and there; but Absalon would have none of it. The burden was too
heavy for his shoulders, he said. However, the clergy seized him,
“being,” says Saxo, who without doubt was one of them, “the more
emboldened to do so as the archbishop himself laid hands upon him
first.” Intoning the hymn sung at archiepiscopal consecrations,
they tried to lead him to the altar. He resisted with all his might
and knocked several of the brethren down. Vestments were torn and
scattered, and a mighty ruction arose, to which the laity, not to
be outdone, added by striking up a hymn of their own. Archbishop
and King tried vainly to make peace; the clamor and battle only
rose the higher. Despite his struggles, Absalon was dragged to the
high seat, but as they were about to force him into it, he asked
leave to say a single word, and instantly appealed his case to the
Pope. So there was an end; but when the aged Eskild, on the plea
of weakness, begged him to pronounce the benediction, he refused
warily, because so he would be exercising archiepiscopal functions
and would be _de facto_ incumbent of the office.[6]
Here, as always, Absalon thought less of himself than of his
country, so the event showed. For when the Pope heard his plea,
though he decided against him, he allowed him to hold the bishopric
of Roskilde together with the higher office, and so he was left at
Valdemar’s side to help finish their work of building up Denmark
within and without. At Roskilde he spent, as a matter of fact, most
of his time while Valdemar lived. At Lund he would have been in
a distant part of the country, parted from his friend and out of
touch with the things that were the first concern of his life.
They were preparing to aim a decisive blow against the Pomeranian
pagans when Valdemar died, on the very day set for the sailing. The
parting nearly killed Absalon. Saxo draws a touching picture of him
weeping bitterly as he said the requiem mass over his friend, and
observes: “Who can doubt that his tears, rising with the incense,
gave forth a peculiar and agreeable savour in high heaven before
God?” The plowmen left their fields and carried the bier, with sobs
and lamentations, to the church in Ringsted, where the great King
rests. His sorrow laid Absalon on a long and grievous sick-bed,
from which he rose only when Valdemar’s son needed and called him.
In the fifteen years that follow we see his old warlike spirit
still unbroken. Thus his defiance of the German Emperor, whose
anger was hot. Frederick, in revenge, persuaded the Pomeranian duke
Bugislav to organize a raid on Denmark with a fleet of five hundred
sail. Scant warning reached Absalon of the danger. King Knud was
away, and there was no time to send for him. Mustering such vessels
as were near, he sailed across the Baltic and met the enemy under
Rügen the day after Whitsuntide (1184). The bishop had gone ashore
to say mass on the beach, when word was brought that the great
fleet was in sight. Hastily pulling off his robe and donning armor
instead, he made for his ship with the words: “Now let our swords
sing the praise of God.” The Pomeranians were taken completely by
surprise. They did not know the Danes were there, and when they
heard the archbishop’s dreaded war-cry raised, they turned and fled
in such terror and haste that eighteen of their ships were run down
and sunk with all on board. On one, a rower hanged himself for fear
of falling into the hands of the Danes. Absalon gave chase, and the
rout became complete. Of the five hundred ships only thirty-five
escaped; all the rest were either sunk or taken. Duke Bugislav soon
after became a vassal of Denmark, and of the Emperor’s plots there
was an end.
It was the last blow, and the story of it went far and wide.
Absalon’s work was nearly done. Denmark was safe from her enemies.
The people were happy and prosperous. Valdemar’s son ruled
unchallenged, and though he was childless, by his side stood his
brother, a manly youth who, not yet full grown, had already shown
such qualities of courage and sagacious leadership that the old
archbishop could hang up the sword with heart at ease. The promise
was kept. The second Valdemar became Denmark’s royal hero for all
time. Absalon’s last days were devoted to strengthening the Church,
around which he had built such a stout wall. He built churches and
cloisters, and guided them with a wise and firm hand. And he made
Saxo, his clerk, set it all down as an eye-witness of these things,
and as one who came to the task by right; for, says the chronicler,
“have not my grandfather and his father before him served the King
well on land and sea, hence why should not I serve him with my
book-learning?” He bears witness that the bishop himself is his
authority for much that he has written.
