joined the French army at Marseilles, and was, in company with Francis of
Lorraine, placed at the head of his old corps the German _lansquenets_,
who were delighted to fight under so practised and trusted a leader. They
were 6,000 at the beginning of the campaign, pitted against a larger
number of their own brethren under Frundsberg, in the Emperor's service.
On St. Matthias Day, in 1525, the battle of Pavia was fought, which lost
Francis his liberty. Francis, as usual, showed no want of dash, but a
lamentable lack of prudence. Mistaking the enemy's retreat, under the fire
of his guns, for a settled defeat, he sent his infantry after them,
placing the bulk of his army between the foe and his own artillery. The
allies were not slow to turn this false move to account. Charging back
upon their foes, they overwhelmed them with superior numbers. That lost
the French the day. Richard's _lansquenets_ did their best to retrieve the
error. Having knelt down, as their manner was, and thrown dust behind
them, they rushed, singing their familiar war-songs, into the fray with an
impetus which promised to break the hostile ranks. "Had but the Switzers
fought like the _lansquenets_," Francis said after the battle, "the day
would have been ours." But the odds were too many against them. They were
met by their own fellow-_lansquenets_--each side being furious with the
other. The German men were wroth at seeing their comrades on the other
side, fighting against their own country--the French at seeing their
brother-soldiers desert so faithful an employer as Francis. So no quarter
was given on either side. And the French _lansquenets_--they had lost
one-fourth of their number before the charge began--being wedged in
between a superior force of Germans closing in on either side, were simply
crushed as between two millstones. The list of killed was long--and
brilliant. Among the slain were the two captains of the _lansquenets_,
Francis of Lorraine and Richard de la Pole. The latter had--as a painting
preserved in the Ashmolean Museum indicates--died protecting Francis with
his sword. He was found buried under "_un monceau_" of dead enemies
against whom he had fought. There was loud rejoicing in the camp of the
allies. It was given out that "three kings" had been taken or
killed--Francis, the unfortunate King of Navarre, and, "to make up the
trinity of kings," says a despatch addressed to Wolsey, "La Rose Blanche,
whom they call the King of Scots." Appended to the curious despatch which
Frundsberg forwarded to the Emperor, giving a report of the battle--the
oldest record extant--is a drawing, showing three crowned knights, fancy
portraits of the "kings."
One is prepared to find Henry VIII. ordering a triumph, and congratulating
himself upon his happy riddance from a rival who had been more of a thorn
in his side than the present generation is probably aware. But it does
seem small to read, in the State Papers, of one of Henry's tools begging
from Wolsey the king's authority for seizing "some goods of no great
amount" that Richard had left at Metz.
The French were far more chivalrous in their treatment of the dead
warrior. We read in Camden that "for his singular valour" his very enemy,
the Duke of Bourbon, "honoured his remains with splendid obsequies, and
attended in person as one of the chief mourners." Francis expressed his
attachment to the fallen, and his indebtedness to him for brilliant
services. "_La France_," says Gaillard, "_perdit en lui un allie utile,
qui la servit efficacement et sans rien exiger d'elle_." Considering that
he was an English subject, that may sound questionable praise. But though
he may have shown too great willingness to avail himself of the excuse, it
should be borne in mind that it was England's kings who first drove him
into treason.
The chapter of Metz, grateful for Richard's liberality, passed the
following "resolution"--as we should say--founding a mass for the repose
of their benefactor's soul: "Aprilis anno Domini 1525 in conflictu apud
Paviensem civitatem quo tunc Franciscus Gallorum rex per exercitum
Romanorum imperatoris captus et Hispaniam captivus ductus extituit,
habito, obiit quondam illuster Richardus dux de Suffolk qui domum nostram
dictam a la Haute Pierre sibi ante per nos ad vitam locatam obtinens valde
somptuose restauravit, unde statuimus nunc anniversarium quotannum
Ecclesia nostra pro salute animae suae perpetuo celebrari."
That mass ought, of course, to be read still. However, deans and chapters
have as little respect for "pious founders"--though these be their own
predecessors--as British Parliaments in democratic days. Consequently, the
ecclesiastical function has long since been discontinued.
Apart from Richard's death, Henry did not find himself much of a gainer by
the victory of Pavia. He had contributed nothing directly to the battle,
and Charles V. accordingly would concede him none of the spoils. On the
contrary, grasping monarch that he was, under cover of a marriage-portion
to be given to Henry's daughter, he asked for a subsidy of 600,000 ducats.
