Brandenburg and the Hohenzollern Family of Nurnberg have hitherto no
mutual acquaintanceship whatever: they go, each its own course, wide
enough apart in the world;--little dreaming that they are to meet by and
by, and coalesce, wed for better and worse, and become one flesh. As is
the way in all romance. "Marriages," among men, and other entities of
importance, "are, evidently, made in Heaven."
Friedrich IV. of Nurnberg, Son of that Friedrich III., Kaiser Rudolf's
successful friend, was again a notable increaser of his House; which
finally, under his Great-grandson, named Friedrich VI., attained the
Electoral height. Of which there was already some hint. Well; under the
first of these two Friedrichs, some slight approximation, and under his
Son, a transient express introduction (so to speak) of Brandenburg to
Hohenzollern took place, without immediate result of consequence; but
under the second of them occurred the wedding, as we may call it, or
union "for better or worse, till death do us part."--How it came about?
Easy to ask, How! The reader will have to cast some glances into the
confused REICHS-History of the time;--timid glances, for the element
is of dangerous, extensive sort, mostly jungle and shaking bog;--and
we must travel through this corner of it, as on shoes of swiftness,
treading lightly.
CONTESTED ELECTIONS IN THE REICH: KAISER ALBERT I.; AFTER WHOM SIX
NON-HAPSBURG KAISERS.
The Line of Rudolf of Hapsburg did not at once succeed continuously
to the Empire, as the wont had been in such cases, where the sons were
willing and of good likelihood. After such a spell of anarchy, parties
still ran higher than usual in the Holy Roman Empire; and wide-yawning
splits would not yet coalesce to the old pitch. It appears too the
posterity of Rudolf, stiff, inarticulate, proud men, and of a turn for
engrossing and amassing, were not always lovely to the public. Albert,
Rudolf's eldest son, for instance, Kaiser Albert I.,--who did succeed,
though not at once, or till after killing Rudolf's immediate successor,
[Adolf of Nassau; slain by Albert's own hand; "Battle" of Hasenbuhel
"near Worms, 2d July, 1298" (Kohler, p. 265).]--Albert was by no means
a prepossessing man, though a tough and hungry one. It must be owned, he
had a harsh ugly character; and face to match: big-nosed, loose-lipped,
blind of an eye: not Kaiser-like at all to an Electoral Body. _"Est
homo monoculus, et vultu rustico; non potest esse Imperator_ (A one-eyed
fellow, and looks like a clown; he cannot be Emperor)!" said Pope
Boniface VIII., when consulted about him. [Kohler, pp. 267-273; and
_Muntzbelustigungen, xix. 156-160._]
Enough, from the death of Rudolf, A.D. 1291, there intervened a hundred
and fifty years, and eight successive Kaisers singly or in line,
only one of whom (this same Albert of the unlovely countenance) was a
Hapsburger,--before the Family, often trying it all along, could get
a third time into the Imperial saddle. Where, after that, it did sit
steady. Once in for the third time, the Hapsburgers got themselves
"elected" (as they still called it) time after time; always
elected,--with but one poor exception, which will much concern my
readers by and by,--to the very end of the matter. And saw the Holy
Roman Empire itself expire, and as it were both saddle and horse vanish
out of Nature, before they would dismount. Nay they still ride there
on the shadow of a saddle, so to speak; and are "Kaisers of AUSTRIA" at
this hour. Steady enough of seat at last, after many vain trials!
