In the summer of 1608 (23d May, 1608) Johann Sigismund's (and his
Father's) Mother-in-law, the poor Wife of the poor imbecile Duke
of Preussen, died. [Maria Eleonora, Duke Wilhelm of Cleve's eldest
Daughter: 1550, 1573, 1608 (Hubner, t. 286).] Upon which Johann
Sigismund, Heir-Apparent of Brandenburg and its expectancies, was
instantly despatched from Berlin, to gather up the threads cut loose by
that event, and see that the matter took no damage. On the road thither
news reached him that his own Father, old Joachim Friedrich, was dead
(18th July, 1608); that he himself was now Kurfurst; [1572, 1608-1619.]
and that numerous threads were loose at both ends of his affairs.
The "young man"--not now so young, being full thirty-five and of fair
experience--was in difficulty, under these overwhelming tidings; and
puzzled, for a little, whether to advance or to return. He decided to
advance, and settle Prussian matters, where the peril and the risk were;
Brandenburg business he could do by rescripts.
His difficulties in Preussen, and at the Polish Court, were in fact
immense. But after a space of eight or nine months, he did, by excellent
management, not sparing money judiciously laid out on individuals,
arrive at some adjustment, better or worse, and got Preussen in hand;
[29th April, 1609. Stenzel, i. 370.] legal Administrator of the imbecile
Duke, as his Father had been. After which he had to run for Brandenburg,
without loss of time: great matters being there in the wind. Nothing
wrong in Brandenburg, indeed; but the great Cleve Heritage is dropping,
has dropped; over in Cleve, an immense expectancy is now come to the
point of deciding itself.
HOW THE CLEVE HERITAGE DROPPED, AND MANY SPRANG TO PICK IT UP.
Wilhelm of Cleve, the explosive Duke, whom we saw at Berlin and
Konigsberg at the wedding of this poor Lady now deceased, had in the
marriage-contract, as he did in all subsequent contracts and deeds of
like nature, announced a Settlement of his Estates, which was now become
of the highest moment for Johann Sigismund. The Country at that
time called Duchy of Cleve, consisted, as we said above, not only of
Cleve-Proper, but of two other still better Duchies, Julich and Berg;
then of the GRAFSCHAFT (County) of Ravensburg, County of Mark, Lordship
of---In fact it was a multifarious agglomerate of many little countries,
gathered by marriage, heritage and luck, in the course of centuries, and
now united in the hand of this Duke Wilhelm. It amounted perhaps to two
Yorkshires in extent. [See Busching, _Erdbeschreibung,_ v. 642-734.]
A naturally opulent Country, of fertile meadows, shipping capabilities,
metalliferous hills; and, at this time, in consequence of the
Dutch-Spanish War, and the multitude of Protestant refugees, it was
getting filled with ingenious industries; and rising to be, what it
still is, the busiest quarter of Germany. A Country lowing with
kine; the hum of the flax-spindle heard in its cottages, in those old
days,--"much of the linen called Hollands is made in Julich, and only
bleached, stamped and sold, by the Dutch," says Busching. A Country, in
our days, which is shrouded at short intervals with the due canopy of
coal-smoke, and loud with sounds of the anvil and the loom.
This Duchy of Cleve, all this fine agglomerate of Duchies, Duke Wilhelm
settled, were to be inherited in a piece, by his eldest (or indeed, as
it soon proved, his only) Son and the heirs of that Son, if there were
any. Failing heirs of that only Son, then the entire Duchy of Cleve was
to go to Maria Eleonora as eldest Daughter, now marrying to Friedrich
Albert, Duke of Prussia, and to their heirs lawfully begotten: heirs
female, if there happened to be no male. The other Sisters, of whom
there were three, were none of them to have the least pretence to
inherit Cleve or any part of it. On the contrary, they were, in such
event, of the eldest Daughter or her heirs coming to inherit Cleve, to
have each of them a sum of ready money paid ["200,000 GOLDGULDEN," about
100,000 pounds; Pauli, vi. 542; iii. 504.] by the said inheritrix of
Cleve or her heirs; and on receiving that, were to consider their claims
entirely fulfilled, and to cease thinking of Cleve for the future.