We need not be surprised to find Henry shortly after concluding a treaty
with France, which secured him two millions of crowns.
One more notice we have of Richard de la Pole, the last of his race.
Describing Pavia, as he found it in 1594, Fynes Moryson says: "Neere that
(the castle) is the Church of St. Austine; there I did reade this
inscription, written in Latin upon another sepulchre:--The French King
Francis I. being taken by Caesar's army neere Pavia, the 24th of February,
in the yeere 1525, among other lords, these were slaine: Francis Duke of
Lorayne, Richard de la Pole, Englishman and Duke of Suffolk, banished by
his tyrant King Henry VIII. At last Charles Parker of Morley, kinseman of
the said Richard, banished out of England for the Catholike faith by
Queene Elizabeth, and made Bishop here by the bounty of Philip, King of
Spain, did out of his small means erect this monument to him."
This is the last memorial of a life which created not a little stir in its
day, and might under more favourable circumstances have been made signally
serviceable to Richard's own country. Even that last memorial has probably
now disappeared. But still "White Rose" may fairly claim a place at any
rate in the lighter records of English history.
III.--THE EARLY ANCESTORS OF OUR QUEEN.[5]
Thanks to Cook, thanks to our all-reporting newspaper-press, and thanks,
not least, to our truly Athenian craving continually for "some new thing,"
Ammergau has become almost a household word among us. Everybody has heard
of its "Passion Play." Every tenth year sees Britons rushing in shoals to
the picturesque banks of the Ammer, to witness there, while it may be
witnessed, the last surviving specimen of that popular religious drama
which in bygone times helped the Church so materially, and over so wide an
area, to impress her truths upon men's minds. But I question, if among all
those thousands of sight-seeing Britons, who gather as interested
spectators, there are many who realize in what very close relation that
same little valley stands to the early fortunes of the ancient House whose
Head now occupies our Throne. How many, indeed, among us can be said to
know very much at all about that family? And yet the history of that race
ought to be of some interest to us. In these latter days it has become
intertwined with the history of our own nation. It is marked by striking
contrasts of ups and downs, at one time leading the Guelphs on a rapid
triumphal progress up to the very steps of the Imperial Throne, then again
dropping them down to the obscure level of paltry insignificance. It tells
of a race endowed with a strong individuality--manly, chivalrous,
generous; but generally also headstrong and reckless. It is interwoven
with pathetic legend. Its early beginnings are lost in the dim haze of a
prehistoric age. Its latter end has not yet come. There is no dynasty now
surviving equally ancient--there is but one which can join in the boast
which up to a few decades ago the Guelphs could make:--that on the throne
on which it was planted centuries ago it has retained its hold to the
present generation. That other dynasty is the family, Slav by descent, of
the Obotrite Grand Dukes of Mecklenburg--the same race whom our Alfred the
Great speaks of as "Apdrede." The present grand dukes are the direct
descendants of that terrible Prince Niklot, of the twelfth century, whom
among German princes only the Guelph, Henry the Lion, was found strong
enough to subdue. But before Bodrician Niklot had mounted his barbarian
throne, Henry the Generous had already been installed as chief over
Lueneburg--the principality over which his family continued to rule down to
1866, when the cruel Fortune of War decided against its last Guelph chief.
In the adjoining Duchy of Brunswick, over which, as forming part of
ancient Saxony, the Guelphs were set as heads in 1127, the family
continued to hold sway till 1884, when Death removed the last scion of
their older line, in the person of the late Duke of Brunswick. The Guelph
pedigree, however, goes very much farther back than the time of Henry.
