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Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 05 (of 15), German

by Charles Morris · English · Gutenberg #16587 · 509,356 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 05 (of 15), German

Author: Charles Morris


        
Release date: August 24, 2005 [eBook #16587]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORIC TALES: THE ROMANCE OF REALITY. VOL. 05 (OF 15), GERMAN ***




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Édition d'Élite

Historical Tales

The Romance of Reality

By

CHARLES MORRIS

_Author of "Half-Hours with the Best American Authors," "Tales from the
Dramatists," etc._

IN FIFTEEN VOLUMES

Volume V

German

J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON

Copyright, 1893, by J.B. Lippincott Company.

Copyright, 1904, by J.B. Lippincott Company.

Copyright, 1908, by J.B. Lippincott Company.

_CONTENTS_


                                                           PAGE

HERMANN, THE HERO OF GERMANY                                 7

ALBION AND ROSAMOND                                         19

THE CAREER OF GRIMOALD                                      28

WITTEKIND, THE SAXON PATRIOT                                37

THE RAIDS OF THE SEA-ROVERS                                 47

THE CAREER OF BISHOP HATTO                                  58

THE MISFORTUNES OF DUKE ERNST                               64

THE REIGN OF OTHO II                                        69

THE FORTUNES OF HENRY THE FOURTH                            77

THE ANECDOTES OF MEDIÆVAL GERMANY                           92

FREDERICK BARBAROSSA AND MILAN                             105

THE CRUSADE OF FREDERICK II                                118

THE FALL OF THE GHIBELLINES                                129

THE TRIBUNAL OF THE HOLY VEHM                              138

WILLIAM TELL AND THE SWISS PATRIOTS                        148

THE BLACK DEATH AND THE FLAGELLANTS                        162

THE SWISS AT MORGARTEN                                     170

A MAD EMPEROR                                              176

SEMPACH AND ARNOLD WINKELRIED                              187

ZISKA, THE BLIND WARRIOR                                   198

THE SIEGE OF BELGRADE                                      210

LUTHER AND THE INDULGENCES                                 217

SOLYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT AT GUNTZ                           229

THE PEASANTS AND THE ANABAPTISTS                           238

THE FORTUNES OF WALLENSTEIN                                252

THE END OF TWO GREAT SOLDIERS                              265

THE SIEGE OF VIENNA                                        277

THE YOUTH OF FREDERICK THE GREAT                           288

VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT                           305

SCENES FROM THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR                           315

THE PATRIOTS OF THE TYROL                                  328

THE OLD EMPIRE AND THE NEW                                 343







LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


GERMAN.

                                                           PAGE

MAXIMILIAN RECEIVING VENETIAN DELEGATION                     7

RETURN OF HERMANN AFTER HIS VICTORY OVER THE ROMANS         13

THE BAPTISM OF WITTEKIND                                    43

THE MOUSE-TOWER ON THE RHINE                                61

PEASANT WEDDING PROCESSION                                  65

SCENE OF MONASTIC LIFE                                      78

THUSNELDA IN THE GERMANICUS TRIUMPH                         94

THE AMPHITHEATRE AT MILAN                                  109

STATUE OF WILLIAM TELL                                     153

THE CASTLE OF PRAGUE                                       175

STATUE OF ARNOLD WINKELRIED                                193

STATUE OF LUTHER AT WORMS                                  225

THE MOSQUE OF SOLYMAN, CONSTANTINOPLE                      236

OLD HOUSES AT MÜNSTER                                      246

WALLENSTEIN                                                252

THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE IN VIENNA                             278

STATUE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT, UNTER DEN LINDEN, BERLIN    289

SANS SOUCI, PALACE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT                  315

THE LAST DAY OF ANDREAS HOFER                              340

A GERMAN MILK WAGON                                        347


[Illustration: MAXIMILIAN RECEIVING VENETIAN DELEGATION.]




_HERMANN, THE HERO OF GERMANY._


In the days of Augustus, the emperor of Rome in its golden age of
prosperity, an earnest effort was made to subdue and civilize barbarian
Germany. Drusus, the step-son of the emperor, led the first army of
invasion into this forest-clad land of the north, penetrating deeply
into the country and building numerous forts to guard his conquests. His
last invasion took him as far as the Elbe. Here, as we are told, he
found himself confronted by a supernatural figure, in the form of a
woman, who waved him back with lofty and threatening air, saying, "How
much farther wilt thou advance, insatiable Drusus? It is not thy lot to
behold all these countries. Depart hence! the term of thy deeds and of
thy life is at hand." Drusus retreated, and died on his return.

