was loudly blown, and instantly each of them drew from beneath his
doublet a steel blade, which he fixed upon the end of his staff. At the
sound of the horn thirty other men rushed from a neighboring wood, and
made for the open gates. In a very few minutes they joined their
comrades in the castle, which was quickly theirs, the garrison being
overpowered.
Landenberg fled in haste on hearing the tumult, but was pursued and
taken. But as the confederates had agreed with each other to shed no
blood, they suffered this arch villain to depart, after making him swear
to leave Switzerland and never return to it. The news of the revolt
spread rapidly through the mountains, and so well had the confederates
laid their plans, that several other castles were taken by stratagem
before the alarm could be given. Their governors were sent beyond the
borders. Day by day news was brought to the head-quarters of the
patriots, on Lake Lucerne, of success in various parts of the country,
and on Sunday, the 7th of January, a week from the first outbreak, the
leading men of that part of Switzerland met and pledged themselves to
their ancient oath of confederacy. In a week's time they had driven out
the Austrians and set their country free.
It must be admitted that there is no contemporary proof of this story,
though the Swiss accept it as authentic history, and it has not been
disproved. The chief peril to the new confederacy lay with Albert of
Austria, the dispossessed lord of the land, but the patriotic Swiss
found themselves unexpectedly relieved from the execution of his
threats of vengeance. His harshness and despotic severity had made him
enemies alike among people and nobles, and when, in the spring of 1308,
he sought the borders of Switzerland, with the purpose of reducing and
punishing the insurgents, his career was brought to a sudden and violent
end.
A conspiracy had been formed against him by his nephew, the Duke of
Swabia, and others who accompanied him in this journey. On the 1st of
May they reached the Reuss River at Windisch, and, as the emperor
entered the boat to be ferried across, the conspirators pushed into it
after him, leaving no room for his attendants. Reaching the opposite
shore, they remounted their steeds and rode on while the boat returned
for the others. Their route lay through the vast cornfields at the base
of the hills whose highest summit was crowned by the great castle of
Hapsburg.
They had gone some distance, when John of Swabia suddenly rushed upon
the emperor, and buried his lance in his neck, exclaiming, "Such is the
reward of injustice!" Immediately two others rode upon him, Rudolph of
Balm stabbing him with his dagger, while Walter of Eschenbach clove his
head in twain with his sword. This bloody work done, the conspirators
spurred rapidly away, leaving the dying emperor to breathe his last with
his head supported in the lap of a poor woman, who had witnessed the
murder and hurried to the spot.
This deed of blood saved Switzerland from the vengeance which the
emperor had designed. The mountaineers were given time to cement the
government they had so hastily formed, and which was to last for
centuries thereafter, despite the efforts of ambitious potentates to
reduce the Swiss once more to subjection and rob them of the liberty
they so dearly loved.
_THE BLACK DEATH AND THE FLAGELLANTS._
The middle of the fourteenth century was a period of extraordinary
terror and disaster to Europe. Numerous portents, which sadly frightened
the people, were followed by a pestilence which threatened to turn the
continent into an unpeopled wilderness. For year after year there were
signs in the sky, on the earth, in the air, all indicative, as men
thought, of some terrible coming event. In 1337 a great comet appeared
in the heavens, its far-extending tail sowing deep dread in the minds of
the ignorant masses. During the three succeeding years the land was
visited by enormous flying armies of locusts, which descended in myriads
upon the fields, and left the shadow of famine in their track. In 1348
came an earthquake of such frightful violence that many men deemed the
end of the world to be presaged. Its devastations were widely spread.
Cyprus, Greece, and Italy were terribly visited, and it extended through
the Alpine valleys as far as Bâsle. Mountains sank into the earth. In
Carinthia thirty villages and the tower of Villach were ruined. The air
grew thick and stifling. There were dense and frightful fogs. Wine
fermented in the casks. Fiery meteors appeared in the skies. A gigantic
pillar of flame was seen by hundreds descending upon the roof of the
pope's palace at Avignon. In 1356 came another earthquake, which
destroyed almost the whole of Bâsle. What with famine, flood, fog,
locust swarms, earthquakes, and the like, it is not surprising that many
men deemed the cup of the world's sins to be full, and the end of the
kingdom of man to be at hand.