Long even before Guelph Odoacer, at the head of his Teuton hordes,
dethroned that caricature of an Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, there were
Guelph "Agilolfings" leading to battle, as trusted chiefs, their own
Scyrian tribes. What the later history of the family might have been, if
to its constitutional valour and generosity had been joined the less
showy, but far more useful, qualities of prudence and judgment, we may
now, by the light of past events, readily conjecture. The Guelphs were in
Henry's day by far the strongest dynasty in Germany--at a period when for
the Imperial throne above all things a strong dynasty was needed. Had
Germany elected Henry the Generous as Emperor, as everybody expected that
she would, the Guelphs might still be wearing the crown of Charlemagne,
and Germany might have a different tale to tell, both of her past
experiences and of her present position. For it deserves to be noticed
that all the troubles which came upon the Empire, by minute subdivision of
its territory, and by the setting up of "opposition emperors," sprang
directly and demonstrably from contests provoked with the Guelphs. It was
Henry IV.'s resistance to Welf IV. that led to the multiplication of
vassal crowns, which subsequently became a curse to Germany. It was the
Powers pledged to the support of the Guelphs--most notably the Popes and
our Coeur-de-Lion--who put forward those troublesome "opposition
emperors," the forerunners and direct cause of the ruinous
Interregnum--"die kaiserlose, die schreckliche Zeit"--and by such means of
the political prostration of the country enduring through centuries.
But our interest, in England, lies more with the Guelphs than with
Germany. One cannot help sympathizing with a race which, being evidently
designed for greatness, advanced towards it with giant strides, only to
find the prize at which it ambitiously grasped snatched from its hand in
the very moment of seeming attainment.
Of the very early history of the Guelphs we have fairly definite, but only
very fragmentary, information. They were leaders of the Scyri, we learn--a
Teuton race of the Semnone family, mentioned by Pliny, by Zosimus, and by
Jornandes--who poured over Germany, in the days of Valentinian, along with
hosts of other German tribes, and who, having been all but exterminated by
the Goths, united with some other septs of the same family, the Rugii, the
Heruli, the Turcilingi, to form a composite nation which, for convenience,
adopted the common name of Bajuvarii. Bavarians accordingly the Guelphs
originally were, as the historian Theganus is careful to point out--not
Swabians, as German historians have often named them; Bavarians, as seems
to be evidenced, among other things, by the dark features and black hair
which for a long time distinguished them--more especially from their
opponents of a full century, the fair-haired and light-complexioned
Hohenstaufens. Of the confederate Bajuvarii, the Agilolfings or Guelphs
still continued chiefs. Under a Guelph, Eticho--whom Priscus Rhetor
praises as a man of exceptional capacity and high character--we find the
nation attaching themselves as auxiliaries to the host of Attila, and
rendering the Hunnish king signal service. Eticho was by no means a mere
rough warrior. He fully appreciated Roman culture and civilization--which
led the eunuch, Chrysaphas, to propose to him the murder of his chief. The
honest Guelph rejected such suggestion with scorn. From the midst of the
Bajuvarii went forth the Guelph Odoacer on his march to Rome. The
Bajuvarii were then settled on the banks of the Danube--roughly speaking
in what is now Austria, _plus_ Bavaria and the Tyrol. Hence we find the
earliest known seats of the Guelphs in the Bavarian Highlands. Ammergau
was theirs, and Hohenschwangau was one of their earliest castles, founded,
indeed, by a Guelph. When, after a revolt of the Rugii--which was
successfully suppressed by Odoacer--some of the allied tribes dispersed,
to seek new homes in the tempting districts on the banks of the Ens and
around the lake of Constance--both at the time sorely devastated and
depopulated by the Goths--the Guelphs, without giving up their old seats,
accompanied their men. And thus it came about that the earliest castle
which we hear of as having been built by the Guelphs is supposed to have
stood in Thurgau, of which country the Guelphs subsequently became Counts.
This is all mere inference; but as such it seems legitimate. For the
monastery of Rheinau is known to have been founded by a Guelph. And such
monasteries were never built far away from the founder's stronghold. Hence
the Guelphs' connection with the Black Forest, of which the Guelph St.
Conrad is the venerated patron saint; and hence their connection with
Alsace, of which they were long Counts--such powerful Counts that Pepin
the Short judged it advisable to reduce them to the position of removable
governors--_missi camerae_. [S. Odilia, the patron saint of Alsace, whose
name is a household word among her own countrymen, and about whom Goethe
grew enthusiastic, was an undoubted Guelph.] Hence, also, their connection
with the whilom country of the Burgundians, among the nobles of which land
we find a Guelph chief, in 605, standing up manfully against the
aggressive usurpations of Protadius, a Frankish major-domo, and acting as
spokesman.