For during those hundred and fifty years,--among those six intercalary
Kaisers, too, who followed Albert,--they were always trying; always
thinking they had a kind of quasi right to it; whereby the Empire often
fell into trouble at Election-time. For they were proud stout men, our
Hapsburgers, though of taciturn unconciliatory ways; and Rudolf had
so fitted them out with fruitful Austrian Dukedoms, which they much
increased by marriages and otherwise,--Styria, Carinthia, the Tyrol, by
degrees, not to speak of their native HAPSBURG much enlarged, and claims
on Switzerland all round it,--they had excellent means of battling for
their pretensions and disputable elections. None of them succeeded,
however, for a hundred and fifty years, except that same one-eyed,
loose-lipped unbeautiful Albert I.; a Kaiser dreadfully fond of earthly
goods, too. Who indeed grasped all round him, at property half his,
or wholly not his: Rhine-tolls, Crown of Bohemia, Landgraviate of
Thuringen, Swiss Forest Cantons, Crown of Hungary, Crown of France
even:--getting endless quarrels on his hands, and much defeat mixed with
any victory there was. Poor soul, he had six-and-twenty children by
one wife; and felt that there was need of apanages! He is understood
(guessed, not proved) to have instigated two assassinations in pursuit
of these objects; and he very clearly underwent ONE in his own person.
Assassination first was of Dietzman the Thuringian Landgraf, an
Anti-Albert champion, who refused to be robbed by Albert,--for whom the
great Dante is (with almost palpable absurdity) fabled to have
written an Epitaph still legible in the Church at Leipzig. [Menckenii
_Scriptores,_ i.?? _Fredericus Admorsus_ (by Tentsel).] Assassination
second was of Wenzel, the poor young Bohemian King, Ottocar's Grandson
and last heir. Sure enough, this important young gentleman "was murdered
by some one at Olmutz next year" (1306, a promising event for Albert
then), "but none yet knows who it was." [Kohler, p. 270.]
Neither of which suspicious transactions came to any result for Albert;
as indeed most of his unjust graspings proved failures. He at one time
had thoughts of the Crown of France; "Yours _I_ solemnly declare!" said
the Pope. But that came to nothing;--only to France's shifting of the
Popes to Avignon, more under the thumb of France. What his ultimate
success with Tell and the Forest Cantons was, we all know! A most
clutching, strong-fisted, dreadfully hungry, tough and unbeautiful man.
Whom his own Nephew, at last, had to assassinate, at the Ford of the
Reus (near Windisch Village, meeting of the Reus and Aar; 1st May,
1308): "Scandalous Jew pawnbroker of an Uncle, wilt thou flatly keep
from me my Father's heritage, then, intrusted to thee in his hour
of death? Regardless of God and man, and of the last look of a dying
Brother? Uncle worse than pawnbroker; for it is a heritage with NO pawn
on it, with much the reverse!" thought the Nephew,--and stabbed said
Uncle down dead; having gone across with him in the boat; attendants
looking on in distraction from the other side of the river. Was called
Johannes PARRICIDA in consequence; fled out of human sight that day, he
and his henchmen, never to turn up again till Doomsday. For the pursuit
was transcendent, regardless of expense; the cry for legal vengeance
very great (on the part of Albert's daughters chiefly), though in
vain, or nearly so, in this world. [Kohler, p. 272. Hormayr,
_OEsterreichischer Plutarch, oder Leben und Bild nisse, &c._ (12
Bandchen; Wien, 1807,--a superior Book), i. 65.]
OF KAISER HENRY VII. AND THE LUXEMBURG KAISERS.
