of Orange), and the Emperor's most influential confessor, the Dominican Garcia de Loaysa, wished to turn the occasion as much as possible to advan- tage. The Emperor steered a middle course. As Francis ostentatiously professed his readiness to resign the crown of France, Charles decided upon releasing the king, but with the condition of his renouncing for ever Burgundy, Flanders, Artois, and Italy. The wily disciple of Machiavelli, for once overshooting his mark, forgot that it was his own policy to let might go for right, and that therefore Francis, when he had once recovered his might, would take very good care to recover his rio;ht also. Francis was to become Charles' brother- in-law by marrying his sister Eleanor, the Queen Dowager of Portugal. Francis, only to escape from the captivity which had become well nish intolerable to him, agreed to anything and everything; and thus the peace of Madrid was concluded, which Francis signed on the 14th of January. But, w^ith the assent of the Pope, who absolved him from the oath which he was going to take, he had already before recorded a solemn protest against the validity of the treaty, which, it is true, had been exacted from him by force. Yet he took the oath at a solemn CHARLES AND FRANCIS I. 59 high mass, laying his hand on the Gospel. From thence he went to lilescas, halfway between Madrid and Toledo, to be affianced to Eleanor. After this the Emperor and the king frequently met, were carried in the same litter, and called each other brothers. As they took leave of each other near a crucifix which had been set up a little way from lilescas, the Emperor said, " Remember, my brother, what you have promised me ; tell me truly, will you keep the articles ?" Francis made such an answer as he thought it right to make. The Emperor then parted from him with the words, " There is one thing I beg of you, if you do anyhow deceive me, let it not be concerning your affianced bride, — she would not he able to revenge herself .''^ Francis now, accompanied by Lannoy, Alar^on, and a troop of gendarmes, rode to the frontier, the Pyrenees. As the cavalcade reached the river Bidassoa, Marshal de Lautrec presented himself on the opposite bank with an escort of French horsemen. In the middle of the Bidassoa, where the two parties met in the ferry-boats, the king was exchanged for his two sons, who Avere to be taken to Spain as his hostages. " Sire," said Lannoy, " your Highness is free ; be pleased now to fulfil what you have promised." Francis hastily answered, " All shall be fulfilled." Then, after embracing his two sons, to whom he addressed the parting wish, " May God protect you, my children," he jumped into the French ferry-boat. On reaching the land, where the miglit was his, he mounted a Turkish charger which had been kept in readiness for him, and exclaimed, ^' Je siiis le roi, le roi!^^ After this he started at a gallop to St. Jean de Luz, and from thence to Bayonne, where his family and the court expected him. This hap- pened on the 18th JNlarch, 1526. Scarcely had the king of France reached his oiim country in safety when he sent his excuses to the Emperor, that he should not be able to keep the treaty, because the States of the realm refused to give their consent to the cession of 60 CHARLES V. Burgundy. He therefore offered to the Emperor a large sum of money for the restoration of his sons. In the same fortunate year 1526 the twin crowns of Bohemia and Hungary devolved on the House of Habsburg. Louis II., the last Jasrellon kino- of those realms, husband of Mary, the sister of Charles V. and Ferdinand, died at the age of twenty-one, after the battle of Mohacz in 1526, without leaving any children ; when, according to the provi- sions of the Treaty of Vienna, concluded by Maximilian in 1515, the Archduke Ferdinand, husband of Ann Jagellon, and brotlier-in-law of Louis, succeeded. This was the third of the three great marriages with heiresses, the other two being the Burgundian Mary and the Spanish Jane, which have raised the power of Habsburg- Austria to the first rank in Europe. But it was much easier to acquire than to maintain Hungary. Germany had thenceforth to combat there her principal foe, the Grand Turk, the terrible Sul- tan Soleyman. The ruler of the Moslems allied himself with the monarch of France, the most Christian king, — whose other ally was the Pope — against the Emperor, whose exorbitant power certainly all Europe had now to fear. There was really every reason to believe that Charles would restore the Germano-Roman Empire as a universal monarchy after the pattern of Charlemagne. The fear of the accomplishment of such a plan, of which the young ambitious Emperor was perhaps not unjustly suspected, was one of the principal causes by which the schism in the German Church has been nurtured. Immediately after taking leave of Francis, Charles V. married, in Seville (15th March), Isabella, daughter of Emanuel the Great of Portugal ; a princess who was con- sidered one of the most beautiful women of her time.* He remained in Spain, whilst his army accomplished in Italy one of the boldest feats against the man whom the * The nuptial solemnities will be related in another place. ASSAULT OF ROME. 61 Emperor in public revered as the Holy Father, but against whom he was in his heart greatly incensed as against an ally of France who had attempted to induce Francis to break the peace of Madrid, and who had tried to seduce Pescara from his duty by promising him the vice-royalty of Naples. Charles, after having been apprised of the league of the Pope with France, had, by way of reprisals against him, suspended in Germany the Edict of Worms ; thus allowing the German princes to reform their churches after Luther's docti'ine, as their consciences might dictate to them. He had asked them also for help against the Turks, expressing his belief that " they would easily guess ivliat Turks he meanty Bourbon was still stationed with the Spaniards in Mi- lan, whither George of Frundsberg, who was a friend of Luther's, led to him 16,000 lansquenets, most of them likewise Lutherans. The Venetians having closed the narrow Veronese passes, Frundsberg marched across the most rugged mountains, passing the Sarke hills by a road, which in fact was only a footpath, along the edge of the steepest precipices. The old captain walked along the most dangerous spots by the lances of his men, as along a railing. He joined Bourbon on the 31st January, 1527. The Imperial army in Italy, Germans as well as Spaniards and Italians, were left without any pay ; the consequence of which was, that they rebelled. Bourbon applied to the Pope for money ; the Holy Father refused it. Frunds- berg, whom the lansquenets called their father, and the enemies the " Devourer of the People," waited in vain for letters or messages from Germany, and, always showing a cheerful face and trusting in God's help, pro- mised the lansquenets that he would not leave them un- til they were paid. The mutiny broke out at last. It went on from the 13th March, in the evening, to the 15th at noon. On the 16th Frundsberg addressed his men near Bologna ; but his eloquence would not avail this time, 62 CHARLES V. the angry children shouted, ^^ Money ! Money!" and lowered their lances against their father. The old man, deprived of speech by his towering rage, raised his hands ; the big tears stood in his eyes ; he tried to open his lips, but sank swooning on a drum : an attack of paralysis had struck him. On this the lansquenets became silent, and quietly dispersed. On the fourth day only Frundsberg recovered his speech, but never again his strength ; and he was obliged to stop at Ferrara. He recrossed the Alps in the following year, and died at his estate of Mindelheim, in Swabia, which afterwards became the property of the Fuffo-ers, and at last of the crown of Bavaria. It is the same lordship from which, in the war of the Spanish suc- cession, the Duke of Marlborough took his title as Prince of the Empire. Frundsberg used to say, " Three things ought to deter a nation from war : the misery into Avhich the people ai-e plunged ; the wicked life of the soldiery ; and the ingratitude of the princes, with whom the faithless are sure to rise in favour, and the well-deserving servants remain unrewarded." On the death of Frundsberg his estates were found to be mortgaged to merchants, as he had never in his life received any gratuity for his faithful services. He died on the 20th August, 1528. Bourbon, whose tent the lansquenets had invaded, whose coat had been torn from his back, and who, among the fury and the threats of the men, had only saved his life by flight, and by hiding himself under the straw in Frundsberg's stables, now took the chief command of the whole army, the Ger- mans included. The soldiery, instead of pressing for their arrears, demanded speedily to be marched to Rome, where they said there would be no lack of pay, as all the money of Christendom had gathered there for centui'ies. Bour- bon was not in a condition to oppose their request. On the 5th May, 1527, at sunset, the constable with his army of 25,000 men appeared before the walls of the Eternal City. Pointing out to his troops the shining ASSAULT OF ROME. 63 domes and pinnacles of Its churches and palaces, he pro- mised them the plunder of the place. Everything was at once put In readiness for the assault. A thick fog in the morning concealed from the Romans the approach of the hostile army. The ladders were planted without delay, and the escalade began. Bourbon was repulsed several times, the Swiss making a stout defence for the Pope, who, •with his cardinals, had taken refuge in the castle of St. Angelo. At last Bourbon, being conspicuous to friend and foe by a white cloak which he wore over his suit of armour, snatched a ladder from the hands of a Spanish soldier, and began scaling It. But he had only climbed a few steps when a shot from an arquebuse struck him down. The Imperialists now entered Home; the Swiss gradually gave way ; and before evening set in, the capital of the world was conquered. The soldiery, no longer restrained by the control of a commander, continued to sack the city for ten days. The hordes of his Catholic Majesty committed atrocities equal to any which have been recorded of the Goths and Van- dals. Sebastian Schtirtlin of Burtembach, one of the captains, writes In his autobiography: " On the 6th May, 1527, we took Rome by assault: we slew 6,000 men in It; sacked the whole town ; took away whatever we could find in the churches or above ground ; burnt down the greater part of the city ; and there were all sorts of strange doings. In the castle of St. Angelo we found Pope Clement with twelve cardinals In a narrow stable, and took him prisoner, and made him sign the articles which the clerk read out to him. There was great sorrow among them ; they wept very much, but we all of us grew rich." Reisner, In his quaint " Life of Frundsberg," states : " The German lans- quenets put the cardinals' hats on their heads, donned the long scarlet robes, and rode on donkeys about the city. William Von Sandizell (a Bavarian captain of Frunds- berg's) often used to make his appearance before the Castle 64 CHARLES V. of St. Angelo, dressed up as the Pope of Rome, with the triple crown ; and his men, in the cardinals' robes, bowed before him. Then the mock pontiff, with a glass of wine, officiated ; and the mock cardinals drank his health after him, calling out, that they were now going to make right good popes and cardinals, who would be obedient to the Emperor, and not cause rebellion, war, and bloodshed, as the others had done. At last they shouted aloud, ' Let us make Luther Pope of Home /^ whereupon all raised their hands, shouting, 'Luther a Pope, Luther a PopeP^^ This game was carried on before the castle of St. Angelo in derision of the real Pope, who was shut up in it, first when besieged, and then as a prisoner. A German lansquenet, Griinewald, especially distinguished himself in mortifying and frightening the Pope. He publicly called up to the castle, " that he would be only too happy to tear a piece from the Pope's body and take it to Luther, because the Pope had, until now, so vehemently opposed the Word of God." Clement VII., a scion of the celebrated house of Medici, had to pay 400,000 scudi as his ransom, and give up to the Imperial troops his fortified places around Home and in Lombardy. Until the stipulated sum was paid, he was to go as prisoner to Naples under the guard of the same Colonel Alar^on to whom Francis I. had been en- trusted. The constable of Bourbon, because he died excommuni- cated, was not buried, but kept in a box in the Castle of Gaeta. The Bavarian Baron von Lerchenfeld-Aham, during his journey in 1728, still saw the body. It was standing upright, in a Spanish dress, with a hat and peruke, holding a cane in its hand, and wearing a sword at its side. The Emperor, who did not care to make the world believe that the assault of Rome had happened with his knowledge and by his orders, sent letters of excuse to all the Christian princes. Whilst his soldiery, who, it is true, could no longer be restrained after having lost their com- SIEGE OF NAPLES. 65 manders Bourbon and Frundsberg, kept the Pope prisoner, first in the Castle of St. Angelo, then in Naples ; Charles had public prayers offered for the delivery of the Holy Father in all the churches of his empire. The Pope made his escape on the eve of the 10th December, 1527, the day on which he was to have been liberated and sent back to Rome. Lest he should a second time be exposed to the insults of the soldiers in Rome, he went, very likely with the knowledge of his gaolers, to the camp of the Holy League at Orvieto. The Imperial army left Rome only after a stay of ten months, having, in retribution of the horrors committed by them, dwindled by disease to 25,000 men. It marched to Naples, which the French under Lautrec had invaded with great success. Charles was in a very critical position. Diplomacy now came to the rescue. Charles, who was alwavs successful on that field, executed a master stroke. He brought the celebrated Genoese naval hero, Andrew Doria, over to his side. Doria, who had been elected Doge of Genoa, now sailed with his fleet to the relief of Naples, and forced the French to raise the siege of that city. With this, fortune again turned in favour of the Emperor. Whilst this was going on in Italy, there had been be- tween Charles and France a new declaration of war, and, moreover, that remarkable challenge for single combat concerning wliich the *' Papiers (Vetat du Cardinal de Granvelle^ lately published from the public library of Besan^on, have communicated the documentary evidence. The declaration of war was made in the ancient mediaeval style by two kings- at-arms of the allied monarchs of France and England, the heralds appearing in person at the court of Charles V. at Burgos, 22nd January, 1528. On the 28th March, 1528, Nicolaus Perrenot de GranvcUa had his farewell audience with Francis I. in Paris. The king wished to commit to his care the challenge to Charles bearing the same date. Granvella declined to take it ; it VOL J. F GQ CHAELES V. was therefore delivered to Charles on the 7 th June of the same year, at Mon^on, in Arragon, by Guyenne, Boi (T Amies de France. It ran thus : — " Nous Fran^oys, par la grace de Dieu roy de France, seigneur de Gennes (Genoa), etc. A vous, Charles, par la mesme grace esleu empereur des Romains, roy d'Es- paignes, faisons savoir que, nous estans avertiz, que en aulcunes reponces qu'avez faictes a noz anibassadeurs et heraulx envoyez devers vous pour le bien de la paix, vous vuillant sans raison excuser, vous avez accuse en disant qu'avez nostre foy, et que sur icelle, oultre notre promesse, nous estions allez et partiz de voz mains et de vostre puissance. Pour deifendre nostre honneur, lequel en ce cas seroit trop charge contre verite, avons bien voula vous envoyer ce cartel, par lequel, encoires que tout hovime garde ne peut avoir ohligacion de foy, et que cela nous fust excuse assez souffisante ; ce nonobstant, vuillant satisfaire a ung chacun et nostredict honneur le quel avons voulu garder et garderons, si Dieu plaist, jusques a la mort, vous faisons entendre que si nous avez voulu ou voulez charger, non pas de nostredicte foy et delivrance seulement, mais que nous ayons jamais fait chose qu'un gentilhomme aymant son honneur ne doit faire, nous disons que vous avez menty par le gorge et autant de foy que vous le direz, vous mentirez, estant delibere de deffendre notredict honneur jusques au dernier bout de notre vye. Parquoy, puisque contre verite vous nous avez, comme dit est, charge, doiresenavant ne nous ecrivez aulcune chose, mais nous asseurez le camp, et nous vous pourterons les armes, protestant, que si, apres ceste declaration, en aultry lieux vous ecrivez ou dictes paroles qui soient contre notre honneur, que la honte du delay du combat en sera vostre, veu que venant audict com- bat, c^est la Jin de toutes escriptures. Fait en nostre bonne ville et cite de Paris le 28"^* jour de mars, I'an 1527 avant CHALLENGE OF FRANCIS I. 67 Pacques. Signe Franqoys, Et dessus est mis ung cachet sur cire vermeil." The challenge was provoked by the following statement, which Charles had made in a written communication to the French ambassador, Jean de Calvymont, dated 18 th March, 1528. *' Substance des paroles ecrites par Sa Majestc au Pre- sident et Ambassadeur de France qui pretendait ne pas se souvenir de ce que I'empereur lui avait dit precedemment a, Grenade. " Je vous ai dit que le roi votre maitre avait ogi laclie- ment et mechamment en violant la parole qu'il m'avoit donnee lors du traite de Madrid, et que, s'il pretendoit le contraire, le le lui sontiendrai, d'homme a homme. Ce sont les propres termes dont je me suis servis a I'egard du roi votre maitre a Madrid lui disant quej> le tieiidrais pour Idche et mediant sil manqait a la j^arole qiiil ni'avoit donnee, et en le qualifiant ainsi, je tins plus fidelement mes pro- messes que lui les siennes. Donnee a Madrid le 18 mars."* Charles sent to the challenge of Francis the following answer : — " Charles, par la divine clemence, empereur des Romains, roy des Allemaignes des Espaignes etc. a vous Franc^oys par la grace de Dieu roy de France faiz s9avoir etc. Et a cest effet et pour plus prompt expediant,^^ vous nomme dois maintenant le lieu dudit combat sur la riviere qui passe entre Fontarahye et Andaya en tel endroit et de la maniere que de commung consentement sera advise plus seur et plus * The Freucb, alternately quaint and modern, is literally copied from the German edition. Dr. Vehse seems to have taken the documents from dif- ferent works, or the " substance" has perhaps been translated from Spanish, or abridged and rendered in the language of the present day by the French editor. F 2 68 CHARLES V. convenahle ; et me semble que par raison ne pouvez au- cunement refusei% ne dire de non estre bien asseure, puisque y fustes delivre, en recepvant vos enffiins pour hostaiges, et moyennant vostre foy paravant baillee pour vostre re- tour, comme dit est ; et veu aussi que sur mesme riviere fyates vostre pei'sonne et celle de vos enfFans, pouvez bien fyer la vostre seule, puisque je y mectroy la rayenne, et que nonobstant la situation dudict lieu, se trouvera bon moyen qu'il n'y aura avantaige a I'ung que a I'autre. Et a I'efFect que dessus et pour ajjpoincter sur Velection des armcs que je pretendz me appartenir et non a vous, et afin qu'il n'y ayt longueur ne dilacion en la conclusion, pour- rons envoyer sur le diet lieu gentilshommes d'un chacung couste, avec souffisant pouvoir d'adviser et conclure tant de la seurte esgalle (egale) dudict camp que de I'election des dictes arines, pour I'efFect dudict combat et du surplus touchant a ce cas. JEt si dans 4:0 jours apres la presenia- cion de ceste ne me repondez et ne me advisez de vostre intencion sur ce, Ton j)ourra bien voir que le delay du combat sera vostre, que vous sera impute et adjoinct avec la faulte de non avoir accompli ce que vous promistes a Madrid. Et quant a ce que vous protestez, que sy, apres vostre declaration, en aultres lieux je ditz ou escriptz parolles qui soient centre vostre honneur, que la honte du delay du combat sera myenne, veu que venant au diet combat c'est la fin de toutes escriptures, votre dicte pro- testacion est chose bien excusee ; car ce n'est a vous me garder (empecher) que je ne dye verite, encoires qu'il vous griefve, et aussi je suis bien seur, que par raison ne puis recepvoir honte du delay du combat, puisque tout le monde peult cognoistre I'afFecttion que j'ay d'en veoir I'efFet. Donne a Monson en mon royaulme d'Arragon le 24™® jour dudict mois de juing I'an 1528. " Charles. ** (Et S9elle de son seel du secret.)" THE ladies' peace. 69 Bourgoi^ne, the king-at-arms of Charles, delivered his letter to Francis on the 10th September, 1528. But the affair did not go any further. No duel was fought ; Cardinal Wolsey having in the meanwhile, on the 15th June, brought about a peace. Yet even as late as on the 9th November Charles wrote to his chamberlain, William de Montfort, his ambassador in the Netherlands : " Tou- chant ce du deffault (defi) vous pourtiez ce qui s'y est faict ; n'oubliez de en tons endroictz S9avoir sije suis tenu a plus ou dots fairs aultre chose pour hojineur, car je rCy vouldrois faillir. " Both parties now longed for peace, which was at last concluded in 1529, at Cambray, by two ladies, Louise of Savoy, the mother of Francis, and Margaret, aunt of Charles, and Regent of the Netherlands ; and which, there- foi*e, was called *' The Ladies' Peace." The King of France paid two million crowns for the liberation of his two sons, who were still kept prisoners in Spain. Eleanor, Charles' sister, whom Francis now married, brought the young j)rinces back to him. Francis also renounced his claims to Italy; whereas Charles, on the other hand, did not press for the immediate cession of Burgundy, reserving, however, his claims to it. Charles likewise concluded peace at Barcelona with the now humbled Pope, Clement VIL, and installed another Medici as hereditary Duke of Florence, to whom he afterwards gave his natural daughter Margaret in marriage ; the Duchy of Milan he restored to Francesco Sforza. Genoa remained a republic under the Doge Andrew Doria. Charles then left Spain, and betook himself to Italy, where he had never been before. He went there to be crowned by the Pope as Boman Emperor. On the 12th August, 1529, he landed at Genoa, surrounded by a splendid retinue of Spanish grandees. From Genoa he went to Bologna. Plere he met the Pope, kissed, accord- ing to ancient usage, on his knees the foot of the Holy F 3 70 CHARLES Y. Father, and was by him crowned King of Lombardy and Roman Emperor. The coronation took place on the 24th February, 1530, the anniversary of the victory of Pavia, and at the same time his thirtieth birthday. It was the last coronation of an emperor performed hy a Pope until the time of Napoleon. Great splendour and profusion was displayed on that occasion. Gold and silver coins were flung to the people on the first day by a herald, during the procession from the church after the coronation ; and, on the second day, for two whole hours, from the balcony and the corner windows of the palace. At the coronation banquet, all the gold and silver plate and other costly vessels of the table were, after every course, likewise thrown out of the win- dow to the people. The Spanish Charles had not one prince of the German Empire with him. This was a new fashion : no Germano-E-oman emperor had been crowned in this way before. But, on the other hand, as a faithful son of the Church, he staid with the Pope for five months under the same roof at Bolosrna. The Emperor had now his hands unfettered against the Turks, and also against the German Protestants, of whom he had very cleverly made use as bugbears to frighten the Pope. He therefore now resolved upon going to Ger- many, where he had summoned the princes of the Empire to Auo-sburo;. It was the celebrated Diet at which the confession of the Protestants was brought forth, the Diet of the year 1 530. Even before having crossed the Alps, Charles received the joyful news of the departure of the Grand Turk, who had made his appearance before Vienna whilst the Emperor was engaged in settling the affairs of Italy. Never before had the Turks advanced so far westward. They had reached the height of their power under Soleyman; having become a naval power, they had conquered Rhodes, from whence the Knights of St. John were then obliged to SOLEYMAN BEFORE VIENNA. 71 remove to the Island of Malta, of which Charles V. made them a grant in 1530. The Turks had invaded Hungary since 1521, after having conquered Belgrade, the key of that kingdom. In 1526, as mentioned before, Louis IL, the last lagellon of Hungary and Bohemia, was killed in the battle of Mohacz, after which the Hungarians elected John Zapolya, Count of Zips (John Zapol Sctepius): an opposition party elected the brother of Charles V., Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, who, however, was not able to maintain him- self in possession of what he considered his hereditary kingdom. Charles allied himself with the Shah of Persia, Ishmael Sophi, to have the Turks attacked in the East ; his ambassador to the Shah was the Knisfht of St. John De Balbi. His instructions, dated from Toledo, 18th of February, 1529, have lately been communicated by Lanz. Soleyman overran the whole of Hungary, and laid siege to Vienna for twenty-one days in Autumn, 1529. His army was estimated at 250,000 men, the baggage being carried by 22,000 camels, which animals had never been seen before in those parts ; the tents of the Moslems spread along the whole valley of the Danube, Soleyman's own gorgeous pavilion being pitched near Sommering, where, dressed in silk, gold, and purple, he might be seen issuing his com- mands. Ferdinand, with his Court, fled to Linz. Vienna was indifferently fortified, having only a single wall and a dry ditch, and it was garrisoned by not more than five regiments ; but from the times of the old Emperor Maxi- milian, who had had a particular fancy for heavy ordnance, there were so many cannons in the town that all the wall and even the roofs of the houses could be armed with them. There were, moreover, Tyrolese miners in the city, who foiled the mines of the Turks by counter-mines ; and thus all their attacks were successfully repelled. The departure of the Grand Turk took place, after an unsuccessful general assault, on the 14th October, 1529. r 4 72 CHARLES V. Soleyman left, in order to escape from the cold of winter, and to return at his own convenience. He took with him an immense number of captives ; the kidnapped Christian children were to recruit the ranks of his Janissaries. Hungary had to be left to the " highly favoured Turkish Emperor Soleyman," as the celebrated Sigismund von Herberstein calls him, who afterwai'ds was sent to him as an ambassadoi'. With great difficulty Hans Katzianer*, Herberstein's nephew, preserved the very small part which remained to Ferdinand. The house of Habsburg was more successful in the other kingdom which Ferdinand had acquired by his mar- riage with Ann lagellon — Bohemia. At first, in ad- dressing the Bohemian pai'liament, he spoke of the inherited claims of his wife to the crown : but this allusion very nearly cost him all his expectations, and he was forced to acknowledge by a special document that he owed the kingdom to election. He now obtained the crown from the representatives of the nation, by means of the old established electioneering expedient of bribing the voters. Yet he confined himself ,to promises, of which he was most lavish, especially towards the great nobles. But he took very good care to leave his promises unful- filled. To give one example : the old Count Palatine (^Obersthurggraf) of Bohemia, Zdenko Leo of Rozmital, brother of the queen of King George Podiebrad, had been promised 50,000 ducats, of which, after long waiting, he received a very small sum on account. When, however, in 1541, the very welcome fire in the archives of the Parlia- ment of Prague had accidentally destroyed all the old docu- ments, Ferdinand declared, in his testament of the year 1543, "that he had given those pledges only in ignorance of the real facts of the case ; and that he had since ascer- * Katzianer received the wolf, which had formerly belonged to the coa* of arms of Zapolja, for his own. The family of Katzianer was raised to the dignity of counts in 1665. DIET OP AUGSBURG. 73 tained from the Golden Bull of the Emperor Charles IV., his predecessor in the kingdom, that by all means, in the reahn of Bohemia, after the extinction of the royal male line, the females were entitled to the succession :"' moreover, he had by negotiation prevailed upon the parliament to return to him the acknowledgment which he had signed. The fate of Bohemia was accomplished only after the battle of Miihlberg, in 1547, and, after the battle of the White Mountain in 1621, in the " Altstatter Ring" at. Prague, of which more hereafter in its proper place. Charles from the coronation at Bologna went, in the spring of the year 1330, across the Alps, to attend at the Diet which he had summoned to Augsburg. During the nine years of his absence from Germany important changes had taken place, Avhich might not a little aid his ambitious plans for the establishment of absolute rule, which he en- tertained with regard to Germany as well as to Spain. Of the four great estates of the German Empire — the electors and princes, who constituted the high aris tocracy ; the free cities, which still appeared at the Diet but made no great figure there ; and lastly the knights (smaller nobility and gentry) of the Empire, and the ■peasantry (yeomen), who were not represented at the Diet at all, — the two latter had been crushed by the storms which the religious movement had conjured up. The German Reformers being very well-meaning but exceed- ingly impractical men, with but a very slight knowledge of the world, expected to keep their work clear of every ad- mixture of political elements. But the worldly and political element forced its alliance upon the cause, owing to that close connection between moral and material interests which hud linked together Church and State during the whole of the Middle Ages, and by which the two will be linked together as long as man is not a spiritualised nonentity, without human wants and human desires. The two estates which wished to derive political results from 74 CHARLES V. the religious movement were the lower nobility (gentry) of the Empire and the peasantry ; their field of action was the SicMngen Feud, and the Peasants' War. 4. THE SICKINGEN FEUD, AND THE PEASANTS' WAR. The numerous nobility (gentry), vassals in capite of the empire {reiclisunmittelbar), on the banks of the Rhine, in Svvabia and Franconia, wished to avail themselves of the Reformation to appropriate large estates belonging to the Church, in order thereby to be able to form a counterpoise against the princes, and to break the thraldom which they had sometimes to endure from them. Ahost of pamphlets were published, in which it was set forth that the authority of the imperial prerogative should be restored, the pro- perty of the Church turned to account for improving the po- sition of the common people, of the burghers, and of the lower nobility, and the political power of the princes and prelates be crushed for ever. Francis von Sickingen had for a long- time been the secret leader of the lower nobility. He was born in 1488, at his family seat of Sickingen, in the Palatinate. He was of small stature but of large mind, and of an iron will, which he brought to bear upon the most lofty aspirations. Being the possessor of a great many castles on the left bank of the Rhine, in the retired forests of Kreuznach and Kaiserslautern, to the west of Mayence and Worms, he was constantly at feud with the neighbouring princes, secular and spiritual, with the bishops of Mayence and Worms, and with the dukes of Lorraine. When Charles V. began the contest with France for the possession of Italy, he entrusted Sickingen, as his privy councillor and general, with the chief command on the Rhine. Sickingen there fought against Bayard. He was the idol of the soldiers : when he rode through the camp, every one had a smile FRANCIS VON SICKINGEN. 75 for him. The lansquenets pressed round his horse, patted it, and would also sometimes sliake the hand of the knight, with whom they used to make so free that one day they snatched from his helmet the crape which he wore as mourning for his deceased wife, and fixed it to the pennons of their troops. But when, in the hour of the fray, he shouted with his voice of thunder his " At them ! " he well knew he might reckon upon his men. It was durinn; the French war on the Rhine that Sick- ingen, although being the Emperor's general, began to negotiate with Francis I. His friend, the celebrated Ulrich von Hutten, had given him the far wiser and more patriotic advice, to league himself with the German towns and the peasantry. Pamphlets written by Hutten, and printed at his Castle of Ebernburg, near Kreuznach, or at that of Steckelberg, belonging to Sickingen, were already circulated in the villages ; and they told among the people. Three years after, copies of them were found among the papers of the ringleaders of the great peasants' riots. But Sickingen either would not wait for the as- sistance of the common people, or, in his aristocratic pride, disdained covering with his baronial shield the cause of " pepper bags and smock-frocks." He therefore allied himself with the foreigner, with whose help he hoped to carry out his far-aiming plans. He summoned in 1522 all the imperial (reiclisunmit- telhar) nobility of the banks of the Rhine, Swabia, and Franconia to a great meeting at Landau. He was ap- pointed captain of the League ; and his enemies already began to call him the Anti-Emperor, as they did Luther the Anti-Pope. Having assembled the considerable ibrce of 12,000 mercenaries, he invaded with them in the middle of summer the spiritual Electorate of Treves. After having conquered the Elector, he intended to turn his arms against the other members of the high princely aris- tocracy. The princes were seized with terror. Men who 76 CHARLES V. were intimately acquainted with the general temper of the times saw very clearly the magnitude of the danger. France, however, left Sickingen in the lurch ; upon which the nobility, just as happened afterwards to the peasantry, were reduced, one by one, by the neighbouring princes, the Elector Palatine and the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who came to the rescue of Treves. The three Princes, of the Palatinate, of Hesse, and of Treves, invested Sick- ingen, in 1523, in his stronghold Landstuhl, near Kai- serslautern. The artillery of the princes knocked down the walls of the knight's castle, and a splinter from a rafter struck by a cannon ball inflicted a fatal wound on Sickingen. The three princes entered by the breach into the castle, and stood before the dying man. When the Elector of Treves began to chide him, Sickingen only replied, " I have now to do with a greater Master than you are." Immediately after, he expired. Ulrich von Hutten fled to Switzerland, v/here he died on the soil of freedom, as the guest of the burghers of Zurich, on the island of Ufnau, in their lake, in 1525. Thus were the German Imperial nobility conquered, owing to their isolatino- themselves in their aristocratic pride ; and never since Sickingen's defeat have they been able to recover their old importance and independent po- sition. They had now to bow before the princes, at whose courts, at a later period, their reduced ambition was content to disport itself in diminished proportions. In a similar mannei*, the German peasantry wrought its own ruin by plebeian stitFneckedness. Their rising was as isolated as that of the nobility ; and thus they were con- quered, singly, in divided hosts. It was 300 years ago just as we have seen it in our own times. The energetic exertions of the armed opposition, as they were made singly, without distinct consciousness of their ultimate object, although not without great valour, could not but end in smoke. THE peasants' WAR. 77 In the most ancient patriarchal era, when the whole nation in times of war was one vast host, the German peasants had been independent freemen. Their position grew worse and worse during the feudal ages, when, partly from want of protection, and partly by force, they were driven into a state of vassalage and even serfdom. In this position, however, the services which they had to render to the lords of the noble houses were regulated by fair laws and contracts, and the protection received in ex- change was an important equivalent for them. As early as in the 14th century, in the days of Louis of Bavaria, and in those of the Emperor Charles IV., the peasantry had their riots of "poor Claus" (Nicolas) and of Hans Behem the drummer. In the Netherlands, especially in the pro- vince of Holland, the rebellious peasants were called " the Casebrodter," from the bread and cheese on their banners. Yet their position became quite intolerable only as late as the reign of the Emperor Frederic III., when they were re- duced to abject servitude and dependence. The German lords began to imitate the luxury which had been gene- rated in the Burgundian court ; and since the proud Spanish Charles had displayed his pomp and magnificence in their Diets, they did not wish to cut a less figure than the stately Netherlandish, Spanish, and Italian nobles in the suite of the Emperor. The increased expense they charged upon the peasants, by adding to their feudal burdens. This state of things was further aggravated by the extortions of the newly established lansquenets, whom the princes now kept as standing troops, and who lived principally on the peasantry. But as this soldiery was generally raised from the country population, the peasants were thereby again practised in the use of arms, and able to wield the sword and battle-axe for the recovery of those ancient rights which their oppressors had wrested from them. At the Diet of 1517 already, the Committee of the States had given it as their opinion " that the ferocity 78 CHARLES V. which had for some time been traceable in the peasantry, and their readiness for rebellion, were merely owing to the fact that the lansquenets, who had served in foreign wars, were dismissed to their homes asain." Another source of evil for the peasantry was the intro- duction of the Roman law, which gave rise to a most harassing system of tedious law-suits, as the delays of justice became the interest of the learned lawyers, who thus were enabled to enrich themselves at the cost of their imfortunate clients. The nobles in some instances also treated the peasants with the most overbearing insolence. Thus, the peasants of the Wetterau, in the Electorate of Treves, and in Lorraine, were bound to perform the strange service of flogging, during the summer nights, the water in the moats of the seignorial castles, in order that the frogs might not annoy the lords by their croaking. The towns and cities did not care to help the peasants. They likewise looked down upon them with disdain; and on their own territories, which sometimes were very considerable, they, instead of trying to raise the condition of the country people, made it their endeavour to keep them under as much as possible. Owing to this contemptuous treat- ment of the peasantry, the towns and cities afterwards in their turn came to ruin. They too fell singly before the power of the princes ; and, although they were the last to fall, yet fall they did. The peasants felt the shoe pinch them, and for that reason they adopted it as their emblem on their banners. The '"Bundschuh"* is for the first time mentioned as having been raised in 1439, at Strasbourg, in the Alsace. Upwards of eighty years after, in 1522, it turned up again in Southern Germany, where the sight of the neighbouring free and, owing to their freedom, wealthy Swiss, excited the anger of the German peasants, ^Yhen they compared * Either the " Shoe of the League," or the peasants' laced shoe. Both interpretations have been given ; the latter is the more likely. — Translator. THE peasants' WAR. 79 this prosperity with their own miserable condition. In the Hegau, a district of Swabia, belonging to the Duchy of Wiirtemberg, the peasants rose, bearing a golden shoe on their banner, with the motto, — " He who wishes to be free, may follow this sunshine." The peasants wished the Christian freedom which Lu- ther preached to be understood as political freedom. It appeared to them very unchristian that their lords should thus cruelly oppress them. The peasants of the Hegau were overcome: but after the autumn of 1524 the agita- tion spread through the whole of Upper Swabia ; and when the peasants in the county of Stiihlingen were commanded by their overbearing countess to gather snails for her, that her servants might wind yarn on the shells, they refused, and rose under a black, red, and white standard. During the winter of that year. King Ferdinand, the Em- peror's brother, who in his absence was regent of the Em- pire, appointed as general of the Swabian league against the peasants, Truchsess* George of Waldburg, or, as the peasants called him, Bauernjurg (peasants' Georgy). He was a scion of that Swabian house whose ancestor accom- panied the last Ilohenstaufen to the scaffold, and who there received from the hands of the unfortunate Conradin his gauntlet and his signet, to take it to Peter of Arragon ; in memory of which event, the Waldburgs to this day quarter the three Hohenstaufen lions with their own arms. Truchsess was ordered to arrest the rebel peasants, and to question them on the rack as to who were their leaders ; after which all should be slain who could be got hold of, their lands devastated, their houses burnt, and their wives and children ex[iellcd without any forbearance or mercy. In 1525 the rebellion broke out in every direction. The first were the peasants of the Abbot of Kempten ; they were followed by those of the Bishop of Augsburg: * This title, grown into a name, corresponds to the Scotch of " Stewart." 80 CHARLES V. the peasants of Trnchsess himself joined the insurrection, as did also those of the imperial city of Ulm ; the most numerous host of them, however, was formed by the pea- sants of the neighbourhood of the Lake of Constance. The latter hemmed in Truchsess near the monastery of Weingarten, and he had to make concessions on the basis of the so-called " twelve articles" of the peasants. This summary of their demands was rapidly circulated by them throughout Germany. The peasants would agree to sub- mit their grievances to the arbitration of a committee of umpires, which they in their simplicity wished to be com- posed of King Ferdinand, the Elector of Saxony, Luther, Melanchthon, and some pastors. It was just as in 1848, when also the entire salvation of Germany was expected to proceed from Frankfort alone, from those learned pro- fessors who made such fine speeches in St. Paul's church. The twelve articles demanded, that the peasants should be at liberty to choose their ministers themselves, who were to preach the pure word of God ; that they should not pay more than the tithe, out of which the parish mi- nister was to be paid, and, with the remainder, the parish expenses, and those for the support of the poor, were to be defrayed; bondage should be abolished; the soccage burdens and the rate of interest be reduced. Moreover, the articles stipulated that the chase, fishery and birdcatching, forests, and woods should be free, and the property of everyone ; and justice be administered by judicious men of the nobility and from the towns, not by the doctors of law, who only perverted the law and made it expensive. The princes were far from accepting these articles, and Luther also opposed them. It was an abomination to him that the religious movement should be turned into a poli- tical one. THis own inborn rustic humility could not brook the idea' of allowing the great loixls to be harassed by the common mass. To him doctrine and discipline appeared the only thing needful in the community ; he was convinced k peasajhTs' war. 81 that everything would be subverted, unless the secular power were left at the helm of the state. He knew very- well that the root of the evil lay with the great lords, and he wrote : " We have no one to thank for this mischief and rebellion but you princes and lords, who do nothing but grind the faces of the poor, to carry on your pomp and vanity, until the common man cannot, and will not, any longer bear it." But he stood firm to the dogma of passive obedience. To this we must add that he was afraid, and justly so, lest a mob rule should be even worse than the tyranny of the princes. After the peasant riots were put down, he said : " I certainly apprehended that if the peasants got the mastery, the devil would be ab- bot ; but that if the princes got it, his mother would be abbess." He had to bear the reproach that the rebellion had been his work. There was one thing which weighed with him more than any other, and that was, not to allow the pure gospel to be compromised by the excesses of the peasantry. Their conduct, indeed, justified his fears : their demands were just and fair enough, but their untutored bands were soon carried away by their own wild passions ; the complainants became the self-constituted judges of their own cause, and — a melancholy fact, which occurs over and over again — they now practised the same iniquities under which they themselves had groaned. It did not strike Luther that the best way for him would have been to go in person to the peasants, to take the lead of the movement out of their hands, and to act as mediator. The peasants set fire to the seignorial manors and to the monasteries. In those times most of the feudal donjons were destroyed ; among others the magnificent castle of Hohenstaufen, the ancient hereditary seat of the Swabian emperors. The bands of the peasants rapidly increased : in Franconia one host gathered under a black banner in the Odenwald ; and another, from the valley of the Neckar, assembled under gay colours. A war of extermination VOL. I. G 82 CHARLES V. was carried on against the nobles, with the cry, " The idlers have no rigid to live ! " At Welnsberg, celebrated for its true-hearted women*, Count Louis of Helfenstein, the husband of a natural daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, had, with seventy other nobles, to run the gauntlet through their lances, whilst a piper was playing " to the dance." His wife, having her little son Maximilian with her, entreated the murderers to spare the life of her husband ; but she was not listened to ; the peasants wounded her boy, an infant of two years, in her arms ; and, after having despoiled her of all her jewels and trinkets, sent her, together with another iady, on a dung-cart to Heilbronn. The peasants told the Council of Nuremberg In plain words, " that they did not intend to rest as lono; as there was a house in the coun- try better than a peasant's cabin." Luther being apprised of it, wrote his book against the " rapacious and murderous bands of the peasants," in Avhich he called upon everybody " to smash, to strangle, and to stab the peasants in public and in private, just as you kill a mad dog." " The mob needs to be ruled by force, the ass must be cudgelled. If there are any innocent among them, God will preserve and save them, just as He did Lot and Jeremiah. If He do not, they certainly are not innocent, but have at least connived at the crimes of the others by their silence." The whole passionate choleric temperament of Luther vented itself in these words, which remind one of the * Weinsberg Castle had to surrender, after a siege, to the Hohenstaufen Emperor, Conrad III. The conqueror having given permission to the women, and especially to the noble ladies, to take away with them as much as they were able to cany, they were seen issuing from the gates with their husbands on their backs, declaring them to be their most precious posses- sions. The Emperor, however, allowed them to take all their clothes and jewels likewise. It was at this siege (1140) that " Guelph" (Welf) and " Ghibclin" were first heard as war-cries. The ruins of the castk, called from that incident Weihertreu (woman's truth), are still standing. Gold rings, with a peculiar sort of pebble which is found on its hillside, used, some twenty years ago, to be given as love-tokens. — Translator. peasants' war. 83 speech of Arnold, Abbot of CitCcaux, wlien, in the war of the Alblgenscs, he with the Count of Montfort took Be- zieres by assault. " Slay them all," Arnold said ; " the Lord knows his own ! " Luther by that pamphlet severed himself entirely from the peasants, and left them to their ftite. Two circumstances had, it is true, much to do with his resolution : — Carlstadt, " the heavenly prophet," had taken part with them ; and the Swiss, who were particu- larly odious to Luther, on account of their anti-sacramen- tai'ian principles, stood in connection with them. Caspar Schwenkfeld, the notorious Silesian divine, at that time said something for which Luther never forgave him, and for which the Wittenberg reformers set him down as a visionary : " Luther has led the people from Egypt (from Popery) through the Red Sea (through the bloody Peasant's War) ; but he has left them in the lurch in the wilderness." The peasants were headed by able men: by Gotz (God- frey) von Berlichingen, the well-known robber-knight with the " Iron Hand," whose castle lay on the Kocher, in Franconia, and whom they had compelled to take the chief command ; and also by Wendel Hippler, chancellor of a Prince of Hohenlohe, who had voluntarily engaged in their cause. Hippler advised the peasants to take into their pay the many lansquenets who were friendly to their cause, inured to war, and ready to join them ; and especially he tried to persuade them to unite themselves with the lower nobility (gentry). But the peasants were too stingy ; they presumed on their own great numbers, by which they thovight they would be able to make up for their want of military experience. Besides Berlichingen, however, we find other noblemen, such as the Counts of Wertheim and Henneberg, and Florian Geyer, as captains of the peasants. They were the Mirabeaus of those days. Wendel Hippler conceived comprehensive plans for the thorough reform of the Empire. He held on the 12th of G 2 84 CHARLES V. May, 1525, a high parliament of the peasantry at Heil- bronn on the Neckar, their head-quarters. At this as- sembly the ideas which afterwards became those of the French Revolution of 1789, were for the first time pro- claimed in their full bearing. It was proposed " to abolish the feudal burdens, and to indemnify the princes and barons for their loss from the ecclesiastical estates, which were to be secularised ; both the Church and the administration of the law were to be radically reformed ; free trade to be established, by abolishing the tolls and customs ; a decennial tax for the Emperor to be levied ; and uniform measures and weights to be introduced. The peasants were to be represented at the Diet of the Empire as a separate estate, by the side of the clergy, the princes, the barons, and the towns." But the Lutheran peasants, unlike the Bohemian Hus- sites, did not obey their leaders. The peasant, it was said, wanted to be master himself. Gotz von Berlichingen having secretly left them, they in their turn were defeated and destroyed singly. Truchsess von Waldburg took a ter- rible revenge. Wiirtzburg, which the peasants had taken, and where they besieged the bishop in the castle, had to be given up to Waldburg; after which he inflicted most awful chastisement on the rebels. The other princes did the same, the spiritual ones showing themselves not the least bloodthirsty. The Elector of Treves and the Bishop of Wiirtzburg made a progress through their countries, accompanied by an executioner, to have the culprits put to death before their own eyes : he of Treves is even said to have cut off heads with his own hands. As if to show the common people the ingenuity of persons of exalted birth in inventing the greatest possible variety of tortures and excruciating punishments ; fingers, noses, and ears were cut off, eyes scooped out, the culprits broken on the wheel, lacerated with red-hot pincers, flayed alive, impaled, and roasted by slow fires. All were, however, surpassed peasants' war. 85 in cruelty by Anthony, Duke of Lorraine, the brother of the founder of the celebrated House of Guise, and of the Cardinal of Lorraine. He caused at Saverne, in Al- sace, a band of as many as 18,000 peasants to be put to the sword, an atrocity the more revolting as he had pre- viously pardoned them. Besides these disturbances near the Rhine, the Maine, the Neckar, and the Lake of Constance, there were other peasants' riots in Thuringia, during the first four months of the year 1525. This insurrection was headed by Thom.as Miinzer; but here the rising had a religious character. INIlinzer had distinguished himself before in the religious troubles at Wittenberg, got up by him in conjunction with Dr. Carlstadt, which, however, Avere crushed by Luther in their very outbreak. Now Miinzer came forth as a heavenly prophet, pretending to have spoken face to face with God, as Moses did. He inveighed very vehe- mently against Dr. Luther, whom in a pamphlet published in 1524, imder the title "Against the Spiritless Soft- living Flesh at Wittenberg," he called Dr. Liigner (liar), and he charged him with having made the Reformation an affair of the princes, whereas he himself would carry it out as an affair of the people. Miinzer then already preached the principles of communism, which have turned up again in our days. He said: "The princes take all God's creatures for their property, even the fish in the water and the birds of the air. On the other hand, they say to the poor, ' It is God's commandment, " Thou shalt not steal."' They themselves grind and fleece all; but as soon as a poor man lays hold even of the least that is not his he is hung, and Dr. Liar savs Amen to all this. The Lord has given the earth to the faithful as their inherit- ance ; all government ought to be carried on only ac- cording to the Bible and to Divine Revelation ; jirinces, nobles, and priests are not wanted ; in the kingdom of G 3 86 CHARLES V. God all men ought to be equal, all men also ought to live in a community of goods ; for all are brethren.^'' Thomas Miinzer established himself in the small impe- rial town of Miihlhausen, where, with the help of the com- mon people, he ousted the magistrates, and made himself the preacher and master of the town. In a printed manifesto he called himself " Thomas Miinzer, with the hammer; " pro- claiming in plain words that all princes were to be banished or killed. From Miihlhausen he overran the whole of Thuringia, where his peasants, like those of Southern Ger- many, began to destroy the castles and monasteries. At the suggestion of Luther, the Elector John, called the Constant, of Saxony, — the brother of Frederic the Wise, who had just died in his quiet chamber at Lochau, in the Wittenberg district, after having strongly urged his brother to deal kindly and cautiously with the i)easants, — allied himself with Philip the Magnanimous, Landgrave of Hesse, and with the Duke Henry of Brunswick. Part of their united troops, under the command of Philip of Hesse, encountered the hosts of the peasants near Frankenhausen, in Thuringia, at the foot of the KyfFhauser Mountain, on the 15th Majr, 1525. Miinzer fought to the last with the greatest courage, announcing to his men certain victory against the army of the princes, and assuring them that he would catch all the bullets of the enemy in his sleeves, and that hosts of angels would come down from heaven to fight by their side. Just as the battle began, a beautiful rainbow appeared in the sky. " Look ! look," said Miinzer, " here is a token of the Lord's mercy and favour." A gentleman who came from the landgrave to negotiate was, Avithout further ado, stabbed by Miinzer's orders. The peasants, having bar- ricaded themselves behind their waggons, prepared for the stoutest resistance. But the battle was decided in a few moments. The artillery of the princes did the work, just as it at had done at Landstuhl against Sickingen. Five BATTLE OF FRAKKENHAUSEN". 87 thousand of the peasants were shot or cut clown, whilst, with their hands folded in prayer, they were waiting for the Lord to fight their battle. Milnzer fled to Frankenhaii- sen, where he concealed himself in the hayloft of a house. A soldier who happened for some purpose or other to go there, found his pocket-book by mere chance ; after which the prophet was dragged forth from his hiding place, first tortured, and then beheaded. After the battle of Frankenhausen the most cruel exe- cutions were enacted, by which, according to a rough calcu- lation, nearly 350,000 peasants in all parts of Germany- perished. The worst consequence of all for the sur- vivors was, that their bondage became even more op- pressive than before. Then, for the first time, the game laws gave the nobles an exclusive right of chase, not merely over their own property, but also over the lands of their vassals. In some parts only, where the peasants were not put down by force of arms, better conditions were ob- tained; as for instance in the Breisgau and in Upper Austria. The Tjrolese also succeeded in maintaining their ancient liberties : they remained the freest of all German peasants ; and likewise did the Salzburgers, whose peace was made in 1526 by George von Frundsberg. Luther asserted that bondage was allowed by Holy Scrip- ture. He declared to Hildebrand von Einsiedel, who entertained some scruples about the hard servitude of the peasantry, " The common man must be heavily laden, otherwise he grows wanton. Where there are good pooi' people your honour will know how to deal leniently with them." But he was honest enough, to allow himself to be taught by experience. He wrote some time after : " I would lay a wager that, if the peasants' riots had not oc- curred, there would have been a rising of tlie nobility against the princes, and perhaps a rising of the princes against the Emperor. So criticallij did the fate of Germany tremble in the balance. Now, however, as the peasants have G 4 88 CHARLES V. fallen, they alone are the black sheep, and the nobles and princes come out clear, and look as if they had never in- tended any harm. Yet that will not deceive the Lord. He has thereby given them a warning likewise to be faithful on their part to their own master (the Em- peror.)" After the great defeat which the nobles had suffered by the downM of Sickingen in 1528 and the peasants in the battle of Frankenhausen in 1525, — after these two heavy thunderstorms which had followed the dawn of the Re- formation, the character of the movement underwent a consi- derable change. Until then it had been a popular movement. Now the princes came forth to place themselves at its head, and Luther attached himself more and more closely to them. He who had hitherto maintained his independent position, who had refused to make common cause with the nobles, with Hutten and Sickingen, and who had completely kept the peasants at bay ; did now join the princes, into whose hands, it cannot be denied, he de- livered the new Church. In 1524, the Margrave Albert of Brandenburg, Grand-Master of the Teutonic Order, came to him at Wittenberg. Luther advised him to secu- larise the province of Prussia, which was the property of that order. This seed fell on good ground, and yielded a luxuriant crop. As early as towards the end of 1524, a state paper was written, very likely in Saxony, and at any rate by a Lutheran pen, in which the principle was laid down that all the ecclesiastical estates of the empire should be confiscated and employed for secular purposes. Luther was convinced that the princes alone were able to keep discipline in the new Church : it is true that he looked upon them only as bishops to make shift with for the present, out of sheer necessity, conferring on them the episcopal power de facto only. But this was again a most impolitic step, for this possession de facto was soon changed into one de jure, might standing in place of right. In FIRST SrLIT AMONG THE EEFOEMERS. 89 1523, Luther had still vhidicated the right of self-govern- ment for the Church in his letter to the Bohemians: " Proof and argument from the Scriptures, that a Christian congregation has power to judge all doctrine and to in- stitute and depose its preachers." Even as late as 1526, the Landgrave of Hesse tried, with the help of a French- man, Lambert of Avignon, to rebuild the Church on a democratical foundation, as it had been among the first Christians. But this constitution did not gain ground in the Lutheran Church: it only became the corner-stone of the Reformed (Calvinist) Church, which, however, was completely and widely separated from the Lutheran, on account of the quarrel about the Eucharist. The reformed German, Swiss, French, Dutch, and Scotch Churches, as also the American Protestants, have stuck to the principle that the power in the Church rested with the whole con- gregation : in the Lutheran Church it fell entirely into the hands of the princes. The Calvinist Church adopted a republican, the Lutheran a monarchical, constitution. With this immense difference in the organisation of both, the first great split arose between the seceders from Popery. Luther went so far in his aversion against the republicanised Calvinists in Switzerland and in the free imperial cities of South Germany, Strasburg, Basle, Frankfort-on-the-Maine, which were afterwards joined by the Netherlands, that he expressly declared that he " ivoK Id seven times leather unite icith the Roman Catholics than with the Calvinists ! " When, at the Diet of Spires, in 1526, Charles V. — having since the victory of Paviabeen at enmity with the Pope — issued the decree that *' every member of the Empire, until a general council, was, in matters of religion, to follow that line which he should deem best, and as he thought to be able to answer for in the face of God and the Emperor," the sanction of imperial law was stamped on the principle of the autonomy of the princes in the churches of their ter- 90 CHARLES V. ritorles, and thus the Reformation was entirely left to their pleasure. This was the origin of the Separate Churches according to the divisions of the different territories, which were organised and managed at will by the dif- ferent princes and magistrates of the free cities. Thus the Lutheran Church became but an aggregate of separate territorial establishments, loosely linked together ; the unity which had ceased in the State ceased also in the Church, where, likewise, diversity and " particularism " was ac- knowledged as the leading principle. The Reformers sought, for the illegitimate reform of the Church, a support in the secular legitimacy of the princes. They therefore now also proclaimed the p?-inciple of the absolute jjolitical supremacy of tJie poivers that be, and of the duty of passive obedience in the subject. They not only withdreio from every political opposition, but decidedly declared against it. Thus the exclusion of the people from political life now be- came an article of faith ; the natural consequence of lohich teas that the masses lost every interest in public affairs. Together with absolute political power and spiritual supremacy, the church property also fell to the princes. All the conventual institutions were abolished. Their revenues ought to have been employed in endowing parish livings, and, as Luther most earnestly urged, in esta- blishing schools for educating the brutalised German pea- santry, whose ignorance and degraded position he so frequently deplores in his writings. But the least part of the confiscated church property went to the parish mi- nisters; somewhat more to the schools, yet only to the classical ones and to the universities. The common Lu- theran clergyman received less than what sufficed for the indispensable necessaries of life. The Lutheran Church has been ruined by its poverty, as the Roman by its ivealth. The village schools, Avhich Luther so earnestly recom- mended to be established from the conventual property, and for the benefit of which he, in 1529, published his SPOLIATION OF CHURCH PROPERTT. 