As _missi camerae_ the Guelphs had a serious brush with the Church--the
only tiff, practically speaking, which ever occurred between them and
Rome. Of this quarrel, in which the Guelphs were probably in the right, we
find a tradition kept up for some centuries. The Abbot of St. Gall figured
in those days in Germany as the exact counterpart to the rich and grasping
"Abbot of Canterbury" of our ballad. For some pilfering of crown lands the
Guelph Warin, as a conscientious _missus camerae_, had Abbot Othmar
imprisoned, which brought about the Abbot's death. Rome at once canonized
her "martyr," and exacted heavy retribution from his "persecutors," not
merely in the shape of severe penances and the foundation of masses, but
by the more substantial satisfaction of large transfers of landed estates
to the injured abbey--Affeltangen and Wiesendangen, and I know not how
many properties more, till even to the pious Guelphs the demands appeared
to grow beyond all measure of reason. It is true, they recouped themselves
elsewhere--_quod si cui minus credibile videatur_, say the monkish
chroniclers--"which, if to any it appear a little incredible, let him read
the ancient histories, and he will find nearly all their territories to
have been violently taken and held by them of others."
It is with Warin's son Isembart, living in the time of Charlemagne, that
the better known history of the Guelphs begins. He was the hero of that
ridiculous fable about the "pups," which has been invented to explain
their adoption of their peculiar name. Isembart's wife Irmentrude, it is
said, having uncharitably reproached a poor beggarwoman for having borne
triplets--which she held to be a proof of unfaithful conduct towards her
husband--was punished for her gratuitous accusation by being herself made
to bear at one birth, not three sons, but twelve. To screen herself from
the same reproach which she had unkindly fastened upon the beggar, she hit
upon the rather inept device of having eleven of those newly-born sons
drowned as supposed "whelps." The twelfth she kept--and he is said to have
become "Welf," the founder of the race. The other eleven were happily
rescued by their father, who came up just in time to save them. Ten of
them lived to become founders of princely houses. The eleventh became a
bishop. One of them is said to have been Thassilo, the reputed ancestor of
the Hohenzollerns. The real meaning of all this legend obviously is that,
by survival and intermarriage with other illustrious families of Europe,
the Guelphs have in course of time become, in a sense, the parent of most
reigning lines--Zaehringens, Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Capets, Bourbons,
and the rest of them.
The fable of children being sent to be drowned as "whelps"--and in every
instance happily rescued--is, as it happens, by no means peculiar to the
Guelphs. It occurs in the Black Forest, in connection with a family
bearing the name of "Hund." It occurs in Lower Lorraine in that pretty
_trouvere_ legend recording the doings of "Helias," the "Chevalier au
Cygne," whom we moderns know as "Lohengrin." It is interesting to note
that, along with that fable, Guelph tradition in Bavaria shares with the
tradition of Lorraine the far more attractive and poetical myth of an
enchanted swan--the swan, in fact, of "Lohengrin"--a bird specifically
emblematizing purity--whence the extinct "Order of the Swan" of the
Margraves of Brandenburg. That order was an aristocratic "Social Purity
League," which Frederick William IV. would gladly have revived, could he
but have found sufficient candidates for it among his nobility. But his
proposal met with very scanty support. Hence, also, the equally ancient
"Order of the Swan" of Cleves, having a like object.
As regards the "whelps" of the Guelphs, the existence of very different
and contradictory versions helps to show what a made-up story the whole
legend is. The only authority for it is the monk Bucelinus, who himself
quotes no more ancient source. And he is said to have invented it for the
mere purpose of showing off his monkish Latin, in order to deduce from the
Latin word for "whelp"--_catulus_--an imaginary descent, supposed to be
complimentary, from a fabulous Roman senator "Catilina," and through him
from the ancient Trojan kings. In opposition to this, it is a fact that
there were "Welfs" long before Isembart. The name Guelph, therefore, could
not have been first suggested by Irmentrude's unsuccessful stratagem.
Isembart lived in the ninth century. But, as early as the fifth, Odoacer
had a brother named "Welf." "Welf" and "Eticho" were, in fact, the two
traditional names of the family, from prehistoric days downward. Sir
Andrew Halliday's suggestion, that the name may have been first taken from
an ensign which the Guelphs are supposed to have borne in battle, is
equally wide of the mark. For that ensign, we know, from the Agilolfings
down to the Hanovers, never was a "whelp" at all, but a "lion." In truth
the name "Welf" has nothing whatever to do with "whelp," but is derived
from "hwelpe," "huelfe"--help. As Eticho means "hero," so Welf means
"helper"--_auxiliator_. The popular Latin rendering for it in olden days
was "Bonifacius." "Salvator" would be a more exact rendering, but would
obviously be liable to misinterpretation. In confirmation of this theory,
we find that, migrating into Italy about Charlemagne's time, a Guelph, on
becoming Count of Lucca, as a matter of course assumes the name of
"Bonifacius." And in his line, for further confirmation, we observe the
same peculiarity which marks the Guelphs, that is, the naming of all sons
of the family, without distinction, by the style of "Count"--a practice
altogether unknown in those days among other families.