Of the other six Kaisers not Hapsburgers we are bound to mention one,
and dwell a little on his fortunes and those of the family he founded;
both Brandenburg and our Hohenzollerns coming to be much connected
therewith, as time went on. This is Albert's next successor, Henry Count
of Luxemburg; called among Kaisers Henry VII. He is founder, he alone
among these Non-Hapsburgers, of a small intercalary LINE of Kaisers,
"the Luxemburg Line;" who amount indeed only to Four, himself included;
and are not otherwise of much memorability, if we except himself; though
straggling about like well-rooted briers, in that favorable ground, they
have accidentally hooked themselves upon World-History in one or
two points. By accident a somewhat noteworthy line, those Luxemburg
Kaisers:--a celebrated place, too, or name of a place, that "LUXEMBOURG"
of theirs, with its French Marshals, grand Parisian Edifices, lending
it new lustre: what, thinks the reader, is the meaning of Luzzenburg,
Luxemburg, Luxembourg? Merely LUTZELburg, wrong pronounced; and that
again is nothing but LITTLEborough: such is the luck of names!--
Heinrich Graf von Luxemburg was, after some pause on the parricide of
Albert, chosen Kaiser, "on account of his renowned valor," say the
old Books,--and also, add the shrewder of them, because his Brother,
Archbishop of Trier, was one of the Electors, and the Pope did not like
either the Austrian or the French candidate then in the field. Chosen,
at all events, he was, 27th November, 1308; [Kohler, p. 274.] clearly,
and by much, the best Kaiser that could be had. A puissant soul, who
might have done great things, had he lived. He settled feuds; cut off
oppressions from the REICHSTADTE (Free Towns); had a will of just sort,
and found or made a way for it. Bohemia lapsed to him, the old race
of Kings having perished out,--the last of them far too suddenly "at
Olmutz," as we saw lately! Some opposition there was, but much more
favor especially by the Bohemian People; and the point, after some small
"Siege of Prag" and the like, was definitely carried by the Kaiser. The
now Burggraf of Nurnberg, Friedrich IV., son of Rudolf's friend, was
present at this Siege of Prag; [1310 (Rentsch, p. 311).] a Burggraf much
attached to Kaiser Henry, as all good Germans were. But the Kaiser did
not live.
He went to Italy, our Burggraf of Nurnberg and many more along with him,
to pull the crooked Guelf-Ghibelline Facts and Avignon Pope a little
straight, if possible; and was vigorously doing it, when he died on
a sudden; "poisoned in sacramental wine," say the Germans! One of the
crowning summits of human scoundrelism, which painfully stick in the
mind. It is certain he arrived well at Buonconvento near Sienna, on
the 24th September, 1313, in full march towards the rebellious King of
Naples, whom the Pope much countenanced. At Buonconvento, Kaiser Henry
wished to enjoy the communion; and a Dominican monk, whose dark rat-eyed
look men afterwards bethought them of, administered it to him in both
species (Council of Trent not yet quite prohibiting the liquid species,
least of all to Kaisers, who are by theory a kind of "Deacons to the
Pope," or something else [Voltaire, _Essai sur les Moeurs,_ c. 67,??
Henri VII. _OEuvres,_ xxi. 184).]);--administered it in both species:
that is certain, and also that on the morrow Henry was dead. The
Dominicans endeavored afterwards to deny; which, for the credit of human
nature, one wishes they had done with effect. [Kohler, p. 281 (Ptolemy
of Lucca,) himself a Dominican, is one of the ACCUSING spirits: Muratori,
l. xi.?? _Ptolomaeus Lucensis,_ A.D. 1313).] But there was never any
trial had; the denial was considered lame; and German History continues
to shudder, in that passage, and assert. Poisoned in the wine of his
sacrament: the Florentines, it is said, were at the bottom of it, and
had hired the rat-eyed Dominican;--_"O Italia, O Firenze!"_ That is not
the way to achieve Italian Liberty, or Obedience to God; that is the way
to confirm, as by frightful stygian oath, Italian Slavery, or continual
Obedience, under varying forms, to the Other Party! The voice of Dante,
then alive among men, proclaims, sad and loving as a mother's voice,
and implacable as a voice of Doom, that you are wandering, and have
wandered, in a terrible manner!--
Peter, the then Archbishop of Mainz, says there had not for hundreds of
years such a death befallen the German Empire; to which Kohler, one of
the wisest moderns, gives his assent: "It could not enough be lamented,"
says he, "that so vigilant a Kaiser, in the flower of his years, should
have been torn from the world in so devilish a manner: who, if he had
lived longer, might have done Teutschland unspeakable benefit." [Kohler,
pp. 282-285.]
HENRY'S SON JOHANN IS KING OF BOHEMIA; AND LUDWIG THE BAVARIAN, WITH A
CONTESTED ELECTION, IS KAISER.