An event followed that seemed to confirm this belief. A pestilence broke
out of such frightful virulence that it appeared indeed as if man was to
be swept from the earth. Men died in hundreds, in thousands, in myriads,
until in places there were scarcely enough living to bury the dead, and
these so maddened with fright that dwellings, villages, towns, were
deserted by all who were able to fly, the dying and dead being left
their sole inhabitants. It was the pestilence called the "Black Death,"
the most terrible visitation that Europe has ever known.
This deadly disease came from Asia. It is said to have originated in
China, spreading over the great continent westwardly, and descending in
all its destructive virulence upon Europe, which continent it swept as
with the besom of destruction. The disease appears to have been a very
malignant type of what is known as the plague, a form of pestilence
which has several times returned, though never with such virulence as on
that occasion. It began with great lassitude of the body, and rapid
swellings of the glands of the groin and armpits, which soon became
large boils. Then followed, as a fatal symptom, large black or
deep-blue spots over the body, from which came the name of "Black
Death." Some of the victims became sleepy and stupid; others were
incessantly restless. The tongue and throat grew black; the lungs
exhaled a noisome odor; an insatiable thirst was produced. Death came in
two or three days, sometimes on the very day of seizure. Medical aid was
of no avail. Doctors and relatives fled in terror from what they deemed
a fatally contagious disease, and the stricken were left to die alone.
Villages and towns were in many places utterly deserted, no living
things being left, for the disease was as fatal to dogs, cats, and swine
as to men. There is reason to believe that this, and other less
destructive visitations of plague, were due to the action of some of
those bacterial organisms which are now known to have so much to do with
infectious diseases. This particular pestilence-breeder seems to have
flourished in filth, and the streets of the cities of Europe of that day
formed a richly fertile soil for its growth. Men prayed to God for
relief, instead of cleaning their highways and by-ways, and relief came
not.
Such was its character, what were its ravages? Never before or since has
a pestilence brought such desolation. Men died by millions. At Bâsle it
found fourteen thousand victims; at Strasburg and Erfurt, sixteen
thousand; in the other cities of Germany it flourished in like
proportion. In Osnabrück only seven married couples remained unseparated
by death. Of the Franciscan Minorites of Germany, one hundred and
twenty-five thousand died.
Outside of Germany the fury of the pestilence was still worse; from east
to west, from north to south, Europe was desolated. The mortality in
Asia was fearful. In China there are said to have been thirteen million
victims to the scourge; in the rest of Asia twenty-four millions. The
extreme west was no less frightfully visited. London lost one hundred
thousand of its population; in all England a number estimated at from
one-third to one-half the entire population (then probably numbering
from three to five millions) were swept into the grave. If we take
Europe as a whole, it is believed that fully a fourth of its inhabitants
were carried away by this terrible scourge. For two years the pestilence
raged, 1348 and 1349. It broke out again in 1361-62, and once more in
1369.
The mortality caused by the plague was only one of its disturbing
consequences. The bonds of society were loosened; natural affection
seemed to vanish; friend deserted friend, mothers even fled from their
children; demoralization showed itself in many instances in reckless
debauchery. An interesting example remains to us in Boccaccio's
"Decameron," whose stories were told by a group of pleasure-lovers who
had fled from plague-stricken Florence.
In many localities the hatred of the Jews by the people led to frightful
excesses of persecution against them, they being accused by their
enemies of poisoning the wells. From Berne, where the city councils
gave orders for the massacre, it spread over the whole of Switzerland
and Germany, many thousands being murdered. At Mayence it is said that
twelve thousand Jews were massacred. At Strasburg two thousand were
burned in one pile. Even the orders of the emperor failed to put an end
to the slaughter. All the Jews who could took refuge in Poland, where
they found a protector in Casimir, who, like a second Ahasuerus,
extended his aid to them from love for Esther, a beautiful Jewess. From
that day to this Poland has swarmed with Jews.