91 Small Catecliism for Children, were miserably neglected ; and long after the Kcformation the old brutality and ignorance were rife among the country people. The princely exchequers, on the other hand, enriched them- selves with the capitular and conventual revenues, and the nobles were by no means bashful in helping themselves. Luther complains most bitterly of this wickedness, which prevailed in Saxony and in Hesse also, where, as the landgrave himself wrote to Luther, there was much "scrambling" about the property of the convents. The landgrave set the example. He gave to the son of his guardian Count Philip of Waldeck, at his christening, as a sponsor's gift, the rich convent of Arolsen. INIe- lanchthon, in his letters written to liis most confidential friends, calls these patrons of the Evangelical Church, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Elector of Saxony, and others, without any circumlocution, " Centaurs, tyrants, and des- pisers of God." He says that they care only for worldly interests, and mourns over the abolition of the old consti- tution, the princely bishops having now been replaced by episcopal princes. When at last the princes came to settle with the new Protestant clergy, the princes kept the power and the money for themselves, and to the clergy they left — the most profound respect of the poor people. In Saxony, at a later period, in 1550, the Elector Maurice established with some of the conventual property the three " princely schools" (^F'urst.enschulen) at Pforta, Grimma, and Meissen. In Hesse, some of the proceeds of the confiscations were spent on the Free College of the University of Marburg ; in Brunswick, on the Gymna- sia. INIost of all was done in Wiirtemberg, where there were scarcely any nobles holding their fiefs under the duke, and where the honest and energetic Duke Chris- topher reigned. Under his auspices the large theological college at Tubingen, called the Stift, and a number of 92 CHARLES V. cloister schools at Maulbronn, Bebenliausen, Blaubeuren, and Hirsau, afterwards Denkendorf*, were established. In Llineburg and Mecklenburg, the nobles compelled the government to change the convents into secular chapters, with canonries for the younger sons and the daughters of the nobility. The princes, as may well be imagined, had their power vastly increased by the secularisation of the ecclesiastical property ; yet the free towns and cities at that time still formed a very compact power in the Empire by their side. All the commerce was in the hands of the cities, and there were even then in Germany banking firms, whose heads, like the Forentine Medicis, became princes from merchants, as, for instance, the Eggenbergs of Gratz and the Fuggers of Augsburg. Citizens like these were a power in the state, of whose importance Charles V. was perfectly aware. The Fuggers, as has been mentioned before, had played a very prominent part in his election as Roman Emperor. Before the discovery of America, and of a shorter road by sea to India, whence the principal riches at that time were derived ; the cities of Southern Germany as well as those forming the Hanseatic League in the North, were possessed of very considerable wealth and of a corre- sponding amount of power. No wonder that the free cities with the most determined zeal embraced the new, freer principles of the Reformation ; in those of Southern Germany the bankers alone stuck to the old Popish faith. The cities and princes of Northern Germany, being * These four cloister schools (lower seminaries) are now Maulbronn, Urach, Blaubeuren, and SchonthaL The Stift, the theological seminary at the University of Tubingen, is likewise still in existence, and furnishes the majority of the candidates for the clerical offices of the Protestant Church in Wiirtemberg. The church property, however, was confiscated during the reign of the late king, when, supported by Napoleon, he overthrew the con- stitution of the country ; and the expenses of those establishments, like all the rest, are now borne by the state. — Translator. ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF PROTESTANT. 93 thorough-going partisans of Luther, became Charles's most dangerous opponents. The Catholics, especially in Southern Germany, the secular princes no less than the princes of the Church, the bishops, had at an early stage prepared themselves to take the field against the party of the Reformers. As early as the year 1524, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, Duke AVilliam of Bavaria, and a number of South-German bishops, had united in a league nt Ratisbon. Against them the northern princes, John the Constant, Elector of Saxony, and Philip the Magnanimous, Landgrave of Hesse, concluded, in 1526, the league of Torgau, which was joined by the Dukes of Brunswick-Liineburg, the Duke of Mecklenburg, the Prince of Anhalt, two Counts of Mansfeldt, and by the most important free city of Northern ;.Germany, Magdeburg, The firmness of the Elector of Saxony brought about, in the same year, the Decree of Spires, by which the Reformation was henceforth tobeleft to the conscience of the princes. But at a new Diet at Spires in 1529 the Catholic princes of the Empire again openly opposed the Reformation, which, until then, had been tolerated; and they caused a decree to be passed that every- thing should remain in statu quo, and no further extension of the reform be admitted. It was against this decree that the Lutheran members of the Diet entered their celebrdted protest, from which they received the name of Protestants. It was registered on the 19th of April, 1529, and on the same day a deputation was despatched to carry it to the Em- peror in Italy. The deputies met his Majesty at Placentia. Charles, the Catholic King of Spain, having secured himself against his rival Francis I. by a tolerable peace ; against the Grand Turk, the ally of the Most Christian King, by money ; and against the Pope by f\imily arrange- ments in Italy ; gave the messengers of his protesting lieges but a very cold reception. His reply was, that they should expect to be severely chastised, unless they 94 CHARLES V. consented at once to drop the protest. He now travelled by short stages through the Tyrol, by way of Munich, to Augsburg, attended by his Spanish, Italian, and Nether- landish lords and councillors. He was also met by the delegates of the Catholic German princes, who wished to bring him over to their interest ; but with true Spanish grandezza he wrapped all his thoughts in impenetrable secrecy, referring everything to Augsburg. Three zealous Papists, the Dukes William of Bavaria and George of Saxe-Dresden and the Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, rode to meet him as far as Innsbruck. After the death of the Chancellor Gattinara, who stood high in the Emperor's favour, and who in the imperial cabinet had, even to the last, advocated forbearance and moderation ; Charles had for his principal adviser the new chancellor, Nicholas Perrenot Granvella, the celebrated father of the equally celebrated Cardinal Granvella. Nicholas accompanied the Emperor to Augsburg, and, in direct violation of the " capitulation," became, although a foreigner, the Keeper of the Imperial Seal of Germany. He was perfectly qualified to conduct the business of the general European policy ; but he was also what we should now call an ultra-abso- lutist, and a most zealous Papist. Some time before the Diet, he was heard to say, " The Lutherans will fly in all directions like pigeons before the hawk." 5. THE DIET OF AUGSBURG, AND THE FRENCH WARS TO THE PEACE OF CRESPY, 1544. Charles now appeared in Germany as quite a different man from what he had been, nine years before, at his coro- nation at Aix-la-Chapelle, and at the Diet of Worms. He now stood in the prime of life, being thirty years old. During the eight years, from 1521 to 1529, which he passed in Spain, he had quietly gone through his appren- DIET OF AUGSBURG. 95 tlceshlp as a ruler, from which he came out an accom- phshed politician and a worthy disciple of the Spanish priesthood. The teacher who had " boiled him hard " and put his iron stamp upon him was no other than his con- fessor, the Dominican Garcia de Loaysa, afterwards Cardinal and Bishop of Osma, subsequently of Siguenza, and at last Archbishop of Seville and Grand Inquisitor. He accompanied Charles in 1529 to Bologna, after which he became his ambassador at Rome. From that time he kept up a correspondence with his imperial pupil. His letters from the year 1530 to 1532, during which Charles staid in Germany, have only lately been published from the archives of Simancas, by G. Heine. They are a remark- able monument of Spanish priestly policy, to which every tender feeling of hunianity is completely unknown. Garcia de Loaysa did his utmost to force upon the young Emperor his own point of view, that with regard to the heretics, *' those dogs, there should he no question lohatever of the fancy of converting souls to God ; it ivas quite sufficient to compel bodies to oOedience.^'' He wrote once to Charles the following spiritual recipe : " If you are determined to bring back Germany, I see no better means than to induce, by gifts and flatteries, those who take the lead in the learned world and in the state to return to our faith ; which being done, you are first to issue for the common people your imperial edicts and Christian exhortations, and if they will not obey them, then the true rhubarb to heal them is force." * Such were the insinuations, under the guidance of which Charles took his measures in Ger- many. He now stood on the acme of his political power. His most mighty enemies were partly humbled and partly pacified ; one half of Europe obeyed him, and, just then, one of his subjects, the Spaniard Francis Pizarro, had laid Peru at his feet — the land of gold, where the precious * III a letter written from Rome, dated I8th June, 1530, shortly after the presentation of the Augsburg Confession. 96 CHARLES V. metal was found in such abundance as had never been known before. This powerful ruler, not without intention, made his appearance at Augsburg on the eve of Corpus Christi, the highest festival of the Koman Church, there to hold his second Diet. Quarters were prepared for him at the palace of the " Frohnhof," the mansion of the Bishop of Augsburg ; but as it was full six months before he left that citv, he removed to the house of his banker, Fugger. When Charles rode into Augsburg, 15th June 1530, he did not at once retire to his quarters, but, after having alighted, he was, according to the then usage, led to the cathedral, with his brother. King Ferdinand of Hungary, and all the electors, cardinals, and other bishops and princes, who had gone out on horseback to meet him. The following account is given by an eye-witness from the household of the Elector of Mayence : — " It was late, and the cathedral nearly dark, a great many lighted torches were therefore brought ; directions also were given not to admit the people, in order to prevent a crowd. His Majesty was first led up through the middle of the nave, at the upper end of which there were three prie-dieus. His Majesty kneeling down on the centre one, the King of Hungary on tlie right, and the Legate Carapeggio on the left; but their chairs were not as high as the Emperor's. The Bishop of Augsburg with his suffragans and the Abbot of St. Ulrich, all wearing their mitres, stood opposite. The Emperor and the cardinals and the electors, — the Elector John of Saxony carrying the sword of the Empire, — and the other bishops, princes, and lords, besides the rest of the clergy, were standing around him. The Bishop of Auffsburo; with his suffra; to the German tongue," were made over to him ; he was to possess them as vicarius imperii, as a fief of the Empire, under which title Arelat had before passed to the French crown. Maurice did not disband the army employed before Magdeburg ; on the contrary, he increased it to 25,000 men. He engaged officers who had served in the Smal- kalde war against the Emperor ; as, for instance, the Wiir- temberger Hans von Heydeck. To disguise the strength of his steadily increasing army, he employed the stratagem of dividing it and making the separate bodies frequently change their quarters at the villages. The Emperor indeed had his spies in the camp of Maurice, where Lazarus Schweudi stayed as Imperial commissioner. Maurice, how- L 3 l.:0 CHARLES V. ever, deceived all of them. Charles secretly paid pensions to two of the secretaries at the Saxon court. Maurice was quite aware of it ; but he dissembled, and continued to call them in at every deliberation of the council, where he took good care always to boast of his fidelity to his Majesty ; and thus the corrupt scribes unwittingly sent to Charles nothing but false reports. The Venetians had already, in 1550, ferreted out some- thing about the alliance between Maurice and France. Towards the end of 1551 the report of its existence was pretty general. Charles received at Innsbruck warnings from his ambassador in France, and from his brother Ferdi- nand; who, in a letter from Vienna, dated 5th of November, 1551, expressed to him his apprehensions, and advised him to liberate the Landgrave Philip. Frightened by these reports, the three spiritual electors wanted even to leave suddenly the Council of Trent. Charles, however, had no misgivings ; he could never divest himself of his expressed conviction that these " wild roystering Germans " had no capacity for such intrigues. As late as on the 28th of February, 1552, he wrote to the Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, that he " expected from Maurice every obedience." Charles was not, however, as has always been believed, taken aback by Maurice at Innsbruck. He was very well aware of his approach, although informed of it only very late. This is evident from a letter of the Emperor to his brother, dated 4th of April, 1552, which Buchholz and Hormaye have communicated. Charles writes, " that he knew that Maurice had put off meeting Ferdinand at Linz, to settle accounts with him (Charles) for the griev- ances of the German nation. He had positive information that Maurice was on his way to Augsburg. He knew he must not tarry any longer at Innsbruck, lest he might one fine morning he seized in his bed. He was determined to set out that very night to Flanders, where he possessed CHARLES V. AND MAUEICE. 151 the most power to resist his enemy. He was obliged to leave Germany because he had no one who ivould declare for him, because so many took part against him, and because he no longer possessed any means of raising money. He was placed in the alternative of either submitting to great indignity or risking a great danger. He would rather choose the latter, because he was then in the hands of God, who might help him. If Maurice were apprised of his flight, and came to Ferdinand to enter into nesfociations at an advantage, Ferdinand should show every good-will, but take care not to settle any tiling definitively.''^ Maurice left Dresden in the month of March for Thu- ringia. His army stood near Erfurt and Miihlhausen. On the 25th of March, 1552, he joined at Schweinfurt his brother-in-law William of Hesse, with whom was likewise the Bishop of Bayonne, the French envoy. They now marched in all haste by Donauwerth to Augsburg. Ilere Maurice arrived on the 1st of April ; thus placing himself, as he expresses it, " before the den ofthefox''^ at Innsbruck. Charles had until now repeatedly given the most super- cilious and defiant answers to the applications about Philip ; " he would have the body of the landgrave cut in two pieces, and send one to each of the parties who wished to force him." Notwithstanding this high tone, he had given directions to his sister Mary, the regent of the Netherlands, to enter into negociations with the prisoner. A very important protocol, relating to one of these trans- actions, conducted by the President Viglius, is dated 18th of April, 1552. The liberation of the landgrave teas to procure for Charles the consent of the two electors of Saxony and Brandenburg to a great scheme lohich the Emperor ivas then aiming at. He had for this very purpose invited Maurice to an interview at Innsbruck. It seemed, therefore, quite natural when one of the councillors of the latter made his appearance at that city, and quietly bespoke quarters for his master, who, he said, would immediately follow him. L 4 152 CHARLES V. The privy councillor Carlowitz, and the Chancellor Morcl- eisen, the electoral Lord High Steward, as also the ser- vants, had gone before to Landshut. Melanchthon and other divines were likewise on their way to Trent, the Emperor having ordered them to send delegates to the Council ; everything, in fact, was apparently done as the Emperor wished it. On the 27th of March, 1552, Maurice, in a letter from Schweinfurt, repeated for the last time the request to the Emperor to liberate his father-in-law, as otherwise he himself stood pledged to surrender himself a prisoner to Philip's children. Charles privately sent to him to Augsburg his chamberlain and keeper of the privy purse, Hans Walter von Hirnheim. The latter had been present at Augsburg when Maurice took that city on the 1st of April, and had dined several times with him. According to what Charles writes to his brother Ferdinand, " he sent Hirnheim back to Maurice, in order not to leave anything undone by which he might meet his wishes as fiir as possible ;" and he adds, " that he had selected this messenger because Maurice had allowed himself to be rather Influenced by people who drank with him than by persons of more judgment." Hirn- heim's commission was to this effect : to induce Maurice to go to Ferdinand and negociate with him; for which pui*- pose Ferdinand had appointed to meet him on the 4th of April at LInz. The Emperor's situation was desperate : he had neither troops nor money ; his brother had written to him that he wanted all his forces In Hungary. The spiritual elec- tors, then staying at Trent, to whom he had applied ; and likewise the Duke of Bavaria, wrote evasively, declaring that they wished to keep neutral. The great banking- houses In Italy and In the Netiierlands, and the Fuggers at Augsburg, had refused to accommodate him, although he offered the most advantageous terms. He had lost all credit with those who had until then negoclated his loans. "THE SPANISH PROJECT." 153 He did the worst thing that can be done with financial people: he broke faith. Like Prince Metternich in our own days he made loan after loan in the midst of peace ; and then forced upon his creditors the system of per- manent annuities, converting the loan into an unfunded debt, with perpetual interest — a dishonesty which arrayed the whole moneyed world against him. Yet Charles lost his credit, not only in the commercial world, but in his own family. That great scheme which he had hatched in his cabinet was neither more nor less than a combination by which the Imperial dignity was to be made hereditary in his house. His brother Ferdinand had for some time been King of the Komans elect ; he was to succeed to the Imperial crown. Philip, the son of Charles, was to be King of the Romans, and so was Ferdinand's son Maximilian; but the latter only as " second coadju- tor," as Charles expressed it. Emperor Charles was to be succeeded by Emperor Ferdinand ; Emperor Ferdinand by Emperor Philip; and Emperor Philip only by Emperor Maximilian, Ferdinand's son. The Imperial dignity was thus to alternate in hereditary succession in both lines. In the instructions* for the envoys who were sent for this purpose to the electors, discretionary power is granted them to use every means to attain their object. " Leur ofFrant," it is said, in the instruction to Councillor Gienger, who was to have gained over the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, " leur offrant la recognoissance selon leur desir, fust en honneur, promocion ou prouffit,''^ To the Elector Maurice a " declaration de la prison perpetuelle " of his cousin John Frederic was promised, as the reward of his own consent and that of the Elector of Branden- burg to the election of Philip as King of the Komans ; besides which, the landgrave was to be liberated. This Spanish project alarmed everybody. The Em- peror's own family rose against him. The secret instruction * Publislicd only lately by Lauz, from the archives at Brussels. 154 CHARLES V. of Charles to J. de Rye, dated 3rd of March, 1552, proves that Charles suspected Ferdinand and his son Maximilian of neither more nor less than of siding with his adver- saries against him. The wily monarch had been caught in his own snare. He was threatened with desertion on all sides. Ferdinand was well aware that, if Don Philip were admitted to the Imperial crown, he would do his utmost to secure the succession for his own descendants ; and that the Vienna branch was to be ousted to make room for Philip and his line. The real clue to the mystery of this general desertion is given in the States' papers, lately brought to light, Avhich afford undeniable evidence that it teas the Pope tvho, to icard off the danger of a universal monarchy of the Em- peror, secretly abetted Maurice and his confederates against Charles. The attempted flight of Charles to Flanders failed. The fox could not get out of his den, although he twice made a start. According to a letter of the Emperor to his sister Mary, he set out with the most profound secrecy, between eleven and twelve in the night of the 6th of April, notwithstanding the feeble state of his health and the tortures of gout, which scarcely ever left him. It was his intention to push on through the mountain pass of Ehrenbers: to the Lake of Constance, and from thence to go by Alsace and Lorraine to the Low Countries. Pie was accompanied only by two of his gentlemen, his first equerry d'Andelot, and Albert von Rosenberg, besides his fiiithful barber Van der Fe, and two servants. Rosenberg knew the roads. Van der Fe with one of the servants went before to keep a sharp look out, lest the Emperor should meet any troops who might recognise him. Riding along through the woods and mountains, the party reached Nassereit at eight in the morning of the 7th of April. Here the Emperor remained until two in the afternoon, ATTEMPTS AT FLIGHT. 155 and then rode on to Baclielbucli, one league from the so- called Ehrenberger Klause. There he put up for the night, being too tired to proceed. Van der Fe was sent to Castle Ehrenberg to get information from the com- mandant. This officer reported that Maurice had already set out from Augsburg, and was going on that very day (7th of April) to occupy Fiissen ; moreover, that the Saxon cavalry, who were foraging thereabouts, made the road by Kempten very unsafe. On receiving this intelli- gence, the Emperor determined on returning to Innsbruck with the same profound secrecy. Not a soul knew any- thing of the journey. A second attempt at flight was likewise unsuccessful. He disguised himself as an old woman, intending to escape in a covered carrier's waggon by EhrwaldtoHohenschwan- gau, and from thence, through AVllrtemberg, by Spires to the Netherlands. His companion Albert von Vesten- berg was ordered to answer to any inquiries, that he was conducting an old lady to the warm springs of Wildbad in the Black Forest. This journey also was kept a secret ; so much so, that the Emperor's valet Dubois had to lie in his master's bed, and in the kitchen the meals were cooked just as if his Majesty were present. Two short day journeys were completed by the newly-built mountain-road of the Fern. As Charles alighted in the village of Lermos to take some refreshment, a girl who had only seen his por- trait cried out, " Oh ! how like this old lady is to the Emperor!" Thereupon his Llajesty in a fright returned home again. In the meanwhile the negociations between King Fer- dinand and Maurice went on, contrary to the expectation of the Emperor, but not to that of Ferdinand, and sorely against the wish of his brother-in-law "William of Hesse, and of the French ambassador. Maurice arrived on Easter Monday in person at Linz, to meet Ferdinand. He was accom- panied by the Duke of Bavaria and the Bishop of Passau. 156 CHARLES V. All of them supped with the King and his children ; and after supper it was agreed between the King and Maurice, that the next morning between six and seven they would begin to transact business. On the 28th of April, 1552, Ferdinand and Maurice arranged that there should be a truce, in order that an assembly might be summoned to Passau to devise the means for remedying the grievances of the German nation. The truce Avas to commence on the 26th of May, and to last until the 8th of June. Ferdinand then set out to join his brother at Innsbruck, where he arrived with his children on the 7th of May. On the 8th Maurice was again with his confederates at the Upper Danube, where the army was stationed. Charles had at last succeeded in raising some money : troops gathered under his banner near Frankfort on the Maine, and near Ulm; the principal force mustering at Reitti, near the Ehrenberger Klause. Maurice had only the intervening time from then to the beginning of the truce to carry out his design. On the 18th of May, just eight days before the beginning of the armistice, he first took tlie field, dispersing the camp of Keitti. On the following day, Ehrenberg Castle Avas taken, after a feeble resistance ; and now the way to the Emperor lay open. Maurice forthwith deliberated with his brother-in-law and the other allied princes, whether they should proceed " to draw the fox out of his den ; " and the question was decided in the affirmative. Then sud- denly an event happened which brought relief to the old Emperor. The infantry of Maurice broke out in a very dangerous mutiny, the regiment of Reiffenberg claiming the usual gratuity of double pay for having taken Ehren- berg Castle by storm. This riot caused a delay of two days and a half; and things were in such a critical state, that Maurice had to fly for his life and conceal himself. By this means Charles gained a respite, which enabled THE emperor's ESCAPE FRO^M IXNSBRUCK. 157 him to leave Innsbruck ; on which step he determined as soon as he had, on the 19th of May, received the intel- ligence of the surrender of Ehrenberg Castle. On the same day, in the afternoon, he summoned the captive Elector John Frederic of Saxon}-, to meet him in the palace- garden. According to the States' papers pub- lished by Lanz, he had received from him, as early as the 14th of May, a declaration in answer to the question, "What help and assistance John Frederic might expect from his relations and friends, if the transactions at Passau should not lead to any result, and if the Emperor -pronounced out- laxory against Maurice." John Frederic had sent an envoy to Passau, and Maurice had offered to negociate. But the final resolution of the single-minded old ex-elector was to the eifect : " Que si le different entre sa Majeste ct le Due Mauritz ne deust estre accorde, le Due (Jean Fre- deric^ ne jugeroit luy convenir aulcunement d'accepter des ennemys et adversaires de sa Majeste aulcung appoinctemeyit et de se separer de sa dicte Majeste.'''' Charles conversed with John Frederic for half an hour in the summer-house of the palace-garden ; and of his own accord offered to him his liberty, under the sole condition that he should volun- tarily for a short time follow his court. Charles was tem- porising again. After having dismissed John Frederic, he gave orders that the most important papers and jewels should be placed in safety at the strong castle of Rodenegg. This beino- arrangred, he set out with his brother Fer- dinand, at nine o'clock in the evening, with the intention of passing across the Brenner, through the Puster Valley, to Carinthia. Thus the master of two hemispheres was obliged, in a cold spring night, in a pouring rain, agonised by the tor- tures of gout, to make a precipitous flight. He was car- ried in a litter; and his servants, bearing torches, liglited him through the narrow passes of the Tyrolese Alps. All the bridges were destroyed after he had crossed them ; 158 CHARLES V. Spanish soldiers were also placed at all the mountain passes. On the following morning the illustrious fugitive reached Sterzing, and at nightfall Brunecken, a castle in the Paster Valley belonging to the Cardinal of Trent. In the suite of the Emperor followed the captive elector with his friend Lucas Cranach. For the first time for five years the old prince saw no Spanish guard about him ; which so gladdened his heart, that he began to sing in the waggon a hymn of praise and thanksgiving. In Brunecken he delivered into the hands of the Emperor a second declaration, dated 23rd of May, and likewise re- ferring to the execution of outlawry against Maurice, and to the war against France. He advised the Emperor to raise a German army; not to employ any Spaniards and Italians; to seize Augsburg; and to make over the country of Maurice to him and to Alaurlce's brother Augustus. * The Emperor wished to make people believe that he intended to go to Linz; but he stopped at Villach in Carlnthia until the end of July. The magistrates of this town, in reward of their kind reception of the Emperor, were ennobled by him. His brother went to Passau. On the other side of the Alps, the Council of Trent had dis- persed in all directions about the end of April. The par- tisans of the Emperor alone remained behind there, until news of the taking of Ehrenberg Castle by Maurice ar- rived ; on which the inhabitants, as well as the prelates, all fled to the mountains, to the woods, and to the lakes. On the 23rd of May, between one and two o'clock in the afternoon, Maurice made his entry into Innsbruck, at the * This latter point of the declaration is worded thua : " Touehant le point, comme Ton pourroit recouvrir les pays du Due Mauritz et mettre dis- sension entre ks frires, qu'il semblc au diet seigneur due et supplie tres humblement a sa dicte Majeste qu'estant publie le ban et le diet due jn-ive dc son estat honneur et preeminence, sa diet Majeste ne donne ou permette de prendre ses pays et terres a aultrc quelconque que a soy, ses freres et nfans, comme aux vrays agnats .... toutcs fois le Due Aiiguste assistera a ex(ecuter le) ban." — Lanz, States' Papers, pp. 510 — 518. SCHEMES OF HENRY II. OF FRAXCE. 159 head of liis cavalry and infantry ; the French envoys also were with him. All the personal property of the Spa- niards, of the Emperor, and of the Cardinal Bishop of Augsburg, Maurice left as booty to his lansquenets, Avho wei'e then seen strutting about in the gorgeous Spanish dresses, with Portuguese gold coins glittering on their hats ; they also used to enhance tlieir new-blown magnificence by calling each other " Dons." King Fer- dinand's property was spared. To Zasius, the councillor whom the latter had left behind at Innsbruck, Maurice excused his advance to that place by stating " that the French envoys had so earnestly urged it, that it could not have been helped ; and that he was sure to make his ap- pearance at the conference at Passau." Danger was threatening in a difFei'eut quarter, from Henry II. of France, the ally of ]\Iaurice. He was moving to and fro in Alsace, at the same time issuing manifestos, in which, as in those of Maurice, much was said about German libertv. In the French manifestos, dated Fontainebleau, 5th of February, 1552, there was even a cap of liberty, with two daggers, and the word " Lihertas " emblazoned on the top. Yet the first act by which the " Liberator of Germany " showed his good-will, was his laying hold on the bishoprics of Toul, Metz, and Yerdun, which until then had always belonged to the German Empire. From Innsbruck Maurice started, on the 25th of May, to Hall on the Inn, and thence went by water to Passau, to be present at the assembly appointed for the 26th of May, on which day the truce began. The army retired from the Tyrol to Eichstiidt. The Emperor had left the negociations to his brother Ferdinand, and they began on the 1st of June. There were present, besides Maurice and Ferdinand, the Duke of Bavaria and the Bishops of Passau, Eiciisladt, and Salzburg; the other electoi's and princes being represented by their delegates. The princes, both Catholic and Pi'otestaut, 160 CHARLES V. were unanimous in the opinion tliat no war should be permit- ted in Germany. The negotiations lasted for two months. The Emperor was decidedly against admitting the French envoy, and repeatedly advised Ferdinand to arrest him. The Frenchman left Passau on the 9th of June. As Charles refused to ratify the ai'ticles which had been agreed upon, Ferdinand had to go himself to Villach to his brother, where he wrested from Charles his assent. This happened on the 6th of July ; on the 16th the treaty was signed in the Emperor's name at Passau. At this assembly also, Maurice behaved with extraor- dinary prudence and cunning ; so much so as even to puzzle his own brother-in-law William of Hesse, who in those days wi'ote to the Margrave Albert of Culmbach " that he received bad news from Passau. Perhaps the whole was only a sham." Maurice had returned to Eichstiidt to rejoin his army, with which he marched towards the Phine. He wanted to reduce Frankfort, which, like Nuremberg, had remained faithful to the Emperor. When he challenged the town to surrender, he was answered " that he should first become an honest Christian, and lay aside his Judas appearance." Here, again, his brother-in-law conceived mistrust, as Maurice held a secret deliberation with the magistrates of Frankfort. William, in an altercation with him, called him a traitor. At last, in the camp at Rodelheim, near Frankfort, on the 2nd of August, 1552, he and the Land- grave William of Hesse signed the Treaty of Passau ; the treaty which again guaranteed to the Protestants their religious liberty. Peace being concluded, Maurice, to support Ferdinand, marched eastward against the Turks, and Charles west- ward against the French ; whilst the liberated captive princes of Saxony and Hesse returned to their countries. The Emperor Charles V. repaired, on the 1st of August, from Villach to Innsbruck; thence he went to Hall and JOHN FREDERIC SET FREE. 161 Schwetz, on the Inn ; then left the Tyrol, and went by Munich to Augsburg, which he reached on the 20th of August. On the 1st of September, 1552, he there dis- missed John Frederic, not without marks of regard and emotion. The ex-elector obtained no better conditions than those of the capitulation of Wittenberg, and at once started for his own country. Wherever he passed, he was received by the Protestants as a saint and a martyr. At Nuremberg, the delegates of the magistracy came out, with forty horses, to meet him. At Coburg he found his wife waiting for him. She had never cast oflf her mourning attire during all the five years of their separation, and she fainted when she saw her beloved lord again. In every town of Saxony the councilmen came to meet him in their black robes of office ; the burghers, either clad in armour or in their holiday suits, lined the roads ; the clergy waited in the market-places, with the boys on one side, and on the other the oldest men and the young girls, wearing the Saxon garland of rue * in their flowing locks ; the boys singing the Te Deum in Latin, and the girls responding with the German " Herr Gott dich loben wir." The prince passed along through their ranks bare-headed, attributing his return to the effect of their prayers. In Jena, where his sons, to make up for the loss of Wittenberg, had esta- blished a university, he was particularly pleased to see professors and students once more. By his side on the wasfffon sat his eldest son and his faitiiful friend who had shared his ca})tivity — his beloved Lucas Cranach. The Landgrave of Hesse returned from his confinement at Mechlin to Cassel. He had obstinately refused to believe in Maurice's undertaking anything against the Emperor, saying, " How shall a sparrow attack the hawk ? and, besides, Maurice has himself destroyed the other birds, whereat foreign nations cannot help laughing." In Trc- vueren, on the 14th of September, 1552, he took leave of * The Saxon coat of arms bears a garland of i*ue. VOL. I. M 162 CHARLES V. Queen Mary of Hungary, the then Regent of the Nether- lands, and on the 12th he was back in Cassel. Maurice was doomed not long to survive his triumph over the Emperor. He lived only one year after the Peace of Passau. On his return from the Turkish war in Hungary, he held, in the Carnival of 1553, a great tourna- ment at Dresden ; after which he took the field once more against his former friend and ally the wild Margrave Albert of Brandenburg-Culmbach. This princely freebooter had been pleased to continue the war on his own account, thus keeping up the old state of club-law in Germany. No wonder that he was universally dreaded. He maintained that the Treaty of Passau was good for nothing, and that " the parsons were to be thoroughly humbled." By the way, he also was always ready to pluck the " pepper bags," as he called the merchants of the cities. Having about him a few thousand cut-throats, he marched through Middle Germany to devastate the Franconian and Saxon bishop- rics, all "in the name of the Gospel." After this, he turned against the King of France. And now the clever Charles did one of the most foolish things he had ever done in his life. Near Metz, which the Imperial troops at that time were besieging, he caused Alba and Granvella to conclude with the wild Margrave the unhallowed com- pact, by which he took him into his service. From that time the authority of Charles in Germany completely declined. The Imperial Chamber pronounced outlawry against Albert, and the princes bound themselves, without the Emperor, to defend the peace of the country against its disturber, — publicly protected and abetted as he was by the head of the Empire. Near Sievershausen, on the Liineburg Heath, where Albert was just engaged in plundering, the Elector of Saxony fell in with him. In this encounter Maurice fell fatally wounded. Proudly seated on his charger, his breast crossed by his red scarf striped with white, his DEATH OF MAURICE. 163 colours, he had chivah'ously rushed to the combat, when a silver ball hit him through the cuirass in the back, and passed right through the body. William Von Grumbach, a Franconian knight, who afterwards was quartered, in 1567, for other delinquencies, is said to have been his mur- derer. The wounded Maurice, in a tent which they pitched for him by the side of a hedge, received the captured standards, and also the papers of the Margrave, which he examined with eager cui'iosity. He likewise then and there caused Christopher Von Carlovvitz to draw up his will, which was sent to his brother Augustus, at that time on a visit to his father-in-law in Denmark. Two days after, Maurice died, 11th July, 1553. His last words were " God will come," — the rest was unintelligible. Maurice had only reached his thirty-second year. He was buried in the cathedral of Freiberg, in the Erzgebirge, where his monument may be seen to this day. He left but one child, Anna, who was married in 1561, at Leip- sic, to Prince William of Orange, the liberator of the Netherlands. His brother Augustus succeeded him as Elector of Saxony. Charles V. loved Maurice so dearly, that, on receiving the news of his death at Brussels, he mourned for him, in the words of David over his son, " Oh ! Absalom ! my son ! my son ! Would to God I had died for thee ! " But his chancellor Granvella rejoiced, being of the same opinion as Antony Fugger, who was thoroughly versed in the ways of the world, and who said to him at Augsburg, "that Maurice was well out of the way, and that his death had j)rofited no one more than his Imperial Majesty, whom he had tried to deceive and rob of his sceptre to intrude himself into his place. It had been the plan of Maurice to make himself king of Saxony, and after the defeat of the margrave to attack his Majesty in the Netherlands in conjunction with France." Charles himself expressly writes to J. de Rye and to his brother Ferdinand that he had heard of this. M 2 164 CHARLES V. The state of the times was still very critical. In a letter of Henry of Brunswick — who at Sievershausen had lost his two eldest sous — to Philip of Hesse, the following passage occurs : " As soon as the Emperor's affairs are in a better train, Germany will be in great dano-er. The Emperor only icants to set the princes against each other. It is true he used Albert as one of his hounds for the purpose ; but he would be greatly pleased if a wheel went over his leg."" King Ferdinand, the Elector Augustus of Saxony, and other princes, having at last concluded at Eger a league against Albert of Brandenburg, Charles, frightened by the general commo- tion in Germany, was obhged, on the 18th of May, 1554, to confirm the outlawry. The wild Margrave had now to fly to France, but returned afterwards to Germany. He died in great misery, at the early age of thirty-five, in 1557, at Pforzheim, where he had been received by the Margrave of Baden. In the treaty of Passau it had been agreed upon that a diet should be summoned for the complete and ultimate settlement of the religious grievances. This was held at Auo-sburg, in 1555. Charles again left everything to his brother. The treaty of Augsburg, which was then con- cluded, secured liberty of religion to all the princes and knights, and to the senates of the free cities ; that is to say, to about 20,000 privileged persons ; not, however, to the 20 millions of the German people. These might be Pro- testants, but, if they lived in a Catholic country, the prince had the right to command them to emigrate. The prin- ciple was laid down " Ctijus regio, ejus religio ;" in other words, whatever faith the ruler of the country professed the people had to profess likewise, or to leave the country. According to the " spiritual clause," ecclesiastical princes might become Protestant in their own persons ; but if bishops and abbots wished to change their religion, they forfeited their sees and prebends. The countries of Ca- EESIGNATION OF THE EMPEROR. 165 tholic ecclesiastical princes must needs, therefore, remain Catholic. Of Protestants, the Lutherans alone were tolerated ; the Calvinists were not included in the peace. This treaty, or, as it is called, " Peace of Religion," was the sad ending of the Reformation. The movement, which had begun as a popular cause, terminated as a political compromise of the princes. 8. RESIGNATION OF CHARLES V HIS DEATH IN SPAIN. Since the terrible days of ignominious flight, when the proud heart of the master of two hemispheres was humbled in the loneliness of his mountain journey, amidst the ex- cruciating tortures of disease ; Charles seems to have con- ceived the plan of at once casting off all that pomp which had until now surrounded but not satisfied him. He had once more tried the fortune of war against France ; but he was not even able to reconquer Metz. And yet he had for this very purpose had recourse to the expedient which completely destroyed his credit in Germany, — that of taking the brutal Albert of Brandenburg in his service. We may gather with what feelings he did so, from a letter of his to his sister Mary, to whom he wrote on the 13th of November : " Dieu scayt ce que je sens, me veoyr en termes de fayrc ce que je fays avec le dit marquis, mais necessitc n'a point de loy." The hand of every man was raised against him ; he could not trust his own relations. The most potent and invincible Charles had indeed been brought very low, as he had to bear with the most bitter home truths from very small princes of the Empire before he confirmed the outlawry against the wild INlargrave ; and yet he still adhered to his principal plan of procuring the crown of the Gcrmano-Roman Empire for his son Philip. The old Emperor suft'ered more and more both in mind M 3 166 CHARLES V. and body. The sharper the twinges of gout, the more his melancholy increased. He sat often for days moodily brooding, and sometimes breaking out into a flood of tears without speaking a word. Many years before, when his Portuguese wife was alive, he had entertained the plan that each should retire into a convent. In 1549, at the death of Paul III., the proposal had been made to him to become Pope, as his grandfather Maximilian had once intended to do. His physicians had long urged him to live in a warmer climate. On the 26th of October, 1555, Charles performed the act of resigning the Netherlands to Philip, whom he sent for from England, where the Infant had lived ever since his marriage with " Bloody Mary" in 1553. The cere- mony took place at Brussels, in the same hall in which forty years before he had entered upon his reign. The gouty and melancholy Emperor rose with difficulty from his chair, his right hand resting on a staff, and his left on the shoulder of Prince William of Orange. His speech, which he delivered in French, drew tears of the deepest emotion from the whole of that large assembly. He set forth, "that since his seventeenth year all his thoughts had been bent upon the glorious government of his Em- pire; that he had tried to see everything with his own eyes ; and that therefore his reign had been one continuous pilgrimage. He had visited Germany nine, Spain six, France four, Italy seven, and the Netherlands ten times. He had been twice in England, and as often in Africa ; and had, on the whole, made eleven voyages by sea, eight on the Mediterranean and three on the Atlantic. Now, however, he was reminded, by his failing strength, to retire from the turmoil of worldly business, and to lay the burden on younger shoulders. If in all his endeavours and exertions he had neglected or mismanaged anything of importance, he from all his heart begged the pardon of all those who had been wronged by it. He would him- DEPARTURE FOR SPAIN. 167 self affectionately remember his faithful Netherlanders to the day of his death, and would never cease to pray to God for their welfare." Upon this, turning to his son, who went down on his knees before him and kissed his hand, he exhorted him, in the most impressive manner, " to do his utmost to make his reign glorious." At last he fell back breathless into his chair. On the 15th of January, 1556, Charles resigned, in the same solemn manner, at the house of Count de Oropeza at Brussels, the kingdoms of Spain, with all their dependen- cies in the old and new worlds, to Don Philip ; and in August, the government of Germany into the hands of the envoys of his brother Ferdinand. Philip i*emained at Brussels until 1559. Charles, on the other hand, prepared to sail to Spain as soon as possi- ble, and only waited at Flushing for a fair wind. Dr. Seld, the vice-chancellor of the Empire, his brother's en- voy, was still with him. One evening, he conversed with him until a late hour. He then rang the bell, but none of the servants came. Charles thereupon took the candle himself, and lighted the doctor down stairs, saying, " Take this for ever as a remembrance of the Emperor Charles, who, after having in times bygone been surrounded by so many warriors and guards, is now deserted by every one, even by his own servants ; whom you have served so long, and who now has served you in his turn, wishing thereby to honour your virtue and ability." On the 17th of September, 1556, Charles embarked with his two sisters Mary Queen dowager of Hungary, and Eleanor Queen Dowager of France, on the coast of Zealand, and landed in Sj^ain at Laredo, on the coast of Biscay. On touching the land he kissed the ground, with the words, " Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither." He kept his sisters with him as far as Valladolid, where he dismissed them. From thence he went to Estramadura, where a small house M 4 168 CHARLES V. was being built for him near the Jeromite convent of Yuste. Don Philip, as a complimentary present, sent to his father, on his return to Spain, a heart of gold studded with precious stones ; on receiving which Charles called out with melancholy foreboding, " God grant that his heart may not become as hard as these stones." Philip, immediately after the Emperoi"'s abdication at the house of Count de Oropeza, had made him wait se- veral weeks for his stipulated annual revenue, so that Charles had not been able to pay his servants. The son afterwards even reduced the pension of his father to one-half of the amount. The Jeromite monastery of Yuste, founded in 1410, was situated in a mountainous district, famous for its beauty and its salubrious air, and fi'equented even to this day, in the hot season, by the Spanish nobility and gentry. This was that most delightful valley, twelve Spanish miles long and three broad, called the orchard of Placentia, in the midst of gardens and plantations, enlivened by a profusion of cool springs and mountain torrents. Ten years before, this country had so pleased Charles, that he exclaimed: " Here is a place of rest for a second Diocletian ! " He was not able to enter his new abode until February, 1557, as the building wa? not completed. The house inhabited O I. by Charles lay close to the church of the monastery. When he was ill, he might hear the mass and the chanting from his bedroom. In this bedroom was hung the cele- brated " Glory" by Titian, his favourite painter, who had long travelled in his suite. The eioht rooms of his mansion overlooked his own garden and those of the monastery. All was very still and lonely. Charles lived at Yuste not quite two years. During this time he only saw his sisters twice, but his son Philip never again. When the state of his health permitted, he would walk out to a small hermitage in the neighbourhood, under the shadow of some noble old chestnut trees ; sometimes he would LAST DAYS OF CHARLES. 169 ride on a sumpter horse, but at last was unable even to do that. Having a taste for music, he loved to be present at the chanting in the church, and the superiors of the monastery took good care to assemble all the finest voices for their choir. He had with him the afterwards so famous Don Juan d'Austria, at that time in his tenth year; who seems to have been just as mischievous as other boys, to judge at least from the fact of the peasants of the neighbourhood being obliged frequently to drive him away from their cherry- trees by pelting him with stones. Charles kept up an un- interrupted correspondence with his son Philip, and by this means took at least an indirect part in the government. On receiving the news of the victory of St. Quentin, in 1557, he asked, " Is my son in Paris ? " Being answered in the negative, he gnashed his teeth with rage. The time left to him by his religious exercises he employed in garden- ing ; he also amused himself with clocks, of which he had a great number, and which he endeavoured to make all go together ; and when he could not succeed in makinsc two to go alike for any time, he would exclaim, " Clocks are like men." On the day when he caused his own obsequies to be solemnised by the friars (the 31st August, 1558), he caught a cold by which the deadly fever already in him was brought to its fatal height. He knelt several days with his eyes streaming before a large crucifix, fervently clasping it in his embrace. The learned Dominican Bartholomew de Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, adminis- tered extreme unction to the dying monarch.* One of his last sayings was : " In manus tuas Domine ! commendo spiritum meum ; redemisti nos Domine ! Deus veritatis : " words which he frequently repeated during his last illness. * This is a mistake; the prelate only arrived after the ceremony had been performed, as the critical state of the Emperor made it advisable not to delay it any longer.— 2>ans/. .,.....,jx^ 170 CHAKLES V. He died on the 21st of September, 1558, in his fifty-ninth year. Bakhuizen van der Brink, a Dutch savant, has only lately published * some very curious details of the last days of the life of the Emperor Charles V. from the MS. of a friar of the convent of Yuste, found in the archives in the old herald's office at Brussels. " On the 28th of September, 1556, Charles landed at Laredo. On the 11th of November he retired to the small town of Xarandilla, at a distance of one (Spanish) mile from the monastery of Yuste, there to wait until the house should be completed which was then building for him at the latter place. He anxiously wished to remove as soon as possible to his new residence. But although he on the 25th of November, went himself to Yuste to in- spect as much as was finished, and to urge the workmen to greater speed, the house was not made thoroughly habit- able until February, 1557. It contained eight rooms, all of the same size — twenty feet broad by twenty-five feet long. Four apartments on the ground-floor were intended for the summer months ; and four on the second story, with large chimneys, for winter. A wide corridor ran along the whole building on each story. The south front of the house was on each side flanked by a turret, with a foun- tain playing in the centre, in the basin of which trout were kept, for which the Emperor had a great fancy. On the right the building bordered on a secluded garden, richly laid out with trees and flowers of his own choosing, and likewise cooled by a jet of water. The left angle joined a large court-yard adorned with a magnificent foun- tain which was cut from a single block of marble ; and with a sun-dial, a master-piece of its kind, by the celebrated mechanician Gianello Torreano. By the church of the * The German original of this volume of the present Memoirs was pub- lished in 1852, before Mr. Stirling's most interesting " Cloister Life." The very slight discrepancies between the accounts of the two monks are an additional proof of the general authenticity of both. — Transl. HIS '^'CLOISTER LIFE." 171 convent, which lay higher by twenty feet than the Imperial villa, it was sheltered from the blasts of the north. A covered staircase like a gallery afforded to the Emperor, who was sorely troubled Avith the gout, an easy access to the church and gardens of the convent. The apartments were lighted by many large windows, through which the sweet balmy air poured in from the lemon and orange trees of the garden, and from which the eye might roam over the noble verdure of dark woods to the neighbouring ridges of hills, glimmering with the golden tints of their luxuriant vineyards. Although the Imperial mansion was but a plain wooden structure of very humble aspect from without, yet its interior was furnished with every elegance and comfort that could make it a delightful residence. " When Charles settled at Yuste he dismissed part only of his household, retaining in his service upwards of fifty persons, Spaniards, Netherlanders, Burgundians ; the only German among them was the assistant baker. The lower officers of his court who could not be accommodated in the outbuildings of the convent, were lodged in the neighbour- ing little village of Quacos. Those who held the first rank amono; his gentlemen never left their master. His familiar circle comprised, besides his major-domo and favourite Quixada, two Flemings of Bruges — William de Male, who frequently acted as his secretary, and Henry Matthys, his physician. " Although Charles still kept up a regular correspond- ence with his son Philip IL, who was then in the Nether- lands, and with his daugiiter Juana, the regent of the kingdom of Spain ; yet he withdrew his thoughts from the stormy stage which he had left for ever. Many petitioners applied for an audience ; but he refused to admit them, simply referring them to those in whose favour he had abdicated. He only reluctantly consented to re- ceive some great lords who wished to pay him their respects. On such occasions the major-domo would take 172 CHAULES V. the utmost care that in the presence of Charles the same etiquette should be observed as in the times when he was Emperor x)f Germany, King of Spain and Naples. " The plan of his daily life was as follows : Every morning the clock-maker (mechanician) Gianello was the first to enter the room of the Emperor. He was suc- ceeded by the friar Juan Kegala, his confessor, who read prayers. After him came the surgeons and the phy- sician. At ten, dinner was served for those officers who were to attend afterwards at the table of the Emperor; after their repast, at which the gentleman on duty pre- sided, they followed the Emperor to mass. Divine service being concluded, the Em])eror sat down to his own dinnei', listening with pleasure to the discourse of Dr. Matthys and William de Male, which generally bore upon subjects of history or of military science. Sometimes the confessor was ordered to read to the Emperor during his repast a chapter from St. Bernard or any other good writer, until his Majesty fell into a nap or rose from the table to be present at a sermon or a reading of the Holy Scriptures held before the assembled friars. Charles attended mass in a I'aised stall set apart for him, and confessed and took the saci'ament at all the great festivals ; yet the Pope had dispensed him from fasting before the communion, as he was too weak and infirm to stand it." This was the whole extent of the reliajious exercises of the Emperor at the monastery at Yuste. The MS. does not make the slightest mention of the discipline, in virtue of which, according to Robertson's statements, Charles had flagellated himself till the blood flowed. The Emperor, suffering severely from the gout, was scarcely able to move ; he always had two of his gentlemen to accompany him, on whom he would lean when he tried to walk, or even Avhen he was carried in a sedan-chair. Once only did the Emperor dine with the friars in their refectory ; yet, although a separate table had been HIS DEATH. 173 dressed for him, and the cooks of the convent had done their very best duly to honour their illustrious guest, he was so little edified with the conventual bill of fare, that he never repeated his visit to that dining-hall. According to the friar to whose MS. we owe our information, Charles never intended to enter their order, nor did he ever wear their dress. But it is a fact that he had his obsequies solemnised in his lifetime. One day, when he felt particularly free from pain, he ordered mass for the souls of his ancestors and of his late empress. On the evening of the same day he had a conversation with his confessor, and ordered for the next morning his own obsequies. It was on the 31st of Au- gust, 1558. The catafalque was erected in the large chapel of the church. Charles attended with the whole of his little court in deep mourning. The ceremony lasted the greater part of the day. When it was over, Clrarles, in a state of great exhaustion, caused himself to be set down in the court-yard of his house, his face turned towards the east. He remained there sitting a good while, with his eyes fixed on Gianello's sun-dial. Then, rousing himself from his silent reverie, he had a likeness of his late wife brought to him, which he looked at for some time. After this he asked for a picture representing Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane ; and lastly for a third picture, a representation of the Last Judgment. All at once a shudder i-an through him, when, turning to his phy- sician, he said, " I feel unwell, Doctor." This gentleman carried him to his bed, which he left no more. He died on the 21st of September, after having passed in the peaceful solitude of Yuste only one year and eight months, all but nine days. Charles in his last will directed that he should not be embalmed ; but, when in 1656 his remains were transferred to the Pantheon of the Escurial, on which occasion his 174 CHARLES V. coffin was opened, his body was found to be quite uncov" rupted. * 9. PERSONAL NOTICES OF CHARLES V. Charles, in his younger days, and before he was tor- mented by asthma and gout, had been a very fine man. He was of ordinary size, rather tall than short, inclined to stoutness, but had thin legs. His complexion in the prime of life was as white as milk ; his hands also were equally white. His hair was light, with a bright auburn tinge; since his Italian journey in 1529 he wore it cut short, on account of a tendency to nervous headache. About the same period, living much in Germany, he began to have his beard trimmed after the then existing German fashion. His first grey hairs he accidentally discovered, when not more than thirty-six years old, at Naples, whilst he was dressing for a ball, where, as he himself con- fesses, he " wished to please the ladies." He had them plucked out, but they grew again. His eyes were of a bluish-grey ; his forehead broad and ample. His long, pale face would decidedly not have been called handsome, dis- figured as it was by his large and somewhat open mouth, with the hanging under lip of the Habsburg race ; and by his protuding lower jaw, covered with a short, curly beard. His nose was very long, and strongly aquiline. More- over he had, in his later years, but few and bad teeth left. His eyes lacked lustre. His constitution was very feeble, and his nerves were as weak as irritable. He always looked grave and serious, only on very rare occasions allowing a smile to light up his pale, gloomy countenance. His melancholy temperament and his Spanish gravity * According to Mr. Stirling's account, it was embalmed on the very day of the Emperor's death. — Transl. HIS NUPTIALS. 175 showed themselves in evei-ything. There are still in existence many of his portraits by Titian, to Avhom he used to pay a thousand ducats for each ; Charles wished to be painted by no other artist, just as Alexander only by Apelles. In his younger days Charles, like his brother Ferdi- nand, had been obliging, affable, and easy with everyone; but his principal adviser for Spain, the Grand Commander Covos, had intreated him to change this Netherlandish manner; urging that whoever wished to keep the Spaniards in their place should show himself grave and stern, as they were naturally very proud. Charles after- wards introduced the strict and solemn Spanish etiquette also in Germany ; even his brother, the King of the Romans, never spoke to him but with his hat off and with a profusion of bows. At the age of twenty-six, Charles married the beauteous and graceful Isabel of Por- tugal, then in her twenty-third year. Three French and two English princesses had been before thought of for him ; two daughters of Louis XII. and one of Francis I. of France ; one daughter of Henry VII. and one of Henry VIII. of England : the last of these — the Princess, afterwards Queen Mary — became in 1 554, at the age of thirty-eight, the wife of his son Don Philip, her junior by eleven years. The marriage of Charles and Isabel was celebrated at Seville on the 10th of March, 1526. The following ac- count is from an old contemporary pamphlet : — " The princess arrived at Seville by ship eight days before the wedding. On the 10th of March, Charles came from Madrid just after having taken leave at Illescas of Francis I., until then his prisoner of war. The royal bridegroom was attended by the papal legate, Cardinal Salviati, and a great number of prelates and grandees. Before the city he was received by the Governor Philip, Duke of Arschot, of the house of Croy, and by twenty- 176 CHARLES V. four members of the Council of Seville, who were ad- mitted to kiss the Emperor's hand. They were followed by the Archbishop of Seville, to whom the Emperor took his oath that he would preserve the liberties of the Spanish nation. Charles wore a dress of plain white silk embroidered with gold ; he was mounted on a beautiful white horse, and held in his right hand an olive branch. With a gorgeous canopy borne over him, he was led through seven triumphal arches to the Cathedral, whence, after having performed his devotions, he repaired to the royal palace." " In the third hour of the night, the Emperor and the princess met in the royal hall, which was most splendidly decorated. They had scarcely saluted each other when the cardinal legate made his appearance to perform the marriage ceremony. At midnight the Archbishop of Toledo read mass, at which, after having confessed, the Emperor and the princess received the sacrament. After the blessing of the archbishop, they, in a holy and Christian spirit, entered the nuptial chamber." Charles lost his beautiful wife Isabel in 1539, after a union of thirteen years, at the birth of her fourth child, when she refused to call in a surgeon-accoucheur. After her death, the Emperor was again seized with epileptic fits, from which he had been free ever since his marriage. Charles had lived very happily with Isabel. His temper was completely changed, and he had adopted a different diet and different manners. His grief at her loss was un- bounded. He sat for several days in silent despair beside her corpse, inaccessible to every thought of public busi- ness ; like a madman he flew with a drawn dagger at those who dared to intrude upon the solitude of his sacred sorrow. The Duke of Borghia, the celebrated Jesuit, had to admonish him, at first gently and kindly, but at last very roughly, not to forget the living, as the dead could HIS PROFLIGACY. 