Henry VII. having thus perished suddenly, his Son Johann, scarcely yet
come of age, could not follow him as Kaiser, according to the Father's
thought; though in due time he prosecuted his advancement otherwise
to good purpose, and proved a very stirring man in the world. By his
Father's appointment, to whom as Kaiser the chance had fallen, he was
already King of Bohemia, strong in his right and in the favor of the
natives; though a titular Competitor, Henry of the Tyrol, beaten off by
the late Kaiser, was still extant: whom, however, and all other
perils Johann contrived to weather; growing up to be a far-sighted
stout-hearted man, and potent Bohemian King, widely renowned in his day.
He had a Son, and then two Grandsons, who were successively Kaisers,
after a sort; making up the "Luxemburg Four" we spoke of. He
did Crusades, one or more, for the Teutsch Ritters, in a shining
manner;--unhappily with loss of an eye; nay ultimately, by the aid of
quack oculists, with loss of both eyes. An ambitious man, not to be
quelled by blindness; man with much negotiation in him; with a heavy
stroke of fight too, and temper nothing loath at it; of which we shall
see some glimpse by and by.
The pity was, for the Reich if not for him, he could not himself become
Kaiser. Perhaps we had not then seen Henry VII.'s fine enterprises, like
a fleet of half-built ships, go mostly to planks again, on the waste
sea, had his Son followed him. But there was, on the contrary, a
contested election; Austria in again, as usual, and again unsuccessful.
The late Kaiser's Austrian competitor, "Friedrich the Fair, Duke of
Austria," the parricided Albert's Son, was again one of the parties.
Against whom, with real but not quite indisputable majority, stood
Ludwig Duke of Bavaria: "Ludwig IV.," "Ludwig DER BAIER (the Bavarian)"
as they call him among Kaisers. Contest attended with the usual election
expenses; war-wrestle, namely, between the parties till one threw the
other. There was much confused wrestling and throttling for seven years
or more (1315-1322). Our Nurnberg Burggraf, Friedrich IV., held with
Ludwig, as did the real majority, though in a languid manner, and was
busy he as few were; the Austrian Hapsburgs also doing their best, now
under, now above. Johann King of Bohemia was on Ludwig's side as yet.
Ludwig's own Brother, Kur-Pfalz (ancestor of all the Electors, and their
numerous Branches, since known there), an elder Brother, was, "out of
spite" as men thought, decidedly against Ludwig.
In the eighth year came a Fight that proved decisive. Fight at Muhldorf
on the Inn, 23th September, 1322,--far down in those Danube Countries,
beyond where Marlborough ever was, where there has been much fighting
first and last; Burggraf Friedrich was conspicuously there. A very
great Battle, say the old Books,--says Hormayr, in a new readable
Book, [Hormayr, _OEsterreichischer Plutarch,_ ii. 31-37.] giving minute
account of it. Ludwig rather held aloof rearward; committed his business
to the Hohenzollern Burggraf and to one Schweppermann, aided by a noble
lord called Rindsmaul ("COWMOUTH," no less), and by others experienced
in such work. Friedrich the Hapsburger DER SCHONE, Duke of Austria, and
self-styled Kaiser, a gallant handsome man, breathed mere martial
fury, they say: he knew that his Brother Leopold was on march with a
reinforcement to him from the Strasburg quarter, and might arrive any
moment; but he could not wait,--perhaps afraid Ludwig might run;--he
rashly determined to beat Ludwig without reinforcement. Our rugged
fervid Hormayr (though imitating Tacitus and Johannes von Muller
overmuch) will instruct fully any modern that is curious about this big
Battle: what furious charging, worrying; how it "lasted ten hours;" how
the blazing Handsome Friedrich stormed about, and "slew above fifty with
his own hand." To us this is the interesting point: At one turn of the
Battle, tenth hour of it now ending, and the tug of war still desperate,
there arose a cry of joy over all the Austrian ranks, "Help coming!
Help!"--and Friedrich noticed a body of Horse, "in Austrian cognizance"
(such the cunning of a certain man), coming in upon his rear. Austrians
and Friedrich never doubted but it was Brother Leopold just getting on
the ground; and rushed forward doubly fierce. Doubly fierce; and were
doubly astonished when it plunged in upon them, sharp-edged, as Burggraf
Friedrich of Nurnberg,--and quite ruined Austrian Friedrich. Austrian
Friedrich fought personally like a lion at bay; but it availed nothing.