Archbishop Absalon closed his eyes on St. Benedict’s Day, March
21, 1201, in the cloister at Sorö which Sir Asker built and where
he lived his last days in peace. Absalon’s statue of bronze, on
horseback, battle-axe in hand, stands in the market square in
Copenhagen, the city he founded and of which he is the patron
saint; but his body lies within the quiet sanctuary where, in
the deep forest glades, one listens yet for the evensong of the
monks, long silent now. When his grave was opened, in 1826, the
lines of his tall form, clad in clerical robes, were yet clearly
traceable. The strong hands, turned to dust, held a silver chalice
in which lay his episcopal ring. They are there to be seen to-day,
with remnants of his staff that had partly crumbled away. No Dane
approaches his grave without emotion. “All Denmark grieved for
him,” says a German writer of that day, “and commended his soul
to Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, for that in his lifetime he
had led many who were enemies to peace and concord.” In his old
cathedral, in Roskilde town, lies Saxo, according to tradition
under an unmarked stone. When he went to rest his friend and master
had slept five years.
Esbern outlived his brother three years. The hero of so many
battles met his death at last by an accidental fall in his own
house. The last we hear of him is at a meeting in the Christmas
season, 1187, where emissaries of Pope Gregory VIII preached a
general crusade. Their hearers wept at the picture they drew of the
sufferings Christians were made to endure in the Holy Land. Then
arose Esbern and reminded them of the great deeds of the fathers
at home and abroad. The faith and the fire of Absalon were in his
words:
“These things they did,” he said, “for the glory of their name and
race, knowing nothing of our holy religion. Shall we, believing,
do less? Let us lay aside our petty quarrels and take up this
greater cause. Let us share the sufferings of the saints and earn
their reward. Perhaps we shall win—God keeps the issue. Let him who
cannot give himself, give of his means. So shall all we, sharing
the promise, share also the reward.”
The account we have says that many took the cross, such was the
effect of his words, more likely of the man and what he was and had
been in the sight of them all throughout his long life.
Footnotes:
[3] Pronounced Reeg.
[4] Pronounced Snare, with a as in are. In the Danish hare rhymes
with snare, so pronounced.
[5] Pronounced Veethe.
[6] That all this in no way affected the personal relations of the
two men Saxo assures us in one of the little human touches with
which his chronicle abounds. When Eskild was going away to end his
days as a monk in the monastery of Clairvaux, he rested awhile with
Absalon at his castle Haffn, where he was received as a father. The
old man suffered greatly from cold feet, and Absalon made a box
with many little holes in, and put a hot brick in it. With this at
his feet, Eskild was able to sleep, and he was very grateful to
Absalon, both because of the comfort it gave him and “because that
he perceived that filial piety rather than skill in the healer’s
art” prompted the invention.
KING VALDEMAR, AND THE STORY OF THE DANNEBROG
To the court of King Ottocar of Bohemia there came in the year
1205 a brilliant embassy from far-off Denmark to ask the hand of
his daughter Dragomir for King Valdemar, the young ruler of that
country. Sir Strange[7] Ebbesoen and Bishop Peder Sunesön were the
spokesmen, and many knights, whose fame had travelled far in the
long years of fighting to bring the Baltic pagans under the cross,
rode with them. The old king received them with delight. Valdemar
was not only a good son-in-law for a king to have, being himself
a great and renowned ruler, but he was a splendid knight, tall
and handsome, of most courteous bearing, ambitious, manly, and of
ready wit. So their suit prospered well. The folk-song tells how
they fared; how, according to the custom of those days, Sir Strange
wedded the fair princess by proxy for his lord, and how King
Ottocar, when he bade her good-by, took this promise of her:
In piety, virtue, and fear of God,
Let all thy days be spent;
And ever thy subjects be thy thought,
Their hopes on thy care be bent.
The daughter kept her vow. Never was queen more beloved of her
people than Dagmar. That was the name they gave her in Denmark, for
the Bohemian Dragomir was strange to them. Dagmar meant daybreak
in their ancient tongue, and it really seemed as if a new and
beautiful day dawned upon the land in her coming. The dry pages of
history have little enough to tell of her beyond the simple fact of
her marriage and untimely death, though they are filled with her
famous husband’s deeds; but not all of his glorious campaigns that
earned for him the name of “The Victor” have sunk so deep into the
people’s memory, or have taken such hold of their hearts, as the
lovely queen who
Came without burden, she came with peace;
She came the good peasant to cheer.
Through all the centuries the people have sung her praise, and they
sing it yet. Of the many folk-songs that have come down from the
middle ages, those that tell of Queen Dagmar are the sweetest, as
they are the most mournful, for her happiness was as brief as her
life was beautiful.