177 not come to life again. Then only Charles rallied, and allowed the beloved remains to be interred. After Isabel's death, Charles would not hear of a second marriage, although the Marquess del Vasto proposed to him Margaret, the youngest daughter of Francis L, who afterwards married Emanuel Philibert of Savoy. Not yielding in gallantry to his royal brothers Francis I. and Henry VIII., Charles again engaged in amorous intrigues, just as he had done before marriage ; and when his health was repeatedly impaired by his excesses, he used the maddest cures. De Thou expressly states, that in all his love affairs he observed the greatest secrecy. But his confessor Garcia de Loaysa was very well aware of his profligacy, and again and again wrote to him during the years 1530 — 1532, even before the death of his wife, " that he should not allow himself to be carried away by this insidious sensuality, lest on the couch of luxury and sloth he might miss the sacred purpose of his existence." One of his natural sons was the celebrated Don Juan d' Austria, the conqueror of the Turks at Lepanto. He was supposed to be the son of Barbara Blomberg, the fair daughter of a burgher at Katisbon ; who during the diet of 1544 had soothed the melancholy of the Emperor by her sweet singing. According to another statement,^that of Girolamo Lippomani, Don Juan's envoy at Naples in 1575, — his mother was a noble lady of Flanders, Madama di Plombes, who was then still living at Antwerp, and to whom Charles had given a husband with a yearly income of 10,000 ducats. A princess of the first rank was sus- pected to be the real mother; but it was never known with certainty. Don Juan d'Austria was born on the 25th of February, 1545, and was in 1550, at Brussels, entrusted by Adrian, the valet of Charles, to the care of Francisco Massi and iiis wife Anna de ]\Iedina ; a hundred crowns a year being paid for his board. He afterwards accom- panied his father to Yuste, and was in Spain also kept VOL. I. N 178 CHARLES V. in the most complete ignorance as to his descent. After the death of Charles he was told who he was. In 1561 Philip II. acknowledged him at a hunting party as his brother, and took him to his court. His father had in his last will expressed a wish that he should devote himself to a monastic life ; but, in case he should not feel any inclination to do so, a yearly pension of from 20,000 to 30,000 ducats was settled on him, to be paid from the revenues of the kingdom of Naples. Charles was a very proud lord, and knew better than any one how to make himself regarded and looked up to as long as he lived. His person and character forced even his enemies to respect him ; none of his contemporaries have spoken meanly of him. It was not merely the ad- ventitious fact of his exalted position, but innate majesty and Q-reatness which commanded the homasre of the world. He showed singular power of self-control, and was anxious on every occasion to prove himself the first, not only in rank, but in fortitude and high-souled conduct. The rule which, in this respect, he imposed upon himself he wished to be observed also by others. In several in- stances he opposed great sternness to the pride of the Spanish grandees, who tried to treat with contempt those whom Charles, on account of their merit, had raised to the rank which the others had been born to. His brave cap- tain Antonio de Leyva was hated by the Spanish nobility because he was the son of a shoemaker of Navarre, and because Charles had made him a duke ; he was hated by the Spanish clergy because he helped himself to their silver when he could not pay his troops in any other way ; he was hated by the ladies because he did not pay his court to them ; and, lastly, he was hated by the people because he lived as if the world were only made for the soldiers. There were none who loved Leyva but his men and the Emperor; who made him Prince of Ascoli and ap- pointed him Governor of Milan. When Charles, in 1530, OLD LEYVA. 179 came to Bologna to be crowned, old Leyva caused himself to be carried in a litter to Piacenza to meet his sovereign. On this occasion Charles, as Frederic the Great after- wards in the case of General Ziethen, made Leyva to sit down in an arm-chair and cover himself. Charles then uttered the remarkable words, " The grandees of Spain cover themselves near my throne, and should tlie old man of seventy years, who has been in sixty battles for me, stand bare-headed before his master, who is only thirty ? I cannot, forsooth, do less than grant to personal merit the same distinction as to that which is only hereditary." In the procession, on entering Bologna, Leyva, by order of Charles, rode by the side of Andrew Doria, before the archbishops and bishops, two noblemen leading his horse. Leyva died in 1536, in the third campaign against the French, At a festivity of the court in Madrid, when the nobility held a cm^ousel, the courtiers agreed to exclude a certain officer who had only shortly before been ennobled, and whose name was on the list. Charles havino; been in- formed of it, drily said to the chief equerry, on entering the arena, " Let no one take this nobleman from me; I have selected him for my own quadrille." A proud Cas- tilian lady and an equally proud fair Neapolitan were once quarelling about precedence at the door of the palace chapel in Brussels, when Charles promptly settled their 8qua])ble with the w^ords, " Let the most foolish go in first." The Cavaliere Bidolfi, in his « Vite de' Pittori Veneti," states that one day, Titian happening to drop his brush whilst being at work, tlie Emperor picked it up and handed it to the artist. As he saw his courtiers surprised and displeased at his condescension, he remarked, " I have always people about me who bow before me, but I have not always a Titian." Another proof of the greatness of mind in Cliarlcs was N 2 180 CHARLES V. his hatred of flattery. His son-in-law Alexander of Medici once recommended his protege, the well known historian Paul Jovius of Como (Bishop of Nocera, died in 1552), for a pension, with the remark, that Paul was engaged in writing the history of all the great men of his age, and that he intended to write among the others that of the Emperor. Charles replied, " Just because he intends to write my life I should be ashamed to bribe him by a pension; let him relate to us the history of bygone times, and I will read and reward him." Of this Italian Jovius, and the German Sleidanus, professor and orator of Strasburg (died 1566), Charles used to say, "What a couple of liars ! the one praises and the other censures me more than I deserve." Concerning Sleidanus Charles is stated to have expressed himself thus : " The rogue has certainly known much, but not all ; he has either been in our privy council, or our councillors have been traitors." To a third biographer, a Spaniard, Sepulveda (Canon of Salamanca, died 1578), Charles himself related remarkable incidents of his life, and, to use his own words, " as can- didly as in the confessional." But Sepulveda was never allowed to read to him even one line of what he had written. Charles' court was very quiet, owing to his strong dis- like to noisy amusements. He did not even give banquets ; nay, he always dined alone. Being fond of secrecy in everything, he had also a particular fancy for the occult arts, and occupied himself, like several of his ancestors, with the course of the planets round the sun. He had for his teacher in astronomy Peter Bienewiz, or, according to the fashion of that time of Latinising names, Petrus Apianus, a native of Leisnig in Saxony, and a professor of the University at Ingolstadt, where he died in 1552, enno- bled by Charles V., who gave him for his coat of arms the double-headed eagle hovering in the clouds. Petrus Api- anus dedicated to the Emperor his large cosmography, his PETRUS An ANUS. 18l " Opus Casareum^'' tlie Emperor paying the cost of print- ins ; besides which, he made to his teacher an additional present of 3,000 ducats. Charles often conversed for half a day together with the far-famed astronomer, who, in 1541, at the Diet of Ratisbon, presented him with an orrery of pure gold, at the construction of which he had worked for ten years. Apianus was the best astronomical instrument maker of his time, and also had at Ingolstadt one of the earliest collection of maps, which was celebrated throughout Europe. The Emperor's favourite pursuit, besides astronomy, was the science of mechanics and me- chanical works : his fancy for time-pieces was very re- markable ; he had a hundred of them, and among them one in his seal ring, which struck the honr. The clever me- chanician Gianello Torreano was still with him at Yuste. Among his body physicians there was the celebrated Andrew Vesali, a native of Brussels, who before that had been first professor of anatomy at Padua, and had there published a celebrated work on anatomy, with drawings from nature, in which Titian helped him. Be- sides the study of physical science, Charles was fond of the chase, which he often followed with but a small suite of not more than eight or ten horses, and with only a fowling- piece in his hand. The whole sport consisted in firing his musket at a bird, such as a crow or a raven, or some beast of the forest, a stag or a wild boar. " These hunts," says a Venetian ambassador, " don't cost the Emperor a hun- dred scudis a year." Besides this, Charles took very little exercise. In his earlier years he used to tilt in the lists, or in the open field, to run at a quintain, take part in the bull-fights, and engage in all the sports of the manege or of fencing. Moreover, Charles in his leisure hours amused himself, according to the fashion of the time, with his dwarfs. The Venetian ambassador Bernardo Nava- giero states in 1 546, that the King of Poland had made him a present of one who was well made and very intelli- 182 CHARLES V. gent. He also found much diversion in the conversation of his jester Perico, a Spaniard, at whose jokes he had many a hearty laugh. Charles, who in his later years had but little sleep, liked to rise late in the morning. He then first attended a private mass for the soul of the empress, and imme- diately afterwards gave audience to his ministers, to which he also admitted his son Philip as soon as the infant had emerged from boyhood. Audience being over, Charles heard a second mass for his own soul ; at the conclusion of which he went directly to dinner, the rule being proverbial at the court of the Emperor " della messa alia mensa.^' He generally dined in state, but alone at his table, at one in the afternoon. He ate much, and was fond of good cheer, preferring highly seasoned dishes, which were the cause of frequent bilious attacks. His physicians pretended that moisture and cold prevailed in his constitution ; for which reason he was always craving for warmth, being fond of travelling in the heat of summer, and of living in hot rooms in winter. This may also account for his liking all those things that would drive the blood to the head and stimulate the nervous system, especially hot spices. He indulged very freely in wine; during the years 1530 to 1532 his former confessor Garcia de Loaysa wrote to him, " that it would be better for the general good if he would leave off drinking in the middle of the day ;" and the same warning was repeated more than once. The Venetian ambassador Mocenigo writes, as late as 1547, " the Emperor ate and drank so much, that everybody was amazed." The physicians, who were always present in the room during his dinner, would sometimes remind him that some dish disagreed with him. His confessor also wrote to him to " abstain from fish, as being injurious to his health." But abstain from such things he would not ; on the contrary, he rather preferred the heavier meats, such as were the most injurious to his constitution, red- CHARLES AT DINNER. 183 herrings and other salt fish, and salt dishes. " Worst of all," says Mocenigo, " he would not properly masticate his food, but he devoured it ; which was in a great measure owing to the decayed condition of his teeth." Sastrow, who saw the Emperor at the Diet of Augs- burg in 1546, states, in his Pomeranian Chronicle: "I have often seen the Emperor dine at several diets, at Spires, Worms, at Spires again, at Augsburg, and also at Brussels, when his brother King Ferdinand was present likewise, whom, however, he never allowed to sit down with him. And although his sister (Mary of Burgundy), his sister's daughter (the widow of Duke Francis of Lor- raine), his brother, with his daughter the Duchess of Bavaria, all the electors, and so many princes were there, he never gave a banquet nor kept them to dinner. When they were waiting for his coming from church, and accom- panied him to the hall where he was going to dine, he shook hands with them one after the other, left them, and sat down alone without speaking. The dinner was served by young princes and counts, four courses always, of six dishes each. The dishes being placed before him on the table, the covers were removed, and he shook his head at those of which he did not wish to partake ; but if he fancied one he nodded, and drew it towards him. Goodly pasties, venison, and savoury made-dishes, were sometimes taken away, while he kept back a sucking pig, calf's head, or such like. He had no one to carve for him, nor diJ he use the knife much himself; but he first cut his bread in small pieces, a mouthful each, then stuck his knife into the joint just where he fancied a piece, scooped it out, or other- wise tore it with his fingers, drew the plate under his chin, and thus ate in a very unaiFected but neat and cleanly manner, so that it was pleasant to look at him. When he wished to drink — he only drank three times at a meal — he beckoned to his physicians, who were standing in front of the table ; they went to the buffet, on which stood two N 4 184 CHARLES V. silver flasks and a crystal tankard, which held as much as one pint and a half; they then filled the glass from both flasks'; after which he drained it to the last drop, even if he had to draw his breath two or three times before he took it from his mouth. He seldom, however, spoke one word ; his jesters would stand behind him, cutting their jokes, but he did not much mind them ; sometimes, only when they said something particularly ridiculous, a half- smile played round his mouth. He had fine vocal and in- strumental music, though it would have sounded better in church than it did in the room. The dinner lasted not quite an hour; after which everything pertaining to it was removed, the table and chair folded up and carried out of the room, so that only the four walls remained ; but they were everywhere hung with the most costly tapestry. Grace being said, a little quill was handed to him with which he picked his teeth ; he then washed, and placed him- self in a corner of the room near the window, where every one might approach him to present petitions or state their case by word of mouth." The private audiences of the Emperor used to last two or three hours ; he then rested himself for one hour on an easy chair, and sent again for the ministers. After they had again withdrawn, he read or sat down to write letters. At seven in the evening, Charles took a slight collation only of sweetmeats and preserved fruits. This arrangement had been kept up ever since his twenty-fifth year. At nine o'clock he retired to bed, as did the whole of his court. The Emperor's melancholy disposition, which he proved among other things by carrying his coffin with him in all his journeys, his excess in eating and drinking, his taking little exercise, besides his naturally chilly constitution, caused him to be nearly always ailing. In later years only, he kept stricter diet and used much medicine. " The Emperor," says the Venetian ambassador Cavalli in 1550, i HIS INFIRM HEALTH. 185 " would have been dead long since, if he had not done so." He was constantly tormented by gout, and by spasms in the chest. He was particularly liable to catarrhal affections, and often suffered so severely from asthma that he dared not lie down in the evening to sleep, but w^^s obliged to stand upright and keep awake, supporting himself on a table. These asthmatic sufferings only gave way to the attacks of gout which, ever since his forty-first year, re- turned every winter regularly, and would also harass hira at other times. This broke his strength ; so that he could no longer mount his horse nor follow the chase, and in his journeys he had to be carried in a litter. In 1549, the year when the Papal crown Avas offered to him, he is de- scribed as creeping through his room, supported by his staff, with bent back, snow-white hair, deadly pale, and with beardless lips. Yet he would himself smile at his infirm appearance, saying " that he was not quite so weak as he looked." He used to say of the gout, " Patience and a little screaming is a good remedy against it." Ca- valli states, in 1550 : " The gout sometimes rises to his head, and threatens some day to kill him suddenly." In his own apartments he often trembled at the least noise. Mocenigo writes of him : " The Emperor, which perhaps will hardly be believed, is, according to the statements of his household, naturally so nervous that he is often frightened when perchance a spider comes near him, and even trembles as on the day when the army of the. Protestants drew up opposite to him at Ingolstadt. Yet notwithstanding this, his reason had such power over his natural instinct that, on many important occasions, and in the greatest dangers, he showed himself as brave and intrej)id as ever prince did; and especially on that day near Ingolstadt, he was seen, after the first emotion, in which even the wisest cannot altogether get the mastery over his nature, at once to rouse himself, and put on his armour ; and, whilst the enemy kept up a galling fire upon us from their heavy guns, he rode to and 186 CHARLES V. fro, arraying his army in order of battle, and making every arrangement for defence. Charles remained with his troops the whole day, and did so the three following days, without showing the least fear. Granvella, who had remained behind in the town on account of indisposition, sent word to his Majesty by the confessor that an Emperor needed greater prudence but less bravery ; but Charles answered, that ' no King or Emperor had ever been killed hy a cannon ball. If he was to be the first, it would be better for him to die than to live.'' " The Venetian ambassador, in the same report, extols the Emperor's kindness and forbearance in times of peace, but remarks that in war he had shown himself very cruel. He mentions that Charles, at the revolt of Ghent, caused a great number of the principal citizens to be executed ; and that also in the battle of Muhlberg the Saxon soldiers were by his order put to the sword, even after having thrown away their arms and entreated for their lives. Sastrow, in his " Chronicle," relates a fact which does not speak much for the kindness of Charles. The Emperor caused cannon which had been cast at Augsburg and Ulm to be driven by Swabian carriers to the Netherlands. This was in the year 1543, when he made war against the Duke of Juliers and Cleves, for the possession of the country of Guelders. The roads being bad, the carriers were not able to proceed very quickly, and the Emperor was in a great hurry to Ml in with the enemy. He there- fore rode up to one of the drivers to urge him to speed ; and when the man, not knowing the Emperor, looked cross and disregarded the order, Charles struck him with a stick on the nape of his neck. The carrier at once retorted on his Cajsarean Majesty by giving him a cut of his whip over his head, and by a curse, " May God's element confound you, you Spanish ruffian." The Emperor gave the order to take him away at once and hang him to the nearest tree. The officers, however, put off the execution until the first THE "CAROLINA." 187 heat of his anger was over ; and when Charles thought the order had long been carried out, they implored pardon for the man on their knees. On this, the Emperor mitigated the punishment of the carrier to the effect " that he should only have his nose cut off, in token of his having sworn at the Emperor of the Romans and struck him." The poor carrier even expressed his thanks for the punishment. The " Carolina," the criminal code which Charles gave to the German Empire in 1533, is likewise a very indifferent monument of his forbearance. Cutting out the tongue, cutting off ears, and tearing the flesh with hot pincers, are mentioned in its notorious 198th article as mere additions of punishment. For the slanderers at his court Charles devised a pu- nishment of truly Tartar character. They had to muster every morning, and for several hours to crawl on all-fours, and bark like dogs. This, however, lasted only a short time, as his councillors represented that the noise of the barking drove every serious thought out of their heads for the greater part of the forenoon, so that it was impossible for them to get on with their hard work. " In money matters his Majesty is exceedingly careful ; and, although he cheei'fully consents to any, even the heaviest expense, where it is necessary, yet he cannot bear that one ducat of his money should be spent uselessly. He keeps a very small court, considering his being such a great Emperor ; the usual service of his person and of his table do not cost him more than 120,000 scudl. Contrary to his former custom, he very rarely now has new suits made for his pages, so that their clothes are nearly always torn ; and even on his own dress the Emperor spends less than any nobleman of high rank would do. He says, ' that one must be a fool to pay more than 200 scudi for a lining of fur.' He remembers even his smallest article of dress, and notices if one of his shirts or a handkerchief is missing. He also sometimes has his clothes mended. 188 CHARLES V. He is said to act in this way, not for the purpose of keep- ing down his own expenditure, but in order that his courtiers, who are always prone to imitate him, may not have occasion to run into extravagance ; for this reason the Emperor in the German wars wore suits of fus- tian which were not worth a scudo, and a woollen hat which did not cost more than a marcello ; all the great lords of his court then dressed like him." All these statements of the Venetian ambassador con- cerning the frugality of Charles with regard to dress are founded on fact ; it is even recorded that once, at a review near Nauraberg in 1547, when it began to rain, the Em- peror took off his velvet cap and put it under his cloak. An eye-witness, who saw Charles on that occasion at Naumburg, describes his appearance as follows*: "I had pictured to mj^self this great Emperor very differently. At his entry into Naumburg (21st of June, 1547), scarcely any one was able, for the number of captains who pressed round his Majesty, to get a sight of him ; but when he alighted at his quarters I saw him, a tall, somewhat stout, grave personage. He wore a black velvet cap, and a red Spanish cloak coming down to the knees, yellow hose, half-boots, and a blue doublet, long moustaches, and beard on the chin. He looked cautiously round him before he went in. The Duke Maurice, who followed him, was a tall and spare man, with keen sparkling eyes; the Em- peror's on the contrary were languid." On the 22nd of June, the Emperor visited Alba's camp outside the town. *' This time he wore a black doublet;, and a large white Spanish ruff. His jerkin and hose were likewise black ; his head was covered with a round plumed hat, on account of the heat of the sun ; he was mounted on a very fine black charger, with rich black velvet housings embroidered * Report of the Clerk of Canals, Schirmer, in the Materials for Saxon History. Altenburg, 1791, No. 1. p. 34. HIS THRIFTINESS. 189 with gold ; and was surrounded by many princes, counts, and lords, several hundreds in number." On the 23rd of June, the army marched out from Naumburg ; which lasted from half-past five in the morning to one o'clock in the afternoon : " The Emperor was on horseback, dressed as on the day before, except that he wore no hat, but again his new black velvet cap, and a Spanish cloak. As it began to rain a little, Charles took off his velvet cap and put it under his cloak ; so that the rain fell on his bare head, the hair of which was of a chestnut brown ; whereat every one was very much astonished. Poor Emperor ! who had done such great deeds in the world, who had made war on Africa, and was the possessor of so many tons of gold, and who let the rain fall on his uncovered head !" There was evidently in the most potent Emperor Charles V. a drop left of the blood of his ancestor, Rodolph of Habsburg, who mended his clothes with his own hands. Yet it is just as true that Charles did not know how to mannge finances on a large scale. The Venetian, Marino Cavalli, writes in 1550: "There is a saying tlmt, up to ten scudi, no one in the world spends money better than the Emperor ; but as to large expenses, matters go on at his court just in the same way as with other princes." He was nearly always in straits and obliged to contract debts. He was far from beinof dis- pleased when, in 1530, his host, Anthony Eugger, at Augsburg, rekindled the fire which was getting low by feeding it Avith the old bonds of the Emperor; and yet twenty-two years afterwards the credit of Charles was at such a low ebb that no Augsburg firm, not even Anthony Eugger, whom he had so much honoured, would lend him money any longer. In political affairs the Emperor was, among the many wise and clever people at his Court, the wisest and most clever. All business was carried on in writing, and every argument for and against duly weiglicd. The ministers 190 CHARLES V. put questions to the emperor, who, on his side, ruminated over them cautiously and deliberately in the quietness of his cabinet, and then gave his decision, with Yes or No, and sometimes with some remarks written on the margin. As a rule, everything was treated in writing. In some cases Charles would call in parties for personal confer- ences. The written marginal remarks were very laconic, bearing the stamp of the monarch, who wrote them or caused them to be written, and who was always most chary of his words. In the States' papers of the Emperor, published by Dr. Lanz, from the Archives of Brussels, such brief rescripts occur generally in forms like the fol- lowing : " Bien !" " Que fait tres bien. " " Qui se face (fasse.)" " Fiat." " En soit escript." " L'Empereur y ad- visera." « Sa Maj. I'a a plasir." " Cela ira bien." The signature of Charles was very different from that of his grandfather ; that of Maximilian being small and cramped, that of Charles with large and tall perpendicular letters, although with some similarity to the proud slanting characters used by the French Bourbons after him. The letters of Charles V. and Henri IV. are the largest among all the signatures of the princes of the 16th and 17th centuries. Charles, when in Germany, always signed " Carolus." Charles won over the Flemings and Burgundians by his affability and condescension, the Spaniards by gran- deur and gravity, and the Italians by cleverness and in- genuity ; yet he, the German Emperor, seems to have been least able to imderstand the German way of feeling and thinking. He is also well known to have loathed the German language. He called it " the language of horses." After being deserted by Maurice of Saxony, whom of all Germans he had esteemed most, he hated to have any- thing to do with German affairs, and left them entirely to his brother Ferdinand. It is true, that on the whole he had a great aversion to any sort of work during the last HIS MELANCHOLY. 191 six years of his reign, which he passed in the Netherlands. He would still give audiences, but only as it were by way of recreation for some hours after dinner. The Bishop of Arras, Granvella, who then completely ruled him, gave the decision. At last Charles retired entirely from the affairs of government, and would not sometimes for months see anybody. No one was admitted to him but those whom he expressly sent for. He was averse even to signing his name. Once they had to wait nine months for his signature, and the mere opening of a letter caused him pain in his hands. Alone in his room, which was hung with black, and lighted up by seven tapers, he re- mained for hours on his knees. After the death of his mother, in 1555, he sometimes fancied he heard her voice calling to him to follow her. Cliarles spoke every one of the languages of his several European kingdoms. He used to say, " As many lan- guages as a man understands, so' many times is he a man." French was the one in which he generally wrote and negotiated. It became under him the language of the Court, because in it the many strangers who met there were best able to carry on their conversation. Since Charles the medley of tongues began in Germany, owing to which the native idiom was interlarded with French flourishes and Hispano-Italian bombast. In the conduct of business Charles was deliberate and cautious, calm and patient in the most eminent degree. He spoke little. When he did so, he generally looked fixedly before him, or cast his eyes vipwards. Long speeclies always annoyed him. His usual remark was, " Cut it short," and his usual answer, " We'll consider about it." Obstinate he was too. The pressing entreaties with which the Electors, Maurice and Joachim, at Halle, urged Charles to liberate the Landgrave Philip, had the very contrary effect of making the Emperor keep him a prisoner longer than he had perhaps at first intended. 192 CHARLES V, Charles once said to the Venetian ambassador Contarini: " It is my nature to insist obstinately upon my own opinions." The Ambassador replied : " Sire, to insist in good opinions is firmness, not obstinacy." Charles then concluded the conversation with the characteristic words : " QualcJie Jiate io sono fermo in le cattive''' — " I sometimes also insist upon bad ones." Charles was excessively scrupulous ; he made everything a case of conscience. His confessor therefore played a very important part. Cardinal Granvella complained that if one thought one had arrived at a result with him, the hydra of religious scruples would always start new heads. The settlement of religious differences, at the last diet at Augsburg, 1555, Charles left to his brother, merely because he had himself strong scruples against it. Within twelve days of his death he most strongly advised his son Philip, by a codicil appended to his last will, to crush heresy in its bud. Charles V., " The Lord," as he was called in his own court, was the last German Emperor who understood how to assert the European supremacy of the Imperial dignity. His successors, with perhaps the sole exception of Ferdinand II., were far inferior to him in political greatness. They partook more of the character of terri- torial rulers, Lords of Austria. " A complete history of the life and reign of Charles has not yet been written, and is exceedingly difficult to write. The preliminary studies and the collecting of materials alone must occupy more than twenty years. It would be necessary personally to examine the docu- ments at Vienna, at Brussels, at Mechlin, at Milan, at Naples, and Madrid — if possible, also in Rome. Many a man who, with sincere earnestness, entered upon this preliminary task, was paralysed by it, crushed by the avalanche of the materials.''^ It is Hormayr who says this. He spent twenty years, from 1807 to 1827, in FATHER AND SON. 193 collecting the materials for a work which he intended: " Maximilian I. and Charles V. ; their Heroes and their Times" ; but it was beyond his power to complete it. 10. THE FAMILY OF CnARLES V. Charles had an only son, Don Phihp. He loved him most affectionately ; it was for his sake alone that at last he entangled himself in the ruinous net from which he saw no honourable escape but by his abdication. The attempts of Charles to procure for Philip the succession in Germany estranged all hearts from the old Emperor, and even arrayed his own family against him. And yet he had to experience the most galling ingratitude from his beloved Philip. To pave his way for his marriage with Mary of England, Charles ceded to him the independent rule of the Two Sicilies. This resignation was scarcely effected when Philip, dismissing the faithful servants of the Emperor, appointed his own creatures in their places. To meet his designs on Sienna, the Emperor nominated him his vicar in Italy. Philip did not even assume the title. Charles thereupon summoned him to Brussels to concert with him important measures against France. Philip then dis- patched the Portuguese Ruy Gomez, Count de Silva, his favourite, with whose witty sallies he used to beguile his time. The message to his father was to the purport, that " he, Don Philip, as the autocrat of powerful kingdoms, could not come to him until it was clearly settled what etiquette the Emperor would observe with regard to him, and how in general he intended to treat him." As Charles would now have been obliged to give to his enemies the welcome spectacle of a domestic quarrel, by coming to a public rupture with his ungrateful son, he preferred to lay the crowns, which had long been a l)urden to him, in the hands which were Fip eager to grasp them. VOL. I. O 194 CHARLES V. Even more dearly than his ungrateful son Charles loved his grandson Carlos, who at that time gave the fairest promise, but who at an early age already showed occa- sionally that fierce obstinacy which afterwards brought his life to such a tragic termination. Young Carlos continually urged his grandfather to send him arras, but at once gave signs of impatience when the Emperor made him stand before him somewhat longer than usual with his cap in his hand. Being informed that in his father's marriage- contract with the English Queen, the Netherlands were eventually settled on a son of Philip by her ; Carlos declared to the Emperor that, if this were true, he would not allow it, but rather take up arms against his father. He would never call Philip " Father," but reserved this name for the Emperor alone. Those of the gx'andees for whom he had a liking, he caused to take an oath that they would follow him in all his wars. Onorato Giovanni, the tutor of Carlos, collected all his ingenious and witty sayings in a little volume, which he dedicated to the Emperor. Yet it was scarcely a judi- cious measure to keep the boy to a constant study of Cicero's book " De Officiis," in order to subdue his fiery temper. On the 12th April, 1555, the mother of Charles, the melancholy Dona Juaxia, died at Tordesillas. This death matured his determination to abdicate. During the autumn of the same year Philip came from England to Brussels by invitation of the Emperor; who, from the love which he bore to his grandson Carlos, forgot his grudge against his son Philip, and was ready to resign to him the crowns of the Netherlands and of Spain. It was about this time that the Emperor, previous to his abdication, related to Don Carlos, then a boy of twelve years, the history of his whole life, never wearying of answering the numberless questions of the prince. When the Emperor came to speak of his flight from Innsbruck, Carlos called out, " For YOUNG DON CARLOS. 195 shame ! I would not have fled," The Emperor once more described to him the entire want of every means of re- sistance ; but Carlos stuck to it, '* I would not have fled." *' And if," the Emperor said, with a smile, " the whole of your pages conspired to surprise you, and make you prisoner?" The Infant angrily replied, "What are you talking about ? I would never fly under any circum- stances." Besides Don Philip, Charles left by his wife Isabella of Portugal two princesses. One, Joanna, was married in 1553 to the Infant John of Portugal, who died in the following year. Her son was the unfortunate King Se- bastian, who in 1578 was killed near Alcassar, in the expedition against Morocco. She became regent in Spain until the arrival of Philip in 1559, and died in the same year as her son, 1578. The second princess was Maria, married in 1548, at the age of twenty, to her cousin, who was afterwards Maximilian II., Emperor of Germany. She was the favourite child of her father, and the most pious lady of her time. Of the natural children of Cliarles V., I have before mentioned the brave, ingenious, and agreeable Don tfuan d' Austria. He died of poison in 1578, not having com- pleted his thirty-third year. His heart was found to be quite dried up and his skin as if singed with fire. His brother Philip had been informed that he was in corre- spondence with the captive Mary Stuart, and that he plotted with the Guises to secure for himself the inde- pendent rule of some kingdom or other. His motto was, " He who does not try to go forward goes backward." Charles had also a natural daughter by a Flemish lady, Margaret Vomgeest, who afterwards married John Van- dendick. This was the masculine, shrewd Margaret of Parma, who, at the age of thirteen, in 1535, was married to Alexander Medicis, Duke of Florence, and in 1538, one year after his murder, to Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma, o i^ 196 CHARLES V. to whom she bore a son, afterwards the great General Alexander Farnese. From 1559 to 1567 she was, as re- gent of the Low Countries, at Brussels ; after which she received from her brother King Philip the beautifully- situated lordship of Aquila in Naples, and died in retire- ment, at the age of sixty-four, in 1586, at Artona a Mare, an estate of the Farneses at Naples. This lady was re- markable for four qualities, which are generally considered as attributes of the stronger sex. In the first place, her masculine power of judgment ; secondly, the gout ; thirdly, her fondness for hunting ; and, fourthly the very unlady- like ornament of a moustache. The court of Charles V. was the most numerous and brilliant which had ever been seen in Western Christen- dom. The flower of four great, rich, and powerful countries, of Burgundy and the Netherlands, of Spain, Italy, and Germany, combined to form it. The young- Emperor arrived at the Diet of Worms in 1521 with a retinue of not less than 2700 horses; yet, when the laurels of a succession of the most brilliant victories were heaped upon him, he began to contract his household. It is one of the principal characteristics of great men that they know how to assemble other men of genius around them. As the iron follows the magnet, thus great captains and statesmen will crowd about really great princes. Charles made no exception to that rule. A number of the most able generals served him in the field, and the most accomplished diplomatists in his cabinet and at foreign courts. Diplomacy already played a very important part under Charles V. The Granvellas formed a nursery of diploma- tists who were equal to the celebrated Venetian politi- cians. Charles knew as well as any one the secret, which has almost become a truism, that prudence carries the day against bravery ; only he was too prudent. As far as foreign policy went, he conducted his business in a most HIS FAMILY AGAINST HIM. 197 r masterly style, and attained nearly all his objects ; but he ! was caught in his own snares, in his family policy — it was his own house which brought him down.* * Appendix C. contains Scamples of the style and courtesy of the Erepe- f ror's private and diplomatic correspondence, and of his State Papers. O 3 198 CHAPTER III. FERDINAND I. 1556—1564. 1. PERSONAL NOTICE OF THE EMPEROR. After the resignation of the German crown by Charles V., his brother Ferdinand I. was acknowledged as Emperor. He was born at Alcala de Henarez, in Spain, in 1503, and remained until his eighteenth year in that country, at the court of his grandfather Ferdinand the Catholic, who, according to the custom of that time, frequently changed his residence from one town to the other. Two Spani- ards, Don Pedro Nunnez de Guzman, king at arms of the Order of Alcantara, and Osorio, Bishop of Asturias, superintended Ferdinand's education, according to the directions of the celebrated Erasmus of Rotterdam. When Charles, in 1515, came as king to Spain, he sent his brother to Brussels, and Ferdinand never saw Spain again. In 1521 Ferdinand married, at Linz, Anne Jagellon, both being in their nineteenth year. In 1526, he obtained the two Jagellon crowns of Hungary and Bohemia. In 1530, Charles also gave up to him the Archduchy of Austria and the other family possessions of Habsburg. In 1531, he became King of the Romans. After the abdica- tion of his brother, he styled himself Roman Emperor Elect ; fur, as the Pope would not acknowledge the validity HIS CHARACTER. 199 of the abdication, " because the Roman See had not been asked for its consent,''' Ferdinand did not cause himself to be crowned; nor has any German Emperor since Charles V. allowed himself to be crowned by the Po])e. Ferdinand was a Spaniard like his brother ; and yet he was very different from him, in many respects his very opposite. Charles was grave, taciturn, sedate, and always ailing ; Ferdinand was ardent as the sun of Castile, gay, exceedingly communicative, disdaining neither the plea- sures of conviviality, nor the relaxation of music and dancing, and he enjoyed the most robust health. We have a Relation of the Venetian ambassador Navagiero, of the year 1547, which must be received with circumspection, to be understood as it is meant : — " The King Ferdinand is at present in his forty-fifth year. His figure is rather small; his face thin ; his hair, which is standing out, inclines to red ; his forehead is of middling height ; his eyebrows thick and arched ; his eyes not very dark, but fine and sparkling; his nose large, somewhat aquiline ; his lips thick and protruding. Since the death of the queen he has allowed his beard to grow, which is now long and reddish, like the hair of his head. He also wears large whiskers, which are of a some- what of a lighter colour. His neck is long and thick, but the rest of his body is rather thin. Examined individually, all his features are ungainly (brutti) ; but whoever ap- proaches the king is on the whole impressed with his kingly appearance, and, from the spirited expression of his eyes and the energy of his mind and language, recognise in him a man who is worth looking at. He never had an illness of any consequence. For many years he has lived most regularly and methodically. He keeps open table only four times a week in the evening, and always rises early ; so that whoever in winter wants to accompany his Majesty to mass (as I always did on holidays) had to make his api)earancc at the palace at least one hour before day o 4 200 FERDINAND T. He is indefatigable in taking exercise. From rising in the morning to going to bed in the evening he only sits down to take his meals. All the rest of the time he is on his legs, either standing or walking, in business, in promenades, and in the chase. He seems likely to be destined for long life. Queen Anna was of distinguished beauty in mind and body. She loved the king as dearly as he did her in re- turn ; so that all the twenty-six years which they spent together (she died in childbed on the 27th of January, 1547, at Prague) their marriage was the very model of a happy union. She bore to the king fifteen children ; of whom twelve are alive, — three sons and nine daughters, — all of them very handsome. " The court of his Majesty would be very royal and numerous if all the servants whom the king pays were assembled in one establishment. But the king has his own servants ; so has his eldest son Maximilian (afterwards Emperor), and his second son Ferdinand, and likewise the other princes and princesses who are at Innsbruck. For several years past the king has kept court together with only one of his sons ; and since the death of his queen he has reduced his household still more. " The king," continues Navagiero, " is of sound and })enetrating judgment; he also speaks the Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Latin languages very fairly." — " In Latin," the learned scholar Busbeck says, " Ferdi- nand sometimes sins against Priscian ;" of which ample proofs are afforded by the letters of his which have been preserved. According to Dolce, he was fond of reading Roman and Greek history, especially Caesar's Commen- taries. He often urged his brother to give him a command in the Italian wars, and " not to allow him to dawdle about the stoves (firesides) of Germany." But Charles remained deaf to his requests. " The king," Avrites Navagiero, '' is an excellent man of business {(jran negociante), doing everything himself. No ambassador or any one else can niS CITARACTER. 201 transact business except with his Majesty himself; and if a citizen wishes to present a petition, it is his Majesty's pleasure always to receive it himself ; and if a poor man wants to address him whilst he is going to mass or to table, the king stops, listens to him, and then disposes of his cause according as he thinks best. Yet this meddling with everything in most cases occasions great delay. His Majesty is very religious ; attends mass every day, and on great holidays hears one or two sermons ; he receives the sacrament two, three, or four times a year. He is very temperate, and it is believed of him that he was ever faith- fid to his wife, and that his life both before marriage and after the death of his wife was perfectly chaste. He is liberal; which is sufficiently proved by the condition of his servants, who are most of them rich, whilst he is poor. Magnanimous I do not think him to be — one of the prin- cipal characteristics of that virtue being the forgetting of received injuries ; but if any prince offends his Majesty he never forgets it, and it is my firm belief he would revenge it." The truth of this last feature is evidenced by the fact alluded to before, of Ferdinand's having so earnestly urged the carrying out of the sentence of death on the Elector of Saxony in the camp before Wittemberg ; and also by the cruel instructions given by him in the Pea- sants' War to Truchsess of Waldburg. Sastrow saw King Ferdinand at the same period from which this Venetian report dates ; that is to say, at the Diet of Augsburg, in 1547 and 1548, which he attended as one of the delegates of Pomerania. He says, in his quaint Chronicle, "This was not only a cuirassed, but also a very magnificent and pompous diet, there being so many royal and princely ladies in the place. There were Italian and German dances nearly every evening. King Ferdinand especially was rarely without guests, who were always splendidly treated, and had all sorts of amusements and magnificent dances. There were most stately and well-got 202 FERDINAND I. up niusica non solum instrumentalis, verutn etiam vocalis ; besides other devices. There always stood behind the king one of his jesters, with whom he used to bandy laughable talk, and to put him down with ease. He generally had royal and princely persons (utriusque sexus) sitting with him at table, with whom without intermission he would keep up a pleasant conversation, for his tongue never rested.^^ 2. POSITION OF THE NOBILITY UNDER FERDINAND I. IN AUSTRIA. THE FIRST PROTESTANT " CHAIN " OF THE NOBLES. According to the original documents pertaining to the government of Charles V., which have very recently been published from the different archives, there can be no doubt left but that the persons who enjoyed the confidence of Ferdinand were hostile to Charles. The latter indeed had, after the Pope, no worse secret enemy than his brother, who, especially at the catastrophe in the Tyrol, worked hand-in-hand with Maurice. Concerning the ex- istence of that spirit of opposition at Ferdinand's court long before that catastrophe, irrefutable evidence may be adduced from the despatches of the ambassadors of those times. The Archbishop of Lund, one of the most able diplomatists of the Emperor Charles, reports to his master, as for back as the 17th of November, 1534, from Vienna : — " As in duty bound, and according to the true state of affairs, I would point out to your Majesty that the whole government rests with the privy councillors of his royal Majesty, John Hoffman, Baron von Roggendorf, and Leonard von Fels ; the latter a relation of the Cardinal of Trent (Bernhard von Gloess) ; and that, to call the thing by its right name, they lead the king just Avhere they please. I see that these councillors are not very favourable to the THE AUSTRIAN " FKONDE." 203 interest of your Majesty ; and I have found that, on the contrary, they are very strongly disposed against it, and that they even express themselves hostile to it^ The families of the three lords mentioned in this despatch, who formed the council of King Ferdinand, the Hoffmans, the Colonna-Fels, and the lioggendorfs, form the nucleus of the Protestant band or "Chain of Nobles "in Austria, and maintained themselves in power for the whole of a century. After the outbreak of the Bohemian rebel- lion, at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, they joined the Palatine King : and after his downfal were obliged, with the loss of all their officers, honours, and estates, to take refuge in Silesia. A fourth family belonging to this Austrian " Fronde^'' was that of the Dietrichsteins, which had been raised to such a high place by Maximilian I. They, however, remained, in the Thirty Years' War, true to the House of Habsburg ; and, with the Liechtensteins, who had returned to the old creed, placed themselves in the seventeenth century at the head of the second Catho- lic " chain " of nobles. Immediately after the death of Maximilian I., a strong movement arose in the Austrian hereditary countries for reforms in the constitution and administration. The re- gency appointed by Maximilian in liis last will was set aside, and the public treasury and the arsenal laid hold of by some members of the nobility, the university, and the municipality. Sigismund von Herberstein, who was sent by the Estates of Styria as one of their delegates to Charles V. in Spain, and had an audience with him at Molino del Re, near Barcelona, easily guessed, from the answer of Charles, that he was '' very little pleased with the things which had happened in Austria and at Vienna." Ferdinand caused, in December, 1522, two noblemen, Buehheim and Eytzlng, and six citizens, to be executed. This, however, did by no means crush the factious spirit of the nobility. 204 FEEDINAND I. Concerning this spirit at the court of King Ferdinand and throughout Austria Proper, remarkable disclosures are contained in a memoir only recently published by Dr. Lanz in the States' Papers of the Emperor Charles, from the Archives at Brussels. It is written in the year 1542, four years before the outbreak of the Smalkalde War. Its author, Messire Corneille Scepperus, Baron d' Eck, Che- valier Conseiller et Maistre aux Requestes de I'Empereur, was a diplomatist employed by Charles on many occasions as ambassador to the German Empire and to the Sublime Porte. It is the most remarkable document which has come under my notice among those of the earlier Austrian history anterior to the Thirty Years' War. It affords ir- refragable evidence of the existence of that organised league among the nobility which has been designated the '* Chain of Nobles ; " a term which is expressly made use of in it. Some passages from it may be in their place here. " I was in the year 1532 and in the beginning of 1533 at the court of King Ferdinand, as well at Innsbruck and Linz as at Vienna. There I every day heard most of the ministers and grandees, as the lords Von Roggendorf, Von Fels, Von Dietrichstein, and others, abusing the Emperor. They called him the most ungrateful prince who trod the earth, and such like expressions; indeed, they spoke so disrespectfully of his Majesty, that it was shocking, and vitterly disregarding that I was the ambassador of his Imperial Majesty at the court of the king. I could not suppose but that their object zvos to loive?- his Imperial Majesty in the estimation of his brother, of the nobility, and of all the people in the countries of the king. They publicly asserted that the Emperor ivas the cause of all the misery that had befallen Germany. " In the year 1534, on my return from Turkey, I heard it said at Nuremberg, Mayence, and Cologne, that the councillors of the king would by no means be pleased to THE FIRST "CHAIN OP NOBLES." 205 see their master great ; that, on the contrary, they en- deavoured to keep hlni in their subjection ; and those well- minded persons pitied the good king for allowing himself to be governed by people like Count Salamanca, Sigis- mund von Dietrichstein, and Hans Hoffman, whose object it was to get all the good places of the Austrian countries into their own hands. They, moreover, said, that these people increased their party more and more every day by marriages and alliances among themselves, and especially with those who held commands within the country and in the borders. ***** The before-mentioned Salamanca and Dietrichstein had agreed between them to ruin the king, and to buy for a ridiculously low price the church lands which the Pope had left to the king. With these estates they had enriched themselves. " I was informed repeatedly that all the lords of Aus- tria were leagued together for such purposes, dropping all former enmity for the advantage which they derived from these purchases ; and that, in fine, they managed matters very well between them, aiid that this league they called the CHAIN^ From this it may be seen that in Austria, as every- where in Germany, the nobles turned the Reformation to their own advantage. Not only did they appropriate the ecclesiastical and conventual estates, but they also used the ignorant single-minded common people as the tools of their opposition against their ruler. When Ferdinand assumed the government there were, according to the statement of a Venetian ambassador, nine- tenths of Germany professijig the new creed ; in the here- ditary Habsburg dominions also by far the greater num- ber were Lutherans. The whole nobility of Austria at that time went to study at Wittemberg. Three young men belonging to the Protestant peerage of Austria were in succession elected (honorary) rectors of the University 206 FERDINAND I. of Ijuther. It is a very significant fact that the authority of the Pope at that time was generally despised, and that the two parties, the followers of the old and new creed, lived with each other in perfect peace — the establishment of the order of Jesuits afterwards lighted the torch of discord in the Empire. The Venetian ambassador Micheli writes, in 1654, "People have agreed to tolerate each other; in mixed communities the question is seldom asked whether any one is Catholic or Protestant. The families also are mixed in like manner. There are houses where the elder generation belongs to one and the younger to the other creed. Brothers follow different religions, and Catholics and Protestants intermarry without any one being scan- dalised by it or even heeding it." Ferdinand on his side was a Catholic with all his heart. In his last will he most earnestly warned all his sons, and especially Maximilian the eldest, against following a re- ligious party which, being divided in itself as to doctrine, could not hold the truth. " I would rather see you dead than that you should join the new sects," he wrote in his codicil of 1555. He was an active patron of the Jesuits, having for his confessor Bobadilla, one of the founders of the order. The fathers of the Society of Jesus quietly and cautiously gained under Ferdinand a footing at Vienna. At first they were quartered with the Domini- cans, gave private instruction, and tried in the distressed times of the plague to be everything to everybody ; just as afterwards in China they made their way as mechani- cians, mathematicians, and compilers of almanacks. Thus in Vienna they acted as physicians, effecting cures by means of Peruvian bark, which was therefore long called " the Jesuit's powder." In 1551, the first Jesuit's College which Germany has had was founded in the capital of the Habsburgs. It occupied the locality of the present Ministry of War at Vienna, and contained the secret chancellery of the Austrian province of the order. It was CONVENTION OF NAUMBURG. 207 inhabited by eleven fathers, sent by Ferdinand's wish, and at the command of the Pope Julius III., by the then still living chief founder Don Ignatio Loyola, who died at Rome only in 1556. In 1552, Petrus Canisius, the compiler of the celebrated catechism, arrived. He re- mained until 1556, and then went to Bavaria. In 1556, Jesuit's colleges were established at Ingolstadt and Co- logne, in addition to the one at Vienna. From these three centres the " Spanish priests," as they were first called in Germany, spread over Austria, Bavaria, the Tyrol, Fran- conia, Swabia, a great part of the Rhenish provinces, and also to some extent in Bohemia. Whilst Ferdinand, through his confessor Bobadllla, inti- mately allied himself with the Pope, the Elector of Saxony Augustus, the brother and successor of Maurice, assembled the heads of the Protestants at Naumburg in 1551. The Emperor was favourable to a union, and even the Pope Pius IV., of the house of Medici, sent his nuncio in the person of the very clever Commendone. The right mo- ment for a reconciliation seemed to have arrived ; the great men of the reformers were dead, and the generation suc- ceding them were sobered down or split into different hostile parties. The gentle, timid Melanchthon, he who had given such great offence to the zealous Lutherans by his leaning towards the tenets of Calvin, especially in his " Apologia Variata " of the Augsburg Confession, died 19th of April, 1560, at Wittenberg. A few days previous to his death he had written on a sheet of paper, as in soliloquy: " Thou wilt see the light ; thou wilt see God ; thou wilt behold Jesus Christ ; thou wilt understand those wonderful mys- tei'ies which thou didst not understand in this life — why we have been made as we are, and what is the union of the two natures in Christ ; thou wilt leave off sinning ; thou wilt be delivered from all evil, and from the wrath of the theologians.'''' For, although Papists and Protestants lived in peace with each other as far as the affairs of this 208 FERDINAND I. world went, yet there were very sharp controversies every- where about the most abstruse points of doctrine among the Protestants themselves ; and it was not Melanchthon alone who complained of the clergy as the principal in- stigators of these constant squabbles. Commendone, the Pope's nuncio, intimated to the Protestants at Naumburg, " How much dissension is among you concerning Luther's doctrine ! there is no town, no house in Germany free from theological squabbles. Men dispute with men, and children with their parents, about the meaning of the Scriptures. In company, in taverns, at drinking parties, at the gam- bling-tables, the most holy truths are discussed, and women take it upon themselves to decide on them. But you will never unite, because, as sure as true tenets do agree, false tenets do not. The further you sail into the ocean of error the darker are its waves." The Convention of Naumburg did not succeed in bringing about a union of the divided religious parties. As, since the downfal of the Hohenstaufen, the Empire had dissolved into innumerable small political disunited dominions, thus the Church since the Reformation split into a number of particu- lar churches, which again divided into sects. In the religious as well as in the political world, there was war of all against all. The Elector Augustus of Saxony tried, in 1580, to unite the Lntheraus by a fixed symbolic form — the For- mula ConcordiEe, but many Lutheran princes and cities refused to accept it ; nay, it soon became a Formula Dis- cordioe, as two of the principal persons who had sworn to it, the Electors Palatine and of Brandenburg, embraced Calvinism. The Calvinists at last split into no less than five large parties : these were a German " Reformed Church," with the Heidelberg Catechism; a Belgian, with the decrees of the Synod of Dort ; a Swiss, with the Hel- vetic ; and a French, with the Gallican Confession ; and, lastly, the Church of England, with the Thirty-nine Arti- Ferdinand's death. 209 cles.* The Lutheran and Calvinist preachers attacked each other with the most hateful bitterness, wrangling about tenets, about the meaning of a passage of Scripture, an idea, a word. Passions became heated to the highest point in these petty quarrels. Abuse stood for argument, and the upshot generally was, that each consigned his antago- nist to the lowest depths of hell. The subtle versatile Jesuits by this means gained more and more ground at the courts against the bluff unmannered Protestant divines. The reverend fathers only bided their time for taking the offen- sive as soon as the disunion of their foes among themselves should be completed. 3. Ferdinand's family, — philippina vtelser and hek children. The Emperor Ferdinand died of a slow fever in Vienna, at the age of sixty-one, and was buried at Prague by the side of his wife Ann Jagellon, who had preceded him in death by seventeen years. Of fifteen fine children, whom he had by her, three only survived liim : Maximilian^ his successor ; Ferdinand, who received the Tyrol ; and Charles, who received Styria. iMaximilian's line became extinct with his sons ; Ferdinand of Tyrol left no children * Dr. Vehse here follows a prejudice which is very common in Germany. Non-theologians there generally look upon the Church of England as Calvinist, on account of bread being used in the ICucharist instead of the wafer, as in the Lutheran Church. But the very use by the earliest English reformers of the term Protestant, which is the historical name of the Lutherans, whilst on the Continent the Calvinists always call themselves " the Reformed Church," points to an affinity of the Church of England rather with the Lutherans than with the Calvinists, who in this countrv evidently have bon-owed that name from the originally i^utheran reformers. This affinity is even more strongly evidenced by the unniistakeable fact of a very considerable part of the Thirty -nine Articles being taken almost literally from the Confession of Augsburg. Nor does the letter and spirit of tlie Rubric lean more towards Calvin than towards Luther; and it would cer- tainly be a very bold assertion that Episcopacy in iix full hearing is more at home at Geneva than at Wittenberg.— Transl VOL. J. p 210 FERDINAND I. entitled to the royal succession ; and thus the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg was continued by the youngest brother, Charles of Styria, the devotee, who be- came the father of Ferdinand II., known as Ferdinand of Gratz. Archduke Ferdinand of the Tyrol has became famous for his morganatic marriage with Philippina Welser, who was considered the most beautiful woman of her time. She was the daughter of the Augsburg patrician Francis Wel- ser, who did money business with the Emperor. Ferdinand made her acquaintance at the Diet of Augsburg at which his uncle Charles V. published the Interim, and which he himself attended on his return from the battle of Miihlberg, where he had fought in the first line at the head of the Bohe- mian troops. Philippina was at that time in her nineteenth year. Ferdinand had fallen most violently in love with her at first sight on meeting her in the street. He was one year older than the lady ; in his features rather resembling his father, only that he was handsomer and his hair lighter. Ferdinand the chivalrous, enthusiastic, light-hearted, and jovial swain, could not forget the beautiful Philippina. He married her privately on the 24th of April, 1548 ; and, notwithstanding the strong aversion of his father, had, in January, 1557, the ceremony repeated according to the rites of the Council of Trent, with the strictest secrecy, only the priest and the dowager Catherine von Loxan being present as witnesses. From 1549 to 1567, Ferdinand was his father's viceroy in Bohemia, with residence at Prague. Philippina lived in complete retirement at the castle of Blirglitz, a few leagues from the Bohemian capital, j At last Philippina herself brought about a reconciliation j with her father-in-law, whom she gained over by her an-l gelic beauty. She was so fair and lovely, that those who knew her were untiring in her praises. Her skin is said to have been of such transparency, that when she drank I red wine the dark fluid was seen through her delicate! PHILIPPINA WELSER. 211 neck.