This persecution was discountenanced by Pope Clement VI. in two bulls,
in the first of which he ordered that the Jews should not be made the
victims of groundless charges or injured in person or property without
the sentence of a lawful judge. The second affirmed the innocence of the
Jews in the persecution then going on and ordered the bishops to
excommunicate all those who should continue it.
Of the beneficial results of the religious excitement may be named the
earnest labors of the order of Beguines, an association of women for the
purpose of attending the sick and dying, which had long been in
existence, but was particularly active and useful during this period. We
may name also the Beghards and Lollards, whose extravagances were to
some extent outgrowths of earnest piety, and their lives strongly
contrasted with the levity and luxury of the higher ecclesiastics. These
societies of poor and mendicant penitents were greatly increased by the
religious excitement of the time, which also gave special vitality to
another sect, the Flagellants, which, as mentioned in a former article,
first arose in 1260, during the excesses of bloodshed of the Guelphs of
northern Italy, and thence spread over Europe. After a period of
decadence they broke out afresh in 1349, as a consequence of the deadly
pestilence.
The members of this sect, seeing no hope of relief from human action,
turned to God as their only refuge, and deemed it necessary to
propitiate the Deity by extraordinary sacrifices and self-tortures. The
flame of fanaticism, once started, spread rapidly and widely. Hundreds
of men, and even boys, marched in companies through the roads and
streets, carrying heavy torches, scourging their naked shoulders with
knotted whips, which were often loaded with lead or iron, singing
penitential hymns, parading in bands which bore banners and were
distinguished by white hats with red crosses.
Women as well as men took part in these fanatical exercises, marching
about half-naked, whipping each other frightfully, flinging themselves
on the earth in the most public places of the towns and scourging their
bare backs and shoulders till the blood flowed. Entering the churches,
they would prostrate themselves on the pavement, with their arms
extended in the form of a cross, chanting their rude hymns. Of these
hymns we may quote the following example:
"Now is the holy pilgrimage.
Christ rode into Jerusalem,
And in his hand he bore a cross;
May Christ to us be gracious.
Our pilgrimage is good and right."
The Flagellants did not content themselves with these public
manifestations of self-sacrifice. They formed a regular religious order,
with officers and laws, and property in common. At night, before
sleeping, each indicated to his brothers by gestures the sins which
weighed most heavily on his conscience, not a word being spoken until
absolution was granted by one of them in the following form:
"For their dear sakes who torture bore,
Rise, brother, go and sin no more."
Had this been all they might have been left to their own devices, but
they went farther. The day of judgment, they declared, was at hand. A
letter had been addressed from Jerusalem by the Creator to his sinning
creatures, and it was their mission to spread this through Europe. They
preached, confessed, and forgave sins, declared that the blood shed in
their flagellations had a share with the blood of Christ in atoning for
sin, that their penances were a substitute for the sacraments of the
church, and that the absolution granted by the clergy was of no avail.
They taught that all men were brothers and equal in the sight of God,
and upbraided the priests for their pride and luxury.
These doctrines and the extravagances of the Flagellants alarmed the
pope, Clement VI., who launched against the enthusiasts a bull of
excommunication, and ordered their persecution as heretics. This course,
at first, roused their enthusiasm to frenzy. Some of them even pretended
to be the Messiah, one of these being burnt as a heretic at Erfurt.
Gradually, however, as the plague died away, and the occasion for this
fanatical outburst vanished, the enthusiasm of the Flagellants went with
it, and they sunk from sight. In 1414 a troop of them reappeared in
Thuringia and Lower Saxony, and even surpassed their predecessors in
wildness of extravagance. With the dying out of this manifestation this
strange mania of the middle ages vanished, probably checked by the
growing intelligence of mankind.
_THE SWISS AT MORGARTEN_
On a sunny autumn morning, in the far-off year 1315, a gallant band of
horsemen wound slowly up the Swiss mountains, their forest of spears and
lances glittering in the ruddy beams of the new-risen sun, and extending
down the hill-side as far as the eye could reach. In the vanguard rode
the flower of the army, a noble cavalcade of knights, clad in complete
armor, and including nearly the whole of the ancient nobility of
Austria. At the head of this group rode Duke Leopold, the brother of
Frederick of Austria, and one of the bravest knights and ablest generals
of the realm. Following the van came a second division, composed of the
inferior leaders and the rank and file of the army.