They sailed homeward over sunny seas, until they came to the shore
where the royal lover awaited his bride, impatiently scanning the
horizon for the gilded dragon’s head of the ship that bore her. The
minstrel sings of the great wedding that was held in the old city
of Ribe.[8] The gray old cathedral in which they knelt together
still stands; but of Valdemar’s strong castle only a grass-grown
hill is left. It was the privilege of a bride in those days to ask
a gift of her husband on the morning after the wedding, and have it
granted without question. Two boons did Dagmar crave,
“right early in the morning, long before it was day”:
one, that the plow-tax might be forgiven the peasant, and that
those who for rising against it had been laid in irons be set free;
the other, that the prison door of Bishop Valdemar be opened.
Bishop Valdemar was the arch-enemy of the King. The first request
he granted; but the other he refused for cause:
An’ he comes out, Bishop Valdemar,
Widow he makes you this year.
And he did his worst; for in the end the King yielded to Dagmar’s
prayers, and much mischief came of it.
Seven years the good queen lived. Seven centuries have not dimmed
the memory of them, or of her. The King was away in a distant part
of the country when they sent to him in haste with the message
that the queen was dying. The ballad tells of his fears as he sees
Dagmar’s page coming, and they proved only too true.
The king his checker-board shut in haste,
The dice they rattled and rung.
Forbid it God, who dwells in heaven,
That Dagmar should die so young.
In the wild ride over field and moor, the King left his men far
behind:
When the king rode out of Skanderborg
Him followed a hundred men.
But when he rode o’er Ribe bridge,
Then rode the king alone.
The tears of weeping women told him as he thundered over the
drawbridge of the castle that he was too late. But Dagmar had only
swooned. As he throws himself upon her bed she opens her eyes, and
smiles upon her husband. Her last prayer, as her first, is for
mercy and peace. Her sin, she says, is not great; she has done
nothing worse than to lace her silken sleeves on a Sunday. Then she
closes her eyes with a tired sigh:
The bells of heaven are chiming for me;
No more may I stay to speak.
Thus the folk-song. Long before Dagmar went to her rest, Bishop
Valdemar had stirred up all Germany to wreak his vengeance upon
the King. He was an ambitious, unscrupulous priest, who hated his
royal master because he held himself entitled to the crown, being
the natural son of King Knud, who was murdered at Roskilde, as told
in the story of Absalon. While they were yet young men, when he
saw that the people followed his rival, he set the German princes
against Denmark, a task he never found hard. But young Valdemar
made short work of them. He took the strong cities on the Elbe
and laid the lands of his adversaries under the Danish crown. The
bishop he seized, and threw him into the dungeon of Söborg Castle,
where he had sat thirteen years when Dagmar’s prayers set him free.
He could hardly walk when he came out, but he could hate, and all
the world knew it. The Pope bound him with heavy oaths never to
return to Denmark, and made him come to Italy so that he could keep
an eye on him himself. But two years had not passed before he broke
his oath, and fled to Bremen, where the people elected him to the
vacant archbishopric and its great political power. Forthwith he
began plotting against his native land.
In the bitter feud between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines he found
his opportunity. One of the rival emperors marched an army north
to help the perjured priest. King Valdemar hastened to meet them,
but on the eve of battle the Emperor was slain by one of his own
men. On Sunday, when the archbishop was saying mass in the Bremen
cathedral, an unknown knight, the visor of whose helmet was closed
so that no one saw his face, strode up to the altar, and laying a
papal bull before him, cried out that he was accursed, and under
the ban of the church. The people fled, and forsaken by all, the
wretched man turned once more to Rome in submission. But though the
Pope forgave him on condition that he meddle no more with politics,
war, or episcopal office, another summer found him wielding sword
and lance against the man he hated, this time under the banner of
the Guelphs. The Germans had made another onset on Denmark, but
again King Valdemar defeated them. The bishop intrenched himself in
Hamburg, and made a desperate resistance, but the King carried the
city by storm. The beaten and hopeless man fled, and shut himself
up in a cloister in Hanover, where daily and nightly he scourged
himself for his sins. If it is true that “hell was fashioned by the
souls that hated,” not all the penance of all the years must have
availed to save him from the torments of the lost.