* Philippina, in the year 1561, came incognito to the court of the Emperor at Prague. She threw herself at the feet of the Emperor, and told him under a feigned name the misery which the harsh father of her husband inflicted upon her. The Emperor, moved by her tale of woe, raised her, and promised to intercede with the cruel father, that he would no longer repudiate such a lovely daughter- in-IaAV. On this Philippina made herself known. The Emperor now acknowledged their union as a morganatic marriage ; their children, however, were to succeed to the German possessions of the Plouse of Habsbui-g when the whole Austrian male line of the family was extinct. But the Emperor insisted upon the marriage being strictly kept a secret, a fcAV persons of the court and the midwife being alone informed of it under a solemn oath not to divuloe it. From this vow the initiated were dispensed only twelve years after the Emperor's death. Since 1567, when Fer- dinand undertook the government of Tyrol, he lived with Philippina at the castle of Ambras, near Innsbruck, where he collected the celebrated gallery of portraits and armour of distinguished princes and heroes to the number of a hundred and twenty-five, which is still shown at Vienna. At Castle Ambras — an old baronial seat of the extinct illus- trious family of Andechs — the fair Philippina died, on the anniversary of her wedding day, in 1580. According to Johannes Miiller, at one time custos of the Imperial Libraiy at Vienna, there are still extant there five folio volumes of domestic cookery and medicinal receipts which belonged to her, two of them in her own handwriting; from which we may gather that she was a right good housewife. She left to Ferdinand two sons, who were called D'Austria. The elder, Andi-ew, born in 1558, became, in 1579, Cardinal of Austria, bishop of Brixen and Con- * A portrait of Philippina, representing this remarkable feature, is still extant at Nuremberg, at the old family mansion of the patrician house of Poller, which intermarried with the Welsers. — Trarntl. V 2 212 FERDINAND I. stance; in 1598 and 1599, he was governor of the Nether- lands ; and he died in 1600, during the jubilee in Rome, in the arms of Pope Clement VIII. The younger son, Charles, after having served in the Netherlands with the Spaniards and in Hungary against the Turks, got with great difficulty, in 1609, the marquisate of Burgau in Svvabia. He married, in 1601, a princess of Juliers, who was already in her forty -fifth year ; and he died at Giinz- burg, his residence, in 1618, without leaving any legitimate issue. But he had by Clara of Ferery, before his marriage, two sons and a daughter, who bore the name Von Hohen- bers- The lords Von Hohenberg inherited considerable landed property from their father. Their descendants were raised, in 1677, by the Emperor Leopold I., to the dignity of Freiherren * von Hohenberg and Weitingen, and married into the noble houses of the Swabian peerage. Charles Joseph von Hohenberg, the last of his line, met in 1728, on his thirty-second birthday, with a sudden and violent death in a very remarkable manner. He was a small, somewhat hunch-backed, jovial man, of rather sar- castic turn, but who always boasted of having the gift of ** second sight." How this came true in his own case is related by Hormayr, from the report of an eye-witness, who is averse, even hostile, to everything like a belief in visions. " Baron Hohenberg had invited for his birthday all his relations, friends, and boon companions of the neighbour- hood. Ladies were not seen at his board. The first arrival was Baron V. H., the lord-lieutenant of the county. The noble host received him in his usual jovial manner, led him up the staircase, and opened for him the door of the large hall ; but immediately started back hor- rified, covering his face with both hands and trembling from head to foot. As his visitor in amazement asked what * Corresponding to the English viscount. — Transl. THE LAST HOHENBERG. 213 was the matter, the host in great agitation pointed to- wards the middle of the hall, being unable to utter any- thing beyond 'There! there!' The lord-lieutenant re- plied, that he saw nothing but the large banqueting table ready spread. Baron Hohenberg, however, exclaimed, * There 1 There ! don't you see that the hall is all hung with black, and also the many funeral tapers ? and lo ! yonder I am myself laid out on the state-bed ; and oh ! the nasty smell of the tapers, and the oil, and perhaps of the corpse itself!' " The lord-lieutenant had great difficulty in inducing his host to enter the room in order that he might convince himself by touch that there was really nothing but the banqueting table. As the guests arrived by degrees the agitation of the baron gave way to his usual joviality. He now told them that, just a year before, when out hunt- ing, a Gipsy fortune-teller, after looking at his hand, had told him that he should always pass his birthday quite alone, in serious thought and prayer, secluded from the world, and even from his own people, for his birthday would also be the day of his death ; and that he would lose his life by a fool. " The guests now sat down to table, when merry toasts were proposed, wishing to the giver of the feast long life, much happiness, and a speedy maiTiage. After dinner, the company went into the open air to amuse themselves with different rural sports. All at once some one called out, ' But where is our merry-andrew. Master Michael Ganskragen? (Goose-neck.) Since we rose from table he has made him- self scarce; he is sure to be lying dead drunk either in the kitchen or in the cellar.' The poor fellow, who used to be baited by every one, and, especially in the games, was most liberally treated to kicks and cuffs innumerable, had taken refuge in a closet at the top of the house, known to but a few of the inmates, and which was only approached by a narrow and very steep staircase. The roystei-ous p 3 214 FERDTNAND I. guests, after having searched the whole castle in vain, re- turned vexed and angry to the skittle-ground. Baron Hohenberg, however, told them with a laugh, that he could at once bring down the jester. All followed the host, who was not long in discovering the deserter in his hiding-place ; but the jester refused to open the door. In vain the master of the house tried to kick it in, until at last he remembered an old forgotten rope by which it might be opened. He pulled with all his might : but the rotten line snapped, and Baron Hohenberg, falling back- wards down the staircase, broke his neck. " When, on the following day, the lord-lieutenant, with his officials, entered the hall where the banquet had been on the day before, a shudder seized him — the corpse lay exactly in the same place, and the whole hall was fitted up as Baron Hohenberg had described it from his vision of second sight. ' Hohenberg ! Hohenberg ! and never Hohenberg any more ! ' it was then said, as is the cus- tom wherever the shield and helmet are laid on the coffin of the last of his race." Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol married in 1582, two years after Philippina's death, a Mantuan princess. Anna, one of his daughters by this second marriage, became the wife of the Emperor Matthias ; the other went into a convent at Innsbruck. Tyrol reverted to the Imperial house. The youngest son of Ferdinand, Archduke Charles, became the founder of the line of Styria (Gratz), which in the sequel ascended the Imperial throne. Charles was twice very nearly being married to an English princess; to Queen Mary, and, after her death, to Queen Elizabeth. A despatch in the State Papers of Cardinal Granvella (vol. iv. p. 100.) shows that the former marriage was agreeable to the wishes of the councillors of Mary, who would rather have had her married to Charles than to Don Philip. The latter marriage was not effected because of ARCHDUKE CHARLES OF GRATZ. 215 their religion, and because Ferdinand would not send his son to pay a previous visit in England. Charles of Styria afterwards, in 1570, at the age of thirty, married Mary of Bavaria, who became the mother of the Emperor Ferdinand II. Concerning the match with Elizabeth the Emperor Maximilian once wrote (29th of August, 1567) from Vienna to his brother Duke Albert of Bavaria: "Your Highness is no doubt aware that an English embassy is here ; but it brings no better offers than the former ones, and it looks rather as if the whole affair would split in ne- gotio religionis : for the pith of it is, that they wish my lord my brother to accommodate himself to their religion in puhlicis ; which my brother does not intend to do, for they will not allow him to attend mass either; and thus it looks rather as if nothinsj Avould come out of it." A second reason, based on the character of Elizabeth, Maxi- milian had before pointed out, in a letter of the 13th of August, 1565 : " As to the English marriage, I am almost of the same opinion as your Highness, as I have for my own part for the present put very little trust in it, quia est mulier inconstantissima.^^ Of the twelve daughters of the Em})eror Ferdinand I., Elizabeth, one of the most beautiful princesses of her day, was married, in 1543, to King SIglsmund Jagellon of Poland ; she died in 1545 : on which he married her sister Catharine, who, although not more than twenty, had already been left a widow by Duke Francis of Mantua; but she was sent back, as there was no prospect of her ever having any children. A third princess, Anna, became, in 1546, at the age of eighteen, the wife of Duke Albert V. of Bavaria. A fourth princess, Mary, was united in the same month to the Duke William V. of Julici's and Cleves, who had to cede Guelderland to Charles V., and who at first became Lutheran, then Catholic again, and at last went out of his mind altogether ; after which she, the P 4 216 FEKDINAND I. princess, underwent the same fate. With her son, the like- wise demented John William, the possessions of Juliers and Cleves became vacant in 1609. A fifth dauofhter of the o Emperor Ferdinand, Eleanor, married in 1561 Duke William of Mantua, the brother of the above-mentioned Francis ; and also the sixth and seventh daughters were wedded to Italian potentates, — Barbara, in 1565, to Duke Alfonso II. of Ferrara, and Joanna to Duke Francis of Florence. Three daughters took the veil, and two died in infancy. 217 CHAPTER IV. MAXIMILIAN II. 1564—1576. 1. PERSONAL NOTICES OF THE EMPEROR. Maximilian II. was the eldest son of Ferdinand I. He was born at Vienna in 1527, but was educated princi- pally in Spain, under the direction of the Emperor Charles v., his uncle. He had for his tutors three distinguished scholars: Ursinus Velius, of Schweidnitz in Silesia, who had been secretary to the famous magnificent Bishop of Gurk, Mathew Lang von Wellenburg, and who, after having been nominated by Maximilian I. poet-laureate, and by Ferdinand I. councillor and orator in 1538, ended his career by drowning himself in the Danube — it is said, from melancholy on account of his shrewish wife: more- over, the learned Bohemian John Horak von Hasenberg : and, lastly, Wolfgang Schiefer, who had received his education at Wittenberg. His chief governor was John Gaudentius, Baron Madruzzi, an Italian ; and his under governor Don Piedro Lasso di Castiglia, a Spaniard. Navagiero, who saw the young Prince Maximilian at the Diet of 1547 and 1548, describes him thus: "Maximilian will be twenty-one on the 1st of August next. He is a youth of great promise, who has already fought at Lan- drecy in France, and in Swabia and Saxony (in the Smalkalde War). He is rather tall and spare, handsome. 218 MAXIMILIAN II. and of healthy looks ; he has much more of the Emperor In his disposition than of his father, as he does not talk much, but is grave in his manner. He seems to aspire to great things, and, if he were brought up by energetic men, I think that high expectations might be entertained of him. Maximilian rides and also tilts well. He frequently prac- tises with the ai-quebuse and the crossbow. Besides Ger- man, he speaks Bohemian and Latin, and also French, Spanish, and Italian, — the latter languages not very fluently, only knowing them so far as to understand and to make himself understood. He has a strong disposition to command, and is very difficult to manage; which displeases the kino;." Maximilian, in his youth, was indeed on very bad terms with his father. There is a Latin letter of Ferdinand's extant, written shortly before his departure for the war against the Elector of Saxony, to his two sons Maximilian and Ferdinand. In it the father reproaches Maximilian that, notwithstanding his having received him once before, like the prodigal son, he nevertheless conducted himself very ill at the court of the Emperor ; that he was given to drinking strong wines, as he did at the court of the Duke of Bavaria; and that the vice of drunkenness was the more dangerous to him as he was artful and hot-tempered {calli- dus et iraciindus), so that in a state of intoxication he was liable to commit some serious crime. The father, more- over, reproaches Maximilian with being headstrong (capi- fosus), and averse to following the counsels of sensible men ; deeming himself wiser than the rest of the world, whereas he had not yet seen or learned anything. Maximilian, his father says, associated only with loose people, and attended only to his bear and his musicians ; but received grave men from the Emperor's court superciliously, and con- versed very rarely and little with them. He urges him to beware of arrogance and conceit, and to remember the Italian adage: " Qui/ asino e el cervo se crede al saltar del THE AUSTRIAN "PRINCE HAL." 219 foso se vedeJ" In conclusion he says, " What has happened to you would not have happened if you had consulted serious men, — quodsi non possis ahstinere luxuria, facias, ut dicitur, caute non scandalose, neque cum maritatis, et non vim vel injuriam in isto casu facias vel scandalizes.^' This letter affords authentic proof of Maximilian's youth havinof been rather wild. Indeed, he was the Prince Hal of his dynasty; but he w^as the favourite of Charles V., who even gave him the daughter of his heart, Mary, the most pious woman of her day, as his wife. The wedding of MaximiUan took place at Valladolitl, 13th of Septem- ber, 1548 ; and during the absence of Charles V. and Don Philip in Germany and the Netherlands, the son-in-law of the great Emperor held the vice-royalty of Spain. Charles bestowed upon him the highest praise for the manner in which he acquitted himself in this office. When, in 1551, he entertained the idea of causing his son Philip to be elected King of the Romans, it was part of his plan that Maximilian should become second Roman King, as it were second coadjutor. To assist in the nego- tiations concerning this affair, he came, in 1551, fi'om Spain to the court of the Emperor ; with whom he still was, during the last days at Innsbruck, in 1552. He after- wards was present at the negotiations of the Peace of Religion which his father, in tlic name of the Emperor, concluded at Passau with Maurice of Saxony ; and in the same year, he was appointed " Guhernator" of Hungary. He showed such decided leaning towards the Protestants, that his father is said to have intended to cut him off" from the succession, and even to divorce him from his wife. In 1562 only, Maximilian seems to have given a more satis- factory account of himself. In this year he became King of Bohemia and King of the Romans; and in 1563, he was crowned with the crown of St. Stephen of Hungary. 220 MAXIMILIAN II. 2. STATE OF RELIGION. — THE ARMY. — THE AUSTRIAN NOBILITY IS MADE, BY THE MATRICULATION OF 1572, A CLOSE COR- PORATION. Maximilian was a merry and jovial sovereign, his hu- mour keeping a happy medium between the undignified and exceedingly prolix garrulity of his father and the austere taciturnity of his uncle. As soon as Maximilian, in the year 1564, had assumed the reigns of government, he at once showed himself for- bearing and tolerant on religious points ; much more so than his father had been, or than was agreeable to many a Catholic prince of the Empire. In a letter to his brother- in-law, Duke Albert of Bavaria, dated the 30th of May, 1566, in which he alludes to this feeling of dissatisfaction, he lays down the maxim — " In religious matters one must not hend the bow until it breaks,'''' A Protestant divine, John Sebastian Pfauser, who had been left about Maximilian without any particular inquiry as to his tenets, remained for a long time his court preacher, and became his teacher in Protestant theology ; and, after having been appointed dean at Lauingen, in the principa- lity of Neuburg, he continued secretly to correspond with Maximilian, who was privately furnished by him with news and with books. Pfauser only died in 1569, after the accession of Maximilian to the Imperial crown. Maximilian, moreover, lived in open and avowed friend- ship with the first Protestant princes of the German Em- pire. Among these were the Elector Augustus of Saxony and the Elector Palatine Frederic III., Landgrave Philip of Hesse, and the excellent Duke Christopher of Wurtem- berg. With the latter he had been intimate from boyhood, as Christopher, being kept in captivity after his father's discomfiture, was brought up at the court of King Ferdi- HIS RELIGIOUS TOLERATION. 221 nand at Innsbruck. Letters are still extant of Maximi- lian, in which he writes to Christopher that he had read as many as two volumes of the Latin and five of the Ger- man writings of Luther, expressing a wish to possess all the works of Dr. Martinus, and likewise those of Melanch- thon and Brentzius,* which he begs the duke to send to him. Maximilian went far in his relisrious toleration. His motto was : *' God alone rules the consciences of men, man only rules man." Carrying out this principle, he issued, in 1567, an edict for Bohemia, and, in 1568, one for Aus- tria, in which to both these countries free exercise of their religion was granted. One of the first acts of his reign was to release John Augusta, the noble-hearted and learned bishop of the Moravian brethren, from his impri- sonment, in which he had been kept by King Ferdinand for sixteen years. As early as 1 562, Maximilian had sent his Lord Steward Adam von Dietrichstein to Rome, to ask the Pope to sanction the administration of the Eucharist under both forms, and the abolition of the enforced celibacy of the priests. The Pope refused it ; but Maximilian was not cowed by the threat of excommunication which Pius IV. repeatedly held out to him, and just as little by the oppo- sition of his cousin the Spanish Don Philip. Maximilian wrote from Vienna, dated 12th of February, 1574, to his beloved General Lazarus von Schwendi, the followinsr letter, which acquires additional interest from the I'act of the Arch-Chancellor Kaunitz once having it fetched from the archives at Vienna and laid before the Empress Maria Theresa, as an example of toleration which she would do well to follow. After her death it was found in her escritoire, with the beginning of her reply written on * A celebrated divine, who carried out the retormation in the Duchy of Wiirtemberg. — Transl. 222 MAXIMILIAN II. it : " May stand over, — after my death, — the time will come for it." " My dear von Schwendi, *' I have received and read your letter in due time, and am particularly obliged for your kind Christian sympathy with my ailments. May the Almighty God in whose hands are all our affairs vouchsafe to deal with me ac- cording to his Divine Will ; for unfortunately things are going on in this world in such a way as to give one very little joy or rest, but there is plenty of tribulation, faith- lessness, and dishonesty everywhere. " As to the foul deed which the French have tyranically perpeti'ated against tlie admiral and his people (the Saint Bartholomew of 1578), I cannot commend it at all, and / have heard, to my heartfelt grief, that my son-in-law (Charles IX. ) has alloived himself to be persuaded to give his sanction to such an infamous slaughter ; but I knoio this much, that other people rule much more than he does. May God forgive those who are the cause of it ! I wish to God he had consulted me ; I would have advised him as a true father. It is true, as you very sensibly write, that religious matters ought not to be settled by the sword. No honest man who fears God and loves peace will say differently; nor did Christ and his Apostles teach otherwise : for their sword was their tongue, their teaching God's "Word and their Christian life ; and, moreover, those mad people might have seen in so many years that this tyrannical burning and beheading will never do. In short, I do not like it, nor will I ever praise it, unless God should make me foolish and mad, which I ever pray He will not do. ****** " Let Spain and Fi-ance do as they like ; they will have to answer for it to God the just Judge. As to myself, I shall, if God wills, act honestly and sincerely like a true Christian ; and, if I do so, I do not care for TURKISH CAMPAIGN. 223 all tliis wicked and graceless world. With this I commend you to the mercy of God, who in his heavenly wisdom, may turn all things for the best, to ourselves and to all Christendom." Maximilian II. was the last German Emperor who, as such, placed himself at the head of an army of the Empire and took the field in person. This happened in the year 1566, when Sultan Soleyman, who died in that campaign before Szigeth, had overrun Hungary. From that time until 1778, when Joseph II. took the field against the Turks with Austrian troops, no German Emperor took the command of any army at all in the old style of the Othos and the Swabian Emperors, as Maximilian Land Charles V. had also done. Yet the circumstances attending the cam- paign were deplorable ; it was a state of transition between the old licentiousness of the soldiery and the modern sys- tem of military slavery. The Emperor in disgust gave up the command ; which devolved on Lazarus von Schwendi, who preserved Upper Hungary for the Emperor, and took, in 1567, the celebrated fortress of Munkatz from the Prince of Transylvania, the son of Zapolya. A truce for eight years w'as concluded with the successor of Soleyman, and the status quo was maintained. Maximilian 11. employed as his councillors learned doc- tors, just as his uncle Charles V. did the Granvellas. Their names, Seld, Zasius, Sinkraoser, and Unverzagt, show at once that he took them from the bourgeoisie : and as Schwendi was the Emperor's most confidential adviser in military affairs, thus Dr. Seld, the vice-chancellor of the Empire, Avas consulted by him in all affairs of civil government. The latter, unfortunately, was not destined to benefit him long by his counsels. Seld met with his death in 1565, at the early age of forty-nine. His horses having taken fright as he was returning with Dr. Zasius from an au- 224 MAXIMILIAN II. dience with the Emperor, he jumped out of the carriage, fell with his head against a stone, and died half an hour afterwards. On the other hand, Maximilian II. gave permission to his nobility in Austria, by a general decree, dated 10th of February, 1572, to constitute themselves as a close corpo- ration. By virtue of this grant only matriculated mem- bers of the body of nobles could possess noble estates. This was called " The Privilege of Corporate Stand- ing " ( Einstandsrecht) ; according to which the corpo- ration had the right to admit new members at pleasure. The Emperor confirmed the statute agreed upon, in 1572, by the three Upper Estates, the prelates, lords, and knights, for the preservation of the rights and honours of the ancient noble houses, " that in future no one but who was either the well-known proprietor of a seignorial manor of the country, or a person of ancient noble descent long settled in the country, should be matriculated and acknowledged as a member of their body, unless at the request of the honourable Estates, the prelates, lords, and knights." In pursuance of this decree, the rolls of matriculated lords and knights of the canton of Lower Austria were drawn up and completed about the year 1582. They were considerably altered under Ferdinand II. by numerous attainders and the admission of new houses ; yet they con- tinued to maintain their importance down to the times of Joseph II., who reduced them to a dead letter by depriving the provincial nobility of the privilege of corporate standing. At the death of Maximilian II. the roll of matriculated nobles of Lower Austria contained only fifty-eight houses ; fourteen of which — among others the still flourishing noble families of Harrach, Khevenhiiller, Auersperg, Alt- hann, and the Hungarian Palffy's — had been admitted under his reign. HIS LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH. 225 There was not yet any permanently established court under Maximilian II. , who resided at one time at Prague and at another at Vienna. His principal amusement and pleasure were the chase and Hungary wine. For the purpose of hunting he acquired the celebrated Prater (the Hyde Park of Vienna), which originally was a forest park with preserved game. Schonbrunn also, which he built in 1570, was in his time only a hunting-seat. In one of his letters to his brother-in-law Albert of Bavaria (dated 28th of September, 1568) he writes : " I have several times wished from all my heart that you were with us in the Prater, where lots of fine stags have shown themselves ; and particularly on Tuesday last, when I had a boar-hunt there, at which I bagged thirty head of game," &c. The Hungary wine gave the Emperor the gout, which miserably tormented him ever since his accession, although at that period he had not yet exceeded the age of thirty-seven. In a letter (dated 29th of August, 1567) to the same corre- spondent, he says, with regard to his wine-bibbing, " I am much obliged to your Highness for your excellent advice concerning my gout ; I'll strictly follow it, and not fail to dilute my wine with water, as it is an excruciating malady. Yet it might still be borne, if only it did not grow worse." But it grew worse and worse, and at last so bad, that Maximilian had recourse to hazardous cures. In the autumn of 1576, he attended the Diet of Ratisbon, where his son Rodolph was just being elected King of the Romans. Here Maximilian died suddenly on the 12 th of October, 1576, in the fiftieth year of his life and the thirteenth of his reign. He was the last good ruler whom Austria had under the old Habsburg dynasty. A famous quack of Ulm, of the name of Magdalen Streicher, had given him an elixir of reported miraculous virtues ; but, as John Crato, his body physician, foretold, he survived the effects of the nostrum only a few days. VOL. I. Q 226 MAXIMILIAN II. A report, certainly quite unsubstantiated, was current, that the Jesuits had poisoned the Emperor from fear lest he should at last yield too much in favour of the Protestants. According to the statement of the Im- perial postmaster-general Hans Wollzogen, in a letter written immediately after the Emperor's death to the Im- perial ambassador at Constantinople, Baron Ungnad ; Car- dinal Christopher Madruzzi of Trent had administered the poison to Maximilian in "a Genoese soup," as far back as the time previous to the Smalkalde War, when Maximilian returned from Spain. At the opening of the body, a black substance as hard as stone was found in his heart. The physicians attributed to it the Emperor's suffering sometimes so violently from palpitation as to lie like dead for hours together. The letter of Wollzogen to Baron Ungnad* contains the following remarkable details concerning the Emperor's death : — " When his ISIajesty grew weaker and weaker, and fears were entertained for his life, the gentlemen and councillors of the court were not allowed to speak to him about his will and other things, because of their not being quite without blemish in the matter of religion. But the old Princess of Bavaria -j- ventured to remind His Majesty that, as life was uncertain, it might be advisable to make his will, to confess himself, and to receive the sacrament. He would not listen to her, but sent her away with unkind speech. Afterwards his son, the Archduke Matthias, en- treated him to think of his salvation, and not to neglect himself; to whom he made answer, *My son, all this is needless ; I hope through the mercy of God and his merits to be saved as surely as you can be. I have con- * It is given in extenso in Stephen Gerlacli's " Turkish Diary," published at Frankfort, 1 674. Gerlach was almoner to the embassy at Constantinople at the time of Maximilian's death. t Anne, daughter of Ferdinand I. and grandmotlier of Ferdinand II. HIS BURIAL. 227 fessed all my sins to Christ, and thrown them on his passion and death ; and I am sure that they are forgiven, and I do not need anything else.' Thereupon the Bishop of Neustadt, his almoner, earnestly pointed out to him the merit and atonement of Christ, asking him ' Whether his Majesty would live and die on it?' to which he answered * Yes, and not otherwise.' " After his death he was dressed in his usual clothes, with the collar of the Golden Fleece round his neck. In this guise he was laid out on black velvet for three days with his face uncovered, and crowds of people were admitted to see him. " The body, after being embalmed, was carried to the cathedral without any further ceremonies beyond a funeral sermon and singing a few psalms, the choir being hung with black cloth. A boat was prepared for the reception of the coffin, which was placed in it under the care of his chaplains. He was first conveyed to Linz, and from thence to Bohemia, the Austrians and Bohemians having disputed for the honour of having him buried among them. The Bohemians carried the day, and he was taken to Prague to the monastery of St. James." 3. THE FAMILY OF THE EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN IL The empress of Maximilian IL, Mary, the pious daughter of Charles V., immediately after the burial of her royal husband retired to Spain ; she wished to die on pure Catholic ground. She survived Maximilian by twenty- seven years, dying, at the age of seventy-five, in 1603. She was the admiration and delight of the Jesuits ; and a saying is recorded of Pope Pius V., the same who in 1567 issued the famous bull In Coena Domini against the heretics, '' That he had sufficient information concern- ing her to canonise her, if it were just and proper to do so Q 2 228 MAXIMILIAN II. during her lifetime." Her very considerable revenues In Spain were left by her to the Jesuits' College In Madrid. Maximilian had by his wife not less than sixteen children, nine sons and seven daughters. 1, 2. The two archdukes, Rodolph II., born In 1552, and Matthias, born In 1557, succeeded to the Imperial crown. 3. Archduke Ernest, born In 1553. He was for eight years with his brother Rodolph In Spain. Count Khe- venhiiller describes him as " taking after his father, gay and jovial." He was during Rodolph's reign governor of Austria; and from 1593 to 1595, regent of the Spanish Netherlands. He died In 1595, at Brussels, when just going to be married to Donna Isabella, the favourite daughter of King Philip II. of Spain. 4. Maximilian, born in 1558. His fate was a very chequered one. He was twice elected King of Poland ; first In 1576, against Stephen Bathory, and again, after the death of this prince, In 1587. Both times he was un- able to maintain the election. In 1588, the Poles even took him prisoner after having defeated him, and he was released only after a year's captivity. Since 1585, he was Grand Master of the Teutonic Order; and In 1600, he was entrusted with the government of the Tyrol and of the Swabian j^i'ovinces of Austria. He died unmarried, in 1618; according to others, in 1620. 5. Albert, born In 1559. At the age of eleven he ac- companied his sister Anne, who, in 1570, was married to Philip II., to Spain, where he was educated, and became a favourite with his brother-in-law. In 1583, he was ap- pointed viceroy of Portugal; In 1587, he became a car- dinal; and In 1594, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain. Five years later, after having received a dispensa- tion to quit holy orders, he married Donna Isabella, the princess who had been intended for his brother Ernest ; at HIS TAMILY. 229 the same time, he was appointed regent of the Nether- lands. He died without any issue in 1621. 6. WenceslauSj born in 1561. He was sent with Albert, in 1570, to Spain; but died, at the early age of seventeen, in 1578, as Grand Prior of the Maltese Order in Castile. 7, 8, 9. The three other princes died in infancy. None of the sons of Maximilian II. leaving any direct heirs, the elder line of the House of Habsburg ended with the Emperor Matthias. Of the seven daughters of Maximilian II., two were married to the most zealous Papist princes of those times, — Anne, in 1570, at the age of twenty-one, to Philip 11. of Spain ; and in the same year, Elizabeth, aged sixteen, to Charles IX. of France. A third daughter, Margaret, died in a convent in Spain; the others in infancy. Maximilian II. had, before marriage, a natural daughter, Helena Scharseg. Her mother, a Countess Anne of Ostfriesland, was lady of the bedchamber to his mother. The daughter is described as a pattern of beauty and sense. She was married to a Carinthian nobleman. Baron Andrew Everard von Pauber ; who won her as his prize in a match against a gigantic Spaniard, whom, according to the terms of the contest, he put in a sack and thus depo- sited at the feet of the Emperor. The baron was like- wise a giant in size and strength. His portrait, still extant in the Nuremberg Gallery, represents him with the remarkable appendage of a beard, carefully plaited, and reaching down to the ground, and from thence back to the girdle, with a legend stating its dimensions. Ferdinand I. and IMaximilian II. were the last Em- perors who (the former from necessity, the latter by his own free-will) followed a moderate and a tolerant policy with regard to religion and to the Peformation, Under Rodolph 11. the counter-reformation already began. Q 3 230 CHAPTER V. RODOLPH IL 1576—1612. 1. HIS COURT AT PRAGUE. HIS ANTIQUARIAN, ALCHEMICAL, AND MAGIC HOBBIES. KoDOLPH II., eldest son of Maximilian II., was born in ' 1552, at Vienna. Like his father, he was brought up in Spain at the court of Philip IL, where he and his brother Ernest remained from 1563 to 1571; in which latter year they made room for their two younger brothers, Albert and Wenceslaus, who had arrived at Madrid the year be- fore with their sister Anne. Philip at that time had no sons, the death of Don Carlos having taken place in 1568, Rodolph was in charge of Adam Dietrichstein, who, going as ambassador of Maximilian II. to the Spanish court, acted as chief governor of the prince. This noble- man was married to a Spanish lady, a duchess of Cordona. Colonel Wolf von Rumpf acted under him as governor of the prince. The plan of the two courts, which, however, was not realised, was to marry the princes Rodolph and Ernest to the two daughters of Philip, Donna Isabella and Donna Catharina. Eodolph stayed long enough in Spain to see the rise of the Escorial ; the first outbreak of the revolution of the Netherlands also, and the death of the unfortunate Don Carlos, who was accused of having HIS HEREDITARY MELANCHOLY. 231 plotted against the life of his father, took place during his residence at the court of Philip. All these events and incidents left a deep impression in the soul of Kodolph. To judge from Dietrichstein's repeated and earnest re- presentations, the long stay at that gloomy and ever sus- pecting court had a decidedly baneful effect on Kodolph. Whereas formerly he had been gentle, good-natured, timid, but a plover of justice, he now was unmanageable, moody, gloomy, and at times breaking out into fits of the fiercest passion. In his twentieth year, he came back to Germany ; and in 1572, he was crowned as King of Hun- gary, and two years after, as King of Bohemia and of the Romans. His father having died in 1576, Rodolph, like him, established his court at Prague. Unmistakeable symptoms of that deep melancholy which had twice before appeared in his family manifested themselves in Rodolph before he had completed his twenty- fifth year. Yet it was not the affecting sadness of Jane of Arao;on, who could never turn her thoughts from that beloved husband whom she had murdered out of jealousy, nor was it the resigned tranquil greatness of Charles V., retiring from the vanity of all earthly things into the pious solitude of Yuste ; in Rodolph's case, it was rather a state of moody inanition and of hardened and perverse waywardness, sometimes even of downright insanity. His principal characteristic was indolence : in this respect he was the Emperor Frederic III. over again. As the latter idled away his daysat Wienerisch Neustadt, so did Rodolph at Prague. With all the impatience of a silly and naughty child, he kicked against everything in the shape of public business; Ihis deeply rooted aversion would, however, at once give way for awhile, at least as soon as he saw any one else actively and zealously taking the affairs of government in hand. Rodolph was then sure to be seized with envy and the gnawing pangs of jealousy. Rodolph thus for the greater part of his time lived com- Q 4 232 EODOLPH II. pletely unmindful of the affairs of his own states and of the Empire. He never held another diet after the one of Ratisbon in 1594, which the breaking out of the Turkish war forced upon him. He never after his accession came to Hungary, nor even to Vienna, where his brother Ernest resided as governor. He shut himself up in his beautiful palace, the Hradschin in Prague, where he had established his museum of art and curiosities, his alchemical laboratory, and his magic kitchen. When the German princes sent ambassadors to him he had them apprised, " that he was just now very fairly engaged with loads of other business." In the same way, the envoys of Hungary and of the Austrian Diet had to wait years and years for an audience in vain. The governors and generals were left without instructions, and had to make shift as well as they could. Curiosities of every description, and the fanciful pursuits of alchemy and magic, were the only objects he took any interest in. These hobbies took up all his time. He had great trea- sures, but carefully stowed them away and locked them up in his chests. It was a matter of the utmost indiffer- ence to him that the councillors and courtiers could not get their pay, that sometimes even actual want made itself felt at the Imperial court; an example of which is re- corded in a letter of the Bavarian resident minister Boden to the Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, his master (dated 19th of August, 1606): " To-day the chief people of the Em- peror's household have not had enough to eat, there being no money to make purchases for the kitchen." Rodolph was in Germany the first of those amateurs who have a mania for collecting all sorts of curiosities of all times from every part of the world ; whereby many works of ancient art have been preserved, just as the codices have been by the monks. After the Peace of Westphalia, this mania of collecting curiosities grew a fashion among the German princes, great and small; but what at first was a mere fancy and a pleasurable pastime, became after- ( HIS COLLECTIONS. 233 wards an important agent in the promotion of art, litera- ture, and science ; people, after having so long hunted after the curiosities of bygone ages, began to feel an in- terest in the endeavours and productions of their own times. Rodolph's collections comprised, besides the treasures of art, many rare specimens of natural history, minerals, exotic plants, foreign birds and animals, eagles, lions, and leopards ; which he knew how to tame to such a degree, that they would freely walk about with him in his rooms.* But his principal fancy was for Roman and Greek anti- quities, which his agents purchased for him in Italy. Most of the invaluable contents of the matchless Imperial collection of coins, gems, and cameos at Vienna are owing to Rodolph. Among others, he acquired two of the most precious articles of classical vertu in the world, — the mag- nificent sarcophagus with the battle of the Amazons, which he got from the Fuggers at Augsburg; and the even more valuable large tazza of onyx with the apothe- osis of Augustus, for which he is said to have paid 15,000 ducats. The knights of the Hospital of St. John at Jeru- salem brought it during the Crusades from the East to Europe, where it owed its preservation in the nunnery of Poissy near Paris to the pious illusion that it represented the crucifixion of Christ. The so-called Rudolphine Trea- sury (museum) at Prague enjoyed a world-wide celebrity ; unfortunately, it has, with most unpardonable careless- ness, been scattered during the "enlightened" eighteenth century, at the time when Joseph II. put down the mo- nasteries. Joseph had issued a decree which public indig- ♦ The Welsers of Augsburg, who for 1,200,000 florins, lent by Bartho- lomew, the grandfather of the beautiful Philipijina, to Charles V., had re- ceived from this Emperor a grant of land on the western coast of South America and had founded the town of Valparaiso in Chili, used to send to Rodolph from thence many Indian curiosities, until the Spaniards took the country from them. 234 RODOLPH II. nation obliged him soon to revoke ; the venerable old castle of the Hradschin in Prague was to be converted into bar- racks, for which purpose it was to be empty by a certain day. The statues were sold. A torso, finding no pur- chaser, was flung down through the window into the garden of the palace ; an oculist at Vienna, of the name of Barth, at last bought it for six siebenzehner (about three shillings). It was no other than the celebrated Ilio- neus, which is now in the Glyptotheca at Munich, and which the king, at that time Crown-prince Louis of Bavaria, bought at the Congress of Vienna for 6000 ducats. The ancient coins were sold by weight. In an inventory which was drawn up of the collections, and which was preserved at the Schonfeld Museum in Vienna, there is one lot, " a naked female, bitten by a mad goose." It is not very likely that any one would recognise in this de- scription the " Leda with the Swan," by Titian. Rodolph possessed the first picture gallery of any con- siderable extent in Germany ; in which there were, among others, the noble Correggios now in Vienna and Berlin. They were a present from the first Duke Frederic Gon- zaga of Mantua to the Emperor Charles V.: through whose daughter Mary, the mother of Rodolph, they pro- bably came to Prague. The two Correggios now at Berlin, lo and Leda, had a remarkable fate. They were, in the first instance, during the Thirty Years' War, taken from Prague as plunder by the Swedes ; then went with Queen Christina to Rome; and from thence passed into the Orleans Gallery ; at the dispersion of which they found their way to Berlin. Heraldry, and what pertains to it in the art of engraving seals and cutting dies of coins and medals, appears to have been cultivated in the times of Rodolph II. with such re- markable proficiency as to justify the supposition that the Emperor himself took a particular interest in these matters. A great number of letters of nobility, and of HIS TASTE FOR THE FINE ARTS. 235 heraldic diplomas, date from the reign of Rodolph. The seals, especially those appended to the grants of princely fiefs and honours, are executed in the most ornamented Gothic style with such neatness and elegance, as to remind one of the contemporaneous Elizabethan style of architec- ture in England. The Rodolphine coins, compared with those of the preceding and succeeding reigns, appear like an oasis in a desert. He must have employed the most distinguished masters to engrave his seals and to cut the dies of his coins. Rodolph was called by his courtiers the second Solomon. He indeed was wise enough to do away with jesters at his court. In this he took the lead of all other potentates. Eodolph, the pupil of Philip IL, was, like his royal tutor, possessed of a store of knowledge by no means common even among professional scholars. He spoke six languages, German and Bohemian, Spanish, Italian, French, and Latin. He was particularly well versed in mechanics and in all the mathematical and physical sciences, and more especially so in the occult lore of astrology, magic, and alchemy. This is fully proved by his letters, published at Vienna in 1771. He was himself a very skilful practical mechanician. His taste with regard to the fine arts was of a very high order ; he was not only a collector of pic- tures, but he painted remarkably well himself, especially portraits. He kept up an uninterrupted correspondence with all the learned people throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Many a scholar of all the four faculties was raised by him to the nobility of the Empire, or nominated Comes Palatinus, or poet-laureate. lie even ennobled learned Lutheran divines, as, for instance, in 1590, the son-in-law of Lucas Cranach, Dr. Polycarpus Leyser, professor of AVittcnberg, and afterwards first preacher of the court of Dresden. But the people whom Rodolph prized above all others were those who ministered to his fancy for everything that 236 RODOLPH II. was curious or wonderful. There were always living at his court a number of clock and instrument makers and pain- ters, with whom he used to work ; a host of astronomers and astrologers, who had to draw up horoscopes to make prophetical almanacs, and to calculate astrological points for him. He kept up a constant intercourse with alche- mists, Rosicrucians and adepts of every sort ; whose ranks, it is true, in several instances, comprised not a few im- postors, quacks, and needy adventurers. These conjurors undertook to prophesy from magnetic mirrors or from boiling water ; they promised to find for the Emperor the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone ; and, even more than that, they gravely engaged in experiments to produce men, actual human beings, in the crucible, and to resus- citate mummies. Dr. John Dee, the celebrated English alchemist and necromancer, Avas one of the most conspicuous characters among this motley crowd. Rodolph at one time had the very highest opinion of Dee. Each looked upon the other as a great magician, and they were not a little afraid of each other. Even a man like Coimt Khevenhiiller fully believed that Rodolph saw in his magic mirror the remote future, and that he was able by means of his magnets to read the most hidden thoughts of persons living at a distance. When, in 1598, Count Adolphus Schwarzenberg had taken Raab from the Turks, and sent Colonel von Buchheim to con- vey the report to the Emperor, the colonel was not a little surprised at finding that his Majesty was already cognisant of it. " The Emperor," Khevenhiiller writes, "told him that they had known it by means of an art, taught them by an Englishmen, of giving signals at a distance by moonlight with two mirrors and a magnet ; and that Schwarzenberg had had a mirror thus prepared, and his Majesty another." Dee returned, in 1509, to London, where Queen Elizabeth gave him a pension. As James I., being a despiser of the " art sublime," stopped the pay- HIS ALCHEMISTS. 237 ment of the pittance, Dee prepared to leave his country a second time, when death prevented him. He died at Mortlake in 1608, at the age of eighty-two. Edward Kelly, a friend and coadjutor of Dee, was less lucky with Kodolph. The Emperor at first created him a baron of Bohemia; but when afterwards the adept was either unwilling or unable to produce gold, he was in 1590, by the order of his Imperial patron, imprisoned in a Bohemian castle, where he remained for six years. Queen Elizabeth, at the entreaties of Dee, interceded for him but in vain. At last Kelly tried to gain his liberty by his own efforts, lowering himself from the castle by a rope ; but he broke his leg in the attempt, and soon after died of the consequences of the fall. Of itinerant adepts, who from time to time made their appearance at Rodolph's court, two famous Italians, living in the grandest style, are to be mentioned. These philo- sophers, who during the last half of the sixteenth century were the astonishment of the whole of Europe, bore the names of Mai*co Bragadino and Hieronymus Scotto. Marco Bragadino was a native of Famagusta in Cyprus, and made his appearance at several German courts, where he pre- presented himself under the title of Count " Ilhisirissimus." His proper name was Mamugna. He was of Greek extrac- tion ; but he represented himself as the son of Marco Antonio Bragadino, the Venetian governor of Famagusta, who at the fall of that place, in 1571, was made prisoner and killed by the Turks. On his first coming out as an adept in the East, he went by his real name of Mamugna. In 1578, he appeared as Conde Mamugnano in Italy, and showed himself with the ";i'eatest magnificence in the circles of the nobili at Venice, whom he greatly astonished by making gold at the Contarini and Dandolo palaces. In 1588, he came as Conde Marco Bragadino to Germany, pretend- ing to be persecuted by his family. Accompanied by two large black bulldogs, which were to convince people of 238 EODOLPH II. his power over the spirits, he arrived at Prague. Here he was regarded as a second Paracelsus, as he treated gold like brass or quicksilver, giving away large lumps of it, and always keeping an open table. This lUustrissimus, however, came to a very ignominious end at Munich, whither he repaired from Prague. His deceptions having been found out, he died in the Bavarian capital on the gallows, in 1590. Even a greater sensation was created by another Italian, Count Hieronymus Scotto, a native of Parma. Kheven- hiiller expressly states, that the whole of Europe had resounded with the achievements of this man of wonders. He travelled in Germany from 1573, showed himself at Nuremberg, Cologne, and other places, and made gold. It was he who in 1583j by the phantasmagoria of a magic mirror, made the Elector of Cologne, Gerard Truchsess, fall in love with the beautiful Countess Agnes of Mansfeld, for which that spiritual prince lost his see and his country. At a later period, in 1592, the handsome, clever, and insinuating adventurer earned little honour at Coburg, where he succeeded in ruining the Duchess Ann, the wife of the Duke and daughter of the Elector Augus- tus of Saxony. The unhappy princess expiated her folly by a captivity of twenty years. This Hieronymus Scotto was a frequent and ever-welcome guest at the court of Prague. Kodolph's physicians, Thaddaus von Hayek, Martin Ruhland, and Michael Mayer, were likewise celebrated alchemists. Michael Mayer, a native of Kendsburg in Holstein, acted besides as private secretary of the Emperor, and also was a Comes Palatinus and an Eques Auratus. He was Eodolph's favourite writer, recording the Em- peror's own ideas and experiences; he was moreover a Rosicrucian and a very fertile author. His works, bearing the mysterious title " Chevalier Imperial,^^ created an immense sensation. They were most of them published at JOHN KEPPLER. 239 Frankfort-on-tlie-Maine, and some were translated into French. Having afterwards entered the service of the Landgrave Maurice of Hesse Cassel, Mayer died at Magdeburg in 1622. Rodolph's valets were chiefly engaged as assistants in his unceasing alchemical operations. One of them, INIordecai de Delle, a native of Vitri, in the duchy of Milan, acted the part of court poet; putting, for the amusement of his master, all the stories of the adepts into German rhymes, Avhich were exquisitely illustrated by some of the court painters. All itinerant alchemists were welcome at Rodolph's court ; he always had some of them with him, and rewarded them most liberally if the experiments were to his satisfaction. Those who did not come of their own accord, he sent for from all parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Thus he once ordered the magis- trate of Strasburg to send to him, under an escort, Philip Jacob Giistenhover; and, when the adept made his escape from Prague, Rodolph had him brought back by force. With alchemists of note in foreign countries the Emperor kept up an active correspondence, and he was generally called by the masters of the craft " the Prince of Alchemy," the German ''Hermes Trismer/istus." It has been considered, as a proof of his having really been an adept, that after his death there were found among his effects, besides an ash-grey tincture, eighty-four hundred- weights of gold!]and sixty hundredweights of silver, melted down into ingots of the form of bricks. Yet there were some scholars of the highest celebrity and merit at Rodolph's court. Among these, three astronomers, the two Danes Tycho de Brahe and Lon- gomontanus, and the great Wiirtemberger John Keppler, and the Bohemian historian Wenceslaus Hagec, are to be mentioned. Keppler by himself is one of the greatest names of any time. He proclaimed to the world from Prague the discovery which has become the foundation of the whole system of modern astronomy, the discovery of 240 RODOLPH II. the planets moving In elliptic orbits round the sun. The book " Nova Astronomia de Stella MartisP Keppler's most celebrated work, was published in 1609. He lived twelve yeai's at Rodolph's court, having been appointed after the death of Tycho de Brahe, in 1601, as " His Imperial Majesty's Mathematician," with the modest salary of 1500 florins, which was not always even regularly paid to him ; so that, having afterwards entered the service of Wallen- stein, he had to go and solicit for the payment of the arrears to Ratlsbon, where the Emperor Ferdinand at that time resided with his court. And there the great man, as Is well known, died of hunger In 1630. Keppler's prin- cipal work, written at Prague, was the celebrated Ru- dolphlne Tables, thus called In honour of the Emperor. Besides this, he published, for the benefit of his patron, in 1601, the " Fundamenta Astrologia3 ; " and In 1608, the *^ Explicit Report of the Comet of September, 1607 (the celebrated one of Halley), and Its Bodlngs;" to which is added, " A new, curious, but well-founded Discourse as to what Comets really are, and how far they are meant to instruct Mankind;" and in 1610, "Warning to some Divines, Physicians, and Philosophers, whilst justly re- jecting Astrological Superstition, not to pluck out the Wheat with the Tares." 2. THE ITALIANS AT THE IMPERIAL COUET. — FIRST BEGINNINGS OF MILITARY RULE. THE FIRST CAMARILLA OF CLERKS AND VALETS. Ever since the days of Charles V. and Ferdinand I., Spanish and Italian families had been transplanted to the Austrian court ; as, for Instance, the Spanish family De Hoy OS, whose ancestor came. In 1520, with Ferdi- nand, and whose descendants are still among the high nobility of Austria ; and the Italian Tyrolese Madruzzi, V MILITARY ADVENTURERS. 241 whose name is frequently mentioned as connected with the court intrigues of those times. But when, in 1593, after a truce of twenty-five years, su})sequent to Soley- man's death before Szigeth, the Turkish war broke out again, a number of Spanish, Italian, and also Walloon adventurers and fortune-hunters entered the Imperial army, which, owing to the Emperor's utter indifference to business, they soon got completely under their own control. This gave rise in Austria to that peculiar military rule which, after being more fully developed in the Thirty Years' War, reached its fearful climax in the degenerate times of the Turkish and Hunirarian campaigns under Leopold I. Among the military adven- turers under Rodolph are to be mentioned the fierce, rapacious Italians Basta and Belgiojoso, the rough Vene- tian Count Rombaldo CoUalto, the Sjoanish commander Don Balthazar Maradas, and the Walloon Dampierre. The three latter have every one of them played a con- spicuous part in the Thirty Years' War. All these ofiScers made their career, or at least began it, in Hungary. Some Croat generals also began at that time to rise into eminence ; among others the Kollonitch and the Isolanis. Baron John Mark Isolani, the father of the celebrated Croat general, descending from a family of the island of Cyprus, gained a victory over the Turks as early as 1596. The Kollonitch were, in 1638, raised by the Emperor Ferdinand III. to the rank of counts ; and under Leopold L, in 1676, left all of them the Lutheran for the Romish faith. One of them who, during the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683, was bishop of that see, wielded his pastoral power with such energy and heroism, that the Grand Vizier threatened to have his head cut off if he could get hold of him. But it was chiefly the Italians who, in the time of Rodolph, began to gain a firm footing at court, and to form a strong and organised party. We find already a VOL. I. R 242 EODOLPH ir. great number of Italians even among those who were nearest the Emperor. His master of the horse was Count Claudio Trivulzi ; his gentlemen of the bed-chamber the two Maltese knights Ottnvio Spinola, of a Genoese family, and Baron CoUoredo. Of the latter family there were four in the Imperial service, one of whom died in England, in 1586, as Imperial ambassador to Queen Elizabeth. Besides these, we find belonging to the house- hold of the Emperor, in different capacities, as cup-bearers, keepers of the privy purse, &c., &c., the names of Gonzaga, Montecuculi, Trivulzi, Caretto, Millesimo, Malaspina, Strasoldo, Castaldo. These courtiers formed the nucleus of the Italian party which under ]\Iatthias, and especially under Ferdinand IL, was swelled by a great many new arrivals. Besides the Italians, there was another sort of people at court, who, being always about the Emperor, enjoyed a great share of his favour, and thereby acquired great in- fluence. These people were the lower personal attendants, part of whose business it was to assist him in his alchemical operations. Some of them, like Mordecai Dedelle, were likewise Italians. Kodolph, for the very reason of his living in such complete retirement, wanted officious in- formers to supply him with news. This was done by his valets ; to whom the Emperor, in his suspecting and ever mistrustful way, used to lend a willing ear. " From Rodolph," says Hormayr, " dates the habit of the later Austrian Emperors of shoiving themselves mistrustful and taciturn toicards their ministers and the higher aristocracy, and on the other hand familiar to their clerks and lacqueys.^'' The Habsburg rulers had, as it were, an instinctive perception of the necessity of keeping the proud and en- croaching native aristocracy at bay ; they, therefore, used mean-born foreign upstarts, clerks, and servants as a sort of barrier behind which the monarch might breathe more freely. Adventurers, recommended and pushed on by HIS MATRIMONIAL SCHEMES. 243 his Majesty's valets, ruled at the Hradschin in Prague, and carried orders from thence to Austria and Hungary. Even the grooms had an important standing at court, the stables being the Emperor's favourite haunt. Great in- fluence was also possessed by the many artful courtesans with whose tribe Rodolph, who never married, continued through life to carry on an ever alternating intercourse, the reign of his ephemeral sultanas frequently lasting even less than a week. The cause of Rodolph's remaining unmarried was a horoscope drawn for him by Tycho de Brahe. Its pur- port was, " that he ought not to marry, as danger was threatening him fi'oni his nearest relation, his own son." It had been the intention of his father, and of Philip II., to marry him to Donna Isabella, the daughter of the latter, although the princess at the time of liodolph's leaving Spain had not yet completed her sixth year. The actual negotiations with reference to this marria2;e began, accord- ing to Ivhcvenhiiller, as early as in 1579, when the Infanta was not more than thirteen ; but she reached the age of thirty-three before she was brought to the altar, Rodolph having put off his final decision for nearly twenty years ; Philip, anxious to see his favourite daughter married be- fore he was gathered to his ancestors, gave the Emperor a last respite ot six months. Rodolph, however, came to no decision. The Infanta then married his younger brother Albert, with whom she went to the Netherlands, the regency of which she brought to her husband as her dowry. Her father did not live to see her mari-iage; he died in 1798, after having been nursed by her through the dreadful malady of which he died. liodolph was very angry at this marriage of his brother. And just as angry was he when, in the following year, another lady, jNIary of Medici, on whom he had likewise cast his eyes, was, to his great surprise, wedded to Henry IV. of France. Besides these two matrimonial projects, Bodolph, who B 2 244 RODOLPH II. sent for the portraits of the most beautiful princesses from all the different courts, had entertained in succession five others, with two princesses of the Styrian branch of his own house, with another of the house of Lorrain, and even with a Russian, and a Wallachian princess. In 1600, after the failure of the marriage with Donna Isabella and of that with Mary of Medici, Matthias, Rodolph's brother, entreated the Emperor, if he would not marry himself, to secure the succession lawfully to him, as the eldest of the house after him. Accoi'ding to the authenticated statement of Hammer, in his lately published "Life of Cardinal Clesel," Barons Rumpf and Trautson, Rodolph's chief favourites, intei'ceded for Matthias, which at once induced their ever suspecting master to banish both of them from his presence to their estates. Eight years after, Rodolph was forced by Matthias to grant what he had refused to do voluntarily. During this period, from 1600 to 1608, Rodolph's gloomy moodiness reached its highest pitch. Against Matthias he had conceived an Inconquerable antipathy. Halley's comet, which made its appearance in 1607, strengthened his fear of murderous designs from his family, which the awful meteor seemed to him quite unmistakeably to prognosticate. In vain the learned and sensible Keppler tried to turn him from these apprehensions. His mistrust grew to such a height, that he listened to all the slanderous gossip and denunciations of his lowest menials. He went so far as to cause all those who approached him to be searched whether they had any arms concealed about their persons. Even his numerous mistresses had to submit to this regu- lation. Fear made him seclude himself in his castle at Prague. His bedroom was like a fortified place. He would often jump out of bed, and order the governor of the palace to search, in the middle of the night, every nook and corner of the Imperial residence. Pi"ecautions were taken everywhere against the possibility of a surprise. HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 245 Whilst attending mass, which he now only did on the highest festivals, he sat in a high, covered pew, the front of which was very closely latticed. For greater security during his promenades, he had long and spacious passages built on purpose, with narrow sloping apertures like loop- holes, through which he need not fear to be shot at. These passages led to his magnificent stables, where he liked to be, and where, consequently, he passed much of his time. There he used to meet his mistresses ; and there he kept his special pets, a number of the most splendid horses ; but only for the pleasure of looking at them, as from fear for his life he never ventured out on horseback. Daniel I'Hermite of Antwerp, who was attached to the Florentine embassy which the Duke Cosmo II. in 1609 sent to the German courts, has left in the account of his journey, which he published in German, a description of the Emperor's person and appearance. Rodolph was, when he saw him, in his o8th year. " The Emperor," he says, " is advanced in years, but his hair and beard have prematurely turned grey. He is of rather stately presence ; his brow majestic ; his mouth not unpleasing ; his eyes sparkling, but nearly covered by his beetling eyebrows. He is of middling size, and he stoops a little, which is a peculiar feature of the princes of the House of Habsburg. But you may see at once that the Emperor is the Emperor. He still wears his clothes after the old fashion, deeming it requisite to his grandeur not to make any change in his costume. He is dressed in a short cloak trimmed with gold, and in a Spanish doublet over his girded trunk-hose. As we entered his cabinet he was standino; in the backoTOund, leaning his hand on a table. Tiius he received the embassy." The people of Prague did not often know for mouths whether Rodolph was living or dead ; only on particularly joyful occasions, as in 1603, after a victory over the Turks, he showed himself to his faithful lieges from the window R 3 246 RODOLPH II. of the palace. At last he was never seen by any one. The people suspected that his favourites were concealing his death to appropriate his treasure. Then, after having allowed himself long to be entreated, and as at the same time a dangerous riot had broken out, he again presented himself at the window to pacify the assembled populace. He would sit for hours in moody silence, looking from his easy chair at the clockmakers and painters who Avere working under his eyes in liis apartments ; sometimes also he himself worked with them. But, if any one interrupted him during his meditations or his work, his Majesty, flying into a towering rage, assailed the unlucky intruder with a volley not only of abuse, but also of more dangerous mis- siles in the shape of tools, utensils, or anything that came first to hand. Such sudden fits of flino-ino- even the most costly things about, and of smashing everything near him, would also happen when any annoying thought disturbed the monotonous listlessness of his pondering melancholy. In fact he was at times neither more nor less than a mad- man. As long as these fits lasted his servants and fa- vourites were obliged to keep out of his way. He once even pointed his sword to the breast of his lord cham- berlain. Now and then he had visits from some princes of the Empire. Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick espe- cially, who, as president of the privy council, had frequent occasions to see him, was his faithful friend and boon com- panion, and would drink his old Hungarian wine with him. The Elector Christian II. of Saxony also applied himself with such zeal to the same generous beverage, that, on taking leave of the Emperor in 1610, he assured his royal host " that he had been so hospitably entertained by his Mnjesty in Prague as scarcely to have been sober for one hour during the whole time." The Emperor repeatedly received ambassadors from the most remote countries. In 1597 an embassy arrived from the Shah of Persia to urge him to continue the Turkish SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY. 247 war. The envoys were a couple of Armenians, father and son, from Djulfar on the Persian Gulf. Don Gia- como, the father, had been in Germany fourteen years before. Three other times, in 1601, 1604, and 1610, the ruler of Persia — no other than the great Shah Abbas — sent ambassadors to Rodolph. In 1601 Sin Ali Bey made his appearance, accompanied by that remarkable Briton Anthony Sharley, who had eaten with Abbas from the same dish and drunk from the same cup. He and his brother Eobert Sharley, who came to Prague in 1610, were raised by Rodolph to the rank of counts of the Empire, Anthony having in the meanwhile entered the Spanish service. Robert Sharley *, as Khevenhiiller states, " was dressed in black velvet, and wore on his head a Per- sian turban surmounted by a golden cross studded with precious stones, in token of his being a Christian and a faithful Roman Catholic. He visited all the churches in Rome, and also went from Rome to Spain." In 1595 and 1599 ambassadors arrived from the Grand Duke of Mus- covy, and in 1600 a Turkish embassy. But it was gene- rally very difficult for persons who had any business at court to get at the Emperor. Months might sometimes pass without their finding any chance of access to him. He was either shut up in his apartments or in his laboratories, or in his observatory, or in his menagerie ; or in the gardens of the Hradschin, where trees, shrubs, and flowers from all parts of the world were growing round grottos with magic mirrors and water-works, from Avhicli the strains of sweet music were pouring forth. Whoever wished to secure an interview with Rodolph, — even ambassadors and persons of exalted rank, — had to dis- guise themselves as grooms, as an audience could only be obtained of him in his maonificent stables. But even here it was dangerous to approach the eccentric violent sove- * No other than Sir Robert Shh-ley.— Tm?w/. R 4 248 RODOLPH II. reign. Eva, the daughter of George Popel of Lobkowitz, who in 1594 had fallen into disgrace, had, by means of a bribe, been admitted to that singular audience-hall, to entreat for the life and liberty of her father ; when fortu- nately an honest groom kept her back, telling her that she would not be the first lady applying to his Majesty in affairs of importance, and falling there in the stable a victim to the lust of the royal madman. The ruin of Lobkowitz, who had formerly been all in all to Rodolph, was very likely brought about by the Jesuits, against whom he used very strong language at the Diet of Ratis- bon in 1594. He died of grief in 1607, after a captivity of thirteen years. Rodolph then ordered his head to be cut off after his death, and from that time all the great lords of Bohemia turned against the Emperor. Eodolph, with all his incontrollable passions, was a strictly devout son of the Romish church, joining the pro- cessions even in the midst of winter with uncovered head and with taper in hand. 3. REFORMATION AND COUNTER-REFORMATION IN AUSTRIA. Whilst Rodolph was idling away his time in Prague, the management of Austria Proper was left to the Jesuit councillors of the Emperor. In the fierce contest which thus arose between the Papist government and the zealously Protestant Estates of the Archduchy the balance remained long undecided, until at last the Jesuits carried the day by the help of one of their greatest pupils, Ferdinand of Styria (Griitz), afterwards known as Emperor Ferdi- nand II. The Reformation had found its way into Austria soon after Luther's first appearance. Charles V. tried to put down the new creed with fire and sword. In 1524 the burgher Caspar Tauber of Vienna became the first martyr REFORMATION IN AUSTRIA. 249 of the new religjious movement. In 1528 Balthazar Hub- mayer, formerly a professor of the University of Ingol- stadt, who had long been kept a prisoner at the Karthner Thurm (the Carinthian Tower), was burnt near Erdberg, over against the Lower Prater, on the same spot where Richard Coeur de Lion was captured. But the new tenets soon gained ground and kept it. As early as in 1541, the Protestants in Austria felt themselves so strong already as to petition Ferdinand L, at that time in Prague, to grant them equal rights with the Papists in the exercise of their religion, — the inhabitants of Vienna being among the peti- tioners. Great numbers of young Austrian nobles went to study at Protestant Universities, and several of them filled the honorary post of rector at Wittenberg and at Prague. After the peace of Passau, in 1552, the Refor- mation spread even more widely. In Austria, as elsewhere in Germany, the nobility were principally tempted by the spoil of the ecclesiastical estates. The heads of the move- ment were the Jorgers of Herrnals, especially the great champion of Protestantism Helmhard Jorger, president of the Chamber of Representatives! of Lower Austria. With these Jorgers Luther exchanged a great many let- ters ever since 1525, when he sent them a preacher. Besides them, the Hagers of Alensteig, the Thonradls of Thernberg and Ebergassing, the Buchheims of Aspang, the Hoffmans of Strechau, and many others, were zealous Protestants. Within the territories of these lords the monks and nuns were frequently expelled fi'om their houses, the monasteries and churches ransacked and de- molished, the statues and pictures of saints profaned, and the Roman Catholic livings left vacant for years, whilst the Protestant patrons appropriated the revenues. The movement spread from the nobility to the burghers and the peasantry. The abolition of the tithes was a bait for the people, as the clerical estates were for the nobility. Among these ranks of society also examples of a fanatical 250 KODOLPH II. spirit of persecution were not wanting. The burghers made laws among themselves not to admit any Koraan Catholic into the council, nor even to engage a Papist servant. The processions of Corpus Christi had to be dis- continued, in order to prevent fights among the two reli- gious parties in the streets. No priest dared read mass on week days, nor cai'ry the sacrament to the dying without an escort. In 1549 a Lutheran baker's boy in Vienna pushed into a procession, snatched the Host from the hand of the priest, and flung it on the ground with imprecations against idolatrous abomination. He was burnt by a slow fire, after having his tongue and his hand cut off. Yet the only effect of these cruel punishments was to call forth so much the fiercer exasperation on the part of the fol- lowers of the new creed. All comedies, masquerades, and sledge-processions were full of abuse and ridicule against the Papists. In 1561, matters had gone so far, that all these public popular amusements had to be prohibited. Ladies of Protestantised families were so conversant with Gospel lore, as to do duty as missionaries among the Catholics. Where gentle persuasion was of no avail, the Protestants had recourse to violence for the purpose of making converts. The followers of the old creed were not unfrequently pounced upon in the dead of night. It even happened, on the instigation of a pastor, Strohmeyer, that Nicholas Baron von Buchheim was treacherously murdered in the night at his own castle by the noble Lord of Hof kirchen and Schonkirchen, who, under the pretext of a friendly visit, became his assassin. In fact, nothing could exceed the fanaticism and the bloodthirsty bigotry with Avhich the Protestant preachers denounced their op- ponents from the pulpits. Their flocks only too readily took the cue from them ; and the Lutherans were heard pub- licly to declare, that " they would rather live in peace with the Turks than with the Roman Catholics." The in- troduction of the improved calendar, the necessity of which PROTESTANT EXCESSES. 251 had so long made itself felt, was obstinately opposed in Vienna by the Protestants, "as the first letter in the Pope's alphabet by which he only wanted to throw the noose over their horns, so that they might no longer be able to ward off his tyranny in the church of God." The pre- lates, provosts, abbots, and monks married and had fami- lies, after having divided the property of their chapters and conventual estates between them, which they sold, bartered, and mortgaged at their own pleasure ; a pro- ceeding for Avhich they were publicly commended by the preachers from their pulpits. The policy of Ferdinand I. with regard to the encroach- ments of the Protestants had been very forbearing, owing to the necessity of the times. Far from turning all the severity of the law against the new doctrine, he contented himself with keeping down the wild convulsions of fanatical party spirit until an Imperial Diet or General Council should have decided on the dispute. He merely issued a strict general edict that no one should dare to enter on any bargain with clerical personages concerning the alienation or mortgage of church property. During the first years of his reign he tried to induce the headstrong Pope Paul IV. to give his express sanction to the admi- nistration of the sacrament in both kinds, which the Pontiff until then had only connived at ; and also to the marriage of the priests. The Emperor, moreover, pro- tested against several disciplinary decisions of the Council of Trent; but that assembly, in its final session of 1563, pronounced for an entire and irrevocable rupture with the Protestant heretics. The decrees of Trent, however, did not prevent Maxi- milian, the son and successor of Ferdinand L, from showing even greater toleration than his father had done. The Protestants already ventured publicly and freely to call him " a pillar of their doctrine." The Emperor, indeed, was enlightened enough to see in this religious antagonism 252 RODOLPH II. the great evil of the age, for which he knew no other remedy but by the open sufferance of the Protestants. He proclaimed accordingly in 1567 and 1568 free exercise of religion in Bohemia and Austria. The Protestant country gentlemen and noblemen in Austria were allowed per- fect religious liberty at their chateaux and on their lands ; they were, moreover, allowed to take their preachers to Vienna, and to admit any one who wished to hear them to their places of worship. In 1574 the Protestants of Vienna were permitted to have regular religious service at the Laudhaus (the locality of the Chamber of Kepre- sentatives), and afterwards also at the Church of the Minorites. It was the favourite plan of Maximilian II., at the head of a Christian army of Crusaders, and in alliance with Muscovy and Persia, to reconquer the countries taken from Hungary, and to drive the Turks back to Asia. To pave the way for this vast plan, he tried to gain the affection of the Protestant Estates of Austria, and the assistance of the Protestant princes of the Empire. But in the last years of his life, he found himself compelled to tighten the reins again, and to take repressive measures. The Reformation gained more and more ground, extending even to Bavaria. Here also great numbers of the people and, more especially, of the nobles embraced the new faith. Under Rodolph, who never left Prague, the Austrian Protestants proceeded to open hostilities. The burghers of Vienna, joined by those of the country nobles who hap- pened to be present in the capital, made an attempt to extort, by revolutionary means, perfect equality for the followers of the reformed religion with the Koman Ca- tholics. Upwards of 5000 men appeared in arms at the Imperial castle (the Hofburg), where Archduke Ernest, the Emperor's brother, resided. He promised to report about their case to his Majesty. Tranquillity was thus restored for the present, and after the lapse of about a PKOTESTANT ENCROACHMENTS. 253 year the ringleaders were brought to justice and condemned to death. Rodolph, however, mitigated the punishment to perpetual exile. In 1578 a Protestant of the name of John Schwartzcnthaler was elected rector of the Univer- sity of Vienna, in direct breach of the laws and of the oath prescribed by the statutes. This election was quashed by the Emperor ; but the nobles now began, contrary to their pledge, to force the inhabitants of towns and boroughs, as well as their own vassals, to embrace the Protestant religion; in fact, nothing was left undone to wrest every day new concessions from the court. AVhilst thus the prospects of the Protestants grew more and more promising, their cause received the first shock by the dis- cords of their own preachers, who split on the Flacian controversy about original sin and grace. Dr. Opitz, the preacher of the Laudhaus Chapel at Vienna, gave him- self up to the most outrageous Flacianism ; for which the Emperor had him expelled from not only the town, but also from the Austrian dominions. In vain Dr. Lucas Backmayster — sent, at the request of the Austrian re- presentatives, by the celebrated Dean (superintendent) of Rostock, David Chytraus, to hold a visitation of the Pro- testant church of Austria — exerted himself to restore order among the preachers. After having wasted his labour on them for nine months, he returned to Rostock, stoutly re- fusing to accept the post of " Superintendent" of the Austrian Protestant church. The last occasion for repelling violence by violence was at a riot of the peasants in the cantons above and below the confluence of the Erns, in 1595 and 1599. They had marched, 1200 or 1500 men strong, to the Abbey of Lilienfeld, and had laid siege to St. Polten. Heavy taxes, forced levies for the Turkish war, and persecution of the Protestant faith had exasperated them. Gotthard Starhemberg crushed them. On the plain of Steinfeld, near Wilhelmsburg, they were completely defeated by the ^ 254 EODOLPH II. Imperial troops, and their ringleaders broken on the wheel and decapitated at Vienna. As soon as the Jesuits became aware of the dissension in the Protestant camp they began in Austria the counter- reformation. The man who restored Popery in Austria, and very nearly made it triumph again throughout Ger- many, was Ferdinand of Gratz. His father, Archduke Charles, who died in 1590, had, ten years after Maximilian's having granted religious liberty to Austria, followed his example in his countries of Styria, Carnlola, and Carinthia. When Charles afterwards attempted to introduce only two Roman Catholics Into the town council of Grtitz, he had the mortification to see his commissaries expelled and ill- treated. The Bishop of Gurck and the papal nuncio having been grossly Insulted in a riot, Charles came In all haste from the watering-place of Mannersdorf, where he was staying for his health. The vexation at these annoy- ing occurrences became the cause of his death. lllieii Ferdinand, in 1596, celebrated Easter in his cajntal of Griltz he was almost the only one xcho took the sacrament, according to the Romish rite, there being not more than three Papists besides him in the town. In the whole of the arch- duchy of Austria there were, of all the noble houses, only five, in Carinthia seven, and in Styria not more than one*, that had remained Papists. All the patronage, govern- ments of the pi'ovlnces, administration of the revenue, be- sides the arsenals and the command of the mercenaries, were in the hands of Protestants. But Ferdinand said : "I too will be master in my country as the Electors of Saxony and the Palatinate are in theirs." Ferdinand had been brought up at Ingolstadt by the Jesuits, together with his friend the Elector Maximilian of Bavaria, whose father, Duke William V., called by the Jesuits " the pious duke," was his uncle by the mother's * The Herberstorfs, whose house became extinct in 1629. COUNTER-KEFORMATIOX. 255 side, and afterwards his guardian. About the end of the year 1597 Ferdinand set out on a pilgrimage to Loretto, and afterwards to Rome. Here he took, at the feet of Pope Clement VIII., the vow to restore, even at the peril of his own life, the Roman Catholic religion. The reverend fathers of the Society of Jesus became his main supporters. At the age of not more than twenty he began under their o;uidance the o;reat work of the counter-reformation. First of all he issued, in September, 1598, a decree in virtue of which all the Lutheran preachers were to leave his countries of Styria, Carniola, and Carinthia. In 1599 the Protestant church in his capital Griitz, the centre of Protestantism in his territories, was closed, and all Pro- testant worship prohibited under punishment of imprison- ment and death. The Estates remonstrated against it ; reminded him of the privileges which his father had granted, and tvhick he himself on his accession had sworn to respect ,- they, moreover, refused to him their aid against the Turks, and Ehrenreich von Saurau, Under-Land Mar- shal (lord-lieutenant) of Styria, said to him one day, that he should take care lest he " might fare as the King of Spain had done in the Netherlands." But Ferdinand remained immoveable as a rock. He sent the commissaries charged with the counter-reformation, with a host of German sol- diers, about the country; it Avas the prototype of the Dragonnade of Louis XIV. in France. The country people at their approach cried out in ten'or, " The reform is coming." Everywhere the Protestant churches were burnt down, blasted with powder, or otherwise demolished ; and a gibbet and gallows erected on the spot where they had stood. The preachers were either exiled or imprisoned ; and thousands of Bibles and Prayer-hooks burnt by tlie liands of the hanyman. The inhabitants who refused to return to the Romish faith were forced to emigrate, being at the same time mulcted of one-tenth of their property. One of those who at that time had to fly from Griitz was the celebrated 256 RODOLPH II. astronomer Keppler, who had been appointed there by the Estates as professor, and who now went to Prague to the Empei'or Rodolph. Ferdinand, with thorough-paced Papist zealotry, had even the churchyards of the Protestants dug up ; an outrage which he afterwai'ds repeated in Bohe- mia, where he disturbed the graves of the Hussites. For five years the commission of the counter-reformation thus raged in the country, where the inhabitants were as if completely stupefied. The country nobles of the three j^rovinces under the sway of Ferdinand fled to Bohemia, and it was especially owing to these ai'istocratical refugees that the flame of rebellion afterwards blazed so fiercely in that kingdom. The Counts Thurn, the Tschernembls, Thonradls, Jorgers, Hagers, HoiFmanns, Auerspergs, Wurmbrands, Tiefenbachs, Pollheims, Wollzogens, &c., were none of them native Bohemians. Ferdinand's example was followed in due time by Ro- dolph's councillors at Vienna. They were headed by the Cardinal Francis Dietrichstein, bishop of Olmiitz, and by the Bishop of Vienna Melchior Clesel. Francis Dietrichstein was born in 1570 at Madrid. His father Adam was lord chamberlain to the Emperor Rodolph. Francis had in Rome by public controversies at- tracted the attention of the Holy Father and of the Sacred College. He became chamberlain to the Pope, Canon of Olmiitz and Breslau, and, at the age of twenty-eight, a car- dinal, and Bishop of Olmiitz. Diplomatic business led him to Naples, to Madrid and to Brussels ; after the fall of the Hungarian border fortress of Kanischa in 1600, he obtained for the Emperor the aid of all the Italian courts ; where- upon Rodolph, in acknowledgment of his services, appointed him governor of the archduchy of Austria, and afterwards president of the privy council. Clesel, born in 1553, was, like Cardinal Wolsey, of very humble extraction, the son of a Lutheran baker at Vienna. Having been converted in early youth by the Jesuit LEAGUES AGAINST THE COUNTER-REFORMATION. 257 Father Scherer, he iu his turn converted his own parents. He received his education at Ingolstadt, then the head- quarters of the order; after which he quickly made his way, being first nominated provost of the chapter of St. Stephen : then, in rapid succession, chancellor of the imiversity of Vienna, preacher to the court, and Imperial councillor. In 1558, at the early age of thirty-five, he ob- tained the see of Neustadt ; ten years later, that of Vienna. Dietrichstein and Clesel sent round commissaries of counter-reformation in the archduchy of Austria also ; and here too the old Protestant preachers and schoolmasters had to leave the country. The Austrian Estates, on their side, leagued themselves against this reactionary aggres- sion; and, when Matthias, in 1608, was appointed re- gent of Austria, they concluded an offensive and defensive alliance at the celebrated Congress of Horn. They also joined the Evangelical Union entered into the same year by the princes of the Empire at Ahausen. 4. STATE OF HUNGARY. — THE BOHEMIAN " ROYAL LETTER." — RUPTURE WITH MATTHIAS. DEPOSITION OP RODOLPH. LATTER DAYS AND DEATH OP RODOLPH II. In the midst of these stirring times the Emperor Rodolph was forced to abdicate, or rather was deposed. The ap- proximate cause of this event was the danger of a Turk- ish invasion and the insurrection of Stephen Botskay, the Prince of Transylvania, against Austria. Eodolph, who since his election as Emperor had never been to Hungary, contented himself with keeping garrisons of German mer- cenaries in the fortresses of that country. These troops were commanded by the Generals George Basta and Count John Jacob Belgiojoso.* These two men, as governors * Basta had risen from a dnimmcr-boy to the rank of general-in-chief. His family came from Naples, whither it had immigrated from Epiriis in VOL. I. s V 258 RODOLPH II. and chief commanders, treated the unfortunate Hunga- rians worse even tlian the Turks did. Rodolph never checked them. Very rarely some Imperial orders would arrive from Prague. The troops, being left^withoilt pay, indemnified themselves by plunder, arson, and murder. Ever since that time, fierce mastiffs are called in Hungary Bastas. The Jesuits tried to crush the Protestants in Hungary also ; the churches of Kaschau and Clausenburg in Transylvania were taken from them by force. In 1593, the Turks recommenced the war which had been in abey- ance since the death of Soleyman in 1566. Just before this campaign, the famous Aulic Council of war (Hof- kriegsrath) was instituted, which has since so often proved the bane of the Austrian arms. It did not then do much harm to the Turks, who in 1594 took the important for- tress of Raab, which fortunately was reconquered by sur- prise in 1598, by Adolph Schwarzenberg * and Nicolas Pallfy. The cruelty of Basta and Belgiojoso caused the Transylvanians to throw themselves into the arras of the Turks. In 1605, Stephen Botskay, who the year before had, with the consent of the Porte, been elected by the Transylvanians for their prince, rose against the power which was wielded under the name of Rodolph. Basta was driven back to Pressbui'g, and the Heyducks (Ras- cians) revolted and extended their forays to the very gates of Vienna. Yet Rodolph turned a deaf ear to every pro- posal of peace. In this perilous conjuncture, at last all the archdukes agreed, at Vienna, upon the celebrated act of the 25th of April, 1606, in virtue of which Rodolph was forced Greece. Ilodolph raised him, in 1 605, to a rank of a count of the Empire. He died in Vienna in 1607, leaving one son; but the family now seems to be extinct. Belgiojoso was a scion of the Milanese house of Barbiano. He died in 1626, on his estates near Lit'ge. * It was on this occasion that the Schwarzenberg coat of arms was charged with a raven, the German word for M'hich is Rabe, or Rab ? THE " FAMILY TREATiT OF VIENNA. 259 to resign the government of Austria Proper and of Hun- gary. The resignation was to be effected in favour of his much-hated brother Matthias, "as the senior of the house." The reason put forward in this act was, " that unfortunately it was too plain that his Roman Imperial Majesty, their (the archdukes') brother and cousin, owing to his dangerous fits of derangement, was neither equal to, nor fit for the conduct of the government of his coun- tries." The chief mover of this famous " Vienna Family Treaty" was Clesel, Bishop of Vienna and Neustadt, who, however, acted with the perfect consent of the arch- dukes. Rodolph, being apprised of it, wanted to have him arrested at Prague ; on which Clesel, to escape from the Imperial anger, had to conceal himself, and to fly in disguise from Prague to Vienna. Yet even there Rodolph sought after his life. He had, as Khevenhiiller states, an almost miraculous escape. One day, as he was going from Baden near Vienna to Neustadt, where some gentlemen had invited him to breakfast, the six horses of his coach growing restive just before the gate of Neustadt, he allowed the carriage to drive through the gate empty, and followed on foot ; yet the vehicle had scarcely passed the gate when it was attacked by armed men, " On this,' Khevenhiiller adds, " Clesel became more active than ever in undermining the Emperor Rodolph." As soon as the *' Family Treaty of Vienna" was con- cluded, peace was made — likewise at Vienna — with the Hungarians on the 23rd of June, 1606, in which for the first time they succeeded in enforcing the concession of religious liberty to the Protestants. Botskay, having no direct heirs, was confirmed in the possession of Transylvania and of Hungary ; but he died a few months after. AVith the Turks a truce for twenty years was concluded at Comorn, on the 9th of November of the same year. Matthias at first obtained only the re- S 2 260 RODOLPH II. gency of Austria, as Eodolpli delayed giving up Hungary. To force the latter kingdom from him, Matthias two years after marched with a host of 20,000 Heyducks to Mo- ravia and before Prague. The helpless Rodolph had already formed a plan to escape to Dresden, but the Elec- tor of Saxony had declined to receive him. Matthias in- tended to keep the Emperor quiet in a castle in the Tyrol ; yet the Bohemians for the nonce protected Rodolph with their own army. On the 17th of June, 1608, however, Rodolph was obliged entirely to yield the crown of Hungary and the countries of Austria and Moravia for a yearly pension ; and on the 19th of November, 1608, — Cardinal Dietrich- stein having brought out from Prague into the camp of Matthias the Hungarian crown jewels, which until then had been in the keepiing of Rodolph, — Matthias was solemnly crowned under the canopy of heaven at Pressburg. The new king had to sign very hard conditions. Two Pro- testants, one after the other, received the dignity of Pa- latine of Hungary ; in 1608, Stephen lllishascy and in 1609, the great George Thurzo of Arva, Lord of Bethlen- Falva, who died in 1616. The Estates of Austria leagued in the Union of Horn likewise refused to do homage until absolute religious liberty and equality should be granted. Matthias was forced to ensure it to them, on the 19th of March, 1609. In virtue of this decree, which is called the " Capitulation Resolution," the right of a free exercise of religion was extended to the burghei's and to the common people also. Immediately after, Rodolph was compelled to grant to the Estates of Bohemia — who sup- ported their by no means humble request by 3,000 men imder the command of Count Henry Matthias von Thurn — the celebrated Royal Letter, called " Majestats-brief," of the 11th of July and 20th of August, which secured to them absolute religious liberty and opened to the Pro- testants the University and the Consistory of Prague, I THE " MAJESTATS-BRIEF." 261 besides the schools and churches which they ah-eady pos- sessed. Kodolph was in a position similar to that of Charles V. when the German Protestants forced from him the Peace of lieligion of Passau. As Charles was forced into this peace by his secret dissension with his bi'other Ferdinand, so Ilodolph was forced by his public dissension with Mat- thias, and by it alone, into granting the Majestats-brief — the " rag of waste paper," as the Emperor, Ferdinand 11. called it, when he burnt it after the battle of the White Mountain. Rodolph granted the Majestatsbrief with the utmost reluctance; the papal nuncio threatened him with ex- communication. But even the Spanish family ambassador, Don Balthazar de Zuniga, advised the Emperor to yield for the present, in order not to jeopardise everything. Zdenko Adalbert Popel Lobkowitz, lord chancellor of Bohemia (afterwards the first prince of this family), could not be induced by any consideration to countersign this " waste paper." He declared that he would rather die than do anything contrary to his conscience. By com- mand of the Emperor, the chief burgrave, Adam von Sternberg, signed in his stead. One thing Rodolph thought to have secured to himself by granting the Royal Letter, — that he would be allowed to die unmolested as King of Bohemia, in his dearly beloved Prasjue. His ultimate view with regard to the succession was, to obtain for the younger brother of Ferdinand of Grtitz, Archduke Leopold*, Bishop of Passau, not only the Bohemian crown, but also the Imperial dignity. Leopold being appointed by Rodolph as sequestrator of the countries of Juliers, which had fallen vacant in 1609, * Leopold was for this purpose to get a dispensation from his clerical orders, which he afterwards (in 1626) actually did. He is the founder of the last sidc-hrancli of the Austrian House of Habsburg, the Tyrolcse line, which became extinct in 1665. He was, in 1611, iu his twenty -sixth year, s 3 262 KODOLPH II. he enlisted for the occupation of that territory 16,000 men, who were called " Passau folk ; " yet, instead of marching with these troops to the Rhine, he led them to Bohemia, and occupied with them " the Small Side " of Prague on Shrove-Tuesday, 1611. At once the Bohemian Estates made an outcry against it. They believed, or pretended to believe, that these troops were intended to be employed for the purpose of repealing the concessions of the Majestats- brief; of crushing the Protestant religion; and perhaps even of changing the old aristocratical constitution of the country into an absolute monarchy after the pattern of that of Spain. The helpless Rodolph thus was obliged to pay off the " Passau folk," and to send them out of the country. It caused some surprise that the Emperor, who until then had always complained of the extreme exhaustion of his finances, now at once found in his coffers the 300,000 florins which w^ere required for this purpose. After the departure of the Passau folk, the Estates oc- cupied the Hradschin. Making a show of assiduously paying their court to the Emperor, they guarded him so closely, that he was not even allowed to take a breath of air in the grottos of his fairy garden. In those times, when the proud Bohemian aristocracy had reached the summit of its power, from which it was so soon after to be hurled down into irretrievable ruin, it happened one day that, as Eodolph was proceeding by a secret postern into the garden of the Hradschin, the sentry levelled his gun at him, and the Roman Emperor, without having had his walk, was forced to return to his apartments. Here he gave vent to his anger in a curse, which, opening the window, he pronounced on Prague : " Oh, thou ungrateful Prague. By me thou hast been exalted, and now thou castest thy benefactor from thee. May the revenge of God fall upon thee, and his curse blight thee and the whole Bohemian country !" The Electors of Mayence and Saxony having tried to MATTHIAS CROWNED AT PRAGUE. 263 intercede for the Emperor, who, they said, " was likewise their colleague in the Assembly of Electors," the Estates of Bohemia sneeringly answered to the Saxon and May- ence envoys, that, " if the electors Avlshed it, they would send to them the Roman Emperor and the Elector of Bohemia together in one sack." In this emergency, Matthias forced from his brother the Bohemian crown also. He appeared, on the 24th of March, 1611, once more with an army of 18,000 men before Prague, and Archduke Leopold had to leave the city. Andrew Hanniwald, the privy councillor who during the later years of E-odolph's reign enjoyed the greatest share of the Emperor's confidence, Avas with two other councillors arrested as early as the 30th of March. He was threatened with torture in order to force from him a confession as to what Rodolph had intended with the Passau folks. On the 11th of April, 1611, Rodolph was obliged to renounce the crown of Bohemia; and on the 26th of May, Matthias was crowned by the Cardinal Francis Dietrich- stein at Prague. Rodolph, by way of indemnification, received free residence at the Hradschin and an annual pension of 300,000 ducats, which were assigned on the revenue of the lordships of Budweis, Parduwiz, Lissa, and Rzedrow. When signing the document of resigna- tion, Rodolph, in his anger at the ungrateful Bohemians who sided with Matthias, threw his hat on the floor, bit the pen with which he had signed his name, and flung It on the diploma ; on which, as Hormayr states, " the blot of ink is seen to this day." Matthias remained five months in Prague, where he took up his residence in the " Ring" (Circus) of the Altstadt; yet he never saw his brother the Emperor, who as usual was shut up In his apartments ; they only exchanged mes- sages through their lord chamberlains and privy couucll- 8 4 264 KODOLPH II. lors. On the 1st of September, Matthias departed for the Lusatian countries and for Breslau. The old monarch, who for several years past had been suffering from the gout, was quite childish and imbecile. Of all his crowns he had kept only that of the German Empire. The German princes, who had long held him in contempt, at last, in November, 1611, sent an embassy to Rodolph to compel him to cause a King of the Romans to be elected. Rodolph received the envoys standing under a dais, with his left hand leaning on a table. When the point concerning the election of a King of the Romans was mentioned ; the blood rushed to his temples, his knees trembled, and he was obliged to sit down on a chair. After the embassy had withdrawn he thus expressed himself to his most intimate friend Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick : " Those who in my late troubles and calami- ties have lent me no help, and have never had a horse saddled in my service, have now held for me a sort of fu- neral oration ; I dare say they have sat in council with the Almighty, and perhaps they know that I am to die this year, as they urge so very strenuously my appointing a successor in the Holy Roman Empire." The plan having already been mooted of electing another, and perhaps, for the first time, a Protestant Emperor, Rodolph was afraid lest he might be deposed also from the Imperial dignity. In this apprehension he unexpectedly died, — after having, on the evening before, appeared as usual at dinner, — on the 20th of January, 1612, in the morning at seven o'clock, just as his valet was going to hand him a fresh shirt. He had not yet completed his sixtieth year, and so sudden was his death, that there was no time for administering extreme unction. The death of his beautiful and faithful old lion, and of two eagles, which he had every day fed with his own hands, broke his heart. His death was kept secret for some time, even from his own household ; for THE EMPEROK's DEATH. 265 which purpose the table continued to be laid at the usual time, until his brother Matthias should be informed of the event. Mortification had seized his thigh ; at the dissec- tion, the heart and the other vital parts were found still sound and vigorous. The body was embalmed and placed in a coffin lined with red velvet, with a glass lid at the top, through which the corpse could be seen. Matthias, after having received the news of the death of his brother, first sent Maximilian, Count Trautraannsdorf, as his commissary to Prague, where he himself arrived on the 30th of January. 5. rodolph's natural children. KoDOLPH had by his numerous and ever-changed mis- tresses several natural children, of whom six, four sons and two daughters, have been known. After the example of Maximilian I., he allowed the four sons, whom he acknow- ledged as his own, to call themselves " Lords de Austria." They inherited the wild passions of their father. 1. Don Carlos de Austria served the Emperor Ferdi- nand II. in the Thirty Years' War ; but having from mere wantonness, in one of the suburbs of Vienna, taken part in a riot caused by a woman of the town, he was killed without beino; known. 2. For the second son, Don Giulio de Austria, his father bought the large Bohemian lordship of Krummau, which now belonn;s to Prince Schwartzcnbcrjr. 3. A third natural son of liodolph, Don Matthias dc Austria, as Khcvenhiiller states, " came in 1619 to Spain, to see the country and to try his fortune ; but he was not allowed to come to Madrid, and, after his score had been paid for him, was sent back with 4000 ducats to Germany, where he died in 1626. 4. A fourth of these illegitimate scions of the House of 266 RUDOLPH II. Habsburg was put to death by liis father's orders. He was called Don Cesare ; he had done violence to a young lady of noble birth and murdered her afterwards. Rodolph ordered him to die the death of Seneca, having his veins opened in a warm bath. Of the two daughters, one. Donna Carlota, married a Spanish Count Cantacroy, of the Perrenot-Granvella fa- mily ; and the other, Donna Dorothea, died in a convent. r 267 CHAPTER VI. MATTHIAS. 1612—1619. 1. PERSONAL NOTICES OF THE EMPEROR. The successor of Kodolpli II. to the Imperial dignity, as well as to the crowns — forcibly wrested from him — of Austria, Hungaiy, and Bohemia, was his brother Matthias, whose reign lasted not more than seven years (1612 — 1619). Matthias was born in 1557, at Vienna. His governors were Auger Gislain de Busbeck of Comines in Flanders, and Colonel Ottavio Baron Cavriani, an Italian of Mantua. Busbeck was celebrated as a scholar, and had distinguished himself in the diplomatic career — especially as ambas- sador of Ferdinand I. at Constantinople, at the court of Solcyman (1555 — 1562). After the education of his princely pupil was finished, he was sent to the sister of Rodolph II. and Matthias, Elizabeth, the widow of Charles IX. of France, with whom he remained in the capacity of councillor until his death at St. Germains, in 1592. Baron Cavriani, afterwards master of the horse to Matthias, was one of the most splendid and chivalrous cavaliers of his age ; and, moreover, one of the most gallant men with the ladies. He died shortly before his pupil, in 1618. Matthias profited much more from the cavalier than 268 MATTHIAS. from the scholar and diplomatist. He was well formed, but small, and debilitated in body and mind. When not prostrate under the tortures of gout, which sorely tor- mented him, he knew no better employment for his time than court festivals, balls, jousting, pageants, and the chase. Dancing especially was most assiduously cultivated by him, which made Prince Christian of Anhalt once say, " that his majesty, if the right dance should once begin, was not likely to distinguish himself by his steps." Rodolph's hatred had long rendered the life of Matthias cheerless. When, in 1578, the Netherlanders, who had risen against Spain, called him in as their stadtholder, Rodolph as well as Philip II. were highly incensed against him ; and yet he had only the title of a stadtholder, the real power resting with William of Orange. Being unable to maintain himself at his post at Antwerp after 1581, he resigned his office ; but remained in that city nine months longer in poverty and retirement. In fact, he did not know whither to turn. The Emperor refused his consent to a marriage ; yet, when on this he turned his eyes to clerical preferment, asking for the bishopric of Liege, the commissaries of his brother excluded him. After this, he lived almost like a prisoner of state at Linz ; he had not even the power of changing a servant. In vain he begged to be allowed to renounce all his hereditary claims on condition of the town and lordship of Steyer being settled on him. At the Polish election of a king in l587, his younger brother Maximilian was supported in opposi- tion to him. Afterwards Rodolph entrusted him with diplomatical commissions ; in particular making hira his proxy at the Diet of Ratisbon and appointing him to com- mands in Hungary; but refusing his Imperial ratification to his decrees and the necessary means for making war. When the Emperor meditated, contrary to the family statutes, to deprive him of the succession, in order to settle it upon Ferdinand and Leopold (the Bishop of Passau) of HIS MARRIAGE. 269 the Styrlan line, Matthias had scarcely any other choice but to proceed to extremities. Thus then he forced, with arms in hand, the crown from his harsh brother. A short time only before Rodolph's death, Matthias was allowed to take a wife. The chosen lady was Ann, daughter of Ferdinand of Tyrol by the Princess of Mantua, whom that archduke had married after the death of his beloved Philippina Welser. Before that, Matthias had lived with a mistress, Susan "Wachter. Matthias, at the age of fifty-four, married the Princess Ann, who was then in her twenty-seventh year, on the 4th December, 1611, just after his return from the Bohemian coronation to Vienna. Seven weeks after, Rodolph died ; and on the 24th June, 1612, Matthias was elected Emperor, in oppo- sition to the far more able Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, whom Henry IV. of France, the wisest prince of his time, had suggested. Saxony, and the spiritual electors, ac- cording to Khevenhiiller, inclined rather to the Archduke Albert, governor of the Netherlands, the younger brother of Matthias; but gave their votes to the latter. He was crowned at Frankfort with a magnificence scarcely ever witnessed before. He made his appearance on a brown Spanish stallion, with a retinue of 2000 horses, more than 3000 men, and a hundred coaches drawn by six horses each; the latter being a new fashion lately introduced from France to Germany. The Emperor, who lodged at the large mansion called the "Braunfels," remained from the 30th of May to the 23rd of June. All the electors, except the one of Brandenburg, who sent his son as his proxy, and many other princes of the Empire, had appeared in person • "zY luasi" as the historian says, "a.? if people were to take leave of each otlier for ever." Matthias derived little joy from the crowns which he had wrested from his brother. Very nearly the same fate which he had himself prepared for Kodolph, was prepared or him bv his cousin Archduke Ferdinand ; who was his 270 MATTHIAS. tormentor, just as Matthias had been Eodolph's. In June, 1617, he was obliged, contrary to the most urgent remon- strance of Cardinal Clesel, to take Ferdinand to Prague to have him crowned as King of Bohemia ; the Bohemians having consented to elect and crown the zealous Papist because he took his oath to them on the Majestiitsbrief. From Prague Matthias went with Ferdinand on a visit to his brother Maximilian, who since 1595 was Grand Master of the Teutonic Order ; Cardinal Clesel repairing in the meanwhile to Dresden to gain over the Elector John George to the Austrian interest. The Emperor then went home with Ferdinand, intending to accompany him to Hungary, to have him crowned there with the crown of St. Stephen. Matthias, however, having fallen sick soon after his arrival in Austria, sent, as his commis- saries to Ferdinand's coronation at Pressburg, Cardinal Clesel and Archduke Maximilian. Just as Ferdinand pro- claimed at Pressburg as King of Hungary, the great crash occurred in Bohemia which ushered in the Thirty Years' War. 2. THE THIRTY YEARS' W^AR. " DEFENESTBATIO PRAGENSIS." CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ACTORS IN IT, Matthias had left behind, in Bohemia, a regency of seven Papist and three Protestant councillors. The Jesuits, who in 1617, at the coronation of their pupil Ferdinand, had made their entry into Prague in his train, were quietly at work among the councillors and the people. They had on that occasion caused a triumphal arch to be built for Ferdinand, on which, symbolically and significantly, the Bohemian lion was chained to the arms of Austria. The reverend fathers circulated a host of pamphlets, in which the means were discussed for bringing back the whole of Europe to the Church of Rome. An apostate Calvinist, EXCITEMENT OF THE BOHEMIANS. 271 Caspar Scioppius (Schoppe), a man full of wit and impas- sionate energy, in his " Alarm-drum of the Holy War," proclaimed in the plainest language " that the only way to reach that end was a path of blood.'''' As it were as a harbinger of the bloody events which were about to happen, a lai'ge comet was seen in the heavens every night of the year 1618. Men's passions were heated; the two parties faced each other in threatening attitude ; the Protestants, conscious of theirs being the stronger one, were resolved to strike the blow as soon as any fitting opportunity should present itself. And an opportunity soon did present itself. According to the clauses of the Royal Letter (the Majes- tatsbrief ) of Rodolph II., free exercise of religion was only granted to the secular lords and knights (barons) and to the inhabitants of the royal towns and demesnes. When therefore it happened that the Protestants of two spiritual dominions of the territory of the Abbot of Braunau, and of the convent of Grab near Toplitz, were going to erect new churches ; the Archbishop of Prague, in whose pro- vince those territories were situated, gave orders for the destruction of the commenced buildings. On this the Utraquists, which name the Bohemian Dissidents had borne ever since the Hussite times, caused the assembly of their delegates, the so-called defensors, to be summoned. This was one of the privileges granted to them by the Koyal Letter. They now applied to the Em[)eror at Vienna. His Majesty not only took no heed of their remonstrances, but an order was issued to dissolve the assembly. As the defensors thought themselves justified in supposing this order to have been concocted by the regents, they resolved upon the step of the 23rd of May, 1618, one of the most momentous in the history of the world. The two most obnoxious of the Papist members of the regency were Barons Jaroslav Bortzita Martini tz, and William Slawata. 272 MATTHIAS. Martinltz was born in 1582. He had enjoyed great favour with Rodolph II., whom, as a boy of fourteen, he had complimented in a Latin speech, for which the Em- peror forthwith declared the little orator of age. At the age of sixteen, he inherited the immense fortune of an uncle, from which he lent to the Emperor 100,000 florins for a war against the Turks. On a tour in Italy he was gra- ciously received by the Holy Father, who made him a gift of some relics for his family chapel at Prague. Rodolph appointed him on his return lord lieutenant of the circle of Schlan, in addition to which he was nominated, by the Emperor Matthias, Burgrave of Carlstein. Slawata was born in 1568. Having for some time served under Rodolph II. as lord chamberlain, he was now lord chief justice and president of the Chamber (loM treasurer) of Bohemia. He had gone over from the Protestant church to that of Rome for the sake of his marriage with a rich heiress, and he now showed himself so intolerant against his former co-religionists, that he is said to have driven his peasants with hounds to mass, and to have crammed the wafer down their throats by force. On the 23rd of May, 1618, about noon, the Utraquist delegates, attended by a numerous train of servants, and nearly all of them armed, repaired to the Hradschin at Prague, proceeding straightway to the "Bohemian Chancel- lerie ; " the council-room where the regents were sitting. The Utraquists were headed by Count Henry Matthias Thurn*, with whom were William Lobkowitz, of the zea- lously Protestant Hassenstein line of that family; more- over Colonels Ulric Kinsky and Leonard Colonna von Fels ; three Counts Schlick ; Paul von Rzitschan ; and a * Thurn was no native of Bohemia, but had inherited from his mother some, although not very considerable, estates in that country. He after- wards acquired there very extensive landed property to the value of half a million florins, which, combined with his eminent personal qualities, gained for him great influence in the Assembly of the Bohemian Estates, i ^^ DEFENESTRATIU FMJGEXSIS." 273 host of other Bohemian lords. They found in the council- room only four of the Imperial councillors, — Martinitz and Slawata, and besides them the old Burgrave Adam von Sternberg and Matthew Leopold Popel Lobkowitz, Grand Prior of the Order of the Knights of St. John in Bohemia. After a short altercation, Sternberg and Lobkowitz were with scorn and derision led out of the room; on the other two, Martiuitz and Slawata, it was resolved there and then to execute, according to ancient Bohemian usage, the punishment of " defenestration," by flinging them, " as they were, in their Spanish costume, with cloaks and hats," from the window into the dry ditch of the castle. To com- pletejhe trio, the secretary Philip Fabricius was precipi- tated after them. They fell from a height of nearly sixty feet ; but, owing to their cloaks filling with the air and thereby breaking the fall, and to their alighting on a heap of waste paper and other rubbish, they all of them miracu- lously escaped with their lives. The very humble and very polite secretary, who was expedited last, is said to have had sufficient presence of mind, as he fell upon Baron Martinitz, most earnestly to beg his Excellency's pardon. Martinitz, as Khevenhiiller writes, fell in a sitting pos- ture ; Slawata with his head downwards, which he got so badly entangled in his cloak, that he would undoubtedly have been choked had not Martiuitz assisted him in rising. Whilst Martinitz was still lying and rolling about, two shots were fired on him ; one of which grazed his collar, and the other discoloured the flesh of his left hand. Martinitz and Slawata took refuge in the adjoining- house of the Chief Chancellor Adalbert Popel Lobkowitz, who at that time was at Vienna, which saved him from being involved in the catastrophe. His lady caused a ladder to be lowered to them from a window, and took the kindest care of them. Martinitz feigned to be dvino^, begged his confessor to give him absolution, and tlius de- ceived his enemies. He then secretly had his beard taken VOL. T. T 274 MATTHIAS. off and his face stained, assuming the disguise of a groom. Thus attired he left the house of his heroic protectress at nightfall, went to his own house, and from thence to a lioht wao;2;on which was waiting for him at the White Mountain, and in which he escaped to Munich. The secretary, Philip Fabricius, likewise was fortunate enough to get off at once and to reach Vienna, where he brought to the Emperor the first intelligence of the catastrophe. Ferdinand 11. afterwards ennobled him under the very significant name of Baron von Hohenfall (Highfall), set- tling on him some fine estates from the confiscated pro- perty of the Bohemian rebels. Slawata was detained for some time at Prague by his wounds. His wife having gone on her knees to the Countess Thurn, he received permission to remain as a prisoner in his own house, and then for some time at the springs of Toplitz ; after having recovered his health, he was allowed to quit Bohemia likewise. Leaving all his property behind, he settled with the old Burgrave Stern- berg at Passau, where they were joined by Martinitz, who was Sternberg's son-in-law. The Grand Prior Matthew Lobkowitz fled to Di^esden. All these lords returned to Bohemia after a short exile, and were loaded with favours by Ferdinand II. Martinitz was raised in 1621, as Jaroslav " Schmeissansky " * of Martinitz, to the rank of count in the Bohemian peerage, and in 1623, in that of the Empire. He died in 1649 at the age of sixty-seven. His daughter married the out- lawed Margrave of Brandenburg, the administrator of Magdeburg, whom Pappenheim made prisoner at the taking of that city. The male line of his house growing extinct in 1789, its name and estates passed through the heiress of the last count to the family of Clam-Martinitz. * Likewise an allusion to the throwing out of the window, " Schmeissen " being an expression, now degenerated into a vulgarism, the meaning of which is " to fling." FATE OF THE " DEFENESTRATORS." 275 Slawata likewise was created a count in 1623. He died at the advanced age oF eighty, in 1652, at Vienna. Through his wife, Lucy von Neuhaus, he became pos- sessed of the extensive estates of that noble family ; but, as his own race became extinct in the male line as early as 1691, the Neuhaus property passed to the son-in-law of the last Count Slawata, Count Czernin of Chudenitz, whose descendants are still its owners. The actual perpetrators of the defenestration were Thurn, William Lobkowitz-Hassenstein, Colonels Ulric Kinsky, and Leonard Colonna von Fels, besides Albert John fSmirczicky, one of the richest landed nobles, and a rich attorney Martin Frilhwein. Khevenhuller does not fail to point out that all the authors of this outrage came to an untimely end. Four of them died rather suddenly, and Friihwein especially. He was arrested in 1621, and, a short time before the day of bloody retribution in Prague, threw himself into the same ditch into which he had before helped to fling the Imperial councillors ; and, although the heiffht from which he fell was much less than that from the council-room, he was killed on the spot. Smirczicky, "a lord with a yearly income of 300,000 florins, and without any debts," was already dead six months after the defenestration. At the siege of Pilsen, a cannon- ball falling near him, and the loose soil flying into his face, he was so frightened, that he fell into a high fever, of which he died, leaving his name and his property to his '' laughing heirs." Smirczicky's death took place in Prague, 18th of No- vember, 1618. There was, however, a report alluded to by the "Rhenish Antiquary" (published by Baron Stram- berg, Coblenz, 1844), that the "high fever" had had a very good reason, and by no means the futile one, which we have given from Khevenhiiller. " The laughing heirs " xvere the Imperial treasury and the new Catholic " Chain of Nobles " of Austria. After T 2 276 MATTHIAS. the battle of the White Mountain all the colossal Smirczicky property icas confiscated. Wallenstein, whose mother was a Smirczicky*, then acquired Gitschin, which now belongs to the Trautmannsdorfs. The surviving heiress, Baroness Slawata, was forced to emigrate, and went to live with the Landgravine Amalia of Cassel, who had formerly been engaged to her brother. Colonel Ulric Kinsky also died a sudden death in 1619, during the Austrian campaign ; and likewise Colonel Colonna von Fels, in the Bohemian campaign of 1620. Henry Matthias Count Thurn got off with being exiled ; as after the battle of the White Mountain he fled with Frederic, the Elector Palatine and the elected King of the Bohemians, to Holland, he lost all his estates. He passed through all the vicissitudes of the war, during which he served the Bohemian cause both as a soldier and as a diplomatist. In the latter capacity he went to Venice, to Constantinople, to Copenhagen, and to Stock- * Smirczicky left two sisters, one of wliom married Henry Slawata, who professed the Calvinist religion. This lady, Margaret Salome Smirczicky, had an elder sister Elizabeth Catharine, whom her father had, for some suspicion or other, kept for twelve years imprisoned at a castle. Many con- sidered her innocent, but her own sister had, from interested motives, most strongly opposed her being set at liberty. At the death of the brother, Slawata came into possession of all the estates of the family, and also, the guardianship of the imprisoned lady. The condition of the latter, however, had been changed in the meanwhile. A neighbouring Bohemian noble, Otto von Wartenberg, scaled the walls of the castle in which she was confined, and at once married her. Wartenberg was a Lutheran, which induced the tenants to acknowledge him, the husband of the elder heiress, as the right- ful owner. A law-suit ensued, in which Wartenberg, however, did not plead. In the meanwhile the Calvinist "Palatinate" king came to the country. As Wartenberg now surrendered, he was arrested, and the estates adjudged to the Calvinist Slawata. Wartenberg's wife was at that time at Gitschin, which afterwards belonged to Wallenstein. When Slawata, at the end of 1619, came thither, with the seven royal commissaries and a retinue of sixty persons, to take possession of the estates, the heroic lady blew up the castle; whereby all her maids, the garrison of the castle, and the royal commissaries, were kiVed on the spot. Her corpse was afterwards found, with the head and face burnt and all her bones broken. COUNT MATTHIAS THUKN. 277 holm. In 1630, he landed with Gustavua Adolphus in Germany; and he died in 1641 (having retired, after the battle of Nordlingen, in 1634, to Sweden), at the age of seventy-three, at Pernau, in the Swedish province of Livonia. He came to Prague once more after the battle of Breitenfeld, in 1631 ; but he found his wife gone, and never saw her again after his flight from Prague in 1620. His only son he lost in the Prussian war of 1628. His grandsons remained in Sweden. William Lobkowitz- Hassenstein, who had accepted from King Frederic the office of high steward (Landhofmeister), but who after the taking of Prague remained behind, and acted as mediator between the Bohemians and the Emperor's government, was included in the wholesale capital convictions of 1621 ; but escaped with imprisonment for life, his estates being given to Count Maximilian Trautmannsdorf. The throwing out of the window, the defenestratio Pra- ffensis, was the signal for the Thirty Years' War; the second and most sanguinary, which was waged under the pretence of religion, but in truth for very worldly, and even basely worldly, interests. The war of the Hussites was just as fanatical, but it was purer. Both wars began in Prague ; the Thirty Years' War also ended there. Immediately after the defenestration Count Thurn rode through the streets of Prague, exhorting the people to be quiet. The castle was occupied by parliamentary troops; the public officers were sworn in, on the authority of the Estates ; a committee of thirty directors was appointed for carrying on the government ; and Count Thurn received his commission as lieutenant-general and commander-in- chief of the army to be raised. The first step of the Bohemians was the expulsion of the Jesuits. Three towns only remained true to the Emperor, Pilsen, Bud- weis, and Krummau. T 3 278 MATTHIAS. 3. DOWNFALL OF CARDINAL CLESEL. — DEATH OF MATTHIAS. When the news of the catastrophe of Prague reached Vienna, the old worn-out gouty Emperor Matthias was for making concessions ; in which opinion he was joined by Cardinal Clesel, who for the last six years had been his chief of the cabinet, all-powerful premier and confessor. It was said that the Hussites had once made the whole of Germany and Hungary tremble, how should the Bo- hemians now be conquered, who were supported by the Union and by all their Protestant brethren in Europe ? The Archduke Ferdinand (of Gratz) was so much the more determined in his opposition to leniency. He wrote to the Emperor, " That God Himself had ordained the Bohemian troubles, in order that the chief pretext of the rebels, that they did everything for the sake of religion, might be defeated. Under this pretext they had hitherto only laboured to rob their sovereign of all his rights, revenues, and subjects. If authority was of God, then the conduct of these subjects must be of the Devil ; and he considered that nothing now remained but to let the matter be decided by the sword." Ferdinand did not allow the irresolution of the Emperor to interfere with his levies for the army. On the contrary, he came to an understanding with the legate of the Pope, with the Spanish ambassador Count Ognade, and with the court aristocracy, to remove, by a sudden and determined blow, the plebeian, the baker's son. Cardinal Clesel, from about the person of the Emperor. A rifle-shot which had been aimed at the cardinal's head at Pressburg, during the Hungarian Diet, had missed. King Ferdinand and Maximilian, the brother of the Emperor, were aware of Clesel's having said, " that the archduke and Ferdinand were neither of them of any use at Vienna." They CARDINAL CLESEL'S EXPULSION. 279 accordingly paid to the proud prelate — who, since he had been made a cardinal, claimed all the honours due to a crowned head — a visit, in order to oblige him, according to the existing rules of etiquette, to call on them in return. The old cardinal, lulled into security by Maximilian, had not the least foreboding of the storm which \vas gathering over his head. He came at two o'clock in the afternoon, on the 20th July, 1618, with the apostolic nuncio, who, having just called on him, accompanied him to the Im- perial castle; and he went up with his suite to the apartments of Ferdinand, to whom he wished to pay his visit in return. On the staircase, he was received by the chamberlain Von Stein, who apologised in the name of the king ; his Majesty, as he said, being prevented by slight indisposition from coming to meet the prelate. Ferdi- nand, however, was closeted in an inner room with Arch- duke Maximilian and the Spanish ambassador. When the cardinal entered the reception-room, he found the chamberlain Seyfried von Breuner, who, instead of an- nouncing him, told him " that the whole House of Austria, in agreement with his Holiness the Pope and his Catholic Majesty, had determined, on account of the cardinal's perverse government, and on account of the offences enumerated in a warrant herewith handed to him, not to allow him to remain any longer in Vienna. Wherefore he had to take off his cardinal's hat and cloak, put on the black hat and cloth mantle, in readiness for him, and to follow without delay the colonels then present. Count Dampierre, Rombald Collalto, and Ernst Montecuculi." A violent altercation ensued. Count Dampierre said to the cardinal, " You graceless, wicked knave ! your evil doings can no longer be endured; if you will not yield quietly, Ave will teach you differently." At last Clesel submitted to his fate. The colonels led the prelate through a long, narrow, secret passage out of the castle to the " Bastion ; " and from thence, tlu'ough the T 4 280 MATTHIAS. fortifications, out by the Scotch Gate (Schotten Thor), There he was placed with Breuner and a Scotchman in a covered carriage drawn by six horses. Some way off two hundred cuirassiers of Dampierre were waiting, and relays of horses were in readiness at all the stages. Thus Cle- sel was carried through Styria to Archduke Maximilian's castle of Ambrass near Innsbruck, where, being every day sumptuously served on silver, he was waited upon as a prince, but at the same time kept in close confinement as a prisoner of state. After the death of Matthias only, he was allowed to reside at the Benedictine Abbey of Geor- genberg. In 1622, the Pope reclaimed him to be trans- ferred to the Castle of St. Angelo, where the Holy Father visited him in person; and in 1623, his innocence was acknowledged by the Emperor Ferdinand IL, who the year after, through Prince Eggenberg, invited him to return to Austria. Clesel, however, did not at that time enter upon it, but wrote to Maximilian of Bavaria : " The journey to court is not advisable. I am not fit for such rule ; I should relapse into the old offence. I cannot bear to hear of it, and still less wish to see it. I am so far fi-om their ways, that I do not understand their fundamental principles. I am too old to learn — intelligenti pauca." Three years later, the old prelate after all came back from Rome. In January, 1627, he made his entry into Vienna among the ringing of all the bells. After his return to his see, he preached twice more. He died in his seventy-eighth year, at Neustadt, 8th of September, 1630, and was buried in the cathedral of St. Stephen at Vienna. Clesel, even after his restoration, pronounced against the harsh measures of Ferdinand, by which "the Protestant nobles, and even the richest of them, were driven to emigration, the money drawn from the country, trade and commerce ruined, and yet the Acatholics not made Catholics." He was for a middle course, — " not to allow the Protestant lords free exercise of religion and schools, but to keep them in the THE EMPEROli'S RESENTMENT. 