Tiberius, his brother, succeeded him, and went far to complete the
conquest he had begun. Germany seemed destined to become a Roman
province. The work of conquest was followed by efforts to civilize the
free-spirited barbarians, which, had they been conducted wisely, might
have led to success. One of the Roman governors, Sentius, prefect of the
Rhine, treated the people so humanely that many of them adopted the arts
and customs of Rome, and the work of overcoming their barbarism was
well begun. He was succeeded in this office by Varus, a friend and
confidant of the emperor, but a man of very different character, and one
who not only lacked military experience and mental ability, but utterly
misunderstood the character of the people he was dealing with. They
might be led, they could not be driven into civilization, as the new
prefect was to learn.

All went well as long as Varus remained peacefully in his head-quarters,
erecting markets, making the natives familiar with the attractive wares
of Rome, instructing them in civilized arts, and taking their sons into
the imperial army. All went ill when he sought to hasten his work by
acts of oppression, leading his forces across the Weser into the land of
the Cherusci, enforcing there the rigid Roman laws, and chastising and
executing free-born Germans for deeds which in their creed were not
crimes. Varus, who had at first made himself loved by his kindness, now
made himself hated by his severity. The Germans brooded over their
wrongs, awed by the Roman army, which consisted of thirty thousand
picked men, strongly intrenched, their camps being impregnable to their
undisciplined foes. Yet the high-spirited barbarians felt that this army
was but an entering wedge, and that, if not driven out, their whole
country would gradually be subdued.

A patriot at length arose among the Cherusci, determined to free his
country from the intolerable Roman yoke. He was a handsome and athletic
youth, Arminius, or Hermann as the Germans prefer to name him, of noble
descent, and skilled alike in the arts of war and of oratory, his
eloquence being equal to his courage. He was one of the sons of the
Germans who had served in the Roman armies, and had won there such
distinction as to gain the honors of knighthood and citizenship. Now,
perceiving clearly the subjection that threatened his countrymen, and
filled with an ardent love of liberty, he appeared among them, and
quickly filled their dispirited souls with much of his own courage and
enthusiasm. At midnight meetings in the depths of the forests a
conspiracy against Varus and his legions was planned, Hermann being the
chosen leader of the perilous enterprise.

It was not long before this conspiracy was revealed. The German control
over the Cherusci had been aided by Segestus, a treacherous chief, whose
beautiful and patriotic daughter, Thusnelda, had given her hand in
marriage to Hermann, against her father's will. Filled with revengeful
anger at this action, and hoping to increase his power, Segestus told
the story of the secret meetings, which he had discovered, to Varus, and
bade him beware, as a revolt against him might at any moment break out.
He spoke to the wrong man. Pride in the Roman power and scorn of that of
the Germans had deeply infected the mind of Varus, and he heard with
incredulous contempt this story that the barbarians contemplated rising
against the best trained legions of Rome.

Autumn came, the autumn of the year 9 A.D. The long rainy season of the
German forests began. Hermann decided that the time had arrived for the
execution of his plans. He began his work with a deceitful skill that
quite blinded the too-trusting Varus, inducing him to send bodies of
troops into different parts of the country, some to gather provisions
for the winter supply of the camps, others to keep watch over some
tribes not yet subdued. The Roman force thus weakened, the artful German
succeeded in drawing Varus with the remainder of his men from their
intrenchments, by inducing one of the subjected tribes to revolt.

The scheme of Hermann had, so far, been completely successful. Varus,
trusting to his representations, had weakened his force, and now
prepared to draw the main body of his army out of camp. Hermann remained
with him to the last, dining with him the day before the starting of the
expedition, and inspiring so much confidence in his faithfulness to Rome
that Varus refused to listen to Segestus, who earnestly entreated him to
take Hermann prisoner on the spot. He even took Hermann's advice, and
decided to march on the revolted tribe by a shorter than the usual
route, oblivious to the fact that it led through difficult mountain
passes, shrouded in forests and bordered by steep and rocky acclivities.

The treacherous plans of the patriotic German had fully succeeded. While
the Romans were toiling onward through the straitened passes, Hermann
had sought his waiting and ambushed countrymen, to whom he gave the
signal that the time for vengeance had come. Then, as if the dense
forests had borne a sudden crop of armed men, the furious barbarians
poured out in thousands upon the unsuspecting legionaries.

A frightful storm was raging. The mountain torrents, swollen by the
downpour of rain, over--flowed their banks and invaded the passes, along
which the Romans, encumbered with baggage, were wearily dragging onward
in broken columns. Suddenly, to the roar of winds and waters, was added
the wild war-cry of the Germans, and a storm of arrows, javelins, and
stones hurtled through the disordered ranks, while the barbarians,
breaking from the woods, and rushing downward from the heights, fell
upon the legions with sword and battle-axe, dealing death with every
blow.

Only the discipline of the Romans saved them from speedy destruction.
With the instinct of their training they hastened to gather into larger
bodies, and their resistance, at first feeble, soon became more
effective. The struggle continued until night-fall, by which time the
surviving Romans had fought their way to a more open place, where they
hastily intrenched. But it was impossible for them to remain there.
Their provisions were lost or exhausted, thousands of foes surrounded
them, and their only hope lay in immediate and rapid flight.