Switzerland was to be severely punished, and to be reduced again to the
condition from which seven years before it had broken away; such was the
dictum of the Austrian magnates. With the army came Landenberg, the
oppressive governor who had been set free on his oath never to return to
Switzerland. He was returning in defiance of his vow. With it are also
said to have been several of the family of Gessler, the tyrant who fell
beneath Tell's avenging arrow. The birds of prey were flying back, eager
to fatten on the body of slain liberty in Switzerland.
Up the mountains wound the serried band, proud in their panoply,
confident of easy victory, their voices ringing out in laughter and
disdain as they spoke of the swift vengeance that was about to fall on
the heads of the horde of rebel mountaineers. The duke was as gay and
confidant as any of his followers, as he proudly bestrode his noble
war-horse, and led the way up the mountain slopes towards the district
of Schwyz, the head-quarters of the base-born insurgents. He would
trample the insolent boors under his feet, he said, and had provided
himself with an abundant supply of ropes with which to hang the leaders
of the rebels, whom he counted on soon having in his power.
All was silent about them as they rode forward; the sun shone
brilliantly; it seemed like a pleasure excursion on which they were
bound.
"The locusts have crawled to their holes," said the duke, laughingly;
"we will have to stir them out with the points of our lances."
"The poor fools fancied that liberty was to be won by driving out one
governor and shooting another," answered a noble knight. "They will find
that the eagle of Hapsburg does not loose its hold so easily."
Their conversation ceased as they found themselves at the entrance to a
pass, through which the road up the mountains wound, a narrow avenue,
wedged in between hills and lakeside. The silence continued unbroken
around the rugged scene as the cavalry pushed in close ranks through the
pass, filling it, as they advanced, from side to side. They pushed
forward; beyond this pass of Morgarten they would find open land again
and the villages of the rebellious peasantry; here all was solitude and
a stillness that was almost depressing.
Suddenly the stillness was broken. From the rugged cliffs which bordered
the pass came a loud shout of defiance. But more alarming still was the
sound of descending rocks, which came plunging down the mountain side,
and in an instant fell with a sickening thud on the mail-clad and
crowded ranks below. Under their weight the iron helmets of the knights
cracked like so many nut-shells; heads were crushed into shapeless
masses, and dozens of men, a moment before full of life, hope, and
ambition, were hurled in death to the ground.
Down still plunged the rocks, loosened by busy hands above, sent on
their errand of death down the steep declivities, hurling destruction
upon the dense masses below. Escape was impossible. The pass was filled
with horsemen. It would take time to open an avenue of flight, and still
those death-dealing rocks came down, smashing the strongest armor like
pasteboard, strewing the pass with dead and bleeding bodies.
And now the horses, terrified, wounded, mad with pain and alarm, began
to plunge and rear, trebling the confusion and terror, crushing fallen
riders under their hoofs, adding their quota to the sum of death and
dismay. Many of them rushed wildly into the lake which bordered one side
of the pass, carrying their riders to a watery death. In a few minutes'
time that trim and soldierly array, filled with hope of easy victory and
disdain of its foes, was converted into a mob of maddened horses and
frightened men, while the rocky pass beneath their feet was strewn
thickly with the dying and the dead.
Yet all this had been done by fifty men, fifty banished patriots, who
had hastened back on learning that their country was in danger, and
stationing themselves among the cliffs above the pass, had loosened and
sent rolling downwards the stones and huge fragments of rock which lay
plentifully there.
While the fifty returned exiles were thus at work on the height of
Morgarten, the army of the Swiss, thirteen hundred in number, was posted
on the summit of the Sattel Mountain opposite, waiting its opportunity.
The time for action had come. The Austrian cavalry of the vanguard was
in a state of frightful confusion and dismay. And now the mountaineers
descended the steep hill slopes like an avalanche, and precipitated
themselves on the flank of the invading force, dealing death with their
halberds and iron-pointed clubs until the pass ran blood.