281 country; the children would then be obliged to become Catholics again." During the last three years of his stay at Vienna, he wns attached to that party in the court which was hostile to Wallenstein. He was indeed one of the principal enemies of the great general, whose dismissal he still lived to see. Immediately after the removal of the cardinal, the Do- minican prior Hiittner, who was waiting for him in an outer room, was summoned before Ferdinand, and ordered to give up the keys of the chests where Clesel's papers and treasure were kept. There were found in the latter 400,000 ducats in ready cash alone, which strangely con- trasted with the financial distress of the court. The car- dinal's money was at once declared fair prize; and very likely the desire to lay hold of it had not had a little weight in deciding his fate. When all was over, the two archdukes appeared at the bed of the invalid Emperor, telling him what had hap- pened, and putting in his hands an information against " the man who had abused his confidence, and whom they had been obliged to put out of the way of doing any more harm." Matthias, tormented by the gout, was quite flushed with amazement, pressed the coverlet of his bed to his mouth, but did not speak one word. He would fain have given orders for arresting Ferdinand and Maximilian, or at least their principal advisers Eggenbcrg and Stadion ; but he dared not to do it, and he had no one with him in whom he might trust. He therefore submitted ; increased his bodyguard ; and had his chamber more carefully bolted. As soon as he could say it, he expressed himself that he felt much more hurt by Clesel's captivity than by the Bohemian outrage. He at once dispatched a courier to the Pope ; but the archdukes kept his messenger back until their own had got a start of him. Ferdinand reso- lutely declared that he would rather resign his two crowns of Hungary and Bohemia than allow the cardinal to be 282 MATTHIAS. restored. He, however, offered '* to throw himself at the feet of his Imperial Majesty, and to undertake in Clesel's place the presidency of the privy council ; but to submit every matter before deciding on it to his Majesty's most gracious pleasure." The Empress, whom the archdukes apprised of the event through her chief chamberlain Maxi- milian Trautmannsdorf, was greatly agitated on hearing it, and bluntly declared to them, " that she saw very plainly that her husband and lord was living too long for them ; and that they were already tired of waiting." She died some months after, on the 14th of December, 1618, at the age of thirty-two ; and Matthias followed her on the 20th of March, 1619. His death, like that of his brother Rodolph, was quite sudden, overtaking him in the morning, at seven, in his bed; *' whilst," as Khevenhliller writes, "he was just going to raise himself to take his usual cup of capon broth." They still administered to him extreme unction ; but he never was conscious again. A great sen- sation was caused by the fulfilment of Keppler's prognostic of seven Ms, drawn for the year 1619 : " 'M.agnus Mowar- cha M.undi M.edio M.ense M.artio ^lorietur.''^ Matthias died almost under the same melancholy cir- cumstances which he had himself brought about for his brother Rodolph,— " deserted by everybody," as the Saxon resident stated, " there being very few in his antechamber at the ordinary hour of attendance, whereas in the king's (Ferdinand) apartments there is such a crowd that one can scarcely move." The Elector of Saxony had some time before proposed to the Elector Archbishop of Cologne the question, " Whether the Emperor could still be considered as sui compos ? " About one month previous to Clesel's overthrow, Fer- dinand had been crowned with the crown of St. Stephen of Hungary. Very inauspicious omens happened on that occasion. The tower where the crown was kept having been struck by lightning, a link of the diadem got loose at ' terdinand's accession. 283 the coronation, and the belt of the royal sword broke. Ferdinand took his oath on the Hungarian Capitulation which, in the point of religion, he as little intended to keep as he did the Bohemian. He was now master of all the Austrian lands of the House of Habsburg ; and he soon made the world feel that he was so. As he trusted no Austrian, the chief command of the army was given to two foreign officers, Boucquoy and Dampierre, commanders of Walloon regiments and pupils of the Spaniard Spinola. Count Charles Longueval de Boucquoy, a native of Hainault, was called by his con- temporaries the Netherlandish Hercules. Having been employed at the Archduke Albert's court in Brussels, he entered the service of the Emperor Matthias in 1614, and was, according to Khevenhilller, looked upon by the Bohemians with great jealousy. His second in command was Count Henry Duval de Dampierre, the same Avho arrested Clesel. Ferdinand sent for troops from the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy. The times of Charles V. came back again, when foreign soldiers were employed to crush the religious liberty of Germany. 284 FERDINAND II. CHAPTER VII. FERDINAND II. 1619—1637. 1. PERSONAL NOTICES OF THE EMPEROR. — THE THREE STEINS (stones), the THREE BERGS (mOUNTS), AND THE DORP (thorp).* No Austrian ruler has entered upon the government of the hereditary possessions of his house under greater diffi- culties than did Ferdinand II. Whereas Charles V. on his birth found a world full of happiness and magnificence open before him, the career of Ferdinand II. lay through a world full of misery and danger. And yet he raised once more, and for the last time, the crown of the Ccesars to be the most dreaded in the world. Ferdinand was born at Gratz in 1578. His father was Charles, the youngest son of the Emperor Ferdinand I. and founder of the Styrian line; a Tyrolese offshoot of which became extinct in 1665, whilst the main branch sur- vived in the male line until 1740, and, through the de- scendants of Maria Theresa, to the present day. Ferdi- nand's mother was Maria, daughter of the magnificent Duke Albert V. of Bavaria. There had been some negotiations on the subject of a marriage between his father and Queen * This will be explained in the context. HIS EDUCATION AND FIKST MARRIAGE. 285 Elizabeth of England ; but Ferdinand I. would not allow his son to go to London, on which the queen insisted as the prime condition of the possible, although not very probable, success of the affiiir. Her deeply rooted aversion to matrimony she expressed on that occasion in very strong terms to the envoy of Duke Christopher of Wiirtemberg, Ahasuerus Alinga, whom his master had sent, in 1564, to London to bring about " that marriao;e so desirable for an auspicious union of the two churches." The very in^ teresting conversations between Elizabeth and the envoy are given in the fourth volume of Spittler's " Historical Magazine," and are also reprinted in one of Hormayr'a last annuals. Ferdinand's first education was superintended by Cathe- rine Countess Montfort, of the family of the Augsburg Fuggers, who had been mistress of the robes to his mother. His chief governor was Jacob Baron von Attems, " an experienced, godly, and fine cavalier," as Khevenhiiller calls him. The family of Attems was of common origin with that of the Montforts. He was succeeded in this office by Balthazar Baron Schrattenbach, a Styrian. In 1590, at the age of twelve, Ferdinand entered the Jesuit University of Ingolstadt ; in the same year, he lost his father. In 1595, at the age of seventeen, he undertook the government of Styria ; in 1598, he began to organise the movement of the counter-reformation, which he carried out with the most persevering tenacity. In 1600, he married Maria, daughter of the zealous Papist Duke Wil- liam of Bavaria, the founder of the Jesuit College at Munich. Ferdinand on his accession in 1619 had already completed his forty-second year. He was corpulent, of low stature, but of a strong and excellent constitution. He was very temperate both in eating and drinking, and regularly went to bed at ten and rose at four. The prominent charac- teristic of hia disposition was his devotion to the Koman 286 FERDINAND II. churcli, in whose most uncompromising spirit he had been nurtured from his early youth. What Philip II. had been for Spain, Ferdinand 11. wished to be for Germany. "^Better a desert than a coun- try full of heretics,'^ he once said to Clesel, and the maxim remained his motto for life. He was the most faithful disciple of the Church of Rome, whose priests, especially the aristocratic Spaniards among them, were for him the mouthpiece of God. His own confessor, with due praise, states of him, that Ferdinand had feared no one so much as he did the priests, whom he looked upon and venerated as something altogether superhuman. He is reported to have once said, in as many words, that, if he met a priest and an angel at the same time, he would render honour to the priest first. This, however, only applied to the highly bred Spanish priests, who were ever ready to rage with fire and sword against the heretics ; whereas, on the other hand, with all his Catholic zeal, he scrupled not to trample under foot another more tolerant low-born priest, although that priest was a cardinal : — it was to Ferdinand, and to him alone, that Clesel owed his downfall. From the ter- rible vow which Ferdinand, egged on by the reverend fathers his instructors, made in his youth to the Virgin of Loretto, he never swerved in the whole course of his life. Ferdinand heard every day two masses in the Imperial Chapel, and on Sunday, besides a mass in church, a German and an Italian sermon, and vespers in the afternoon ; he never missed kneeling before the crucifix at matins in Ad- vent, and at vespers in Lent ; he regularly, before and after Easter, attended all the processions and pilgrimages on foot and bareheaded. He would frequently take his meals at the monasteries of the Jesuits, Capuchins, Dominicans, and Carmelites ; often also he would minister as an acolyte at mass, or toll the bell at the Hermitage of Neustadt for vespers. He was the first to found, for the church service, the celebrated Vienna Chapel, which in his time consisted ll HIS RELIGIOUS FANATICISM. 287 of eighty instrumental musicians and singers. From him dates the custom of the Emperors publicly joining in the Corpus Christi procession at Vienna ; which was done originally to prevent, by the Imperial presence, the fights which used to occur on that occasion between the two religious parties. And ever since 1682, the Emperors on that day have joined the procession, taper in hand. From him likewise dates the procession to Hernals, the estate of the Jorgers, " where the Catholic doctrine had first been ■profaned by a Lutheran sermon^ In 1632, the Capuchin Convent was completed, which had been begun under Matthias, and where henceforth the Emperors were to be buried ; his second wife, Eleonora of Mantua, having built, in 1627, the Loretto Chapel in the Church of the Augustines, in which the hearts of the Emperors were to be entombed. In 1622, Ferdinand received the Carmelites, and In 1626, the Barnabites ; in 1630, the barefooted Augustines came to Vienna, and a new church was built for the Dominicans; in 1633, even from the distant Montserrat, Benedictines, the so-called "Black Spaniards," were sent for. Ferdinand was a thoroughly monkish ruler. For the Jesuits he built a magnificent church and college, the church being consecrated in 1631. The Jesuits ruled him with absolute sway, constantly keeping near him, and never letting him out of their sight. " A couple of them," as the Saxon resident wrote as early as October, 1618, before Ferdinand's accession to the Imperial throne, "were always to be met with In his antechamber ; nay, they had such free access to him as to be admitted even at midnlfrht to his bedside as often as they chose to send in their names." Fathers William Lamormain* and John AVein- * William Lamormain, of the Society of Jesus, was a native of Luxem- burg. He died at Vienna on the 22nd of Februaiy, 1648. He was said to have made upwards of 100,000 converts to the Roman Church. 288 FERDINAND II. gartner had him completely ia their power, and led hun just as their order wished. But Ferdinand was strong by his blind obstinacy, and by the very narrow-mindedness and fanatical impetuosity of his bigotry. His system — which he carried out with the most unbending pertinacity of a soul emancipated by religi- ous zealotry from every scruple — was, to bear adversity with the patience of a never-changing hatred against his heretical foes; and, whenever fortune favoured him, unmercifully and ruthlessly to let them feel his power. Every mis- fortune which befel Ferdinand — generally owing to his own fault, to his want of truth and faith — was in this system set down as a passing chastisement of the Lord, whose Inscrutable and irresistible will was ever to be sub- mitted to in humility and obedience. Ferdinand was the implacable enemy of the Protestants in Bohemia and Germany. The revenge on them being the task which he set to himself through life, he only abided the first glimmer of success and prosperity to try and annihilate the enemy, who, as the Imperial disciple of the Jesuits conceived, was also the enemy of God. Ferdinand, in his petrified relialous conviction, said once, in imitation of Luther, to Ehrenrelch von Saurau, the speaker of the Protestant As- sembly of Estates, " If my work Is not of God, I shall not accomplish it. I will stake on it all earthly greatness, and life itself." The rulers of the first Habsburg dynasty, from Maxi- milian I. down to Matthias, — not even excepting Maxi- milian II., the best of the old line, — had every one of them been given to all the excesses of illegitimate amours. The new Styrian dynasty began differently ; debauchery having debilitated the stock, Its usual consequence, devoteeism, made itself manifest in Ferdinand 11. Ferdinand was surrounded exclusively with ecclesiastics and women ; the latter, however, belonging all to his own family. ' The allurements of gallantry were no temptation to him ; he entirely lived for his own family and for his HIS WANT OF WARLIKE COURAGE. 289 priests, who held sole possession of his ear and his heart. His mother and his wife, the two Marias of Bavaria, both of them most virtuous matrons and excellent mothers, were likewise only blind tools in the hands of the Jesuits. Ferdinand, the Imperial devotee, was engaged in war during the whole of the eighteen years of his reign. At first, it was forced upon him by the necessity of making head against his nobility — that Protestant " Chain of Nobles" who were exasperated against him, not by mere religious, but much more strongly by political reasons. At a later period, after the battle of the White Mountain, and when Wallenstein and Tilly had crushed, with arms in hand, the sympathies which Germany had shown for the cause of the Austrians and Bohemians, that necessity existed no longer ; but the second, the Papist " Chain of Nobles," pushed Ferdinand on, and he forbore making a fair peace with the conquered party. Yet, although the whole of Ferdinand's reign was re- sounding with the clank of arms, he in his own person was anything but a warrior. Once only, in the Turkish war of 1600, he had allowed himself to be persuaded to present himself before the army in the camp near Kanischa in Hungary. On that occasion, Ferdinand, a young man of not more than twenty-two, made his will before setting out in stately attire from Gratz to take the field. But a band of plundering Spahis, and the dust of a herd of bullocks and swine driven towards the camp, having spread a sudden panic, Ferdinand with the whole of his army in- gloriously ran away ; and it was not until he had crossed the river Mur into his own country of Styria, that Adam Trautmannsdorf succeeded in stopping his flight. Since then, Ferdinand contented himself with the trophies of the chase, — which, besides music and religious exercises, formed his principal occupation ; and with the deliberations and the plots of the peaceful cabinet. It cannot be denied that Ferdinand, after his own fashion and in his own way VOL. T. u 290 FERDINAND II. of thinking, not only was a sagacious and clever sovereign, but that he also understood how to gather round him a circle of able and intelligent councillors. Ferdinand spoke Latin and Italian very fluently. All the transactions of the high diplomacy were at that time still carried on in Latin, which was also the official language of the Hungarians. The Italian, French, and Spanish ambassadors at court were addressed in Italian. It was even used at the reception of the Turkish ambassadors, to whom an interpreter translated from it. Ferdinand did not speak either French or Spanish. His son Ferdinand III., however, was conversant with the latter language ; he addressed the Infanta, when he went to meet her at Som- mering in 1631, in her own mother-tongue. Of the councillors of Ferdinand there are to be men- tioned in the foremost rank his six favourites, the " three noble (precious) Stones" (Steine), and the "three high Mounts " (Berge). The three Steins were the Bohemian Wallen stein, and the two Moravians Liechtenstein and Dietrichstein ; the three Bergs, Eggenberg, a Styrian, and the parvenus Questenberg and Werdenberg, the former a Bohemian, and the latter an Italian. Liechtenstein, Dietrichstein, Wallenstein, and Eggenberg were raised by Ferdinand to the rank of princes of the Empire. Charles von Liechtenstein, formerly lord chamberlain and privy councillor to the Emperor Rodolph II., was first raised by the Emperor Matthias when still king of Hun- gary, in 1608, to the rank of prince; in that country, in 1612, he was invested with the Silesian duchy of Troppau ; in 1621, Ferdinand raised him to the rank of a prince of the Empire, and bestowed upon him in 1623 the Silesian duchy of Jiigerndorf, confiscated from the Margrave of Brandenburg. Both those duchies are still in the possession of the family. Charles, the first prince, the Papist son of an ultra- zealously Protestant HIS COUNCILLORS. 291 father, died in 1627 at Prague as one of the most strenu- ous patrons of the Jesuits. The Eggenbergs were originally bankers like the Me- dicis, the Fuggers, and our own Kothschilds. Ulric and Balthazar Eggenberg were masters of the mint under the Emperor Frederic III., and used to negotiate his loans for him. But when Balthazar, after many unpaid old loans, refused further credit, Frederic sent him in chains to the keep of the castle of Gratz, and there extorted a new loan from him, for the easier repayment of which Eggen- berg disappeared in his dungeon in 1493, and was never heard of again. One century later (in 1598), the family was ennobled by Rodolph II. Hans Ulric Eggenberg, the minister of Ferdinand II., was born in 1568. He had been in Ferdinand's service ever since 1597, rising from one office to the other, until in 1619 we find him accompanying his master to his election as Emperor at Frankfort. In the same year he received the Golden Fleece; and in 1621, he became director of the Imperial privy council. It was he who in the following year fetched home Ferdinand's second wife, Eleonora Gonzaga of Mantua; acting as the Emperor's proxy at the marriage ceremony. A grant of Ferdinand, dated 6th of December, 1622, bestowed upon him the vast lordship of Krummau in Southern Bohemia ; which, com- prehending at that time no less than 311 towns and villages, was, in 1628, raised into a duchy, Eggenberg having been made a prince of the Empire by diploma, dated from Ra- tisbon, of the 31st of August, 1623. As Wallenstein was all powerful in the army, thus was Eggenberg in the cabinet. The prince being nearly always confined to his bed by the gout and by disorders of the stomach, Ferdinand generally caused the privy council to be assembled at his favourite's house; to which, although situated at some distance, a secret passage led from the Hofburg. V 2 292 FERDINAND II. Eggenberg's downfal happened in the same year as that of Wallenstein, whom he survived only by eight months, dying, at the age of sixty-six, at Laibach, 18th of October, 1634. His family grew extinct in 1717, when the duchy of Krummau passed to the Schwarzenbergs, forming the nucleus of the colossal landed property of that princely house. The third favourite of Ferdinand, who rose highest to fall deepest of all, was the celebrated Wallenstein. He was raised to the rank of prince about the same time as his friend Eggenberg, by diploma dated from Ratisbon on tlie 7th of September, 1623. The fourth of the favourites raised to the princely dignity was Francis Von Dietrichstein, Cardinal Bishop of Olmiitz, whose diploma is dated from Vienna on the 15th of February, 1624. He maintained himself in Ferdinand's favour and amassed vast landed property in Moravia and Bohemia, which, with the princely coronet, passed, at his death in 1636, to his nephew Maximilian, from whom the present family are descended. The two other confidential advisers of Ferdinand had risen from the rank of clerks in the government offices, the one to that of baron, the other to that of count. Baron Gerard von Questenberg was the Emperor's factotum in the Aulic war-office; Count John Baptist Werdenberg held the office of Aulic Chancellor of Austria. Both being friends of Wallenstein, were sent to him to Mem- mingen with the delicate commission of inducing him to lay down his command. Their families have long been extinct. Besides the three " Bergs^'' and the three " Steins,''^ we have to mention a '^ Doi-f'^ (Thorp), — the honest Maximi- lian von Trautmannsdorf, who stood highest in Ferdi- nand's favour after Eggenberg. Maximilian von Trautmannsdorf, the celebrated diplo- matist of the Peace of Westphalia, was, like Eggenberg, a COUNT THURN BEFORE VIENNA. 293 Styrian, but from an old and distinguished family. As early as in the battle of the Marchfield against Ottocar of Bohemia, fourteen Trautmannsdorfs ; and at Miihldorf, against the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, twenty of them, had fought and died for the House of Habsburg. Maximilian Trautmannsdorf first entered his public career under Ro- dolph II., in the Imperial Aulic Council, the nursery of Austria's diplomatists ; afterwards he was lord chamberlain to the empress of Matthias, and still under the reign of this emperor a privy councillor. Ferdinand II. entrusted him with the most important diplomatic missions during the course of the Thirty Years' War. He was raised to the dignity of count in 1623 ; in 1635, he concluded the Peace of Prague ; and rose to be prime minister under Ferdinand III., in the account of Avhose reign we shall have occasion to say more of him. 2. COUNT THURN BEFORE VIENNA. — '' NANDY," THONRADTEL, AND DAMPIERRE'S CUIRASSIERS IN THE HOFBURG. — ELECTION OF FERDINAND AS EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS, AND OF THE ELECTOR PALATINE FREDERIC AS KING OF BOHEMIA. Bohemia after the " Defenestratio Pragensis" was as good as lost to Ferdinand. Boucquoy and Dampierre, the generals who marched against Prague, were defeated by the malcontents. Pilsen, the first town after Prague which remained loyal, was, as early as the 21st of Novem- ber, 1618, taken by the bastard Count Ernest of Mansfeld, who brought to the Bohemians a succour of 4000 men. In December, Count Matthias Thurn, the head of the Bo- hemian malcontents, stood before Vienna. The Emperor Matthias was then still living. Zeidler, the resident minister of the Elector of Saxony at Vienna, reported about this time to his court that the Emperor had said : *' I understand that my Bohemians now even walk into my country;" to which Ferdinand had rephed: "They V 3 294 FERDINAND II. are getting rather too near us." Matthias perhaps was not at all sorry in his heart that the man who harassed him was now harassed in his turn. The feeling at Vienna and throughout Austria, where by far the greater majority of the people then professed the Protestant religion, was favourable to the Bohemians. Nevertheless, Thurn, without attacking the capital, marched oiF to Moravia. Here all the people declared for him. After having concluded at Briinn his union with the Mo- ravian Estates, and thereby secured his retreat, he again appeared before Vienna in the spring of 1619. Both times he had advanced, scarcely meeting with any resistance, into the very heart of Austria. When being asked what he was .coming for, he answered, " Wherever he met with any enrolled troops he disbanded them. There must in future be equality between Papists and Protestants ; the Papists must not, as they had done until then, float on the top like a drop of oil on water." Whilst Thurn was for the second time standing before Vienna, the Emperor Matthias died, on the 20th March, 1619. Ferdinand II. stayed in the Hofburg at Vienna. He was without soldiers and without money. His councillors urged him to go to the Tyrol, where he would be nearer Bavaria. Even the Jesuits advised him to yield, or at least to temporise — " he who gained time gained life." But Ferdinand remained in Vienna and did not yield ; on the contrary, he more signally than ever displayed all the peculiar tenacity of his inmost nature. His situation was terrible : the question was already mooted whether he ought not to be shut up in a monastery after the example of the Merovingian and Carolingian empei'ors, so that his children might be brought up in the religion of the country — the Protestant faith. The Archduke Leopold of Tyrol, brother of Ferdi- nand II., was governor of Vienna. By way of precaution, and because a secret understanding between the citizens of HIS DISTRESS AND WONDERFUL RESCUE. 295 Vienna and Count Thurn was apprehended, the archduke ordered all the townspeople to deliver up their arms. The head-quarters of Count Thurn were close before the city in the suburb near the gate called Stubenthor, which opens on the road to Hungary ; his cavalry was at Ebersdorf, his infantry at Herrnals. The Bohenn.ian sol- diers of the regiment of Tiefenbach, which at that time was commanded by Thurn, were to take the " New Gate" (Neuthor); a petard was fixed to it, but the plan of the surprise was betrayed. Thurn's batteries, pitched near the parish church of St. Ulric, poured their shot into the windows of the Imperial residence, the Hof burg. It was the terrible night of the 6th of June, 1619. Ferdi- nand was obliged to retire from his own apartments. He prayed against his enemies. In the Imperial Scliatz Kam- mer (Museum of Curiosities) at Vienna the crucifix is still preserved before which he was kneeling when, as he as- serted, he heard the words called out to him, " Ferdinande non te deseram." This passive tenacity and submission to an inevitable fate was what Ferdinand conceived to be trusting in God's providence. That terrible night was soon followed by a terrible day, the 11th of June. Sixteenmembersof the Austrian Estates appeared before him in the desolate Hof burg.* Their leader was Andrew Thonradtel, Lord of Ebergassing. They brought with them a document containing the arti- cles of a union of the Austrian Estates with the Bohemians, to which Ferdinand was required to give his assent. Ferdinand refused to sign the paper. Then Andrew Thonradtel, seizing him by the buttons of his doublet, called out to him, " Nandel (Nandy, dim. of Ferdinand), give in, thou must sign." In this critical moment there happened one of those for- * The noble names of Tschernembl, Hager, Jorger, Polheim, and others arc mentioned. V 4 29G FERDINAND II. tunate and almost miraculously opportune incidents, of which several examples are to be found in the history of Austria. Trumpets resounded in the courtyard. They announced the arrival of 500 Dampierre cuirassiers, whom Boucquoy had sent down the Danube from Krems to Vienna, and who, having just now entered the city by the unguarded " Watergate," were making their appearance at the Hofburg. These cuirassiers saved Ferdinand. Fear and their own evil conscience drove the craven Pro- testant lords from the Hofburg and from Vienna, to seek refuge in the Bohemian camp. On this, the Papist citizens took courage again, and, together with the students of the University, armed themselves for Ferdinand. In Bohemia, the fortune of war had in the meanwhile veered round a little. Boucquoy, having re-entered that kino;dom from Krems, and at last defeated Mansfeld near Budweis, threatened Prague again. This induced Thurn to raise the siege of Vienna on the 12th of June, 1619. Thurn had twice lost the opportunity of taking the Austrian capital by a sudden attack, and thereby speedily putting an end to the war. It was just as it had hap- pened in the case of the League at Smalkalde and the Emperor Charles V. ; the [)assive tenacity of the Imperial family of Austria got the better of the sluggish, unwieldy, irresolute action of the malcontents. But no Elector Maurice now came to the rescue. Thurn, however, appeared before Vienna a third time, having allied himself (2nd November, 1619) with the great Prince Bethlen Gabor of Transylvania, who had taken pos- session of tlie Hungarian capital and of the sacred crown of St. Stephen. But the two allies mistrusted one another. Bethlen Gabor was not inaccessible to the bait held out to him by Austria, of a match with the Princess Maria Anna, Ferdinand's daughter, at that time in her eleventh year ; who at a much later period (in 1635) was married to the old Elector Maximilian of Bavaria. Bethlen Gabor con- HIS CORONATION AT FRANKFORT. 297 eluded a truce ; and Thurn, after disposing his array in winter-quarters, went to Prague to enjoy the gaieties of the Carnival. During the time intervening between Thurn's second hasty departure from before Vienna and his third cam- paign in conjunction with Bethlen Gabor, Ferdinand de- termined upon a bold and most resolute step. He went in all haste by Munich to Frankfort, to be elected Emperor of the Romans. He entered Frankfort, in his travelling carriage on the 28th of July, 1619, just as a mutiny of a troop of horse was at its height ; and four weeks after he was Emperor. It was not a little remarkable that all the six electors, even the Protestant ones — not excepting the Elector Palatine — gave him their votes. But, whilst Ferdinand was elected at Frankfort, he was deposed at Prague. The Bohemians, although they had elected and crowned Ferdinand in 1617, now ousted him " as the arch-enemy of the liberty of conscience, and as a slave of Spain and of the Jesuits ;" he was charged with having obtained the Bohemian crown by fraudulent means, and with having betrayed the country by secret treaties to Spain. The Bohemian aristocracy were certainly never very sparing in their incriminations and calumnies ; whereas they themselves revolved the most grasping and adventurous plans in their own proud hearts. Kheven- hiiller has recorded some such examples for the benefit of posterity. In May, 1619, Prince Christian of Anhalt, the general of the Evangelical Union, was sent by the Bohe- mians to the great Duke Emanuel of Savoy, to offer to him the crown of Bohemia, and even the Imperial crown ; and from thence to the Signory of Venice. The Nobilis advised the Bohemians " to make a stout defence, and, if it could not be done otherwise, to govern themselves in forma reipuhlicce, with the help of the Dutch and of Venice." The Venetians at the same time sunrsrested the expedient of conquering the wealthy city of Genoa {the 298 FERDINAND II. rival of Venice), " to defray the expenses of the war." The Prince of Anhalt, whose papers after the battle of the White Mountain fell into the hands of Ferdinand, had spoken of his Majesty in the following terms : " QuHl seroit mieux de prendre plutost un Turc, avoir un diahle a la suc- cession de Vempire, que de la laisser venir au Ferdinand^ But the Bohemian aristocracy had no wish for a re- public after the pattern of Holland or Venice. All that they wanted was a king ; that is to say, a king of their own making, such as the Poles had. And now the event happened which raised the exaspera- tion between the three religious parties in Germany to its highest pitch — the election of the Calvinist Elector Pala- tine Frederic as King of Bohemia. Papists and Luthe- rans, however widely they might differ in other respects, agreed most cordially in their intense hatred against Cal- vinism ; the Lutherans, in their blind fonatical zeal, were fond of quoting the saying of the bluff old Doctor of Wit- tenberg, — "that the Calvinists were seven times worse than the Papists." The Elector Palatine Frederic was a prince of not more than twenty-three; a handsome and stately, and, as is proved by his own letters, jovial, gallant, and magnificent lord, who through all his life evinced a remarkable ease of mind and temper. His education had been a French one ; he had passed his youth at Sedan at the house of one of his kins- men, the great Huguenot chief, Duke of Bouillon ; and after- wards resided with his maternal uncle Maurice of Orange, the eon of the liberator of the Netherlands. At the death of his father, he was not more than fourteen ; and he was mar- ried before he had completed his eventeenth year, to the Lady Elizabeth, the daughter of James I. of England. The fable convenue of this princess having induced her husband to accept the perilous Bohemian crown by saying to him, " Rather starve under a kingly crown than revel under an elector's cap," has been effectually refuted by the # THE "PALATINAL" KING OF BOHEMIA. 299 letters of her granddaughter, the well-known Duchess of Orleans (mother of the Regent). Elizabeth had not the slightest inkling of the election, and all her thoughts at that time turned only upon comedies, ballets, and novels. The principal adviser of Frederic in this momentous step was his uncle the Prince of Orange, the arch-enemy of the House of Ilabsburg, especially of its Spanish branch. The ambitious and very influential court preacher of the Elector, Scultetus, may likewise have done his best in re- presenting to Frederic that, in accepting of the Bohemian crown, he was only fulfilling a duty of religion which he owed to his Calvinist brethren. Frederic's election at Prague took place on the 26th of August, 1618, two days before that of Ferdinand as Em- peror of the Romans. Frederic, on being informed of the Bohemians having deposed Ferdinand, exclaimed, "I should never have thought that this would come to pass. Heavens I if the Bohemians elected me, what should I do?" He was at that time at Amberg in the Upper Palatinate, which is contiguous to Bohemia. There he I'eceived the news of his own election on the very day on which Ferdinand was elected at Frankfort. Frederic, surprised and confused, was long wavering whether he should accept or refuse the offer. Only when the Bohemians sent the third letter, in which they pressed for a categorical answer, he accepted the crown, which he knew very well how to wear with great stateliness, but not to maintain with honour. He said, in the canting style then in vogue, Avhich Scultetus was most anxious to keep up at his court, *' that he considered it as an especial dispensation of the Almighty, and that therefore he accepted." Frederic had delayed so long, that it was October before he set out for Bohemia. Seeing him depart, his mother, the clever Princess Juliana, of the House of Orange, said, with gloomy foreboding : " Alas ! here goes the Palatinate to Bohemia ! " But the easy king-elect was in high spirits. 300 FERDINAND II. He relied on his uncle the Prince of Orange ; on his father- in-law James I. of England; on the assistance promised by the Austrians ; on the German cities, which had engaged to supply him with money ; on the Huguenots in France ; on the Grisons, who had pledged themselves to stop the Spaniards on their march if they should advance by Swit- zerland from Milan and Naples ; but most of all he relied, with his light youthful heart, on the chapter of accidents. On the 31st of October, 1619, Frederic made his en- trance into the ancient city of Prague with its hundred towers and steeples, which were so soon again to be sur- mounted by the double -barred papal cross. He was on horseback, splendidly attired, riding on a magnificent charger ; the electress followed in a gorgeous carriage with her eldest son, escorted by Prince Christian of An- halt and his son ; moreover, by Duke Magnus of Wiir- temberg, and by the Silesian Duke of Miinsterberg and the other noble lieges of the crown of Bohemia. Before the gate, a band of 400 Bohemians was drawn up wearing old armour from the times of Ziska, and on their standards the chalice ; and, as a contemporary account relates, " when the elector passed, they made such a noise and clatter with their Bohemian ear-picks (iron clubs), that he could not help laughing." Four days after his entrance, Frederic and his English princess were crowned at Prague as King and Queen of Bohemia, 4th of November, 1619. 3. FREDERIC'S HOPELESS SITUATION AT PRAGUE. — THE BOHEMIAN ARISTOCRACY, AND CALVINIST OUTRAGES. The new " Palatinal King " of Bohemia, as the Papists called him, was a lost man even before the battle of the White Mountain near Prague snatched the crown from from his head. He was deserted and betrayed on all sides — even by his master of the mint, a partisan of Austria, who " EVANGELICAL UNION " AND " CATHOLIC LEAGUE." 301 in coining the dollars of the new king had the D, of the D. G. in the legend reversed ; which was considered as a very ominous sign that Frederic was not king by the " Grace of God." Frederic was the head of the " Evangelical Union " concluded in 1 608 at the convent of Ahausen near the Odenwald, — at that tiaie belonging to Anspach, — by the fol- lowing Protestant princes : the Elector Palatine, the Duke of Palatine Neuburg, the princes of Brandenburg- Ans- pach and Baireuth, the Duke of Wiirtemberg, and the princes of Baden-Durlach and of Anhalt. In 1609, they were joined by the Elector of Brandenburg and by the Duke of Hesse-Cassel. Against this Evangelical Union the " Catholic League " was formed at Wiirzburg, in 1610, by the following Papist potentates: the Duke of Bavaria; the Bishops of Augsburg, Strasburg, Con- stance, Ratisbon, and Passau ; the Provost of Elwangen; and the Abbot of Kempten. The three spiritual Elec- tors of Mayence, Cologne, and Treves joined it some time after. The life and soul of this Catholic league were the Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, an intimate friend of the Emperor's, and Lothair Metternich, Elector of Treves, one of the greatest statesmen among the spiritual princes whom Germany has ever seen. IMaximilian, Fre- deric's cousin, was therefore a most determined and bitter opponent of the Elector Palatine ; and that not only from political and religious motives, but also for the very reason of his being his cousin, to whom he grudged more than to any other prince this accession of honour and power. On the other hand, the Elector of Saxony John George, the head of the Lutherans, turned round upon the new king on account of his belonging to the much-hated body of the Calvinists ; and thus the chiefs both of the Ultramontane and of the Lutheran parties worked for the Emperor, whose interest was not a little furthered by these splits among the princely aristocracy of Germany. 302 FERDINAND II. Frederic, immediately after his coronation, had hastened to Nuremberg to consult with the assembled princes of the Evangelical Union. Thither also Ferdinand sent his privy councillor Count Hans George of Hohenzollern- Hechingen to advocate the Imperial interest. But the princes, pleading the clauses of the Royal Letter (Majes- tatsbrief) of the Emperor Rodolph II., in virtue of which Bohemia was included in the religious peace of the Holy Roman Empire, " treated the attack on the Bohemians as an infringement of the privileges of the Protestants as guaranteed by the constitution of the Empire ; and declared that they on their side considered themselves justified to repel it by force." Yet this energetic resolution was not followed by ener- getic action. The upshot of all was, that the members of the Union entered into a correspondence with Maximilian of Bavaria, the head of the Catholic League, and that many months were wasted in deliberations and negotiations. Maximilian having, in the beginning of the year 1620, re- ceived the Emperor's promise of the electoral palatinal dionity, took the field with his army of 32,000 men, very good troops, and encamped near Dillingen on the Danube. The army of the Union stood near Ulm. But, although the two hosts were thus only a few days' march distant from one another, no fighting ensued. King Louis XIII. of France, son-in-law of Philip III. of Spain, sent envoys, the Duke of Angouleme, and MM. de Bethune, and d'Au- bespine, both to the Catholic League and to the Evan- gelical Union, in order to bring about a reconciliation be- tween the two hostile parties. The result was, that the Evangelical Union allowed themselves to be persuaded by these French envoys to " take unto itself the salutare ;" concluding at Ulm, on the 3rd of July, 1620, a peace with the " League," and disgracefully leaving the " Palatinal King " to his fate. The peace of Ulm was scarcely concluded when enemies THE NEW king's HOPELESS CONDITION. 303 on all sides began to attack the King of Bohemia. Maxi- milian of Bavaria set out in the very month of July for Austria, which was in a state of insurrection against Ferdinand. It was the peasants who had risen again, and who even had slain Duke Ernst Louis of Saxe-Lauenburg merely because, as he was hastening down the Danube to the assistance of the Emperor, he expressed himself, " That they should be quite merry ; they would soon have other guests." Maximilian speedily brought the peasants and the whole country to submission ; having accomplished which, and having on the 8th September joined Count Boucquoy, the Imperial general, near Neupolla, in Lower Austria, he entered Bohemia. As early as in August 25,000 Spanish auxiliaries set out from the Low Countries, under the command of Marchese Ambrosio Spinola and Don Gonzalez Fernandez de Cordova. After passing the Rhine near Coblenz, they overran the Rhenish Palatinate, Frede- ric's hereditary country, which was guaranteed to him by the Evangelical Union ; and the innocent Protestant in- habitants had cruelly to suffer for the delinquency of their absent lord. In addition to this, the Lutheran Elector of Saxony, Frederic's third enemy, allied himself in March with the two spiritual Electors of Mayence and Cologne against the Calvinist Elector Palatine, and for the Em- peror; and invaded in September, with 15,000 men, Lusatia, at that time incorporated with Bohemia. King James I. of England, Frederic's own father-in-law, turned from him like the rest. About Christmas, in 1619, Prince Rupert, who afterwards served in the army of Charles I. during the Civil War, was born. The courier whom Frederic sent to his father-in-law to announce this birth, brought back some promises of money and men. But, as James at that time was negotiating with Spain about a marriage between the Prince of Wales and a Spanish In- fanta, his own interest made him withdraw his help from Frederic, and truckle to the Emperor. The relations between 304 FERDINAND II. James and the Bohemian King may be judged from the following letters of Frederic to his wife. On the 25th February, 1620, he writes to her from Breslau: " Le roy s'amuse toujours a disputer de la justice de la cause, et semble qu'il voudroit bien etre quitte du Baron Achatius*, et le laisser retourner a mains vuides;" and from Rockesan, shortly before the encounter with the Elector of Bavaria and Tilly, he writes (dated 10th of October, 1620) : " Pour les ambassadeurs d'Angleterre j'ay fait commander qu'on les re9oive le plus honorablement, qu'on pourra ; mais que je suis nullement resolu de les defrayer, car les grandes depenses que j'ay, m'en peuvent bien excuser, et aussi le roy ne defraye pas le mien. Je m'etonne s'ils me donneront le litre, autreraent je leur baise les mains de leur lettres." But Frederic's worst enemy was himself. He did not understand the art of insinuating himself with the Bohemian aristocracy, who were offended by his bestowing his con- fidence exclusively on his German generals, ministers, and courtiers. Nor did he understand how to make himself respected, and the Bohemian lords soon got the better of him. These aristocrats, who, in speaking of their enemies, used to style the Emperor the blind cur, the Elector Maximilian the Bavarian hog, and John George of Saxony the perjured, drunken clod ; had but one thing at heart in their rebellion, — the maintenance of their feudal rights, liberties, and privileges. They wanted, as a minister of Frederic expresses it, " a king, as it were, only for show, and one who would make their crooked things straight." This went so far, that when the king once summoned the Bohemian lords for a meeting of the council early in the morning, some of the principal men among them uncere- moniously declared, " That they could not make their appearance as early as seven in the morning ; a man must have his rest after having done his work, and the thing * Frederic's envoy in London. BREAKING OF IMAGES. 305 was contrary to their privileges." The towns, on the other hand, as the same minister states, were to be oppressed and made subservient to the nobles ; besides which, they were to bear all the burdens. As to the officers of the army, Frederic had neither the energy nor the tact for keeping them in their place ; they enriched themselves, whilst their king remained poor. About the latter end of September, 1620, the arrears due to the soldiery amounted to no less than four millions and a half of florins. The men therefore plundered and robbed to get their own, which caused great distress and many bitter complaints among the people. It was of no avail that Frederic and his wife, to court popularity, showed them- selves exceedingly aftable and })ulite, accompanying noble funerals on foot, and dancing at the balls of the citizens ; they only lost respect by their condescension. Frederic also gave offence to the Bohemians by introducing the French language at court, and by displaying all the frivolity of French manners and fashions. But the most serious stumblin 3 406 FERDINAND II. to bestow on them Imperial favours which would he sure to gladden their hearts. This last assurance was a very plain allusion to the estates which were intended to be confiscated from the rich victim, and which certainly again supplied the Emperor with means for maintaining and rewarding the army. Wallenstein was only made aware of the true state of affairs when Gallas, Aldringer, Maradas, Piccolomini, and Colloredo, after the 13 th of February, issued orders in which they forbade the colonels serving under them to obey in future any commands either of Wallenstein or of Illo and Terzka. The first of these orders was issued and signed by Gallas. The commanders, as has been stated before, received orders to march upon Prague, to secure the capital of Bohemia to Ferdinand. Wallenstein now had, on the 20th of February, a solemn declaration prepared, to which he himself and twenty-nine generals put their signatures, setting forth that the former ho\i&'' meant nothing whatever against the Emperor or against religion.'''' He likewise ordered the troops to Prague, appointing the 24th of Feb- ruary as the day of their arrival on the White Mountain. As late as on the 21st of February, he sent colonels Mohr- wald and Brenner to the Emperor, to whom he offered to retire to Hamburg or Dantzig, only stipulating " that he should be allowed to retain his duchies." But those duchies were the "very thing which they also coveted at Vienna. On the 20th of February, Ferdinand had ah'eady issued to Gallas, Colloredo, and De Suys the warrants for the confiscation of the propei'ty and estates of Wallenstein, Terzka, and Illo, ''for the especial use and benefit of the army.^' Wallenstein was fully aware of this; he therefore deter- mined to guard against any emergency except the one which he did not and could not foresee, as it was bevond all WALLENSTEIN AND DUKE BERNARD. 407 calculation. Being himself placed in imminent peril, and forced to pi'ovidc for his own safety, he now, and fur the first time seriously, applied to the Duke Bernard of Weimar, who had his head-quarters at Ratisbon. He called upon him, to advance as speedily as possible with his troops through the Upper Palatinate to the Bohemian frontier. The rendezvous should be at Eger, whither also Arnim, the Saxon general, who was posted at Zwickau and had likewise been summoned by Wallenstein, was to march his troops. Duke Bernard, however, remembering " how many a man the Friedliinder had thrown overboard," could not make up his mind. He called out, " He who does not believe in God cannot be trusted by man." And yet there was not a moment to be lost. Wallenstein was apprised of the deser- tion of one general after the other. Aldringer sent from Frauenberg, excusing himself under the plea of illness ; Gallas, his brother-in-law, who was with him, did not re- turn either ; and Colonel Diodati had absconded from Pilsen without leave from the generalissimo. Thirteen couriers hurried to Ratisbon and back. At last, Duke Bernard got his troops in marching order, but with the greatest caution. The negotiations between the two parties were carried on by Duke Francis Albert of Saxe-Lauenburg ; who on the second day after the catastrophe, was going to return from Weiden to the Upper Palatinate, but was captured by a stratagem of the Croats, at Tirschenreit near Eger. The lieutenant who commanded them, pretended to be sent by Terzka to escort Duke Francis Albert to Eger ; and the latter, falling into the snare, let out in tlie conversation Avith him, " tJiat Wallenstein, with Filsen, Gross-Glogau, Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and Landsherg, which looidd he left to him, might consider himself perfectly safe ; 6000 Swedes and 4000 Saxons were marching on Eger.'" Wallenstein's original plan, which, according to Khcvcn- hulier, had been to betake himself to Prague, was baffled l)y the desertion of the generals ; he was also obliged to D I) 4 408 FERDINAND II. give up another plan, of marching to Zittau, in order to be nearer to his Bohemian possessions and to Silesia. After these disappointments, he, as has been stated before, fixed upon Eger as the place for the Swedes to join him. Wallenstein left Pilsen for Eger, a fortress on the Bo- hemian frontier, on the 22nd of February, 1634, about ten o'clock in the morning. The first night, he slept at Mies, which belonged to his faithful Field-marshal Christian lUo.* Wallenstein was accompanied by Field-marshal lllo, and by his own brother-in-law Adam Terzka. There were with them five troops of Terzka's cuirassiers ; five troops of the Old Saxon regiment of horse, which deserted on the road and went to Prague ; and two hundred men of the Old Saxon foot regiment under Duke Julius Henry of Saxe- Lauenburg. William Kinsky, Terzka's brother-in-law, was likewise in his suite. From Pilsen, Wallenstein, on account of his gout, made the journey in a litter carried by two horses. Before reaching his first night -quarters, he was joined by the man who became his murderer. Colonel Walter Butler, with eight companies of dragoons. Butler was a native of Ireland and a Papist. Wallen- stein had sent to him from Pilsen to Kladrup, where the colonel was stationed, the order, under pain of death, to march with his regiment to Prague. This arrangement, which left the passes leading from the Upper Palatinate to Bohemia undefended, had roused Butler's suspicions. He therefore wrote to Gallas that, " if Arnim should ap- proach Eger within two leagues, he (Butler) would either take prisoner or kill the traitor (Wallenstein)." As, on his march from Kladrup to Prague, he fell in with Wallenstein before Mies, he received a new order to follow the generalissimo to Eger ; and he had with his dragoons * nio, whose name is likewise spelled How and also Illau, was a Bran- denburger, and son-in-law to the president of the Aulic Council of the Empire, Count Vratislaw von FUrstenbcrg. COLONEL WALTER BUTLER, 409 to march before Wallensteln's litter, together with Terzka's cuirassiers and the Old Saxons. At the first night-quarters at Mies, and at the second, on the 23rd of February, at Plan, Butler received orders, contrary to the usage of war, to remain with the colours and standards within the town, whilst the soldiers were encamped outside the walls. This precaution increased Butler's suspicions. He sent from Plan his chaplain, Patrick Taaffc, whose report is still extant, to Gallas or PiccolominI, "wherever they were to be found ;" entrusting him with a few lines in English, written by his own hand, and with the verbal message, " That he marched with Wallenstein only from compulsion ; but that perhaps he was forced on In this way by a special providence of God to achieve some particular heroic deecl^ Father Taaffe, with this message, went from Plan to Pilsen, where PiccolominI, immediately after Wal- lensteln's departure, had established himself by stratagem. Gallas, on the 22nd of February, stood at Linz. Maradas on that day was at Frauenberg, which belonged to him ; but advanced from thence to Horasdiowitz, which Piccolo- mini had left. Maradas had secured Budwels and Tabor, and despatched Lieutenant-field-marshal Baron de Suys to Prague, to maintain the troops there in the allegiance of the Emperor. Aldrlnger was at Vienna. During the last day's march between Plan and Eger, Wallenstein sent for Butler to his litter, apologised for not having until then done more for him, and promised him two regiments, besides a present of 200,000 crowns. Wal- lenstein made his entrance into Eger on the 24th of Feb- ruary, in the afternoon, between four and five o'clock. Again was Butler quartered with the standards within the town, and his di'agoons encamped outside, in the open field. Wallenstein took up his quarters in the market- place, at the house of the burgomaster Pachhalbel* ; Tcrzka * There are descendants of this Bohemian family still living in Prussia, under the name of Pachelbl Gehag. One of them was, in 1850, ranger of cue of the royal parks (Hofjiigernicistcr), in Berlin. 410 • FERDINAND II. and Kinsky, with tlieir wives, put up at the outbuildings of the same house. The post of commandant of Eger was held by John Gordon, a Scotch Calvinist and a lieutenant-colonel in Terzka's infantry regiment. To this officer, whom Wal- lenstein, after his arrival only, had promoted to the rank of colonel, Butler made the first overtures. The two then took into their confidence Walter Leslie, major in Terzka's regiment, whom Gordon had sent as far as Plan to meet the duke. Leslie, like Gordon, was a Scotchman and a Calvinist ; both of them turned Papists only after the catastrophe. These three Islanders, Butler, Gordon, and Leslie, became the instruments of the vindictive plans which had been hatched by the Italians and Spaniards in the cabinet of Vienna. This energetic triumvirate, during the night of the 24th, pledged themselves at the citadel, the quarters of the commandant, by a formal oath taken on the drawn sword, " to make away with Wallenstein." It was arranged that Gordon should invite the generals for the following evening to a carnival banquet in the citadel, at which the deed should be perpetrated. Everything made it expedient to hasten ; lUo having ah'eady tri- umphantly announced the news that, on the day after, the Swedes would enter the town of Eger. On Saturday, the 25th of February, 1634, Count Terzka gave to the officers a banquet at noon. In the evening, at six o'clock, he drove in a coach, with Kinsky, Illo, and Captain Neumann, — the writer of the bond of Pilsen, — to Gordon's carnival supper in the citadel. The guests sat down to table and merrily enjoyed their meat and their wine. The banquet drawing to a close, the tipper gate of the town was opened, as previously ar- ranged by Gordon and Leslie ; and a hundred men of But- ler's Irish dragoons, and as many German soldiers were admitted into the town to reinforce the guard-post in the citadel, which was now closed. In the meanwhile, the MUEDER OF WALLENSTEIN's FRIENDS. 411 dessert had been put on the table. Now a letter was brought to the Commandant Gordon. It was a forged de- spatch, pretended to be written by the Electoral Saxon cabinet, and to have been intercepted. It was stated in it, that the elector disapproved of Wallenstein's inten- tion of deserting from the Emperor; and that he was resolved to give up Wallenstein to Ferdinand if he got him in his power. After having read the despatch, Gor- don handed it to Illo, who with the others pooh-poohed it ; a discussion arose, and, as if to be able to speak more freely, the servants were sent out of the hall to a distant room, where their supper was laid, and the door then locked upon them. Now the murderers were alone with their victims. As soon as the servants were got rid of, there stepped from the two rooms adjoining the dining-hall the Italian Major Geraldino, and the two Irish Captains Deveroux and Macdonald, with thirty-six dragoons, most of them Irish, with not one German among them. Geraldino called aloud : " Viva la casa cV Austria ! " Dcvereux : " Wer ist gut Kaiserlich ? " (Who is the Emperor's friend ?) To which Butler, Gordon, and Leslie quickly answered, ** Vivat Ferdinandus ! Vivat Ferdinandus !" and, seizing each his sword, and a candlestick from the table, they ranged themselves in a group on the side of the wall. The Irish now stepped up to the table and overturned it. Kinsky was dispatched first ; then, after a short resistance, Illo. Terzka, who had succeeded in recovering his sword, placed himself in a corner, where he made a desperate de- fence. His buff jerkin warded off several thrusts and cuts, so that the drao;oons thouiiht him "frozen" (of charmed life) ; at last he too fell, stabbed by daggers in the face, and was then dispatched with the butt-ends of the muskets. Captain Neumann had escaped wounded into the outer part of the house, and was stabbed there. Tlic bodies of the victims were given up to the dragoons ; who stripped them to the shirt. 412 TERDINAND II. It was about nine o'clock. Gordon caused the dinlno;- hall to be locked, and remained with the guard in the citadel; Leslie went to the principal guard-post in the market-place ; and Butler surrounded Wallenstein's quar- ters. It was a dark, boisterous night ; the wind roared, and a drizzling rain pattered against the windows. Captain Walter Devereux, of Butler's regiment, with twelve of his men, now set out on his bloody errand to the duke. The sentinels, supposing he was coming to make a report, allowed him to pass. Wallenstein had taken a bath, and was going to lie down. In the anteroom Devereux, met the valet; who had just carried in to his master his usual evening cup, a tankard of beer on a golden salver. The man requested Devereux not to make a noise, as the duke had retired to rest. A few minutes before, his astrologer Giovanni Battista Seni had left him, who is said to have warned him by the stars even in the last moment. According to Khevenhliller, they could not agree in their calculations, the astroloojer havino; found in his that the hour of danger had not yet arrived ; and the duke, on the other hand, that it was past. The latter also prophesied that Seni would be imprisoned, which really came true. Wal- lenstein had been startled by the noise of the soldiers being drawn up in the market-place; and he had heard the shrieks of the Countesses Kinsky and Terzka in the outhouse, who had already been informed of their husbands' murder. This caused him to go to the window to inquire of the sentinel what all this meant. Devereux asked of the valet the key of the duke's room ; on being refused, he forced the door, shouting, "Rebels! rebels!" and entered with his fellow-assassins. Wallenstein was standing in his shirt, leaning against a table. " You are to die, rogue ! " Deve- reux called out to him. As Wallenstein turned towards the window to call for help, Devereux rushed up to him with a partisan ; and then, without uttering a word, with MURDER OF WALLENSTEIN. 413 outspread arms, the great man received tlic deadly weapon in his breast. " And," writes Wasseuberg, the author of the German Floras, in his own quaint style, " his belly gave a crack just as if a musket had been fired off; and, whilst thus breathing out his soul, he spouted from his mouth a great smoke, just as if he were all burning within. Such was the end of the German Catiline! " Immediately after the murder, the papers of the duke were locked up, Butler taking the keys witli him. Wallen- stein's master of the household, and his two chamberlains, who the day before had told Leslie that Wallenstcin had proposed to them to give them their honourable discharge, lest they might get into trouble, received a guard for their security. The poor astrologer Seni, on the other hand, was imprisoned, as his master had prophesied ; nor did the soldiers I'elease him until he had disgorged 4,000 crowns, given him by Wallcnstein the day before his death. The body of the Finedlander, wrapped up in a scarlet carpet, which had lain under his bed, was conveyed in Leslie's coach to the citadel. Here it lay, with the four other corpses, in the court-yard, during the whole of Sunday. On Monday, they w^ere all sent to Illo's castle at Mies, and there buried, except Neumann ; who, on account of his violent, abusive language at the last banquet, viz., " that he hoped soon to wash his hands in the blood of the House of Austria," was dug in under the gallows. Wallenstein's coffin having been made too short, and the limbs having already stiffened, they were obliged to break liis legs to get him into it. His widow, two years after, caused his remains to be transferred to the Carthusian convent of Walditz near Gitschin. There General I>:incr, in 1639, had his tomb opened, and his skull and his right arm taken off and sent as a trophy to Sweden. In 1785, Count Vincent of Waldstein received permission to re- move the cofhn of his illustrious ancestor to the family- 414 FERDINAND II. vault of the "Wallenstein's at Miinchengratz, a market- town in the canton of Bunzlau, not far from Frledland. Terzka's and Kinsky's widows were conveyed with the captive Duke Francis Albert of Saxe-Lauenburg from Eger by way of Pilsen to Wienerisch-Neustadt. The Countess Kinsky, Terzka's sister, was initiated in all the plans of the duke. Maximiliana Terzka, of the house of Harrach, had not been privy to anything, and was a loyal Imperialist. The chequered career of the duke of Lauen- burg, who at first had been a field-marshal in the Swedish, and then in the Saxon service, ended by his holding the same rank and commission in the army of the Emperor. He was killed in 1642, near Schweidnitz. Everywhere the commandants reputed to be faithful to Wallenstein, were imprisoned or executed. Thus Piccolo- mini put the commandant of Pilsen to death ; and Colloredo arrested, at Ohlau, Hans Ulric Schafgotsch, the general commanding in Silesia, and had him conducted to Glatz, as the " Frankfort Relations* " have it, " in ignominious captivity, without sword, pistols, or spurs." Wallenstein's downfall was the very counterpart of that of the Guises in 1588. Just as they lorded it over Henry III., who was thrown into the shade by them ; so Wallenstein did with regard to Ferdinand II. Appre- hension for his own safety and avarice, but by no means a conscientious care for upholding the public law, prompted the Emperor to destroy the Friedlander. Silent as he had been all his life, so he was also in takinsr leave of it. With the profoundest mystery, he locked up in his innermost heart the plans and designs of his ardent ambition ; and an impenetrable veil remains spread over his life and his death. It probably will ever be doubtful how far Wallenstein was guilty or not. The controversy between Count Mailath in Vienna, who has taken the * One of the earliest German gazettes. CONTROVERSY ABOUT WALLENSTETN. 