Kaiser Karl, we said, was very good to Joachim; who always strove,
sometimes with a stretch upon his very conscience, to keep well with the
Kaiser. The Kaiser took Joachim's young Prince along with him to those
Schmalkaldic Wars (not the comfortable side for Joachim's conscience,
but the safe side for an anxious Father); Kaiser made a Knight of this
young Prince, on one occasion of distinction; he wrote often to Papa
about him, what a promising young hero he was,--seems really to have
liked the young man. It was Johann George, Elector afterwards, Seventh
Elector.--This little incident is known to me on evidence. [Rentsch, p.
465.] A small thing that certainly befell, at the siege of Wittenberg
(A.D. 1547), during those Philip-of-Hessen Negotiations, three hundred
and odd years ago.
The Schmalkaldic War having come all to nothing, the Saxon Elector
sitting captive with sword overhead in the way we saw, Saxon Wittenberg
was besieged, and the Kaiser was in great hurry to get it. Kaiser in
person, and young Johann George for sole attendant, rode round the place
one day, to take a view of the works, and judge how soon, or whether
ever, it could be compelled to give in. Gunners noticed them from the
battlements; gunners Saxon-Protestant most likely, and in just gloom
at the perils and indignities now lying on their pious Kurfurst Johann
Friedrich the Magnanimous. "Lo, you! Kaiser's self riding yonder, and
one of his silk JUNKERS. Suppose we gave the Kaiser's self a shot,
then?" said the gunner, or thought: "It might help a better man from his
life-perils, if such shot did--!" In fact the gun flashed off, with due
outburst, and almost with due effect. The ball struck the ground among
the very horses' feet of the two riders; so that they were thrown, or
nearly so, and covered from sight with a cloud of earth and sand;--and
the gunners thought, for some instants, an unjust, obstinate Kaiser's
life was gone; and a pious Elector's saved. But it proved not so. Kaiser
Karl and Johann George both emerged, in a minute or two, little the
worse;--Kaiser Karl perhaps blushing somewhat, and flurried this time,
I think, in the impenetrable eyes; and his Cimburgis lip closed for the
moment;--and galloped out of shot-range. "I never forget this little
incident," exclaims Smelfungus: "It is one of the few times I can get,
after all my reading about that surprising Karl V., I do not say the
least understanding or practical conception of him and his character and
his affairs, but the least ocular view or imagination of him, as a fact
among facts!" Which is unlucky for Smelfungus.--Johann George, still
more emphatically, never to the end of HIS life forgot this incident.
And indeed it must be owned, had the shot taken effect as intended, the
whole course of human things would have been surprisingly altered;--and
for one thing, neither FREDERICH THE GREAT, nor the present HISTORY
OF FRIEDRICH, had ever risen above ground, or troubled an enlightened
public or me!
Of Johann George, this Seventh Elector, [1525; 1571-1598.] who proved
a good Governor, and carried on the Family Affairs in the old style of
slow steady success, I will remember nothing more, except that he
had the surprising number of Three-and-Twenty children; one of them
posthumous, though he died at the age of seventy-three.--
He is Founder of the New Culmbach line: two sons of these twenty-three
children he settled, one in Baireuth, the other in Anspach; from whom
come all the subsequent Heads of that Principality, till the last
of them died in Hammersmith in 1806, as above said. [Rentsch, p. 475
(CHRISTIAN to Baireuth; JOACHIM ERNST to Anspach);--See Genealogical
Diagram, inra, p. 309a.] He was a prudent, thrifty Herr; no mistresses,
no luxuries allowed; at the sight of a new-fashioned coat, he would fly
out on an unhappy youth, and pack him from his presence. Very strict
in point of justice: a peasant once appealing to him, in one of his
inspection-journeys through the country, "Grant me justice, DURCHLAUCHT,
against So-and-so; I am your highness's born subject!"--"Thou shouldst
have it, man, wert thou a born Turk!" answered Johann George.--There is
something anxious, grave and, as it were, surprised in the look of this
good Herr. He made the GERA BOND above spoken of;--founded the Younger
Culmbach Line, with that important Law of Primogeniture strictly
superadded. A conspicuous thrift, veracity, modest solidity, looks
through the conduct of this Herr;--a determined Protestant he too, as
indeed all the following were and are. [Rentsch, pp. 470, 471.]
Of Joachim Friedrich, his eldest Son, who at one time was Archbishop of
Magdeburg,--called home from the wars to fill that valuable Heirloom,
which had suddenly fallen vacant by an Uncle's death, and keep it
warm;--and who afterwards, in due course, carried on a LOBLICHE
REGIERUNG of the old style and physiognomy, as Eighth Kurfurst, from
his fiftieth to his sixtieth year (1598-1608): [Born, 1547; Magdehurg,
1566-1598 (when his Third Son got it,--very unlucky in the Thirty-Years
War afterwards).] of him we already noticed the fine "JOACHIMS-thal
Gymnasium," or Foundation for learned purposes, in the old Schloss
of Grimnitz, where his serene Grandmother got lamed; and will notice
nothing farther, in this place, except his very great anxiety to profit
by the Prussian MITBELEHNUNG,--that Co-infeftment in Preussen, achieved
by his Grandfather Joachim II., which was now about coming to its full
maturity. Joachim Friedrich had already married his eldest Prince to
the daughter of Albert Friedrich, Second Duke of Preussen, who it was
by this time evident would be the last Duke there of his Line. Joachim
Friedrich, having himself fallen a widower, did next year, though now
counting fifty-six--But it will be better if we explain first, a little,
how matters now stood with Preussen.