On every side the Austrian chivalry fell. Escape was next to impossible,
resistance next to useless. Confined in that narrow passage, confused,
terrified, their ranks broken by the rearing and plunging horses,
knights and men-at-arms falling with every blow from their vigorous
assailants, it seemed as if the whole army would be annihilated, and not
a man escape to tell the tale.
Numbers of gallant knights, the flower of the Austrian, nobility, fell
under those vengeful clubs. Numbers were drowned in the lake. A
halberd-thrust revenged Switzerland on Landenberg, who had come back to
his doom. Two of the Gesslers were slain. Death held high carnival in
that proud array which had vowed to reduce the free-spirited
mountaineers to servitude.
Such as could fled in all haste. The van of the army, which had passed
beyond those death-dealing rocks, the rear, which had not yet come up,
broke and fled in a panic of fear. Duke Leopold narrowly escaped from
the vengeance of the mountaineers, whom he had held in such contempt.
Instead of using the ropes he had brought with him to hang their chiefs,
he fled at full speed from the victors, who were now pursuing the
scattered fragments of the army, and slaying the fugitives in scores.
With difficulty the proud duke escaped, owing his safety to a peasant,
who guided him through narrow ravines and passes as far as Winterthur,
which he at length reached in a state of the utmost dejection and
fatigue. The gallantly-arrayed army which he had that morning led, with
blare of trumpets and glitter of spears, with high hope and proud
assurance of victory, up the mountain slopes, was now in great part a
gory heap in the rocky passes, the remainder a scattered host of wearied
and wounded fugitives. Switzerland had won its freedom.
The day before the Swiss confederates, apprised of the approach of the
Austrians, had come together, four hundred men from Uri, three hundred
from Unterwald, the remainder from Schwyz. They owed their success to
Rudolphus Redin, a venerable patriot, so old and infirm that he could
scarcely walk, yet with such reputation for skill and prudence in war
that the warriors halted at his door in their march, and eagerly asked
his advice.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF PRAGUE.]
"Our grand aim, my sons," said he, "as we are so inferior in numbers,
must be to prevent Duke Leopold from gaining any advantage by his
superior force."
He then advised them to occupy the Morgarten and Sattel heights, and
fall on the Austrians when entangled in the pass, cutting their force in
two, and assailing it right and left. They obeyed him implicitly, with
what success we have seen. The fifty men who had so efficiently begun
the fray had been banished from Schwyz through some dispute, but on
learning their country's danger had hastily returned to sacrifice their
lives, if need be, for their native land.
Thus a strong and well-appointed army, fully disciplined and led by
warriors famed for courage and warlike deeds, was annihilated by a small
band of peasants, few of whom had ever struck a blow in war, but who
were animated by the highest spirit of patriotism and love of liberty,
and welcomed death rather than a return to their old state of slavery
and oppression. The short space of an hour and a half did the work.
Austria was defeated and Switzerland was free.
_A MAD EMPEROR._
If genius to madness is allied, the same may be said of eccentricity,
and certainly Wenceslas, Emperor of Germany and King of Bohemia, had an
eccentricity that approached the vagaries of the insane. The oldest son
of Charles IV., he was brought up in pomp and luxury, and was so
addicted to sensual gratification that he left the empire largely to
take care of itself, while he gave his time to the pleasures of the
bottle and the chase. Born to the throne, he was crowned King of Bohemia
when but three years of age, was elected King of the Romans at fifteen,
and two years afterwards, in 1378, became Emperor of Germany, when still
but a boy, with regard for nothing but riot and rude frolic.
So far as affairs of state were concerned, the volatile youth either
totally neglected them or treated them with a ridicule that was worse
than neglect. Drunk two-thirds of his time, he now dismissed the most
serious matters with a rude jest, now met his councillors with brutal
fits of rage. The Germans deemed him a fool, and were not far amiss in
their opinion; but as he did not meddle with them, except in holding an
occasional useless diet at Nuremberg, they did not meddle with him. The
Bohemians, among whom he lived, his residence being at Prague, found his
rule much more of a burden. They were exposed to his savage caprices,
and regarded him as a brutal and senseless tyrant.