415 part of the Emperor, and Professor Forsterin Berlin, who represents Wallenstein as completely guiltless, will most likely never be settled in a satisfactory manner. There is one fact favourable to the presumption of Wallenstein's innocence, — that the court of Vienna took the trouble, by a special manifesto published in 1634, under the title of " Alberii Friedlandi perdueUionis chaos, etc." to justify the murder before the world ; but that this very apology is completely refuted by other authentic documents. Even Count Mailath was obliged to allow that this apoloo-y was nearly In every point resting on false statements. Count Mailath and Baron von Aretin have, on the other hand, tried to prove that Ferdinand 11. had only intended to depose Wallenstein and to drive him from Bohemia, but not to have him killed. This is completely disproved by what Eggenberg let out to the Bavarian resident minister liichel ; and likewise by the Report of the Elector of jMay- ence from Vienna, which Forster has communicated in the third volume of Wallenstein's Letters. It is of the 23rd of February, tioo days before his death, and the following passage occurs in it : " Piccolomini, Gallas, and Isolani have orders to deliver up Wallenstein either living or dead, and the result is hourly expected." The document con- taining the written order to Gallas for apprehending AVal- lenstein, " dead or alive,^'' was undoubtedly drawn up a considerable time after the deed, and dated back, to give by this *' sententia post mortem," to the Italian murderers protection from the revenge of the German party in the army ; as immediately on the news of Wallenstein's death a terrible mutiny broke out at Prague. The Germans loudly maintained that Wallenstein was no traitor, but that he had fallen by the intrigues of the Italians. One duel after the other was fought ; the German officers challenged the Italians, stabbed them or were stabbed. At last, whole battalions of Germans and Italians fought each other for the quarrel about Wallenstein's guilt or innocence ; aud 416 FERDINAND II. order was only restored In the army by means of tlie most ruthless severity. It certainly was most perfidious and undignified In the Emperor, still to write to Wallenstein confidential letters, after having already Issued the mandate which, insidiously drivino" him from the command, sealed his ruin. Wallen- stein, whom the Emperor himself had voluntarily invested with unlimited power, was after all the man who had saved his monarchy for him. *' There is this to he said of the House of Austria, they have no gratitude ;" once wrote (27th of August, 1718) the shrewd Duchess of Orleans, the mother of the regent. " The history of Austria is the history of ingratitude,^^ says Hormayr ; and no one ever knew it better : for he was for a quarter of a century director of the Archives of Vienna, and was thoroughly aware of all the secret windings of Habsburg policy. No evidence whatever of the treacherous plans Imputed to Wallenstein, was found In his papers ; but, on the other hand, It Is to be borne In mind that Gallas, on the 28tli of February, 1634, wrote to the Emperor from Pilsen that Wallenstein was said to have burned, on the day before the catastrophe, 600 letters. The Marchese di Grana writes more distinctly from Pilsen (3rd of March, 1634): "The Lady Countess Terzka has In the last upset burned all the papers of her husband ; as also others of Wallenstela and Kinsky have been destroyed in the same way." Some officers of the Austrian Etat Major discovered. In 1801, by mere chance, the papers of Wallenstein's field-chancellery In a garret of the town-hall of Budweis In Bohemia ; where they had very likely been brought In the year 1634, for the purpose of the trial going on there against Wal- lenstein's partisans, and had In the course of time been forgotten and stowed away. These Wallenstelniana, published in the Oestreichiche Militairische Zeitschrift (Austrian Military Journal), throw a very doubtful light on the Informers and murderers. But even more than this was WALLENSTEIN'S PROrERTr CONFlSCxVrED. 417 brought to light. The Prussian Aullc Councillor Forstcr made the most important discovery of all. The papers and documents found by him, in September, 1828, in the archives of the War Office at Vienna afford the most un- deniable evidence of Wallenstein's having fallen the victim of Italian-Spanish-Jesuit intrigues, and of the imputa- tions of Maximilian of Bavaria; a victim of uno-rateful informers, most of whom the FriedUinder had raised from the dust to honour and wealth. These documents were carefully kept secret for 200 years ; Captain Aigncr, the keeper of those archives, who had long known them, con- cealed them even from his junior colleagues, so that after his death they were completely forgotten. This very cir- cumstance paved the way for their being discovered by a stranger. The whole state of the question may be sum- med up in a few words: there is not one tittle of positive evidence against Wallcnstein in all that has been found, either at Vienna; or in the royal archives of Sweden ; or in the papers of Arnim, which are kept at Boitzcnburg, the family seat of the Arnims. The estates of the murdered man were all confiscated. Wallenstein's landed property alone was estimated at 50,000,000 florins. Most of it fell to the Emperor, espe- cially the duchies of Sagan and of Glogau. The former was sold, in 1646, by Ferdinand III. — it is true, for a mere nominal sum — to the Bohemian Prince Lobkowitz ; from whose family it passed, in 1785, to the dukes of Biron- Courland. Glogau remained the property of the Emperor until the Silesian wars. The Generals Gallas, Piccolomini, Colloredo, Aldringcr, Isolani, Ticfenbach, Morzin ; and the Imi)crial councillors INIaximilian Trautmannsdorf, Count Henry Schlick, and jNIarchese Caretto di Grana ; as also the three managers of the murder of Wallcnstein and his friends, received a rich share of the booty. Count Matthias Gallas had Wallenstein's lordships of VOL. I. E E 418 FERDINAND II. Friedland and Reichenberg in Bohemia, of the value of 300,000 florins, besides Kinsky's house and garden at Prague, and several mines. The family of Gallas became extinct in 1757, and the estates are now in the possession of the Carinthian family Clam-Gallas. Ottavio Piccolomini, Count of Arra^on, next to Gallas the principal mover of Wallenstein's ruin, and the most perfidious of his betrayers, was one of the worst men of a most worthless set; and he had earned an infamous notoriety before. To him the richest prizes were awarded. The Emperor Ferdinand II. gave to this treacherous sneak, Avho had for his crest a tortoise, with the expressive motto "Gradatim,"'^ Terzka's lordship of Nachod in Bohemia; an estate of the value of not less than 600,000 florins. In 1654, he was raised by Ferdinand III. to the dignity of a prince of the Empire. Besides this, the crown of Spain restored to him the duchy of Amalfi in Naples, which Ills ancestors had possessed. Prince Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi, died in Vienna, in 1656, at the age of fifty-seven, without any direct heir. The family honours passed to his brother ^neas, in whose line they descended. The German branch became extinct in the year 1757; after ■which the Italian branch of the PIccolominis sold the Bohemian estates. Nachod was, in 1792, acquired by the dukes of BIron-Courland ; and from them it passed in 1843, likewise by purchase, into the family of Schaum- burg-Lippe. Kudolph, Count of Colloredo, received the Friedland lordship of Opotschno in Bohemia. The Colloredos are descended from the Swablau house of the counts of Waldsee. A branch of them settled, in the begflnninir of the fourteenth century, in FriuH, and there built the castle of Colloredo — in collorigido — on the bleak hill near Udlne. They came firist to the Imperial Court under Rodolph ir. Opotschno is to this day in the possession of the princely line of the house. I.' I THE UPSTART ALDRINGEU. 419 Count John Aklrlnger received Kinsley's beautiful lord- ship of Toplitz, at that time of the value of 195^000 florins. He was a native of Luxemburg ; one of those bold upstarts of whom so many rose during the stormy times of the Thirty Years' War. His first start in life was as servant to some gentleman, with whom he went to Paris. After- wards he was clerk to Colonel Madruzzi in Milan. From thence he entered the service of Cardinal Louis Madruzzi, Bishop of Trent, in the same capacity ; but, being ousted by some enemies, he left Trent for Innsbruck, with the resolution of taking anything that might happen to turn up. Meeting on the bridge of Innsbruck a soldier who was returning to Italy, he went with him and enlisted. His ready pen and his personal courage soon made him rise from the ranks to be a lieutenant. In 1622, Aldringer was already a colonel ; and three years after, he received from his patron, the Duke of Friedland, the important and most lucrative post of commissary-general of the army. In 1627, he was made a baron ; and in 1632, a count. He became the brother-in-law of G alias. His ruling passion, however, was avarice rather than ambition. He had con- trived so well during the wars to enrich himself by plun- der and forced contributions, that at last he had 800,000 crowns lying in the banks of Venice and Genoa. Like all low-minded ujistarts, he was mercilessly harsh to those who were under him. He was killed in 1634, before the battle of Nordlingen, at the bridge of Landshut; and it was doubt- ful whether the ball which struck him was shot by the Swedes or by his own people. His property devolved on the family of the second husband of his sister, Jerome von Clary, whose descendants received, in 1666, the patent as Counts Clary- Aldringer ; and, in 1767, the princely coronet. Toplitz is still in the possession of tliat family. Wallenstein's principal residence, Gitschin, was given to Count IMaximilian Trautmannsdorf, in whose family it still E E 2 420 TERDINAND II. is ; other rich estates of the duke fell to Count Heniy Schlick and to Count Sigismund Dietrichstein. The murderers of Wallenstein were not less richly re- warded. Colonel Butler, the principal manager of the tragedy of that night, went to Vienna ; where the Emperor received him at the Hofburg, shook hands tcith him, and bestowed a solden chain of honour on him. He was raised to the dignity of a count of the Empire ; was made an Imperial chamberlain ; and received Wallenstein's lordship of Hirschberg, besides several estates of Count Terzka's in Bohemia ; not to reckon the very large plunder which he had already appropriated at Eger. Butler died childless, leaving his property to his grand-nephew, from whom the present Counts Butler in Bavaria are descended. They sold Hirschberg, which now again belongs to the Wallen- steins ; and, having intermarried with the now extinct family of the Counts Haynhausen, they style themselves Counts Butler-Haynhausen. The most successful of the British adversaries of Wal- lenstein was Walter Leslie, who held at the time of the catastrophe the rank of major only. Butler sent him, on the very night of the muixler, with a written report to Gallas ; who in his turn dispatched him to Vienna. Thus Leslie was the first to bring the Emperor the news of the bloody deed ; at which Ferdinand, as is well known, shed tears, just as at the death of Gustavus Adolphus, and ordered 3,000 masses to be read for the soul of his murdered general. Leslie was raised to the dignity of count of the Empire, and made an Imperial chamberlain, captain of the Imperial body-guard of halberdiers, and chief of a regiment. Besides this, he received the Friedland town of Neustadt on the Mettau, in Bohemia, of the value of 200,000 florins. He married the daughter of Prince Maximilian Dietrichstein, and thereby became brother-in- law to the celebrated Montccuculi. In 1650, he was ap- KEWARD OF BUTLER, LESLIE, AND GORDON. 421 pointed field-marshal general, and received the govern- ment of Croatia, the richest one in the whole monarchy. In 1655, he was sworn a member of the Privy Council ; and in 1665, he received the highest distinction of the Ein[)irc, the Order of the Golden Fleece. He afterwards kept one of the most splendid houses in Vienna ; was sent on an embassy to Constantinople ; and died in 1627. The house of the Counts Leslie became extinct in 1802, when most of its estates devolved on the Princes Dietrichstein. The third of the conspirators. Colonel Gordon, received Wallenstein's lordship of Smidar, — which now belongs to the Colloredos, — besides some estates of Kinsky's in Bo- hemia. Captain Devereux, who had pierced AVallensteiu's breast with a partisan, received a golden chain of honour and likewise several confiscated estates in Bohemia. INIajor Geraldino was made a count. Butler, whilst still at Eger, had caused from the plunder 500 rix-dollars to be paid to each of the twelve soldiers who had struck the great blow with Devereux ; and to all the other soldiers, two ducats each. On the other hand, all the partisans of Wallenstein were outlawed. Twenty-four colonels and captains, mott of them Bohemlahs and Germans, like Mohrwald, Uhlcfcld, Wildberger, and Ilammerle, died by the hand of the liang- man at Pilsen. General Hans Ulrich Schafgotsch, of Kynast in Silesia, was beheaded at Batisbon on the 23rd of July, 1635. To his last moment, he protested his inno- cence ; the torture forced from him some vague, uncon- nected statements ; but it is expressly stated in the report to the Emperor, that nothing had been extorted from lilin concerning the main point of the treasonable plot, and what pertained thereunto. His children were given to the Jesuits at Olmiitz, to be brought up as Papl^^ts. The Emperor restored to them the confiscated estates of then- father, with the exception of one lordship— Trachenbcrg, E E 3 422 FERDINAND II. with Avhicli the flxlthfiil services of General Melchior, Count of Hatzfeld, were rewarded. The widow of Wallenstein received the news of her husband's death, at Prugg on the Leitha, in Lower Austria. " The lady," says Khevenhliller, " knew no end to her grief, and only begged for the body of her hus- band." The Bohemian lordship of Neuschloss was allowed her for her residence and jointure. Wallenstein left an only daughter, Maria Elizabeth. She married Count Rudolph Kaunitz, an ancestor of the celebrated Prince and Arch-chancellor Kaunitz. The only remainder of the colossal property of Wallenstein which his heiress had for her dowry, consisted in the two lordships of Neuschloss and Lippa, which continued in the possession of the Kaunitz family until lately, when that house became extinct. In his last will, Wallenstein appointed his cousin, the Imperial master of the horse. Count Maximilian of Waldstein, to succeed him in the entailed property. The descendants of that nobleman have still a law-suit pending since 1841 for decision by the supreme tribunal at Prague, concerning the restoration of the entailed property with- held from them. Count Christian Waldstein-Wartenberg is the plaintiff in the cause. The principal evidence in favour of Wallenstein's heirs is a passage in the charter given by Ferdinand IL, dated Vienna, 11th of May, 1627, in conferring on their ancestor the duchy of Friedland, " That in case some one or other of the Duke of Friedland's successors should be convicted of the crime of lese majesty, he or they should not, as otherwise would be directed by law, be punished with confiscation of the duchy of Fried- land or other estates ; but should suffer capital punish- ment, and the duchy and the estates devolve on the next succeeding duke or prince of Friedland." The death of Wallenstein was, under the circumstances, a most fortunate event for the House of Austria. Yet BATTLE OF NOilDLINGEN. 423 the year 1634 was marked by two other equally lucky occurrences — the taking of the important town of llatis- bon on the 26th of July, and the great victory gained by the Imperial army on the 27th of August, near Xord- Hngen in Swabia. It was won by the King of Hungary, afterwards the Emperor Ferdinand III., — at that time in his twenty-seventh year, — and by Lieutenant-general Gallas, over the Swedish Field-marshal Horn and Duke Bernard of Weimar. Horn's plan had been to wait for reinforce- ments under the Rhinegrave ; but tlie reckless ardour of Duke Bernard carried him away. The King of Hungary, on the other hand, had been joined by the Cardinal Infant of Spain, Ferdinand, a brother of Philip IV., with 10,000 men of the old excellent Spanish infantry, which the car- dinal brought up from Milan. Thus the Imperialists were 35,000 men strong ; the Swedes only 23,000, among tbem 6000 AViirtcmberg peasants gathered in a hurry. The object of the battle had been to save AViirtcmberg, and that duchy was lost with the battle. The feelings with which this event was looked upon by the Protestant I)i'inces, may be gatiiered from a letter of the clever Electress of Saxony, a Brandenburg princess, to her by no means clever husband John George I., when the Duchess-dow- ager of Wiirtemberg had applied to her for alius. The letter is dated from Dresden, 22nd of September, 1634. " It is," she writes, " a most melancholy and pitiful thing that it should have come to pass that the high potentates and princes of the Empire with their infant chiklren arc obliged to beg alms from their trusty friends. The Lord have mercy on us, but the Emperor has much to answer for before God, and I do not believe that the Almiphfij can receive him into fovour af/ain ; he has worked too much evil in his lifo." One of the consequences of the victory of Nordlingcn was that the Elector of Saxony concluded with the Km- peror the Peace of Prague in 1635, in which John George, E E 4 V" 424 FERDINAND II. for the cession of the Lusatias, gave up the cause of the Protestants, and allied himself with the Emperor against the Swedes. Puffendorf states that Hoe von Hoeneffsr, the electoral court chaplain, had been accused of having taken 10,000 crowns for inducing his master to sign that peace. Brandenburg and the other Protestant princes of Northern Germany, and in particular the Saxon dukes of the Ernes- tine line, and even Duke George of Liineburg, joined in it ; Hesse- Cassel, Wiirtemberg, and Baden-Durlach, on the other hand, remained true to Sweden. Hesse-Cassel succeeded in keeping out the Imperialist army, by which Wiirtemberg and Baden, as also Alsace and the Palatinate, were occupied. 10. DUKE BERNARD OF WEIMAR. The third act of the tragedy of the Thirty Years' War now began. In 1635, France declared war against Austria, and engaged as commander-in-chief the former generalissimo of the League of Heilbronn, Duke Bernard of Weimar, the great pupil of the great King of Sweden. Duke Bernard was the youngest of eleven sons whom the pious Princess Dorothy Maria of Kothen had, in as many successive years, borne to her husband Duke John of Weimar. The father died in 1605, when Bernard was scarcely a year old, and the mother undertook the educa- tion of the infant prince. Frederic Hortleder, the author of the large work on the Smalkalde War, became his in- structor in history. The prince went to the University of Jena ; but before he had completed his eighteenth year he went to draw his sword for the cause of the Protestants. He at first served under his elder brother William, in South Germany, where he was present at the battle of Wimpfen ; then under the Prince of Orange, in the Ne- therlands ; then, from 1625 to 1628, as colonel under the DUKE Bernard's early career. 425 King of Denmark, in Lower Saxony. Disgusted with the inglorious war under the Danish standard, he returned to the hereditary country of his family. But in 1631, he was one of the first German princes who joined Gustavus Adolphus, with whom he first met in his camp at Wcrbcn on the Elbe. The king appointed him colonel of his mounted regiment of guards. During the campaign which resulted in the battle of Breitenfeld, he was charged with the protection of Hesse. He afterwards marched with the king to the Maine and the Rhine, to Swabia and Bavaria, commanding the vanguard of the Swedish army ; his ad- vance being only checked by the stronglv-fortlfied Ehren- berger Clause, the key of the Tyrol. He was present at the attack of the Alte Veste near Nuremberg ; then went Avith the king to Saxony; and at Liitzen, decided the battle after Gustavus had fallen. The death of the king giving full scope to his ambition, he exerted himself to his utmost to get the lead in the affairs of Germany, causing thereby many a sleepless night to Oxcnstierna. Having got Oxenstierna to give him the duchy of Franconia, he set out for the Bavarian campaign; conquered, in 1633, the free Imperial town ofRatisbon; and was just negotia- ting with Wallenstein concerning a junction between them, when the latter was murdered at Eger in 1634. But in the same year, Eatisbon was lost again, and Bernard with Horn was defeated at Ncirdlingen; the first and last time in his warlike career that he was beaten in a pitched battle. South-western Germany thus being lost to him, Bernard took up a position on the ISIiddle Khine near Frankfort and Mayence, Avhilst the Swedish Field-marshal Baner, who during the battle of Nordlingen had been stationed in Bohemia, covered North-western Germany. But in 1635, Duke Bernard was obliged to cross the Rhine, and to retire to the Mouse and the :Moselle. On the 7th of December, 1635, Mayence, the last stronghold on the Rhine, capitulated. In the beginning of March, 426 FERDINAND II. 1636, Duke Bernard made his appearance in Pans, ana had, on the 10th of that month, an interview with Louis XIII. at St. Germain ; and on the same day, with Cardinal Richelieu at Rueil. After having stayed with the French for two months and a half, he returned to the head-quarters of his troops at Vezelize in Lorraine. He ■ now called himself " Generalissimo of the Crowns of Sweden and France, and of the Evangelical League." His first visit to Paris, in the spring of 1636, was followed by another in the beginning of 1637, when he stayed from the beginning of January to the end of May. In the treaty concluded by Eichelieu at St. Germain with Bernard's very clever agent at the French court, Tobias von Ponikow, as far back as on the 27th of Oc- tober, 1635; 4,000,000 livres as long as the war lasted, for the maintenance of 12,000 infantry, 6000 cavalry, and an artillery, with 600 horse, and besides, by a subsequent order of the king of the 6th of November, the revenue of the landgraviate of Alsace, had been promised to the duke. Alsace having already been partly wrested from the House of Habsburg, it was Richelieu's plan from thence to overrun the duchy of Lori-aine ; .and, moreover, to conquer the Upper Burgundian provinces from the Spanish crown. These countries being once acquired, France would have had her ascendency secured over Germany, as they formed an uninterrupted chain from the Netherlands along the north-eastern frontier of France as far as Italy. Yet this plan of Richelieu's was wholly at variance with the views of Duke Bei'nard ; whose aim, on the contrary, it was to establish Alsace as a principality for himself under the sovereignty of the German Empire, thus forming for the latter a bulwark on the Upper Rhine against France. This object he very nearly attained by his victory near Rheinfelden, on the 21st of February, 1638, where a great part of the Impe- rial generals were made prisoners. He was brought even 4 DUKE BERNARD AT BREISACH. 427 nearer the accomplishment of his purpose by the taking of the important fortress of ]5reisach (Brisac), which capitu- lated on the 7th of December, 1638, after Bernard had repulsed three attempts for its relief. Breisach being the key of the Upper Rhine, Bernard intended to make it the centre of his dominion. He hoped that, in league with England and the German Protestants, especially with Hesse-Cassel, he should be able to counteract the obnoxious tendencies of Richelieu's encroaching policy, and also to keep the Swedes in check. Austria lost with Breisach its advanced western provinces. The princes of Wurtemberg and Baden-Durlach were enabled to return from their exile at Strassburg to their own countries. On the one hand, Breisach menaced the Spaniards in their Burgundian provinces, and the Papist Duke of Lorraine in his own country, and the Catholic Swiss cantons ; on the other, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria; and, moreover, it afforded a secure base for military operations to be carried on in Swabia, Franconia, and Bavaria. Immediately after the taking of Breisach, still in De- cember, 1638, Duke Bernard set out for a winter cam- paign to conquer the South Burgundian provinces. These he intended to cede to France, with the exception of the most important fortified places; all of which, like Alsace, he claimed for himself. By the middle of Feb- ruary, 1639, the best part of the country was in his power. About this time, Duke Bernard conceived the plan of removing his head-quarters from Pontarlier to the pleasant town of Joux. Previous to his departure, a colonel gave in his honour a banquet. Tlie duke went thither in perfect health, and was brought home ill. lie was immediately taken to Joux, where he recovered in a few weeks. About the end of March, just as he was starting from Pontarlier to Alsace, a French envoy, De Lisle, came to him with despatches from Richelieu, whose paramount care was that Bernard should give up Breisach to the French. Bernard, however, gave a positive refusal, and the Cardinal 428 FERDINAND II. had to content himself with the Duke's written promise that he would guard Breisach, as well as all the other conquered places, under the sovereignty of the King of France. After this compromise was concluded, Bernard, with the princes of Wiirtemberg and Baden-Durlach, and the Hessian and Palatine envoys, went to Alsace, where he kept his Easter at Breisach. He there behaved com- pletely as the master of the country, issuing orders like a sovereign, as is proved by the still-existing documents. The distressed courts of Vienna and Madrid, foreseeing the dano;er which threatened them from Bernard, imme- diately began to negotiate with him. As the price of re- conciliation, they held out to him the promise of the hand of the daughter of Archduke Leopold of Tyrol ; besides which, a German country was to be settled on him. But Duke Bernard did not enter upon It, nor would he agree to a plan which the celebrated Landgravine-regent Amelia of Hesse-Cassel proposed to him in the beginning of 1639, through the Netherlander Wicquefort, their joint agent at Amsterdam, — to form with her the often mooted but never realised " third German party." Bernard wrote on this subject from Rheinfelden to Wicquefort (6th of June, 1639), " That the project was hatched by the Papists themselves, and was saddled with something even worse. For the foreign powers France and Sweden would be driven to desperate measures, and be forced to conclude a peace on their own account, and divide Germany hetioeen friend and foe. The experience of all treaties since the Peace of Passau had shown that 7io peace could be expected from Austria until one had forced it from herJ'^ In the beginning of June, Bernard had returned from Alsace to Upper Burgundy. At Pontarller, he was met by another French envoy, the Comte de Guebriant, whose mission ascain concerned the surrender of Breisach. Ber- nard repeated his former refusal, but remarked, " that he would never separate himself from France ; and, though DUKE Bernard's death. 429 they might drive him out by one clooi', he would return by the other." Guebriant made two more attempts to induce the duke to give a more favourable answer. As he earnestly warned the duke of the possible consequences of his re- fusal, Bernard replied : " Never fear, M. le Comtc, I know the court. It is not the first time that unftiir pro- posals have been made to me. Whenever I refused them, the ministers complimented me, and excused themselves on the plea of duty ; the Cardinal himself once told me that this was the French fashion." Thus persisting in his first resolution, he handed, on the 23rd of June, to the count a written declaration, to be expedited to the French court. This declaration caused the greatest sensation at St. Germain ; and, as Richelieu saw through Bernard's plan of making himself independent, and forming a German border- country against France, the French cabinet determined by every means to oust Bernard from his conquests. On the very same day that Bernard had delivered his written answer for the French court, he set out from Pontarlier to cross the Rhine for a new campaign. On the 3rd of July, he arrived at the fortified town of Iliinin- gen, where, on the 4thj he was suddenly seized with indis- position. He therefore went in a boat with the Swedish resident Mockel to Neuenburg, where Iiis troops were just about to cross the Rhine. The illncf^s daily increased. Tiie doctors treated him for colic, whereas his disease was a malignant raging fever; and thus, on the 18th of July, 1639, at seven in the morning, this hero in the {jrime of his life breathed his last. " It was the most unfortunate day," says Hugo Grotius; " Germany lost her finest orna- ment, and her last hoi)e, ahnost her only prince who was worthy of the name." Bernard died in the thirty-fifth year of his age, unmarried. The King of Sweden had intended to give him his niece. His only love seems to have been the Princess of Rohan, the daughter of the 430 FERDINAND II. Protestant Henry of Rohan, whose acquaintance he had made during his stay in Paris in 1636; and who was of such extraordinary beauty, that Bernard is said to have trembled on first seeing her. The King of France, how- ever, opposed such an alliance, for fear lest the Huguenots might thereby acquire too powerful a support. Another plan, mentioned by Bauer, of a union with the Landgravine Amelia of Hesse, was meant — as Rommel very correctly ob- serves — " for neither more nor less than a military alliance, in which Amelia, the mother of fourteen children, and the senior of Bernard by two years, would have brought hini as dowry 20,000 men." France, as well as Spain and Austria, were accused of having given poison to Bernard of Weimar in a plate of fish. Certain it is that letters from Switzerland, from Venice, and Milan, warned the duke to beware of Spanish poison. On the other hand, the Swedish councillor, Midler of Hamburg wrote, as far back as February, 1639, that the " Duke's life was in great danger from the envy of the great French lords." Bernard's physician Blandini, a Genevese, states, in his report of the opening of the body, that he had died of a malignant fever ; whereas he was known to have treated the duke for colic. And this physician is said actually to have absconded some days after Bernard's death. The whole body of the duke was covered with blotches ; also he himself on his sick bed gave it as his opinion that he was poisoned. Puffendorf says without dissfulse, " because he could not be induced to dance to the tune of the French, they at last administered to him some of their little messes ; upon which he died." The duke Avas buried at Breisach ; and It w^as only In 1655, seven years after the peace, that his body was re- moved to the town-church of Weimar. Bernard was a o-reat man on whom much rested, without however coming up to the standard of a first-rate statesman and general. Goethe, who had been commissioned to write a biography THE EMPEllOli'S DEATU. 431 of the hero, very wisely got out of it, as he found a great many hitches in the way. Feuquieres very hkcly had given a very correct opinion of the duke when he writes, " C'est un Prince dun grand coeur et d'un esprit mediocre, fort vaillajit, et d\ine ambition sans bornes.^^ After the death of the duke the French at once took his troops into their pay, and now occupied Brcisach on the 19th of October, 1639. Bernard in his last will, which, one hour before his death, he dictated to his chancellor lieh- linger (of an Augsburg patrician family), had expressed a wish that " one of his brothers would take the conquered countries ; " remarking at the same time, " the same can and should as much as possible insinuate himself with his Imperial Majesty and the crown of Sweden, in order that he may be so much the rather maintained in these countries. But if none of the princes our brothers should feel inclined to accept the countries, we consider it but fair that his Majesty of France should by all means have the next claim ; so, however, that both his Majesty's garrisons and ours shall be kept in them, and whenever a general peace be concluded, the countries shall be restored to the Empire" In the introduction already he had laid it down most dis- tinctly, " We wish the countries to be maintained for the empire of the German nation." 1 ] . DEATH OF FERDINAND II. — HIS FAMILY. Two years before the death of Duke Bernard of Weimar, the Emperor Ferdinand 11. had been gathered to his fathers. He died as he had lived, a devoted son of iiis church, holding in his hand a consecrated burning taper which his confessor had oflcrcd to him. His death took place on the loth of February, 1637, in the filty-ninth year of his age. Ferdinand II. had been married twice. The first time, he 432 FERDINAND 11. was wedded In 1600, at GrJitz, when still an archduke, to Maria Anna, the sister of his friend Maximilian of Bavaria. She died in 1616. His second marriage, to Eleonora Gonzaga of Mantua, took place at Innsbruck in 1622, after his accession. By his first wife he left two sons and two daughters. The sons were Ferdinand III., who succeeded him, and Leopold William. The latter, born in 1614, has become notorious as one of the richest ecclesiastical pluralists (having, as a boy of fifteen, accumulated not less than nine spiritual dignities, among which there was that of Grand- master of the Teutonic Order) ; and as the successor of Gallas, and most consistent loser of all the battles he fought. The tenth dignity with which he was invested, was a secular one ; he was for ten years, from 1646 to 1656, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, with residence at Brussels. The eleventh dignity which fell to him was that of guardian of his young nephew, the Emperor Leopold ; in which capa- city he greatly contributed to the rise of the House of Schvvarzenberg. Leopold William was a gay, easy-tempered prince, and a great patron of the fine arts ; he collected in the Nether- lands the nucleus of pictures which, combined with the gallery of Rodolph II., form the stock from which the present Imperial Gallery of Vienna has grown. He had for his court-painter the celebrated Teniers ; who purchased for his master many of the pictures from the gallery of Charles I. of England. On account of the enfeebled state of his naturally deli- cate constitution, he retired, in 1656, from Brussels to Vienna, where, after the death of his brother Ferdinand III., he undertook the guardianship of the young Emperor Leopold I. Yet, notwithstanding his drinking asses' milk, and even bathing in it, he never recovered. He died 20th of November, 1662, of the gravel. Of the two daughters of the Emperor Ferdinand II., tlie AUSTRIAN PLANS FOR CONVERTING ENGLAND. 433 eldest, Maria Anna, born in 1610, was at first intended either to marry the great Prince of Transylvania, Bethlcn Gabor, or the Prince of Wales ; at last, instead of these two Protestants, she married the very Catholic Elector of Bavaria. Bethlen Gabor married, in 1626, the sister of the great Elector of Brandenburg; and died three years after. Suffer- ing from dropsy, he put himself under the treatment of a physician who had been especially recommended to him from the court of Vienna. Six weeks after, this sreat man, bemg not more than forty-eight years of age, was in his cof- fin, after having escaped unscathed from forty-two battles. The Imperial Camarilla removed that dangerous neighbour of the Habsburg dominions by one of those Spanish- Jesuit expedients, poison and the dagger, which, down to the assassination of the French ambassadors at the Congress of Rastadt, have so often been resorted to by Austrian policy. Concerning the matrimonial project with the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles I. of England, the reverend fathers of the Society of Jesus gave a very remarkable opinion, which is recorded in Khevenhiiller. It is said in It, ** Connubium. Esther cum Ahasvero pro recreando jJopido Christi qui tot annis in Anf/Iia sub jug a servitutis Calvinis- ticcB gemuity non solum judico licere, sed summe cxpcdirc.'^ Also Prince Eggcnberg, the premier of Ferdinand IL, was favourable to the match, and wrote, in giving his opinion about it, " It is to be hoped that England would now rather be converted by Germany than by Spain ; since, in times of yore, the greater part of Germany was brought to the Christian faith by missionaries from England." These Austrian plans for converting England in the seventeenth century may be of particular interest now, inasmuch His Emineuce Cardinal JVisanan, as has recently VOL. I. F F 434 FERDINAND II. transpired, is on tlie most intimate terms with the cabinet of Vienna* Maximilian of Bavaria, when he married Maria Anna, was already sixty-two years old, whilst she had but com- pleted her twenty-fifth year. He had just lost his first wife, a princess of Lorraine, by whom he had no children. Maria Anna, who was his own niece, bore him Ferdi- nand Maria, the father of that Maximilian Emanuel who, in the war of the Spanish Succession, was outlawed by Austria. Cecilia, the younger daughter of Ferdinand II., was, after having attained her twenty-sixth year, in 1637, mar- ried to King Vladlslaus IV. of Poland, who was her senior by sixteen years. She died, without having borne him any children, in 1644. * The reader is reminded, that this pajt of the German original (vol. iv. p. 74.) was printed as far back as 1852, 435 CHAPTER VIII. FERDINAND III. 1637—1657. 1. PERSONAL NOTICES OF THE EMPEROR. — THE PREMIER MAXI- MILIAN VON TRAUTMANNSDORF. Feedinand II. was succeeded by his son Ferdinand III., born in 1608, at GrJitz; crowned as King of Hungary, in 1625; married, in 1631, to the Spanish Infanta Maria Anna, his senior by seventeen years; and, since 1636, Iloman King elect. Ferdinand III. Avas of very delicate constitution ; in the latter days of his life, which was cut short at the early age of forty-nine, he was so enfeebled by the gout that he could only be moved in a chair; and he died from fright at a fire which had broken out in the Hofburg of Vienna. As loner as he was able, he now and then followed the chase. Although the miiaculous luck of the House of Habsburg made him gain the victory of Nordlingen, yet he was even less warlike than his father. It was his most cherished wish to see the war brought to an end. He was endowed with many of those negative virtues which origi- nate in the absence of strong passions and desires, and which are sometimes very respectable in a private man ; but on the whole he was a monkish ruler, exactly as his father had been before him, and just as intolerant in what he allowed to be done by others in his name, as Ferdi- F F 2 436 FERDINAND III. imnd 11. had shown himself in his own acts. He was in particular one of the most zealous champions of the doc- trine of the Immaculata Conceptio Beatce MaricB Virginis. He issued an order that no one should be made a doctor without taking the oath on the Immaculate Conception. When Torstensohuj in 1645, stood with his army before Vienna, the Emperor made a vow to erect in the square, called " the Hof" (Yard) a monument in honour of that dogma. This monument, executed by him in marble, was replaced by his son Leopold, in 1667, by the one in marble and bronze, which has survived to this day. The reign of Ferdinand III. fell in the most distressful time of the Thirty Years' War, the never-ending expenses of which compelled him to pledge the crown jewels and to mortgage and sell one demesne after the other to his nobles ; who by this means became wealthy and powerful. Ferdinand possessed an honest minister in Count Maxi- milian Trautmannsdorf ; who in his younger days had at- tended him at the victorious battle of Nordlingen, and afterwards concluded for Austria the Peace of Prague. Trautmannsdorf had been well rewarded for his services ; he had from the Wallenstein plunder received that fairy- like residence Gitschin ; and, from the conquest in Wiir- temberg, Weinsberg and Neustadt on the Kocher. Gitschin, with fourteen other estates in Bohemia, is still in the possession of the family ; of Weinsberg and N'eustadt, they have retained the titles. On the accession of Ferdi- nand III., Trautmannsdorf remained lord-steward ; and in 1639, he became, besides, director of the Privy Council. Thus he was at the same time the first person in the court and in the council of the Emperor. Ferdinand II. had honoured him like a friend ; Ferdinand III. honoured him like a father. It was Trautmannsdorf who at last procured for his master the peace so long and so ardently wished for. He was the principal Imperial commissioner at the conclusion MAXIMILIAN TRAUTMANNSDORF. 437 of the Peace of Westphalia. Trautmaunsdorf was not only an honest, but also a very gentle and modest man. Early travels and repeated missions to different courts had given him knowledge of men and business experience ; his tried integrity acquiring for him the confidence and re- spect of friend and foe. As long as he lived, Ferdinand III. was well advised, and the government was carried on in a tolerant spirit. Trautmaunsdorf was hated by the Jesuits ; yet, in the teeth of their venomous antagonism, he over and over again carried the cause of rational toleration. In former days, he had just as earnestly advised against AVal- lenstein's first dismissal, as afterwards against his re- appointment. His suggestions not being listened to, he had repeatedly left the court ; but whenever he was called upon, he always returned to the service, undertaking with the same alacrity the most trifling as well as the most im- portant commissions. Trautmannsdorf died in 1650, two years after the con- clusion of the Peace of Westphalia. His wife, of the PalfFy family, was the mother of fifteen children. He was succeeded in his office as lord-steward by Prince Maxi- milian Dietrichstein, and as minister by the apostate Lutheran John Wcichard von Auersperg; who, in 1653, was made a prince, and who, after Dietrichstein's resigna- tion, became lord-steward. The office of lord-chamberlain at the Court of Ferdinand III. was held by Count Maxi- milian Wallenstein, a cousin of the Friedliinder. 2. THE LAST PERIOD OF THE THIRTY TEARs' WAR, AND THE LAST PAPIST GENERALS OV THE EMPEROR, GALLAS, AND PICCOLOMINI. THE LAST PROTESTANT GENERALS OF THE EJO^EROR, TIOLK, GOTZ, AND JIELANDER. HOLZAPFEL. — AUSTRIAN PLANS FOR SEDUCING THE HESSLiN AND BAVARIAN ARMIES. B.VNER's AND TORSTENSOHN's CAMPAIGNS. The latter times of the Thirty Years' War were doomed to be its most terrible ones. The fury of the contest did F F 3 438 FERDINAND III. not spend itself, until the general exhaustion separated the angry combatants. Awful as the rage had been with which the two German parties assailed each other, in combat for life and death, from the very beginning; the punishment now was just as awful which Germany had to submit to from the strangers who had so made the war their own, that the Emperor had to wait for their pleasure to conclude peace. Sweden was not in a hurry, and still less was France. Armies composed of nearly all the civilised and savage peoples of Europe were disporting themselves on German soil. On the side of the Protestants, there were first Hungarians, English, and Scotch ; afterwards Swedes and Finlanders ; and at last French. On the side of the Papists, Spaniards and Italians, Walloons, Irish, and like- wise some English and Scotch ; besides whole hosts of Croats, Poles, and Cossacks, who fought with Germans against Germans on German ground. Nearly every trace of the spirit of German nationality seemed to be extin- guished by the religious quarrel, fanned in the first in- stance by the dogmatical fury of the theologians, and kept alive by the political lust of gain of the princes. The good-natured German people, quietly submitting to be kept in leading strings by its spiritual and secular rulers, patiently allowed itself for years to be abused in fighting side by side with the most savage hordes of Europe, to drain the life-blood of its German brethren. The manner in which Mansfeldt, the Protestant parti- san, carried on the war, has been described before. The Hungarians, who served as auxiliaries of the Bohemians, committed the most atrocious cruelties from the very be- ginning of the war. In the Diary of Prince Anhalt, of the 3rd of September, 1 620, when the Protestant army lay near Egenburg, it is said of them :" 11 y avoit un chastau aupres FurntJial, que prirent les Hongrois (avec quelque peu de nos Mousquetaires) par feu, et puis sort is encore que les dits SAVAGE AYARFARE. 439 Monsq, leur vouloyent doimer quartier si est ce, que les Ilon- grois ne voulurent pas et tuerent 60 jjcrsonnes nespargnans nul sexe, mesmes Us tuogent de nos soldats qui avogcnt die hutin. C^est uiie nation tres hai-hare." Nor was the Swedish army any longer composed of those pious men whom Gustavus Adolphus had brought with him across the Baltic, who had prayers twice a day, and who kept strict discipline. The fury of war had changed this godly and decorous host into a ferocious band, which carried on the soldier's trade with all the horrors and atrocities of exaction and cruelty. The " Swedish draught* " became at that time proverbial in Germany. Of Torstensohn alone it is recorded that he carried on the war in the most chivalrous manner, not only treating the Imperial generals and officers, his prisoners, wuth the greatest consideration ; but also keeping such good discipline as, in 1645, when his army stood before Vienna, to cause soldiers who had committed plunder and violence to run the gauntlet. In return for the considerate conduct of the general, one of his valets was allowed, with an Imjjcrial passport, to come from the Swedish head-quarters to Vienna to make pur- chases there for his master. The Imperial soldiery, however, raged much worse in their own country than even the Swedes did. On the Imperial side also, the auxiliaries particularly distinguished themselves by their atrocities. The most dreadful scourge were, besides the Poles, the ferocious Walloons, and the still more fero- cious Croats, who since the days of Tilly and ^^'allenstcin became the terror of Germany. To them, rapine and cruelty against the defenceless citizen — friend or foe, it mattered not — was a thing quite in the regular course of the profession of arms. * The victim of this cruelty was laid on the grouml, and water poured down his throiit, causing the most dreadful distension of the stomach, until the persons thus tortured consented to reveal the hiding place of their property and treasure. — Transl. F F 4 440 FERDINAND III. A real plague arose in the Cossacks, who at that period were for the first time called into the heart of Germany by a German Empei-or. This savage nation, then under the sovereignty of Poland, made its first appearance in 1620 before Vienna, just at the time when the Estates of Austria refused to swear the oath of allegiance to the Emperor Ferdinand II. He brought his recalcitrant sub- jects to submission by taking at first 4,000, and then 2,000 more Cossacks into his pay. The first batch of these barbarians advanced in the middle of winter (January, 1620) as far as Moravia, where they laid hands on every- thing that came in their way. Among other atrocities, they once pounced upon a noble wedding-party at Me- serltz, completely stripped naked all the gentlemen and ladles present at it, and afterwards publicly sold the plun- der, both dresses and jewels, at Vienna. The Moravians went in their pursuit and cut down about 500 of them on the 10th of February, and drove them across the Danube into the neighbourhood of Vienna. Here the Emperor took tliem in his pay and formally let them loose against the Pro- testants. Whoever could not repeat the Ave Maria, was treated In the most outrageous way. Five hundred villages were then ransacked, the women and children making their escape to the islets in the Danube, where they perished miserably of hunger and distress. Neither friend nor foe were spared. A Baron von Grasswein, a Bohemian who had done good service to the House of Austria, and Avho showed an Imperial safeguard for his protection, was murdered at his own castle merely because he was a Protestant. In July, another horde of 2,000 Cossacks arrived ; at a later period, they offered themselves to the Emperor even in greater numbers than were wanted, and it was really difficult to keep them off. All these savage auxiliaries were procured In Poland by the agency of the Badzlwil family, on which the Emperor Maximilian I., as i GALL AS. 441 far back as 1518, had bestowed the princely dignity of the Empire. Wallensteln's murder — much as the Emperor gained l)y it, especially in estates and money for the continuation of the war — had, after all, been a desperate measure, sug- gested only by the pressure of the moment. Such a general as Wallenstein had been, was not to be found again. Not one of his successors was at all to be compared to the man who had so well known how to fetter the Goddess of For- tune to his triumphal chariot. The Imperial court was with difficulty able to keep its own against the united powers of the Swedes and French ; especially as the for- mer had the particular good fortune of having retained in Baner, Torstensohn, and Wrangel generals who were quite equal to Gustavus Adolphus and Bernard of Wei- mar ; and, at last, the French also had Turennc. Wallenstein was succeeded as generalissimo of the Imperial troops by Count Matthias Gallas. This officer, a native of Trent, had served under Tilly in the Bavarian army, where he rose to the rank of colonel ; but, having in 1629 passed into the Emperor's service, he went through the war of the Mantuan Succession under Collalto ; after whose death he held the chief command ad interim. Gallas had greatly enriched himself by the Mantuan booty. After having, on the 29th of June, 1631, con- cluded the Peace of Chierasco, he was recalled. lie next served under "Wallenstein ; but was not able to maintain Silesia where he commandetl. "When AVal- lenstein's catastrophe was in preparation, it was lie to whom the Emperor referred the conunanders of the regiments, and who as principal manager of the measures against the dictator brought the affair to such a lucky issue. Yet, successful as he was as a diplomatist, he never, except at Nordlingen in 1635, was victorious in the field ; besides which, like Piccolomini, he was a 442 FERDINAND III. thorough profligate. His ill-luck in war was proverbial, and earned for him the nickname of " army spoiler." The Emperor indeed was at last obliged to transfer the chief command to Piccolomini. Gallas then retired to his estates near Trent ; from whence he returned to Vienna, where, 1647, he died at the age of fifty-nine. Ferdinand II., the most religious Emperor of the House of Habsburg, had already in his time felt no scruple in raising to the highest commands of his army not only greedy converts, but also people who ever showed them- selves obdurate heretics. Of the three bold upstarts who commanded his army, one only, John Aldringer, was a born Papist. The other two, Henry Hoik and John Gotz, were, the former a Lutheran, and the latter a convert to Popery. Hoik commanded the famous and much-dreaded mounted chasseurs, who were called after him. He was a native of Denmark, where counts of that name still flourish. He had lost one eye, and was, like Wallenstein, completely free from religious prejudices ; and like him also he had the Goddess of Fortune embroidered on his standards. Having at first served his own king against the Emperor, and proved himself before Stralsund dangerous as an enemy, he passed, after the Peace of Liibeck in 1629, into the service of Ferdinand ; who received him with open arms and made him a count. Hoik died in 1633, on his expedition to Saxony, at Adorf in the Vogtland ; having caught the plague from his mistress, whom he visited at Zwickau. It had happened a short time before, that the people of Zwickau, after having paid to him a heavy sum of money, besouglit him that the soldiers of "Wallenstein, who came after him, might not be billeted on them. Hoik answered, " My good people, when the Lord comes, th&-apostles must hold their tongues." The corpse of this wild apostle of war was conveyed to Copenhagen. John Gotz was an upstart from Liineburg. He com- if HOLK, GOTZ, HOLZAPFEL. 443 manded a regiment of mounted arquebusiers, who were not less dreaded than Ilolk's chasseurs. In the isknd of Eugen, Gotz once with his Croats broke into a nunnery of noble ladies, where he made his men commit the most atrocious outrages before his eyes. He was such an abandoned drunkard, that very often he was not even able to give out the parole. He survived Hoik and Aldringcr, turned Papist, and was made a count by Ferdinand II. in 1634, after the battle of Nordlingen. He was killed eleven years later, in the battle of Jankau, in 1645, and buried at Prague. The chief command, under Ferdinand IIL, during the latter years of the Long War, was held by a Calvinist, Peter Holzappel, whose name was first changed into Melander, until, by the grace of the Emperor, he was created count of the Empire as Von Holzapfel. Melander, the son of a peasant in Hesse, a sandy-haired and very zealous Calvinist, had served his military apprenticeship under the Swiss and Vene- tians, from which he came forth a very able captain in war. Since 1632, he had commanded the brave Hessian army; but a box on the ear which he received from the Landgravine Amelia drove him into the service of the House of Habs- burg. Having turned Papist, he first undertook, in 1645, a command in the service of the Elector of Cologne ; then the command-in-chief of the Imperial troops ; and Ferdi- nand III. made him a field-marshal and a count of the Empire. It was certainly a thorn in the side of the lords of the old nobility to serve under such an upstart, against whose power they kicked not a little ; but he had sense and energy enough to keep his own. Count Holzapfel was killed in the last engagement of the Thirty Years' War, at Zusmershausen near Augsburg, in 1648. His daughter and heiress married, in 1653, Prince Adolphus of Nassau-DUlenburo;, and broutrht the countv of llolz- apfel-on-the-Lahn, and likewise the castle of Schaumbui-g, to the house of Nassau. From Nassau, the possessions passed to the house of Anhalt-Bcrnburg ; and from the 444 FERDINAND III. latter, by the Felix Austria nuhe, to Austria. Archduke Stephen is the present holder of them. As early as 1637, Count SchHck, president of the Aulic Council of War, and the Elector of Cologne had tried to persuade Melander, by the promise of a yearly pension of 10,000 crowns and promotion to the dignity of count, to enter the Emperor's service, bringing over with, him the whole of the Hessian army. The " Catholic policy" of the House of Habsburg- Austria did not shrink even from such expedients. .But Melander was not able to carry out the scheme, as he was not sure of his officers and soldiers ; and, besides, he well knew the court of Vienna, where there was but rarely any money for the new counts, especially for those who were not either Austrians or Italians. He expressed himself about that time : " The court of Vienna has since the last ten years created six-and- twenty of its upstart counts of the Empire ; yet these are mere empty titles, sullied with the blood of robbed popu- lations, and yielding all of them together not more than 26,000 crowns. Twenty-eight generals are still waiting for the dotations promised them by the Emperor ; they being once satisfied, nothing will remain for me." The Swedes were, during the latter years of the war, much more fortunate in their generals than the Emperor. They still had three great captains from the school of their great king — John Baner, Leonard Torstensohn, and Gus- tavus Wrangel. Baner was one of the greatest heroes of the Thirty Years' War. It was said in his praise, " that he had de- stroyed more than 80,000 enemies ; had conquered more than 800 stands of colours ; and had not once lost an action. To the Imperial court he became a most formid- able foe ; so formidable that at last attempts were made to bribe him, even so far as to offer him the princely dig- nity in the Empire. But Baner refused every offer, and there was a report that he had at last been poisoned, like BANEE. 445 Betlilen Gabon The poison was said to have been adminis- tered at the great convention at Hildesheim. Baner opened his great career of victory at Wittstock in Brandenbui'g, on the 24th of September, 1636, where he routed the Saxons, at that time the allies of the Em- peror. After this victory, the north of Germany breathed freely again. Baner from thence advanced as far as Erfurt ; then, turning back again, he entered the camp on the Elbe nearTorgau. There he remained stationary for four months. At last he was obliged by want, just as his king had once been near Nuremberg, to retire before the Imperial Field- marshal Count Hatzfeld to Stettin, where he arrived on the 19th of June, 1637. Having at Stettin been joined by re- inforcements from Sweden, he opened the campaign of 1638, driving Gallas before him as far as Bohemia. In the campaign of 1639, he was obliged to retire before the superior forces of Piccolomini as far as Erfurt in Thu- ringia. Piccolomini stood in a fortified camp near Saal- feld, where Baner was not able to force him to accept battle. In 1640, Baner joined with the French comman- der the Due de Longueville on the Fulda in Hesse. Bauer's camp was at "Wildungen, where likewise he was unable to force Piccolomini to accept battle, Avho now started for the Weser, Baner following close on his heels to protect tlie Guelphic countries. In the winter of 1640, Piccolomini went with the Emperor to Ratisbon, who had come thither to hold a diet, the first for twenty-seven years. In January, 1641, Baner undertook his bold march from Westphalia, to scare the Emperor and the diet from Eatisbon. Having joined with the French Marslial Gucbriant, he set out from the Weser to the Danube, where he made his aiiiiearancc before Ratisbon with 20,000 men. He bombarded the town. The Emperor might see his enemies from his win- dows. But a thaw setting in, the well-planned expedition had to be abandoned. Guebriant now separated from Baner: the French entering winter-quarters near Bam- 446 FERDINAND III. berg, and Baner remaining stationed in Bavaria at a short distance from Ratisbon. Here Piccolomini was at him again"; but Baner succeeded in executing just as perilous a retreat as he had four years before. He escaped as by miracle through the narrow defiles of the Bohemian forests and of the Erzgebirge to the fortress of Zwickau. For not less than eleven days, the Imperialists had ridden in his pursuit, without once unsaddling their horses. In the Vogtland, he was again joined by Guebriant ; he then passed the Saale near Welssenfels, and thence reached Halberstadt. Here his glorious career ended ; he died on the 10th of May, 1641. His death needs not be attributed to any other cause but to the wild excesses to which this seemingly sedate and taciturn man, but who harboured the strongest passions in his bosom, used to give himself up. He was often drunk four days running, with Hungary wine. On the 28th of May, 1640, in the camp of Saal- feldt, he lost his fondly-loved first wife, a Countess of Erbach ; who had accompanied him all through the fierce war, and who once during these peregrinations had even given birth to a child in her travelling carriage. He buried her at Erfurt. At her funeral, he was smitten with the grand-daughter of Margrave George Frederic of Baden- Durlach ; and already on the 16th of September, 1640, the hoary general celebrated his second marriage at Arol- sen, where the young princess, at that time in her eigh- teenth year, was staying with some relations. But he enjoyed his newly-found happiness only eight months. Baner was succeeded by Torstensohn, formerly one of the pages of Gustavus Adolphus. Torstensohn, protected by the truce with Brandenburg which the Great Elector had concluded, left, in spring, 1642, the Guelphic coun- tries again, closely to press the Emperor. Passing the Elbe, he marched through Silesia and Moravia as for as Olmiitz ; his outposts arrived within six leagues of Vienna. He then returned through Silesia Into Saxony, where, on TORSTENSOnN. 447 the 2ncl of November, 1642, he defeated in another battle, on the fields of Breitenfeld, Piccoloniini and the Arch- duke Bishop Leopold William, the brother of the Emperor Ferdinand III. In consequence of this victory, Torsten- sohn advanced for a second time to Moravia, and Wrangel, who was sent in advance, again stood in the beginning of July with 3000 horse near Vienna. The plan was, in conjunction with George Ragoczy, the new Prince of Transylvania, to dictate a peace to the Emperor. Then, by a masterpiece of Austrian policy, a new enemy was raised in the rear of these tormentors. Ferdinand having induced Denmark to declare war against the Swedes, Torstensohn was obliged to turn against this new enemy, and executed in 1643, with the greatest secrecy, an ex- ceedingly bold march, as it were only a promenade, from Moravia across the whole Empire, suddenly making his appearance in Holstein. In the campaign of 1644, he conquered Jutland ; after which, he drove Gallas from the Baltic to the Elbe, and from the Elbe into Bohemia, where the Emperor was trying to collect a new army at Prague. Torstensohn with only 16,000 men gained the last grand battle of the Great War on the 5th of March, 1645, near Jankau, seven leagues south of Prague. The victory was so decisive, that the whole Imperial-Leaguist army was completely scattered, or rather annihilated. The generals of that army, the Imperialist Count Hatzfeld and those of the League, Jean de W^erth and John Gotz, had disagreed amono- themselves ; which was the principal cause of the loss of the battle. It had been a standing complaint in the Imperial army that there were too many commanders. Hatzfeld with 4000 men was made prisoner ; Gotz with 4000 more was killed on the spot ; Jean de Werth, twice captured by the Swedes, escaped with the cavalry into the Upper Palatinate ; thirty-six cannons and all the anunu- nition waggons were lost; Torstensohn had seventy -seven stands of^colours to send to Stockholm. The three Im- 448 FERDINAND III. perial regiments of Piccolomini, Pompejo, and Bassom- pierre consisted together of not more than 450 men ; and somewhat later, 400 men marched out from Prague to Vienna; who, as PufFendorf writes, called themselves twenty regiments, and carried 120 colours before them. No Im- perial regiment of cavalry had more than sixty men left. It was necessary to create a new array altogether. The Emperor, who was still staying at Prague, set out on tlie 8th of March for Vienna, where he arrived on the 19th, accompanied by his household and 200 musketeers; the Imperial party having been obliged to take the cir- cuitous road by Pilsen and Ratisbon, and from thence down the Danube by Linz. Four weeks after the victory of Jankau, Torstensohn made his appearance for the third time in the heart of Austria ; and on the 9th of April, the I Swedish army arrived before Vienna. The outworks on the ^ rio;ht side of the Danube being soon taken, the river re- ? mained still the only barrier between the enemy and the i. capital. Ferdinand III. now trembled in his Hofburg, just as his father had done before him. The Imperial family, the whole court, the treasure, the archives, were in a thousand carriages and waggons conveyed for safety to Gratz ; many of the nobility and clergy fled as far as Salz- burg and Venice. It was the same state of things over again as when, twenty -six years before. Count Thurn stood before Vienna. Ferdinand alone stayed behind in the capital. Torstensohn's head-quarters were at Hammers- dorf; Pagoczy was already at Pressburgh. The Arch- duke Bishop Leopold William, the Emperor's generalissimo, was with a few troops encamped in the Brigittenau (Brid- get-fields). A romantic, but unauthenticated legend relates that, on the 30th of May, the feast of St. Brigitta (Bridget), a Swedish cannon-ball had fallen at his feet in his tent, and that the archduke had then made the vow, afterwards accomplished, to found the chapel dedicated to that saint ; round which now every year, on the anniversary of its ■Sa TORSTENSOIIN BEFORE VIENXA. 