This Settlement, by express privilege of Kaiser Karl V., nay of Kaiser
Maximilian before him, and the Laws of the Reich, Duke Wilhelm doubted
not he was entitled to make; and this Settlement he made; his Lawyers
writing down the terms, in their wearisome way, perhaps six times
over; and struggling by all methods to guard against the least
misunderstanding. Cleve with all its appurtenances, Julich, Berg and the
rest, goes to the eldest Sister and her heirs, male or female: If she
have no heirs, male or female, then, but not till then, the next Sister
steps into her shoes in that matter: but if she have, then, we repeat
for the sixth and last time, no Sister or Sister's Representative has
the least word to say to it, but takes her 100,000 pounds, and ceases
thinking of Cleve.
The other three Sisters were all gradually married;--one of them to
Pfalz-Neuburg, an eminent Prince, in the Bavarian region called the
OBER-PFALZ (Upper Palatinate), who, or at least whose eldest Son, is
much worth mentioning and remembering by us here;--and, in all these
marriage-contracts, Wilhelm and his Lawyers expressed themselves to the
like effect, and in the like elaborate sixfold manner: so that Wilhelm
and they thought there could nowhere in the world be any doubt about it.
Shortly after signing the last of these marriage-contracts, or perhaps
it was in the course of signing them, Duke Wilhelm had a stroke of
palsy. He had, before that, gone into Papistry again, poor man. The
truth is, he had repeated strokes; and being an abrupt, explosive Herr,
he at last quite yielded to palsy; and sank slowly out of the world, in
a cloud of semi-insanity, which lasted almost twenty years. [Died 25th
January, 1592, age 76.] Duke Wilhelm did leave a Son, Johann Wilhelm,
who succeeded him as Duke. But this Son also proved explosive; went
half and at length wholly insane. Jesuit Priests, and their intrigues to
bring back a Protestant country to the bosom of the Church, wrapped the
poor man, all his days, as in a burning Nessus'-Shirt; and he did little
but mischief in the world. He married, had no children; he accused his
innocent Wife, the Jesuits and he, of infidelity. Got her judged,
not properly sentenced; and then strangled her, he and they, in her
bed:--"Jacobea of Baden (1597);" a thrice-tragic history. Then he
married again; Jesuits being extremely anxious for an Orthodox heir:
but again there came no heir; there came only new blazings of the
Nessus'-Shirt. In fine, the poor man died (Spring, 1609), and made
the world rid of him. Died 25th March, 1609; that is the precise
date;--about a month before our new Elector, Johann Sigismund, got his
affairs winded up at the Polish Court, and came galloping home in such
haste. There was pressing need of him in the Cleve regions.
For the painful exactitude of Duke Wilhelm and his Lawyers has profited
little; and there are claimants on claimants rising for that valuable
Cleve Country. As indeed Johann Sigismund had anticipated, and been
warned from all quarters, to expect. For months past, he has had his
faculties bent, with lynx-eyed attention, on that scene of things;
doubly and trebly impatient to get Preussen soldered up, ever since
this other matter came to the bursting-point. What could be done by the
utmost vigilance of his Deputies, he had done. It was the 25th of March
when the mad Duke died: on the 4th of April, Johann Sigismund's Deputy,
attended by a Notary to record the act, "fixed up the Brandenburg Arms
on the Government-House of Cleve;" [Pauli, vi. 566.] on the 5th, they
did the same at Dusseldorf; on the following days, at Julich and
the other Towns. But already on the 5th, they had hardly got done at
Dusseldorf, when there appeared--young Wolfgang Wilhelm, Heir-Apparent
of that eminent Pfalz-Neuburg, he in person, to put up the Pfalz-Neuburg
Arms! Pfalz-Neuburg, who married the Second Daughter, he is actually
claiming, then;--the whole, or part? Both are sensible that possession
is nine points in law.
Pfalz-Neuburg's claim was for the whole Duchy. "All my serene Mother's!"
cried the young Heir of Pfalz-Neuburg: "Properly all mine!" cried he.
"Is not she NEAREST of kin? Second Daughter, true; but the Daughter;
not Daughter OF a Daughter, as you are (as your Serene Electress is),
O DURCHLAUCHT of Brandenburg:--consider, besides, you are female, I am
male!" That was Pfalz-Neuburg's logic: none of the best, I think, in
forensic genealogy. His tenth point was perhaps rather weak; but he
had possession, co-possession, and the nine points good. The other Two
Sisters, by their Sons or Husbands, claimed likewise; but not the whole:
"Divide it," said they: "that surely is the real meaning of Karl V.'s
Deed of Privilege to make such a Testament. Divide it among the Four
Daughters or their representatives, and let us all have shares!"