So much for the name and origin of the Guelphs. Now I must ask the reader
to return with me to Ammergau, which is peculiarly sacred to the memory of
Eticho, styled the Second, who was probably the son of Isembart. Eticho
lived in the days of Emperor Lewis the Pious, who in second nuptials
married the Guelph's sister Judith. The birth, by Judith, of little
Charles--who became "Charles the Bald"--gave rise to that unnatural war
between Lewis and his three elder sons, in the course of which alike
Judith and two of her brothers were imprisoned in Tortona, from which
place of confinement Bonifacius II. of Lucca, marching to their relief,
avowedly as a kinsman, loyally rescued them. Eticho's daughter, Lucardis,
again married an emperor, Arnulf of Carinthia--of whom Carlyle need not
have spoken quite so unkindly, as of a "Carolingian Bastard," seeing that
he made a far better ruler than any of his legitimate kinsmen of his own
time. Thanks to Lucardis it was that Eticho was driven to seek a refuge,
as a hermit, in the wild seclusion of Ammergau. He went there to mourn,
with twelve chosen companions, the loss of Guelph independence, which his
son Henry, so he thought, had at the instigation of his sister
ingloriously bartered away for a "mess of pottage"--a pretty substantial
one, it must be owned. In truth, Henry did exceedingly well for his house.
This is how the Saxon Annalist relates the story:--Henry, ambitious for
wealth and power, agreed to swear fealty to the Emperor, if in return, in
addition to his own lands, he were given in fee as much territory as he
could drive around with a car, or else with a plough--on that point the
versions differ--in the time between sunrise and the conclusion of the
Emperor's afternoon nap. Arnulf thought the bargain a cheap one for
himself. However, Henry had stationed relays of the swiftest horses that
he could procure at various points, and with their help he raced round the
coveted territory with such marvellous speed that--having started from the
Lech--by the time when the Emperor awoke he had actually reached the Isar.
The Emperor was just beginning to move restlessly in his chair and to show
signs of returning consciousness, when Henry arrived at the foot of a
mountain which he had designed as the extreme limit of his new
possessions. If his mare would but last out the journey, one brisk gallop
would carry him to the appointed goal. Unfortunately, the mare refused--in
consequence of which, for many centuries the Guelphs would not mount a
mare. The hill which Henry thus narrowly failed to obtain still goes by
the name of Maehrenberg, the "Mare's mountain." Arnulf considered that he
had been "done." But, having pledged his word, he held himself bound.
Eticho, grieved, mourned out his life in his hermit's cell in Ammergau.
Henry--who was after his adventure named _Heinricus cum aureo curru_--does
not appear to have made any particular effort to propitiate his father.
But when the old man was dead, he carried his remains with great pomp and
show to the monastery of Altomuenster, very near his own new seat of
Altorf, where he raised a gorgeous tomb to Eticho's memory, at which
Guelph chiefs made it a practice to kneel for generations after, thus
evidencing their respect for an ancestor who came to be looked upon as
specifically the champion of independence. The homage paid became a cult;
and in Ammergau shortly after rose up, where Eticho's cell had stood, a
wooden memorial church, to be replaced, in 1350, by a much larger
monastery, built at the expense of Emperor Lewis the Bavarian, a
descendant of Eticho. The monastery is still known as "Ettal"--that is,
"Eticho's Thal," "Etichonis vallis."
Altomuenster, I may mention in passing, was the "Minster" supposed to have
been founded by S. Alto, a Scottish saint, the companion and disciple of
S. Boniface, who managed, like Moses, to make a hard rock give forth a
spring of rushing water by striking it with his staff. The spring still
flows; and, as it was specially blessed by S. Boniface, its water is no
doubt entitled to the peculiar veneration in which it is held to the
present day.