449 consceration, the gay crowds of the merry Viennese cele- brate one of then- most joyous popular festivals. Tlie priestly generalissimo had no authority over his soldiers, who in- fested all the roads, committing robberies on all sides; plundering even the court carriages on their way to Grlitz— nay, the Empress herself, as she was travelling to a water- ing-place. The most terrible punishments were inflicted on the perpetrators of these outrages; officers were by dozens quartered and impaled in the principal squares of Vienna and before the gates ; whole regiments decimated, and the ringleaders buried up to their heads, which were then played at with heavy balls as at nine-pins. Torstensohn remained for eight months, until October, 1645, in the centre of the monarchy. His head-quarters at Stammersdorf he, however, had left after four days. On the 4th of April, which happened to be Good Friday, he set out for Moravia, to be nearer Ragoczy, with whom he had afterwards, on the 17th of August, a meeting at Eisgrub. The cajjital of Austria was saved once more by the tardiness of Ragoczy and by the obstinate resistance of Briinn in Mo- ravia, where Louis Rattuit (Radewich), Count de Souches, another upstart and convert, held the command. This officer became the saviour of the monarcliy. De Souches was by birth a Frenchman, a native of La Rochelle, and formerly one of the most zealous Huguenots. He had once stoutly defended his native town against Cardinal Richelieu; afterwards he emigrated, and took service witli the Swedes ; offended by them, he passed over to the Imperialists, and — partly from revenge partly from avarice — turned Papist. When Torstensohn summoned him to surrender Rriinn, or else he would give him no quarter, De Souches replied, " Tliat he neither required nor gave qnartei-." Torstensohn, owing to the spirited defence of De Souches, was at last obliged, after a siege of sixteen weeks, to march off, on the 23rd of August, 104 5. He went once more to Austria, and from thence back into winter-quarters in VOL. I. G G 450 FERDINAND III. Bohemia, after having left behind garrisons in the conquered places, particularly at Kornneuburg and Krems. These garrisons maintained their posts until August, 1646. At that time, the last public Lutheran service in Austria, until the days of Joseph II,, was held at Krems ; within the short space of two months, 10,000 country people took the sacrament in both kinds. De Souches was richly rewarded by the Emperor with honours, dignities, and estates : he was made a count of the Empire, a field-marshal general, and a privy councillor; and he was appointed commandant, first of Comorn, and afterwards of Vienna, where, as late as 1683, during the great siege by the Turks, he was still alive, and able to be of good service to Starhemberg, the heroic defender of the Imperial city. Yet, although Vienna was saved, the consequences of the battle of Jankau continued to be very disastrous to the Imperial court. On the 13th of August, 1645, Denmark concluded a peace — and a fortnight later. Saxony a truce — Avitli Sweden; at last, on the 14th of March, 1647, their example was followed by Bavai'ia. On the other hand, the monarchy was protected from Ragoczy by the peace of Linz ; it is true, at the price of the Emperor's securing re- ligious liberty to the Protestants of Hungary. The truce with Bavaria was wrested from the elector by the last Swedish commander-in-chief of the Thirty Years' War, Gustavus AVrangel. Torstensohn, to the great joy of his enemies, who thought him equivalent to 10,000 men, had, on account of the sad state of his health, given up the command. He was suffering so acutely from the gout, that he had to be carried in a litter to the battle- fields where he won his victories. He returned to Stock- holm, where he died in 1651. Gustavus Wrangel abandoned Torstensohn's plan of penetrating through INIoravia into the heart of Austria ; instead of which, he came back to that of Gustavus TRUCE OF BAVARIA WITH SWEDEN. 451 Adolpluis, of assailing it from Southern Germany throuo-U Bavaria. AYrangel, in conjunction with the afterwards celebrated French Marshal Turenne, again added to the oldglory of the Swedish arms in Southern Germany; over- running Bavaria with terrible plunder and devastation, as far as Bregenz on the confines of Switzerland. At tho same time, Gallas was in the Upper Palatinate, where he likewise mercilessly plundered the country of his Em- peror's ally. The Elector of Bavaria was therefore in a desperate plight, and now the most singular complication of affairs followed. Maximilian was negotiating with Wrangel. This very likely was known to the cabinet of Vienna ; and on that account, Gallas conducted himself with the same hostility in the Upper Palatinate, as Tilly had done in Saxony just before the battle of Leipzig. A few days before the negotiations with Wrangel were brought to a conclusion, Maximilian wrote to Gallas : " My dear Count, — It almost seems as if people were looking out for a pretext to break with me. If I only know it, I may act accord- ingly, and throw the ,responsibility upon him who is the cause of all this. I cannot allow everybody to be master in my country." Then followed the conclusion of the truce between Bavaria on the one hand, and S\veden, France, and Hcssc- Cassel on the other. In accordance with its clauses, tho Swedes and French evacuated tiie whole of Bavaria and of the Upper Palatinate. AVrangel led part of his army to Franconia, and part to Bohemia. In the latter country, he took the important fortress of Eger; and there, on the 20th of July, 10-47, the Emperor Ferdinand III., who was in person with the army, had a very narrow escape from being captured by the Swedes. With the earliest dawn, a party of the Swedes attacked the Imperial out- posts, and, after having overpowered them, penetrated to the quarters of the Emperor. Two Swedes wxrc already G G •2 452 FERDINAND III. in the Emperor's room, when assistance arrived just in time : the Imperial soldiers killed one man, took the other prisoner, and dispersed the rest. Before the miraculous good fortune of Austria was once more proved in this case, an undertaking of the Imperial cabinet had miscarried, which most plainly shows in what light those who wielded the power in Austria looked upon the princes of the German Empire ; and how little they shrank from any expedient that might further their own ol)jects. The Emperor's councillors were afraid lest the truce concluded by Maximilian, tchich now, for the first time in the loliole icar, reditced the Emperor s power in the field to his oivn army, should lead to a separate peace ; or even worse than that, to the Elector throwing himself into the arms of France, with which he indeed was already negotiating, and had gone so far, that even at a later period, when he was again allied with Austria, he still kept up a secret cor- respondence with the French cabinet. Austria therefore determined to provide for her own security in any emer- gency. The expedient by wliich this was to be effected, was neither more nor less than to seduce the whole of the Bavarian army ; to lead it over to the Emperor ; and even to carry away the elector and his obnoxious councillors as hostages to Vienna. If this plan succeeded, the elector would not only have lost his army ; but his countrj', in its defenceless state, would have been laid open to the full revenge of the Swedes, who of course would never have believed but that the going over of the Bavarian army to the Emperor had been a mere pre-concerted game on the side of the elector. And if they succeeded in getting the Elector to Vienna, he was irretrievably lost. Neither of these two plans, however, succeeded ; Bavaria was this time saved by her own good fortune, and by the penetrating sagacity of her elector. As soon as the conclusion of the truce by Bavaria was PLAN OF SEDUCING THE BAVATUAN ARMY. 453 known at Vienna^ the Imperial cabinet issued a declaration that there xoas no such thlnrj as a Bavarian army ; that thr troops of Bavaria were only part of the general army of the Empire, commanded, under the Emperor, by the elector. Orders were accordingly sent to the Bavarian generals to bring in their men to the Imperial army. Jean de Werth * was especially applied to ; and this general, as wily as he was brave, allowed himself to be bribed by the supreme head of the Empire. The affair was managed most cunningly. De Werth was especially fitted for covering such unheard-of treachery with consummate dissimulation, and for carrying it out with an energy calculated to overcome every difficulty. To excite no suspicion against himself, he sent in all the orders which the generals had received from the Emperor to Munich, Avhither he went himself. As soon as he had made his appearance at court, Maximilian caused him to be put to the test in several ways, and by different trustworthy persons; but De Werth eluded them all, and knew so Avell how to manage all his conduct, gestures, and speec.es, that no one could have doubted his fidelity. The elector alone, who was even more cunning than his general, in- stinctively clung to his suspicion, and determined at all events beforehand to break the thread of the web whicii possibly might be spun round him. lie sent orders to Jean de Werth to summon for a certain day all the offi- cers of his army to Landshut, where the pleasure of tiic elector would be communicated to them by the com- missioners of his Highness. * Jean de Werth was a Walloon, and had risen from the ranks. IIo was, after rappcnheim, the greatest cavalry general of the sixteenfli cen- tury. Having, in 1G38, been made prisoner near Rheinfelden by Bernard of Weimar, he remained confined four years in the donjon of Vinccnncs, wliere he was a great "lion" of the ladies of Paris, and astonished the world by his feats in the eating and drinking line. He was, in 104:?, ex- changed for the Swedish Field-marsha] Horn; who had been made prisoner in the battle of Nordlingeu. o u 3 454 FERDINAND III. Jean de Werth now speedily made arrangements for having the plan carried out before the arrival of these commissioners. He ordered all the cavalry under his command to set out immediately from their garrisons and to assemble at Vilshofen on the Danube, near Passau, quite in the vicinity of the Bohemian frontier. Hither the foot regiments were directed to march, the Quar- ter-master-general Holz being forced by threats to sign the orders to the different colonels. Whilst the re- giments were on their march, Jean de Werth placed a detachment on the road from Munich to Landshut, with orders to arrest the commissioners ; who in this manner would have been prevented from communicating to the officers who had been summoned to that town the pleasure of the elector. A mere lucky chance saved Maximilian — one of the commissioners having proposed to his colleagues the more pleasant journey by water down the Isar to Landshut; the detachment lying in ambush for them on the high road, waited in vain for their intended victims. The commissioners arrived on the 2nd of July, 1647, at Lands- hut ; but Jean de Werth and his generals, among whom Avas the afterwards famous Count Spork, were already on their way to Vilshofen. Hundreds of messengers were now at once sent off by the commissioners to convey to the troops orders for stopping their march. Some regiments returned without delay ; others, whose colonels refused obedience, continued on their way to Vilshofen. Here Jean de Werth led them across the Danube ; and all was going on quite smoothly, when at the last moment a public proclamation of the elector to his army arrived, and all the superior officers received special letters to warn them. A price of 10,000 florins was set on Jean de Werth's head, whether dead or alive; and 1500 on that of every one of those officers who had intended to desert. Jean de Werth now JEAN DE WERTIIS TREACHERY FOILED. 45o hoped to win over his troops by granting tliem liberty of plunder ; but they rose agp.inst him. The regiments tried to make out each other's intentions by each watching the demeanour of the other, and at last they came to an agree- ment. Spork's cuirassiers at once rode off. The other troops, after having first whispered to each other, gradu- ally spoke out their minds louder and louder ; and at last broke into a threatening outcry, that no one should venture to lead them over to the Emperor. Jean de Worth and Spork had now not a moment to lose. They hastily mounted their horses and galloped off to the Bohemian frontier, both being oblisred to leave behind their bairiTafrc, and Spork even his wife. The Emperor received them with great honour. Jean de Werth was appointed to the chief command over the whole of the Imperial cavalry ; he died only four years after the peace, at the noble estate of Bcnatek in Bohemia, which had been granted to him by the Emperor, and where Tycho de Brahc had once had Ills observatory. Spork, a very remarkable rough old campaigner, became field-marshal-lieutenant, and died as general of the cavalry. The Elector of Bavaria caused a month's pay to be given to his whole army ; the oflScers re- ceiving, moreover, his written and verbal thanks, besides more substantial tokens of his certainly very just gratitude for having saved him from the most imminent danger. Austria nevertheless attained her object, of frightening the elector; who, being harassed now by the Swedes, because they no longer trusted him, gave them warning to break off the truce on the 14th of September, 1647. Count Maximilian Gronsfeld, however, the new commander- in-chief of the Bavarian troops, was secretly instructed never to fiijht aijainst the French. In the last campaign of the Thirty Years' "War, in 1G4H, Wrangel advanced repeatedly into Swabiaj and, after having again joined with Turenne, forced in June the passage through Bavaria into Austria. From March to o 4 456 FERDIXAISD III. May, the hostile troops stood facing each otlicr on the Danube and on the Lech, both parties plundering and robbing. The Imperialists had thirty, and the Bavarians- - now allied with them — twenty ti'oops of horse ; the num- ber of infantry was the same in both armies. The whole strength of combatants of the allied Austro-Bavarian armv amounted to 40,000 men ; to which, however, Avere added 140,000 camp followers of both sexes. No wonder that, not- withstanding the strictest orders of the elector against ma- raud ing, plundering, and robbing, the country was completely exhausted. The Swedes had forty-eight troops of horse, the French twenty-two ; both together twenty more than the Austro-Bavarians, to whom they were likewise supe- rior in artillery. The Imperialists were commanded by Count Holzapfel, who was posted with Gronsfeld near Giinzburg, on the Danube. In the engagement of Zusmers- hausen on the western side of the Lech, not far from Augsburg, — the last general action of the Thirty Years' War,— Holzapfel was killed, on the 17th of May, 1648; after which the army retreated across the Lech. When the Swedes encamped near Thierhaupten on the Lech, on the same spot where, sixteen years before, their great king had burst into Bavai'ia; Gronsfeld's council of war determined upon retreating with their army into the interior of Bavaria. This retreat, however, degenerated into a real flight. The army dispersed and Gronsfeld himself was, on the 4th of June, 1648, arrested by order of the elector and conveyed to Munich, and from thence to Ingolstadt ; yet he was afterwards released, having succeeded in completely justifying his own conduct. The Swedes and French now entirely overran Bavaria. When the escort of Holzapfel's corpse marched down into Austria, they found all the inns of the Bavarian country on the Danube quite deserted ; so that they were able to help themselves to their heart's content from the kitchens and cellars. All the people now fled from the open i END OF THE THIRTY YEAIIS' AVAR. 457 country into the woods; the Emperor Maxhnilian to Salzburg. Amidst columns of smoke from burning castles, villages, and hamlets, Wrangel and Turejine marched through the whole of Bavaria; and on the 15th of June, 1648, arrived before Wasserburg on the Inn, the in- tended goal of their march being Austria. Once more, and for the last time, Piccolomini was entrusted with the chief command to protect Austria ; Jean de Werth commanded the cavalry under him. The latter appointment was contrary to an express promise given by the Emperor to Maximilian ; but the elector had to put up with it, and also with Piccolomini's doing nothing at all for some time to protect Bavaria. At last, Piccolomini advanced to Munich ; and two days after, — on the 4th of October, — Jean de Werth surprised "Wrangel and Turenne out hunting near Dachau, and both these generals, from fear of being cut off from the Lech, retreated, on the 12 th of October, to the other side of the river. In the meanwhile, the Swedish partisan Hans Christopher von Kcinigsmark*, sent by Wrangel from Swabia to Bohemia, had, on the 26th of July, 1648, by a bold surprise, conquered the " Small Side" (Kleinseite) of Prague. This event became the proximate cause of peace being concluded ; and thus the long war ended on the same spot on which it had commenced. 3. TUE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA, AND THE NEW POSITION OF TUE IMPERIAL COURT WITH REGARD TO THE GERMAN PRINCES AND TO THE ARISTOCRACY IN THE AUSTRIAN DOMINIONS. The peace of AVcstj)halia was concluded, on tlic 24th of October, 1648, with the Swedes at Osnabriick; and, on the same day, with the French at Miinster. It was one of the most ardently wished for, which has ever been ncgo- * Tlic grandfather of tlie celebrated Aurora, the motliur of the Marslial de Saxe. 458 FERDINAND III. tiatecl. The negotiations had been opened as far back as seven years before, at Hamburg ; but it had taken all this time to adjust the balance ; the greediness of the foreigner and the obstinacy of the Austrian cabinet ever and ever again delaying the final settlement. It was the first barter of German lands which Austria carried on M'ith the fo- reigner; but it Avas repeated once more, a century and a half later, when, after the French revolutionary wars, it again took about seven years, from the opening of the Con- gress of Rastadt, to come to an agreement as to how much should be taken away from Germany. In both instances, the defeated rulers of Austria availed themselves of their position as elected Emperors of Germany, to pay the losses of their dynasty with lands not of their own, but of the German Em.pire. The Imperial ambassador at the Westphalian congress was Count Maximilian Trautmannsdorf, the premier and favourite of the Emperor Ferdinand III. He was the soul of all the negotiations which, after a great deal of opposition, he at last succeeded in brinQ;ino; to a conclusion, conform- ably to the secret instruction of his master. He met the overbearing exactions of the victorious Swedes and the insolence of the French with imperturbable equanimity : with his phlegmatic temper, he always soothed down the susceptibilities which the conquerors excited by their pre- tensions ; and, whilst they were foi'ced to acknowledge his incorruptible integrity, he at last succeeded in obtaining for his conquered dynasty very tolerable terms. Trautmanns- dorf was modest enough to allow an equal share in what was but the merit of his own exertions to the co-operation of his learned colleagues. These were the hot-tempered Tyrolese chancellor Dr. Isaac Volmar, whom the Em- peror, in reward of his services, created Freiherr (Viscount) von Riedern, and who died in 1662, at the age of nearly eighty ; and the Imperial Aulic Councillor Krane. The Swedish ambassadors at Osnabrlick were John PEACE OF WESTPHALIA. 459 Oxenstlerna, the son of the celebrated chancellor, ^vllose modest doubts concerning his own fitness for a diplon:iatic commission his father met with with the well-known words: " Veni, mi Jili et vide, quantula cum sapientia regatur mun- dus ;''"' and Salvius. The French ambassadors at Miinster were Count d'Avaux, generally called " his wicked Excellency ;" and Servien. Spain and the Netherlands had each sent eight plenipo- tentiaries. The German electors and princes (down to the most petty ones), the counts of the Empire, and the free cities were likewise represented at the congress. The Elector of Saxony had sent the Aulic Councillor von Pistoris, and Dr. Leuber ; Brandenburg, Count John von Wittgenstein, and three privy councillors. Von Luben, Von der Heiden, and Peter Fritz ; the latter of whom was afterwards replaced by Matthew Wesenbeck. Bava- ria was represented by Baron von Hashing ; Brunswick by Lampadius ; and Wiirtemberg by the very able Chan- cellor Loffler. The mediators in the negotiations of peace were the Papal Nuncio Fabio Chigi, Avho, in 1655, became Pope as Alexander VII. ; and the Venetian ambassador Con- tarini. The Pope, however, refused to confirm the peace. The principal, and on all sides most eagerly sought-for point of negotiation of that peace, which was to put an end to the great so-called " lleligious War," was disgusting in the extreme. All the parties — the foreign as well as the German powers, and amongst these Protestants as well as Papists — agreed only in one point; — all wanted to be indem- nified by cession of territories. Nor were the intermediate petty squabbles about points of etiquette, which j)l;iycd such a great part there, less odious. Those ridiculous and trifling questions of precedence; of right of the reception at the top, the bottom, or the middle of the staircase; the honour of the first greeting, or of taking the right-hand 460 FERDINAND III. side; were treated as the most serious matters, and tlien raised to that imaginary importance which they main- tained down to the period of the French revolution. Even the improved Gregorian calendar, which the Protestants were required to adopt, gave rise to the most envenomed debates, as they saw in it nothing but a snare of Popish insidious treachery ; and German Protestant Christen- dom actually accepted it only in the year 1700. The great barter of German territories which was ulti- mately settled in the Peace of Westphalia, yielded a pro- fitable result to three of the powers only ; viz., Sweden, France, and Brandenburg. Sweden gained most. It received that part of Pomerania which is west of the Oder (Vorpommern), and the impor- tant port of Stettin, besides the duchy of Bremen at the mouth of the Weser. In these two provinces, the Ger- man Empire again lost two coastlands, important for her commerce ; in addition to that most important one which the unpatriotic policy of Charles V. had already torn from the German Empire and made over to the crown of Spain. Bremen especially was of such consequence, in a commercial point of view, that, not more than eight years afterwards, Cromwell, who coveted it, formed the intention of snatch- ing it from Sweden; which, however, maintained its prey for seventy-one years, the duchy of Bremen passing to Hanover-England only in the Peace of Stockholm, in 1720. The French, after having proffered by "his wicked Ex- cellency " the most extravagant demands, at last contented themselves with Alsace, In which their power settled as an Incubus on South Germany ; Strassburg, the principal stronghold of the province, was not yet given up to them ; but they received the Bhenlsh fortress of Breisach. Brandenburg was also very richly endowed. The Great Elector obtained, with the archbishopric and city of Mag- deburg, the command of the Middle Elbe, and the strongest fortress of the whole of North Germany ; which, during PEACE OF WESTPUALIA. 461 all the vicissitudes of the perilous Seven Years' "War, Frederic the Great maintained as the principal [)oint of support of his military power. Besides INIagdcburg, the elector received the rich Westphalian bishoprics of llal- berstadt and jNlinden : of the Pomeranian inheritance, on the other hand, — the whole of whicli was to have fallen to the lot of the House of Brandenburg after the death of its dukes, who had died during the war, — he only obtained the part east of the Oder (riintcrpommern) with the Abbey of Camin. Pomerania thenceforth supplied to Brandenburg- its best soldiers. Stettin, the possession of which the Great Elector had so earnestly coveted, — he called it the gate of the Empire, — was only acquired at the Peace of Stockholm, in 1720. The Silcsian duchy of Jiigerndorf, which had been taken from the outlawed margrave, and given to the House of Liechtenstein, remained lost to Bran- denburg until Frederic the Great put forward liis claims to it with that well-known success which gained for him tlie whole of Silesia. By the energetic intercession of 'Brandenburg, the Cal- vinists obtained the same religious liberty which the Lu- therans enjoyed, whose jealousy had until then kept them out of it. The object of the most violent contest was the settle- ment of the disputed territorial chiims between Protestants and Catholics. The former insisted upon having the status yww of 1618 restored; the Catholics, upon having the ques- tion settled on the basis laid down in 1630, after the issuing of the Edict of Pestitution. On the proposition of the elec- toral Saxon minister to meet halfway, the status quo of the year 1624 was at last adopted as the rule. The Protes- tants, although having conquered Austria in the held, thus lost a considerable part of what they held. They retained the two archbishoprics and the twelve bishoprics* of * They were the aixhbishoprics of Magdeburg and Bremen, with the 462 FERDINAND III. Northern Germany, which had been secularised since the treaties of Passau and of Augsburg. On the other hand, the Catholics retained all those territories in which, during the four years following the battle of the White Moun- tain, Austria had forcibly restored the old religion. To this category belonged, in particular, the whole of the hereditary Austrian dominions, Bohemia included ; and the three Westphalian bishoprics of Miinster, Hildesheim, and Paderborn. The Ik'unswick Guelphs thus did not receive Hildes- lieim, which they had so long coveted, nor Halberstadt and Minden, which fell to Brandenburg ; and Hanover had to share the bishopric of Osnabriick with the Papists ; so that, by a very extraordinary arrangement, the see was to be held alternately by a prince of the House of Brunswick and by a Roman Catholic bishop. Hesse-Cassel, which had so energetically defended the Protestant cause, had to con- tent itself with the princely Abbey of Hersfeld. The powerful Pi'otestant house of Saxony also made no acquisition beyond being confirmed in the possession of the two Lusatias. Bavaria retained the electorate, besides the Upper Pala- tinate (Amberg and Sulzbach), which was taken from the Elector Palatine. The outlawed Elector Palatine, and the likewise out- lawed Dukes of Mecklenburg, were restored. Two of the most momentous stipulations of the West- phalian peace, moreover, concerned the definitive acknow- ledgment of the republics of Switzerland and Holland as sovereign powers, Holland even obtained the right of shut- ting up the navigation of the Scheldt and the Rhine, and thereby completed the ruin of German commerce. The plan which Ferdinand II. had entertained of chang- bishoprics of Halberstadt, Osnabriick, Verden, Minden, Brandenburg, Havel- berg, Naumburg, Mcrscburg, Meissen, Liibcck, Schwerin, and Katzeburg. — Transl. 1 PEACE OF WESTrilALIA. 463 ing the German Empire into an absolute monarchy, was completely frustrated by tlie "Westphalian peace, just as in the case of Charles V. by tlie march of the Elector Mau- rice to Innsbruck. I'he Empire was formally constituted as an aristocracy of princes, with oligarchic rule ; the dif- ferent members of the German body having the right expressly granted them of forming alliances with foreign princes, except against the Empire. The Emperor was confined to the dynastic power in his hereditary dominions. " The princes," as the Duchess of Orleans once expressed it, " made a point of being considered as depending on God alone, and not having the Emperor for their master." Only when Austria's miraculous fortune had given her the victories against the Turks, and the conquest of Hun- gary; the ascendency of the House of Habsburg was again felt in Germany. The petty princes had to bow ; but the great ones, especially Brandenburg, gradually emancipated themselves. The House of Austria, as far as the Impe- rial dignity was concerned, had to be content with the jjrestige of still retaining the uncontested precedency over all the European princely houses. The true supremacy of poiver in Europe, Jioioever, noin rested for some time icith France. As co-guarantee of Sweden, in the "Westphalian peace, the crown of the Fleurs-de-lys thenceforth obtained an ever-ready opportunity of meddling with the affairs of Germany. When the heralds flew from Westphalia to all parts of the German Empire, to announce by sound of trumpet to the warring princes, to the beleaguered towns, and to the famished and sorrow-stricken people, the conclusion of peace which it had not enjoyed for nearly a whole gene- ration; Germany was a very diflerent country from what it had been thirty years before. Its fields lay waste ; its population was gone. This was true also of Austrin, and especially of Bohemia. The Tyrol only, protected by its mountains, had kept off the enemy. In Bohemia, instead 464 FERDINAND III. of flourishing, populous, industrious towns, and cheerful, tliriving villages, the eye, as far as it reached, was met only by heaps of smouldering ruins and by newly dug graves : where formerly golden crops waved, there were now bogs and a wilderness of brushwood and bramble ; and the men whom the lonof savajj-e war had left amons: the livino; had, from hunger and despair, formed themselves into bands of robbers and murderers, driven from house and home, and vying with the active and disbanded soldiery in outrage and rapine. Fi'om that time dates the harassing system of passports, which was then adopted on account of those brigands. The principal burden lay now, as usual, on the peasants. Tliey had suffered most in the war ; but even in peace not only their harsh seigneurs, but likewise the selfish citizens and townspeople did their utmost to keep them down. This is proved, among other things, by a remarkable decree of the Bohemian Diet which Ferdinand III. held in 1656 at Prague. " It being well known that the poor peasants, on account of the low price of agricultural produce, can scarcely maintain themselves ; it has been decreed, lest they should be obliged to part xoith the corn, the raising of lohich has cost them so much, for a ridiculously low price, or half give it away, that a fair tariff of all sorts of grain shall be established, below which no one, either in the country, or especially in the towns, shall buy or sell under forfeiture of the same." Whilst the Emperor did not succeed in his plan of breaking the power of the German princely aristocracy, and changing Germany into an absolute monarchy, he carried out his object, at least to a certain extent, in his hereditary dominions. The principal gain which the House of Habs- burg derived from the bloody Thirty Years' War was, that the ascendency of the Imperial Court over the Aus- trian aristocracy was established on a neiv and solid basis. The old dynasts and lords of Austria and Bohemia,-^who 1 THE NEAV ARISTOCRACY. 465 In their proud castles had been the true masters of the country, endowed with " autonomy,'^ as the court ex- pressly designated it ; and who, especially since the time of their turning Protestant, had been very little dependent on the crown; — had nearly all of them been outlawed and ex- iled. They were now broken down, those strong castles, donjons, and mansions of the old nobility of Bohemia, Austria, and Styria; in the court-yards of some of which a moderate sized village might have stood ; whose fountains and cisterns might in many instances be compared to the grand works of the Romans; and whose kitchens, gal- leries, and halls, as Hormayr says, " even in their majestic ruins, exhibit a much grander character than tiie palaces of modern times." The old mediaeval systematical oppo- sition of the nobles against the crown was thereby shaken to its centre. The new aristocracy had been only created by the court, and been made rich and powerful with the confiscated estates of the defeated old Protestant nobility. Whatever, therefore, might be their services, and to how- ever great rewards these new men thought themselves entitled, yet they could not forget the origin of their for- tune, nor repudiate the duty of gratitude to the court which had founded It. The new Catholic aristocracy con- sisted of very heterogeneous elements ; besides a nucleus of a few old houses, like the Liechtcnstelns, Dictrichstclns, and others, who had remained falthfid to the crown, it was composed of a mass of new military nobility, most of whom were foi*eigners, Italians, Spaniards, Walloons, &c., or mere upstarts raised by the fortune of war. Such a body could never be so closely and Intimately connected in the oj^po- sitlon against the Catholic court as the old Protestant " Chain of Nobles" had been. At the end of the Avar, there were still a considerable number of Protestant Austrian noble houses liolding estates In Austria below the (confluence of the) Enns ; for from Austria above the Enns, from Styria, Carinthia, VOL. I. H n 466 FERDINAND III. Cai'niola, Bohemia, and Moravia, all the Protestant noble houses had been exiled. A list published by Von Melern enumerates forty-two houses of counts and barons of Aus- tria below the Enns, and twenty-nine houses belonging to the iramatriculated nobility of the same province, which at the time of the Peace of Westphalia publicly professed the Protestant religion, — without mentioning the secret Protestants, and the Protestant nobility in Silesia. When in the session of the congress at Osnabriick the Swedish ambassador, on the 27th of February, 1647, publicly read the petition in which these Protestant nobles urged their claims, Trautmannsdorf three times rose uneasily, and Sal- vius was scarcely able to induce him to hear the petition to the end. Their demands were, restitution of all the churches, schools, hospitals, orphan houses, with the re- venues pertaining thereto, as granted by the dearly- paid-for * royal letters and patents. The Imperial chief commissioner at last emphatically declared, that '' his Im- perial Majesty would rather lay doion his sceptre, croini, and life, and even see his oion sons slain before his eyes, than allow icorship after the Augsburg Confession, or the autonomy (of the nobles), in his kingdoms and hereditary dominions.'^ Salvius drily replied, " that such a thing might really come to pass." The negotiations for peace very nearly split on this point. Yet the Sw.edes at last gave in : merely reserving to themselves the right, as new members of the Empire, to urge their representations In favour of those petitioners on a further occasion. The fault of the Swedes not succeeding in their re- monstrances lay with the Austrian Protestant lords them- selves, and with the manner in which the Protestant Church had used the privileges acquired by its first founders. No * The Majestiitsbrief of the Emperor Maximilian II. had cost forty-two "tuns of gold" (400,000/. sterling). Sec Raupach, Evangelisches (Estreich, iji, 124., note. THE FLACIANS. 467 sooner had the Emperor Maximilian II., in 1568, granted religious liberty in Austria, than the Protestant cause began to be most glaringly compromised and disgraced by the mad fanaticism and the wanton lust of controversy of its divines ; who were abetted and supported by the noble houses. The first families of the country were the zealous pa- trons of the fanatical and quarrelsome Flacian* preachers, who gave the spectacle of the most scandalous controver- sies. But, with all this fanatical zeal, the Protestant nobles showed in their lives how very little they cared for anything beyond the dead letter of the dogma. The Protestant physician Floriau Crucius writes, on the 13th of August, 1619, — even before the battle of the White Mountain, — a letter which contains the following remarkable passage concerning those Protestant lords: " In the midst of the general distress, they give vent to their tyranny against the peasants. And there are among them great numbers of traitors who, under the cloak of the Gospel, are mere doAvnright Epicureans, not caring for any religion but for that which panders to their palate and to their lusts." Thus the Protestant nobility had for the most part de- served their fate, and they merely earned the punisiunent of their OAvn sins. Most of them soon became converts to Popery, and, as is usually the case, the most fanatical cham- pions of the religion which their houses had been the fore- most to assail as long as there was anything to be gained by their opposition. * The Flacian sect carried the Lutheran doctrine of original sin to sucli lengths as to teach that man was not only sinful, hut sin itself. A sub- division of them, callin<^ themselves Magdehur J. N. R. J. (Jesus Nazare- nus. Rex JudiBorum), in the followhig manner, Jam Nihil Reportabunt Jesuitce. Even his last will, which was exe- cuted in all legal form and publicly read, bore witness to the sarcastic humour with which he loved to lash the " Spanish priests." The Introduction was couched in terms of the most piteous and humble contrition. After Avhich he proceeded to bestow on the reverend fathers, as a token of the love which he always bore to them, and for the gladdening of their hearts, 80,000 . Here the page ended. When the reader turned the leaf he found, " board- nails for a new building." Lobkowitz, the magnificent, liberal, eloquent, and ever- jovial minister, was always a great favourite with the people; even with the Hungarians, who were generally so ready to grumble. Yet he was like one walking in his sleep on the brinkof a precipice; and misfortune suddenly broke in upon him. Just one year after the second marriage of the Emperor, on the 17th of October, 1674, Lobkowitz was drivinfT at his u^ual hour, ten o'clock in the morning, to his audience with the Emperor, when he was arrested by General Prince Pio, the captain of the body-guard of hal- berdiers. Pio announced to him at once that it was by special order of the Emperor. Lobkowitz found himself unceremo- niously deprived of all his dignities and honours. When, with very natural astonishment, he demanded the cause of this extraordinary treatment, his question was met by the strict command of the Emperor under pain of death not to inquire. On the very evening before this piece of Oriental justice was enacted, Lobkowitz had been at court and been received with every mark of favour. From the minutes of Prince Schwartzenbcrg's Diary on this allliir, which, according to the historian Count ^lailath, is still extant in the Schwartzcnberg archives at Vienna, the crimes imputed to Lobkowitz were " disclosure of secrets ; the alienating of the princes from the Emperor; and the I I 2 484 LEOPOLD I. thwarting of Imperial decrees," and that, "for the ex- alting of France and lowering of the Emperor." The affair created an immense sensation, not only in Germany, but also at all the European courts. The Im- perial order was to the effect " that Lobkowitz, being dis- missed from his offices and honours, should leave, within three days, tlie court and the Imperial capital, and betake himself to his estate of Raudnitz in Bohemia, where he was to remain in exile without ever absenting himself or corresponding with any one. The cause of all this he should never ask to know ; if he dared to disobey, he should forfeit his life and all his property." After having received this order, Lobkowitz went to his familiar friend Emeric Sinelli, the father guardian of the Capuchins*, with wdiom he took a solitary dinner. At the expiration of the three days, he was early in the morning conducted from Vienna across the bridge of the Danube in an open carriage, under the escort of three troops of dragoons, as a spectacle to the astonished crowd. He was conveyed to his castle of Raudnitz. Count Martinitz, the chief burfjrave, received strict orders to make arranije- ments for his being closely watched, and not to allow any letter, or book, or visitor to reach him. Yet the fallen minister was soon after forgotten altogether. Even in the midst of this sudden reverse of fortune, the jovial spirits of Lobkowitz never failed him. He had, at Raudnitz, a hall got up, one half with princely spendour, and the other half as a miserable hovel. In one half he lived and occu- pied himself as behoved his former splendid station ; in the other, as was suited to his deep fall ; and on all the walls he wrote ridiculous or scandalous anecdotes of the lives of his enemies. He died on the 22nd of April, 1677, at the age of sixty-nine ; having received, after the death of the ♦ Sinelli was a Hungarian, and became, in 1680, Bishop of Vienna ; in 1682 a privy councillor of the " Conference Coiincil;" and he died in 1685. DOWNFALL OF LOP.KOWITZ. -185 Empress Claudia, for his solace, some marks of favour from the Emperor, and the assurance that he had not deserved any punishment. His two private secretaries, the Ger- man one, as well as the crafty Italian JNIattioli*, a Floren- tine, were likewise arrested, as it was intended to force from them some confession concerning the correspondence of the prince with France, and the money received from thence. jMattioli afterwards fled from the fortress of Raab to France, and became one of the most active emissaries of Louis XIV. with the Signory of Venice, and with the Sublime Porte. The wife of Lobkowitz, a princess of Sulzbach, survived him by five years, and died, in 1G82, at Nurembero;. In the same vear that Lobkowitz fell into disj^racc (1G74), the Spanish party, and in its train the Jesuits, were again placed at the helm of affairs. The first v/ar of Austria with France had already broken out, contrary to all that Lobkowitz wished and intended. For a period of eitihty years, from the time of the downfall of Prince Lobkowitz until the times of Prince Kaunitz, no premier in Austria was able to rule with absolute power. Xor was the post of prime minister ever again combined wi'ii that of lord steward, as had been the case under Lob- kowitz and under his three predecessors Auersperg, Portia, and Trantinannsdorf. Tlie great families of the aristocracy thenceforth shared the power among them- selves, and with some bourgeois " red-tapists," upstarts, and converts. A short time before the dismissal of Prince Auersperg, in 1G70, the Emperor Leopold, after the example of Fer- dinand II., had established the so-called "Conference CounciL" It consisted of a few confidential i)crsons, with whom the most secret affairs of state were discussed and settled. ' ;Muihitli calls liiiii PoiTi. I I 3 486 LEOPOLD I. The first man at the court of Vienna, after the fall of Lobkowitz, was the Italian Count Raimondo JMontecuculi, who, after a long interval, had gained the first victory over the Turks. The Emperor raised him, in 1662, to the dignity of a prince of the empire. Montecuculi, born in 1608, was a native of Modena. He was called from Italy by his cousin Ernest Montecuculi, a general-field-marshal in the Austrian service. He had, however, laid an excel- lent foundation of scientific military knowledge in Italy, and continued his studies when the Swedes, under Baner, kept him for two years a prisoner at Stettin. After the death of Prince Ottavio Piccolomini in 1656, he was ap- pointed colonel of his regiment of cuirassiers ; he rose, in 1664, to the rank of general-field-marshal and governor of Kaab; and in 1668, he became generalissimo of the Im- perial armies, and president of the Aulic Council of War. In the last year, he also received the order of the Golden Fleece. According to the statement of the Italian tourist Abbe Pacichelli, he had a yearly revenue of 60,000 florins ; and each campaign, the Abbe adds, might yield him 150,000 florins. In 1 664, with the aid of a body of auxi- liaries of Louis XIV., he utterly routed the Turks near St. Gotthardt ; which was the first glimmer of success for the Christian arms for a period of 200 years, since the days of the great Huno-arian king Matthias Corvinus. After this, a truce was concluded at Vasvar for twenty years ; the end of which, marked by the great siege of Vienna by the Turks, Montecuculi did not live to see. He died on the 16th of October, 1680, at Linz, whither he had accom- panied the Emperor on account of the plague. Twice before, in the same town, he had had a narrow escape from death. Once he was all but drowned ; and another time, riding by the Emperor's side under the gateway of the castle, he was very nearly crushed by some falling timber. Montecuculi was of a cold and thoroughly unsympathis- ing character, unaccommodating, censorious, and always MONTECUCULI. 487 grumbling, full of intrigue, and utterly unscrupulous ; but of very keen penetration, and of a well-disciplined in- tellect, and such a cautious, circumspect, deliberate general, that he was called " Centum ocuW" — a master of marches and castrametation. Deeply versed in military science, he has earned fiime also as an author by his Memorie dclla Guerra, in which he bitterly complains of his enemies Gonzaga and Portia ; especially of the latter, without how- ever mentioning him by name. Montecuculi was of mid- dling stature, and of a spare figure ; his complexion and the expression of his features markedly Italian ; the fire of his dark eyes was soothed down by the blandncss and sedateness of his manner. His mode of life was very sim- ple. He was alike averse to riotous amusements and to etiquette. His temperament was decidedly melancholy. In his old age, he suffered severely from lui^morrhoidal com- plaints. Montecuculi, however, Avas not only a hero in war, and a thoroughly scientific military commander, but likc- Avise a very well read theologian, philosopher, naiuralist, and jurist ; in fact, a statesman of universal genius. I'aci- chelli, during his stay at Vienna, often saw him at his library, where he had many an argument with him. He states that the generalissimo had always had about him the great work on theology by P. Gonet, a professor of 13or - deaux : the mystic theological writings of the celebrated Englishman llobert Flood, physician, alchymis-t, and liosi- crucian, he was able to recite word for word. He was presi- dent of the Society of Natural Philosophers. His power of oratory was of the highest order, and supported by his extraordinary memory. He made verses : several sonnets of his have been preserved. He possessed at Vienna an extensive library ; his picture gallery, which contained the finest pieces, served at the same time as his domestic chapel ; and he had a beautiful garden near his palace. In 1658, at the age of fifty, he married the beautiful sister of Prince Dietrichstein, at that time in her twenty-first 1 I 4 488 LEOPOLD I. year; who bore to him a son and three daughters. The son became privy councillor, a field-marshal, and captain of the guard of halberdiers. The daughters, according to Pacichelli, were the most lively and eccentric persons of the whole court of Vienna. Fi'om one of them the still flourishing princely house of Kosenberg is descended. The Princess Montecuculi died in 1676, two years before her husband, of small-pox. The first man in the Emperor's council was, after Montecuculi, Count George Louis Von Sinzendorf. He was a scion of the younger branch of that house to which the well known bishop of the Moravian Brethren be- longed.* He besjan his career as chamberlain to Ferdi- nand III., and as a councillor of the Aulic Chamber. In 1653, Sinzendorf, who had been steadily progressing on the way to offices and honours, became a convert to Popery. At the accession of Leopold in 1657, he was raised to the important post of president of the Aulic Chamber (lord treasurer) ; besides which, the Emperor conferred upon him the government of the Tyrol, which, in 1666, reverted to the crown. When Sinzendorf, a younger son of a younger branch, was appointed president, his private fortune amounted to not more than 20,000 rix thalers; but afterwards it in- creased so vastly, that he is said to have paid 60,000 thalers for a set of pearls for his second wife, who it is true was of princely birth. Duchess Dorothea Elizabeth of Holstein-Sonderburg-Wiesenburg, sprang from an an- cient house, which was, however, much impoverished by the division of the family property. She was likewise a convert to Popery, and became, at the age of sixteen, in 1671, the second wife of the president; his first wife having been a Protestant of the zealously Lutheran family of the Jorgers. * The branch of the Bishop of Herrnhut spelled their name Zinzendorf. Both branches became extinct in the beginning of the present centnry. SINZENDORF. 489 According to old custom, Sinzendorf, througli whose hands all the revenue of the state passed, enjorjed the -privi- lege of rendering no account of the public expenditure. " The Austrian lords," Esaias von Puffendorf says, " have long since deluded their soverei2;ns into the belief that the care of the financial concerns teas derogatory to their Imperial dignity and grandeur^ and, besides, icas very harassing and burdensome ; and that therefore the sovereign should leave these affairs completely and absolutely to those tvhose business they were; that, in short, in these matters they ought to see with the eyes of others.'''' Protected by this most excep- tional of all privileges, Sinzendorf took good care, whilst working for the Imperial finances, to work at the same time for himself. He bought estates and lordships, one after the other ; yet this was only one of his ways of accu- mulating wealth. At one of his estates at Neuburg, he openly and unblushingly carried on the nefarious trade of manufacturing counterfeit money. Buying good Bavarian groats by thousands, he re-issued them as bad five-groat pieces. It was of no avail that the Bavarian government complained, Sinzendorf went on with iiis precious trade just the same. Nay, the president went so far in his effrontery as to set up before his mint of counterfeit coin at Neubiu'g the stone statue of the Virgin, which, before exchanging it for a bronze one, the Jesuits had had in front of the colleo'e of tlieir order at Vienna. Tiicre was in fact no O kind of industrial speculation in which the president would not ensao-e ; and in all of them he cither cheated and then persecuted his partners, or allowed them for their benefit and his to cheat the sliareholders and the public. lie was on particularly good terms with the Jews ; who, since the days of Ferdinand IL, had become the favourite money brokers of the House of Austria, and yet, in 1670, in consequence of some riots of the po[)ulace against them, had been removed from Vienna. The president soon re- laxed this prohibition ; and in 1675, some rich Israelites 490 LEOPOLD L from Amsterdam came to Vienna, and remained several days concealed in Sinzendorf's garden. They were said to have offered, as the price of their re-admission, to raise ten regiments of horse and foot, and also to maintain them for a certain time. Of all these fraudulent practices of the president, the Emperor Leopold neither saw nor heard anything ; and Sinzendorf continued to enjoy the highest favour with his Majesty. Things went on smoothly and brilliantly until 1679, the year of the Peace of Nimeguen. This peace, as is well known, was concluded in spite of the protest of the Emperor's faithful ally Brandenburg, — which the court of Vienna then, for the first time, perfidiously left in the lurch, — and the sole reason of its being hurried on in such an extraordinary manner was, that the gentlemen in Vienna wished the public money to be tied up no longer by the expenses of the war. This was especially manifest when, immediately after the conclusion of the peace, the army was reduced to such an extent that, as the " Frank- fort Relations" express it, ''many persons learned in war (Montecuculi, &c.) were greatly astonished at it." The old practised veterans were discharged, and the conse- quences were most signal; war being then threatened by the Turks, and also by Brandenburg, on account of its claims to the Sileslan Princliialltles. France, moreover, annexed in 1680, one year after that untoward peace, the whole of Alsace ; and in 1681 even took Strassburg, the key of Southern Germany. The discontent, which now became too loud, at last led to Sinzendorf's downfall. The crash which, however recklessly he was going on, he had so long warded off, came from Bohemia. A former attempt to bring him to account for his dealings as presi- dent of the chamber (treasury) of that country had been foiled by Lobkowitz, who at that time was still prime minister. Sinzendorf had suggested to Lobkowitz the w\ay in which he might revive an old claim of his family SINZEXDORF. 491 to a sum of not less than 200,000 florins. Lobkowltz entered into it, took the steps which were pointed out, and the tre.asury paid the money over to him. This happened in 1672. In 1679, the Imperial court had fled, on account of the plague, from Vienna to Pesth ; and Sinzendorf was staying there with the Emperor, when suddenly he was suspended. A commission for his trial was appointed; before which, notwithstanding his pleading the privilege of not having to render any account, he was arraigned and condemned. Tiie sentence, which was passed on the 19tii of June, 1 680, and published on the 9th of October, at nine in the morning, in the presence of a great mass of people admitted for the purpose, at the house of Count Nostitz, the chairman of the commission, condenmed him to per- petual imprisonment and to the confiscation of all his estates. The evidence against Sinzendorf proved a defalcation amounting to nearly twenty tuns of gold. The crimes laid to his charge comprised perjury, theft, and fraud. His wife, the duchess, having tlu'ce times implored mercy for him on her knees before the Emperor, some of his estates W'ere restored; in order that he might live in retirement, in one of his chateaux, in a manner suitable to his rank. Yet scarcely a year had passed after his conviction, ere he succeeded in procuring an Imperial " alisohitorinm,^^ by virtue of which he was relieved from all further claims of the treasury against him, and full// acquitted. A residuary claim of 1,9-40,000 florins was remitted him ; and he was allowed to take up his residence wherever lie liked in the Imperial hereditary possessions, even in the capital itself. There he died on the 14th of December, IG.s], liaving nearly completed his sixty-sixth yi'ar. He is said to have, left in his will, to his wife 400,000 florins, and to each of his children, a son and two daughters, 100,000 florins. Four years previous to the downfall of Lobkowitz, in 1670, the privy councillor Count John Adoliihus Schwart- zenberg liad been raised to the post of president of the 492 LEOrOLD I. Imperial Aulic Council. His father Count Adam Schwart- zenberg was that minister of the Elector of Brandenbui'g who, in the Thirty Years' War, did the Emperor such signal service. Count John Adolphus, owing to the liber- ^ alitj of that Archduke Leopold William who held so many ^ church benefices, had, during the minority of Leopold f II., become one of the richest noblemen at the Austrian court. The archduke had given him, in particular, from the Bohemian crown domains, the lar^e estate of Wittino-au, near Budweis, whose celebrated fish ponds, which furnish the market of Vienna with that noted dainty Bohemian carp, are a rich source of revenue to the present Princes Schwartzenberg. He had, in 1644, married a Countess Starhemberg; and had been the archduke's lord steward ever since 1646. After the death of the Emperor Ferdi- nand HI., Schwartzenberg had suggested to the archduke to become a rival candidate of his nephew Leopold for the Imperial crown of Germany, and, moreover, to throw up the government of the Netherlands ; for which reason, he was neither popular wMth Leopold nor with the Spaniards. Yet, notwithstanding this unfavourable disposition against him, he maintained himself in a brilliant, although not the very first position at court. He Avas a thorough Austrian aristo- crat, one of the very best specimens of his class ; and Leo- pold, who was forced to respect him, even raised him, in 1671, to the rank of a prince of the Empire. Schwartzenberg kept one of the best houses in Vienna ; but he was such a good manager as to be able, regularly every year, to lay by part of his revenue. With these savings he purchased a number of estates; especially in Bohemia, from which country his fiimily originally came. Their real name was Czernahora ; and only as late as during the Hussite wars they had emigrated to Franconia, where they purchased the countship of Schwartzenberg. Prince John Adolphus was a gentleman of very stately i:)resence and of good address, and, moreover, a man of IIOCHER. 493 great resolution and courage. "VVlienj in the year of the plague (1679), so many cavaliers fled from Vienna, he remained, and exerted himself In a most ])raisc\vortliy manner for the people. But he was very difficult to deal with in the way of business. Puftendorf states that people use to call him "doctorem perplexiatum et dubita- torem perpetuum." He died suddenly in 1683, at the age of sixty-eight, Avhilst paying a visit to Father Sauter, the confessor of the Empress at Laxenburg; having just before attended a sitting of the privy councih Besides these noble lords, an up-start " red-tapist," John Paul Baron Hocher, the first Aulic chancellor, — a man who had risen from the rank of a common lawyer to that of minister, — exercised the greatest influence at court. He was one of the most unblushino- tools of that absolutism which, having been first hatched during the Thirty Years' AYar, has been established principally by him on a quasi- lawful basis, after the pattern of the sophistry Avhich served in lieu of law at the court of the Byzantine rulers. Being a fiiithful ally of the Jesuits, and consequently a friend of the Spaniards, and being moreover deep in the confidence of the Empress Claudia; he became one of the principal aofents in the ruin of Lobkowitz. A most obscene and scurrilous epigram, casting on the empress the imputa- tions alluded to before, and which was said to have been found among the papers of the fallen premier, was very likely manufactured by Hocher himself. Hocher, this " hard-boiled" minister, died in his sixty- seventh year, at Vienna, on the 1st of March, 1683. Ho left a fortune of more than 1,000,000 florins; a sum quite ftibulous for those times, and for a man of his extraction and position. Yet he had no male heir. Among the most influential men of the last period of Leopold's reign, we must not omit the Jesuit Father WoltT. His real name was Baron von Liidingshausen. He was a native of ^Yestphalia, actual privy councillor, 494 LEOPOLD I. and employed in many secret diplomatic commissions in Avar and peace. To the Emperor he was particularly welcome, owing to his most agreeable conversation. He was, with Prince Eugene, the principal adviser of the war of the Spanish Succession ; and he it was who procured the royal dignity for Prussia. In the interest of his order, he tried to win the favour not only of the new Prussian King, but also of the Russian Czar Peter the Great, when the latter came on a visit to Vienna. 3. WEDDING FESTIVITIES AT THE MARRIAGE OF LEOPOLD I. WITH THE SPANISH INFANTA, 1666. THE GREAT EQUESTRIAN BALLET DURING THE CARNIVAL OF 1667. In 1666, Leopold I. celebrated his marriage with his first wife, the Spanish Infanta, the negotiations concerning Avhich had been carried on for some time. He was at that time in his twenty-seventh year ; the Infanta Magareta Theresa had not yet completed her sixteenth. The Infanta, having embarked at Barcelona, landed at Finale, near Genoa, on the 20th of August, 1666. She was accompanied by her lord steward the Duke of Albuquerque, and by Cardinal Colonna. Here she Avas received by the governor of Milan Don Vincent Gonzaga; and by Count Montecuculi, Avho had been sent by the Imperial court to meet her, and Avho presented to her a jewel from the Em- peror. The journey from thence to Vienna was performed Avith the greatest ease ; it lasted more than three months. The Infanta proceeded by Milan, Avhere she arrived on the 11th of September; and by Brescia, — where the republic of Venice complimented her by an euA^oy extraordinary, and caused her to be entertained in the most costly manner for two days, — along the Adige, to Roveredo. At this place, she was to change her household ; her ncAv lord steAvard bcino- Prince Ferdinand of Dietrichstein. The Duke of o AVEDDING FESTIVITIES. 495 Albuquerque kissed hands on taking leave, on the 19th of October; and had, on the same evening, to return with the whole of the Spanish suite to the next village. The younn- Count Lamberg, as newly appointed chamberlain of the Infanta, states, among other things, that at the exchange the Duke of Albuquerque had, according to custom, re- ceived from the plate of the Imperial bride " several small silver chairs and tables, forty dozen disiies, seventy dozen plates, and all her other table service.* Lamberg, at the next fete of the Emperor, on the 15th of November, brought to the Emperor, as a present from the future Empress, a diamond ring, valued at 150,000 florins; and a chess-board and men of gold studded with diamonds, of the value of 6000 ducats. The Emperor, on the 26th of Novem- ber, surprised the Infanta at Schottwien, where he at once made his appearance, and made himself known, whilst the cavaliers w^ere admitted to the princess to kiss h:nids. When he took leave, his royal bride presented him with a band for his hat, with a precious jewel appended worth upwards of 12,000 rix thalers ; "but, as it had not been properly fixed, and his jNIajesty had ridden back in great haste to Neustadt and repeatedly doffed his hat, it was lost on the road ; but found again by a butcher, and returned, Avith, however, three stones missing, to his ]\Ia- jcsty on the following day, when he came back to Vienna ; at which recovery his Imperial Majesty was not a little rejoiced." The entry of the Infanta into Vienna took place on the 5th of December, with a pomp which afforded to the court historians of the time a most fruitful theme for gorgeous details. In an old woodcut, Leopold appears in a Spanish mantle and plumed hat, wearing a flowing wig a la Fon- tange, with collar and frill of point lace a la Van Dyke, * The Duke being afterwards sent as viceroy to Sicily, lost in a storm two plate cliests, containing from seven to eight hundredweight of silver. 496 LEOPOLD I. and moustache and beard on the chin a la Henri IV. His Roman Imperial Majesty is riding under a canopy carried by some of tlie principal burghers of Vienna. Her Imperial Majesty the bride rode " in a golden carriage made in the most costly and cunning fashion." It cost nearly 100,000 rix thalers (about 15,000/. sterling); and, like all the state carriages of that period, was very long, and covered with a roof similar to a pavilion. It was drawn by six horses; the Infanta sitting far back, and op- posite to her, in front, her first lady of the bedchamber. The horses deserve particular notice ; they were six cream- coloured steeds, with long white manes, a present from Count Antony of Oldenburg, whose stud of more than 1500 horses was celebrated all over Europe. This magnificent procession took three hours in passing through the illuminated city to the church of the Augus- tines ; there the bridal pair alighted, and, after praying in the chapel of St. Maria of Loretto, they went to the high altar, where Cardinal Count Harrach, the Papal Nuncio, attended by all the prelates present in the city, pro- nounced the nuptial benediction, the ceremony having been previously performed by proxy at Madrid. The Imperial bride and bridegroom then sat down, at nine o'clock in the evening, to supper, with the Empress~dow- ao