Denmark now had peace on its southern border. Dagmar was dead, and
Valdemar, whose restless soul yearned for new worlds to conquer,
turned toward the east where the wild Esthland tribes were guilty
of even worse outrages than the Wends before Absalon tamed them.
The dreadful cruelties practised by these pagans upon christian
captives cried aloud to all civilized Europe, and Valdemar took the
cross “for the honor of the Virgin Mary and the absolution of his
sins,” and gathered a mighty fleet, the greatest ever assembled in
Danish waters. With more than a thousand ships he sailed across
the Baltic. The Pope sped them with his apostolic blessing, and
took king and people into his especial care, forbidding any one to
attack the country while they were away converting the heathen.
Archbishop Anders led the crusade with the king. As the fleet
approached the shore they saw it covered with an innumerable host
of the enemy. So great was their multitude that the crusaders
quailed before the peril of landing; but the archbishop put heart
into them, and led the fleet in fervent prayer to the God of
battle. Then they landed without hindrance.
There was an old stronghold there called Lyndanissa that had
fallen into decay. The crusaders busied themselves for two days
with building another and better fort. On the third day, being St.
Vitus’ Day, they rested, fearing no harm. The Esthlanders had not
troubled them. Some of their chiefs had even come in with an offer
of surrender. They were willing to be converted, they said, and
the priests were baptizing them after vespers, while the camp was
making ready for the night, when suddenly the air was filled with
the yells of countless savages. On every side they broke from the
woods, where they had been gathering unsuspected, and overwhelmed
the camp. The guards were hewn down, the outposts taken, and the
King’s men were falling back in confusion, their standard lost,
when Prince Vitislav of Rügen who had been camping with his men in
a hollow between the sand-hills, out of the line of attack, threw
himself between them and the Esthlanders, and gave the Danes time
to form their lines.
In the twilight of the June evening the battle raged with great
fury. With the King at their head, who had led them to victory on
so many hard-fought fields, the Danes drove back their savage foes
time after time, literally hewing their way through their ranks
with sword and battle-axe. But they were hopelessly outnumbered.
Their hearts misgave them as they saw ten heathen spring out of the
ground for every one that was felled. The struggle grew fiercer as
night came on. The Christians were fighting for life; defeat meant
that they must perish to a man, by the sword or upon pagan altars;
escape there was none. Upon the cliff overlooking the battle-field
the archbishop and his priests were praying for success to the
King’s arms. Tradition that has been busy with this great battle
all through the ages tells how, while the aged bishop’s hands were
raised toward heaven, victory leaned to the Danes; but when he
grew tired, and let them fall, the heathen won forward, until the
priests held up his hands and once more the tide of battle rolled
back from the shore, and the Christian war-cry rose higher.
Suddenly, in the clash of steel upon steel and the wild tumult of
the conflict, there arose a great and wondering cry “the banner!
the banner! a miracle!” and Christian and pagan paused to listen.
Out of the sky, as it seemed, over against the hill upon which the
priests knelt, a blood-red banner with a great white cross was
seen falling into the ranks of the Christian knights, and a voice
resounded over the battle-field, “Bear this high, and victory
shall be yours.” With the exultant cry, “For God and the King,”
the crusaders seized it, and charged the foe. Terror-stricken,
the Esthlanders wavered, then turned, and fled. The battle became
a massacre. Thousands were slain. The chronicles say that the
dead lay piled fathom-high on the field that ran red with blood.
Upon it, when the pursuit was over, Valdemar knelt with his men,
and they bowed their heads in thanksgiving, while the venerable
archbishop gave praise to God for the victory.
That is the story of the Dannebrog which has been the flag of the
Danes seven hundred years. Whether the archbishop had brought it
with him intending to present it to King Valdemar, and threw it
down among the fighting hordes in the moment of extreme peril,
or whether, as some think, the Pope himself had sent it to the
crusaders with a happy inspiration, the fact remains that it came
to the Danes in this great battle, and on the very day which,
fifty years before, had seen the fall of Arcona, and the end of
idol-worship among the western Slavs. Three hundred years the
standard flew over the Danes fighting on land and sea. Then it was
lost in a campaign against the Holstein counts and, when recovered
half a century later, was hung up in the cathedral at Slesvig,
where gradually it fell to pieces. In the first half of the
Nineteenth Century, when national feeling and national pride were
at their lowest ebb, it was taken down with other moth-eaten old
banners, one day when they were cleaning up, and somebody made a
bonfire of them in the street. Such was the fate of “the flag that
fell from heaven,” the sacred standard of the Danes. But it was
not the end of it. The Dannebrog flies yet over the Denmark of the
Valdemars, no longer great as then, it is true, nor master of its
ancient foes; but the world salutes it with respect, for there was
never blot of tyranny or treason upon it, and its sons own it with
pride wherever they go.