Nor were these four claimants by any means all. The Saxon Princes next
claimed; two sets of Saxon Princes. First the minor set, Gotha-Weimar
and the rest, the Ernestine Line so called; representatives of Johann
Friedrich the Magnanimous, who lost the Electorate for religion's sake
at Muhlberg in the past century, and from MAJOR became MINOR in Saxon
Genealogy. "Magnanimous Johann Friedrich," said they, "had to wife an
Aunt of the now deceased Duke of Cleve; Wife Sibylla (sister of the
Flanders Mare), of famous memory, our lineal Ancestress. In favor
of whom HER Father, the then reigning Duke of Cleve, made a
marriage-contract of precisely similar import to this your Prussian one:
he, and barred all his descendants, if contracts are to be valid." This
is the claim of the Ernestine Line of Saxon Princes; not like to go for
much, in their present disintegrated condition.
But the Albertine Line, the present Elector of Saxony, also claims:
"Here is a Deed," said he, "executed by Kaiser Friedrich III. in the
year 1483, [Pauli, ubi supra; Hubner, t. 286.] generations before your
Kaiser Karl; Deed solemnly granting to Albert, junior of Sachsen, and
to his heirs, the reversion of those same Duchies, should the Male Line
happen to fail, as it was then likely to do. How could Kaiser Max
revoke his Father's deed, or Kaiser Karl his Great-grandfather's? Little
Albert, the Albert of the PRINZENRAUB, he who grew big, and fought
lion-like for his Kaiser in the Netherlands and Western Countries; he
and his have clearly the heirship of Cleve by right; and we, now grown
Electors, and Seniors of Saxony, demand it of a grateful House of
Hapsburg,--and will study to make ourselves convenient in return."--
"Nay, if that is your rule, that old Laws and Deeds are to come in bar
of new, we," cry a multitude of persons,--French Dukes of Nevers, and
all manner of remote, exotic figures among them,--"we are the real
heirs! Ravensburg, Mark, Berg, Ravenstein, this patch and the other of
that large Duchy of yours, were they not from primeval time expressly
limited to heirs-male? Heirs-male; and we now are the nearest heirs-male
of said patches and portions; and will prove it!"--In short, there never
was such a Lawsuit,--so fat an affair for the attorney species, if that
had been the way of managing it,--as this of Cleve was likely to prove.
THE KAISER'S THOUGHTS ABOUT IT, AND THE WORLD'S.
What greatly complicated the affair, too, was the interest the Kaiser
took in it. The Kaiser could not well brook a powerful Protestant in
that country; still less could his Cousin the Spaniard. Spaniards, worn
to the ground, coercing that world-famous Dutch Revolt, and astonished
to find that they could not coerce it at all, had resolved at this time
to take breath before trying farther. Spaniards and Dutch, after Fifty
years of such fighting as we know, have made a Twelve-years' Truce
(1609): but the battled Spaniard, panting, pale in his futile rage and
sweat, has not given up the matter; he is only taking breath, and will
try it again. Now Cleve is his road into Holland, in such adventure;
no success possible if Cleve be not in good hands. Brandenburg is
Protestant, powerful; Brandenburg will not do for a neighbor there.
Nor will Pfalz-Neuburg. A Protestant of Protestants, this Palatine
Neuburg too,--junior branch, possible heir in time coming, of KUR-PFALZ
(Elector Palatine) himself, in the Rhine Countries; of Kur-Pfalz, who is
acknowledged Chief Protestant: official "President" of the
"Evangelical Union" they have lately made among them in these menacing
times;--Pfalz-Neuburg too, this young Wolfgang Wilhelm, if he do not
break off kind, might be very awkward to the Kaiser in Cleve-Julich.
Nay Saxony itself; for they are all Protestants:--unless perhaps Saxony
might become pliant, and try to make itself useful to a munificent
Imperial House?
Evidently what would best suit the Kaiser and Spaniards, were this, That
no strong Power whatever got footing in Cleve, to grow stronger by the
possession of such a country:--BETTER than best it would suit, if he,
the Kaiser, could himself get it smuggled into his hands, and there
hold it fast! Which privately was the course resolved upon at
headquarters.--In this way the "Succession Controversy of the Cleve
Duchies" is coming to be a very high matter; mixing itself, up with the
grand Protestant-Papal Controversy, the general armed-lawsuit of mankind
in that generation. Kaiser, Spaniard, Dutch, English, French Henri IV.
and all mortals, are getting concerned in the decision of it.