Rindsmaul (not lovely of lip, COWMOUTH, so-called) disarmed him: "I will
not surrender except to a Prince!"--so Burggraf Friedrich was got to
take surrender of him; and the Fight, and whole Controversy with it,
was completely won. [_Jedem Mann ein Ey_ (One egg to every man), _Dem
frommen Schweppermann zwey_ (Two to the excellent Schweppermann):
Tradition still repeats this old rhyme, as the Kaiser's Address to his
Army, or his Head Captains, at supper, after such a day's work,--in a
country already to the bone.]
Poor Leopold, the Austrian Brother, did not arrive till the morrow;
and saw a sad sight, before flying off again. Friedrich the Fair sat
prisoner in the old Castle of Traussnitz (OBER PFALZ, Upper Palatinate,
or Nurnberg country) for three years; whittling sticks:--Tourists,
if curious, can still procure specimens of them at the place, for a
consideration. There sat Friedrich, Brother Leopold moving Heaven and
Earth,--and in fact they said, the very Devil by art magic, [Kohler, p.
288.]--to no purpose, to deliver him. And his poor Spanish Wife cried
her eyes, too literally, out,--sight gone in sad fact.
Ludwig the Bavarian reigned thenceforth,--though never on easy terms.
How grateful to Friedrich of Nurnberg we need not say. For one thing,
he gave him all the Austrian Prisoners; whom Friedrich, judiciously
generous, dismissed without ransom except that they should be feudally
subject to him henceforth. This is the third Hohenzollern whom we mark
as a conspicuous acquirer in the Hohenzollern family, this Friedrich
IV., builder of the second story of the House. If Conrad, original
Burggraf, founded the House, then (figuratively speaking) the able
Friedrich III., who was Rudolf of Hapsburg's friend, built it one story
high; and here is a new Friedrich, his Son, who has added a second
story. It is astonishing, says Dryasdust, how many feudal superiorities
the Anspach and Baireuth people still have in Austria;--they maintain
their own LEHNPROBST, or Official Manager for fief-casualties, in that
country:--all which proceed from this Battle of Muhldorf. [Rentsch, p.
313; Pauli; &c.] Battle fought on the 28th of September, 1322:--eight
years after BABBOCKBURN; while our poor Edward II. and England with him
were in such a welter with their Spencers and their Gavestons: eight
years after Bannockburn, and four-and-twenty before Crecy. That will
date it for English readers.
Kaiser Ludwig reigned some twenty-five years more, in a busy and even
strenuous, but not a successful way. He had good windfalls, too; for
example, Brandenburg, as we shall see. He made friends; reconciled
himself to his Brother Kur-Pfalz and junior Cousinry there, settling
handsomely, and with finality, the debatable points between them.
Enemies, too, he made; especially Johann the Luxemburger, King of
Bohemia, on what ground will be seen shortly, who became at last
inveterate to a high degree. But there was one supremely sore element
in his lot: a Pope at Avignon to whom he could by no method make himself
agreeable. Pope who put him under ban, not long after that Muhldorf
victory; and kept him so; inexorable, let poor Ludwig turn as he might.
Ludwig's German Princes stood true to him; declared, in solemn Diet,
the Pope's ban to be mere spent shot, of no avail in Imperial Politics.
Ludwig went, vigorously to Italy; tried setting up a Pope of his own;
but that did not answer; nor of course tend to mollify the Holiness at
Avignon.
In fine, Ludwig had to carry this cross on his back, in a sorrowful
manner, all his days. The Pope at last, finding Johann of Bohemia in
a duly irritated state, persuaded him into setting up an
Anti-Kaiser,--Johann's second Son as Anti-Kaiser,--who, though of little
account, and called PFAFFEN-KAISER (Parsons' Kaiser) by the public,
might have brought new troubles, had that lasted. We shall see some
ultimate glimpses of it farther on.