King Valdemar knighted five and thirty of his brave men on the
battle-field, and from that day the Order of the Dannebrog is said
to date. It bears upon a white crusader’s cross the slogan of the
great fight “For God and the King,” and on its reverse the date
when it was won, “June 15, 1219.” The back of paganism was broken
that day, and the conversion of all Esthland followed soon. King
Valdemar built the castle he had begun before he sailed home, and
called it Reval, after one of the neighboring tribes. The Russian
city of that name grew up about it and about the church which
Archbishop Anders reared. The Dannebrog became its arms, and its
people call it to this day “the city of the Danes.”
Denmark was now at the height of her glory. Her flag flew over all
the once hostile lands to the south and east, clear into Russia.
The Baltic was a Danish inland sea. King Valdemar was named
“Victor” with cause. His enemies feared him; his people adored him.
In a single night foul treachery laid the whole splendid structure
low. The King and young Valdemar, Dagmar’s son, with a small suite
of retainers had spent the day hunting on the little island of Lyö.
Count Henrik of Schwerin,—the Black Count they called him,—who had
just returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was his guest.
The count hated Valdemar bitterly for some real or fancied injury,
but he hid his hatred under a friendly bearing and smooth speech.
He brought the King gifts from the Holy Sepulchre, hunted with
him, and was his friend. But by night, when the King and his son
slept in their tent, unguarded, since no enemy was thought to be
near, he fell upon them with his cutthroats, bound and gagged them
despite their struggles, and gathering up all the valuables that
lay around, to put the finishing touch upon his villainy, fled
with his prisoners “in great haste and fear,” while the King’s
men slept. When they awoke, and tried to follow, they found their
ships scuttled. The count’s boat had been lying under sail all day,
hidden in a sheltered cove, awaiting his summons.
Germany at last had the lion and its whelp in her grasp. In chains
and fetters they were dragged from one dungeon to another. The
traitors dared not trust them long in any city, however strong. The
German Emperor shook his fist at Count Henrik, but secretly he was
glad. He would have liked nothing better than to have the precious
spoil in his own power. The Pope thundered in Rome and hurled his
ban at the thugs. But the Black Count’s conscience was as swarthy
as his countenance; and besides, had he not just been to the Holy
Land, and thereby washed himself clean of all his sins, past and
present?
Behind prison walls, comforted only by Dagmar’s son, sat the King,
growing old and gray with anger and grief. Denmark lay prostrate
under the sudden blow, while her enemies rose on every side. Day by
day word came of outbreaks in the conquered provinces. The people
did not know which way to turn; the strong hand that held the helm
was gone, and the ship drifted, the prey of every ill wind. It
was as if all that had been won by sixty years of victories and
sacrifice fell away in one brief season. The forests filled with
out-laws; neither peasant nor wayfarer, nor yet monk or nun in
their quiet retreat, was safe from outrage; and pirates swarmed
again in bay and sound, where for two generations there had been
peace. The twice-perjured Bishop Valdemar left his cloister cell
once more and girt on the sword, to take the kingdom he coveted by
storm.
He was met by King Valdemar’s kinsman and friend, Albert of
Orlamunde, who hastened to the frontier with all the men he could
gather. They halted him with a treaty of peace that offered to set
Valdemar free if he would take his kingdom as a fief of the German
crown. He, Albert, so it was written, was to keep all his lands and
more, would he but sign it. He did not stop to hear the rest, but
slashed the parchment into ribbons with his sword, and ordered an
instant advance. The bishop he made short work of, and he was heard
of no more. But in the battle with the German princes Albert was
defeated and taken prisoner. The door of King Valdemar’s dungeon
was opened only to let his friend in.
After two years and a half in chains, Valdemar was ransomed by his
people with a great sum of gold. The Danish women gave their rings
and their jewels to bring back their king. They flocked about him
when he returned, and received him like the conqueror of old; but
he rode among them gray and stern, and his thoughts were far away.