Sunrise came. The soldiers had recovered somewhat from the fatigue of
the day before. Setting fire to what baggage remained in their hands,
they began a retreat fighting as they went, for the implacable enemy
disputed every step. The first part of their route lay through an open
plain, where they marched in orderly ranks. But there were mountains
still to pass, and they quickly found themselves in a wooded and
pathless valley, in whose rugged depths defence was almost impossible.
Here they fell in thousands before the weapons of their foes. It was but
a small body of survivors that at length escaped from that deadly defile
and threw up intrenchments for the night in a more open spot.

With the dawn of the next day they resumed their progress, and were at
no great distance from their stronghold of Aliso when they found their
progress arrested by fresh tribes, who assailed them with murderous
fury. On they struggled, fighting, dying, marking every step of the
route with their dead. Varus, now reduced to despair, and seeing only
slaughter or captivity before him, threw himself on his sword, and died
in the midst of those whom his blind confidence had led to destruction.
Of the whole army only a feeble remnant reached Aliso, which fort they
soon after abandoned and fought their way to the Rhine. While this was
going on, the detachments which Varus had sent out in various directions
were similarly assailed, and met the same fate as had overtaken the main
body of the troops.

[Illustration: RETURN OF HERMANN AFTER HIS VICTORY OVER THE ROMANS.]

No more frightful disaster had ever befallen the Roman arms. Many
prisoners had been taken, among them certain judges and lawyers, who
were the chief objects of Hermann's hate, and whom he devoted to a
painful death. He then offered sacrifices to the gods, to whom he
consecrated the booty, the slain, and the leading prisoners, numbers of
them being slain on the altars of his deities. These religious
ceremonies completed, the prisoners who still remained were distributed
among the tribes as slaves. The effort of Varus to force Roman customs
and laws upon the Germans had led to a fearful retribution.

When the news of this dreadful event reached Rome, that city was filled
with grief and fear. The heart of Augustus, now an old man, was stricken
with dismay at the slaughter of the best soldiers of the empire. With
neglected dress and person he wandered about the rooms and halls of the
palace, his piteous appeal, "Varus, give me back my legions!" showing
how deeply the disaster had pierced his soul. Hasty efforts were at once
made to prevent the possible serious consequences of the overthrow of
the slain legions. The Romans on the Rhine intrenched themselves in all
haste. The Germans in the imperial service were sent to distant
provinces, and recruits were raised in all parts of the country, their
purpose being to protect Gaul from an invasion by the triumphant tribes.
Yet so great was the fear inspired by the former German onslaughts, and
by this destructive outbreak, that only threats of death induced the
Romans to serve. As it proved, this defensive activity was not needed.
The Germans, satisfied, as it seemed, with expelling the Romans from
their country, destroyed their forts and military roads, and settled
back into peace, with no sign of a desire to cross the Rhine.

For six years peace continued. Augustus died, and Tiberius became
emperor of Rome. Then, in the year 14 A.D., an effort was made to
reconquer Germany, an army commanded by the son of Drusus, known to
history under the name of Germanicus, attacking the Marsi, when
intoxicated and unarmed after a religious feast. Great numbers of the
defenceless tribesmen were slain, but the other tribes sprung to arms
and drove the invader back across the Rhine.

In the next year Hermann was again brought into the fray. Segestus had
robbed him of his wife, the beautiful patriot Thusnelda, who hitherto
had been his right hand in council in his plans against the Roman foe.
Hermann besieged Segestus to regain possession of his wife, and pressed
the traitor so closely that he sent his son Sigismund to Germanicus, who
was again on the German side of the Rhine, imploring aid. The Roman
leader took instant advantage of this promising opportunity. He advanced
and forced Hermann to raise the siege, and himself took possession of
Thusnelda, who was destined soon afterwards to be made the leading
feature in a Roman triumph. Segestus was rewarded for his treason, and
was given lands in Gaul, his life being not safe among the people he had
betrayed. As for the daughter whom he had yielded to Roman hands, her
fate troubled little his base soul.

Thusnelda is still a popular character in German legend, there being
various stories extant concerning her. One of these relates that, when
she lay concealed in the old fort of Schellenpyrmont, she was warned by
the cries of a faithful bird of the coming of the Romans, who were
seeking stealthily to approach her hiding-place.

The loss of his beloved wife roused Hermann's heroic spirit, and spread
indignation among the Germans, who highly esteemed the noble-hearted
consort of their chief. They rose hastily in arms, and Hermann was soon
at the head of a large army, prepared to defend his country against the
invading hosts of the Romans. But as the latter proved too strong to
face in the open field, the Germans retreated with their families and
property, the country left by them being laid waste by the advancing
legions.

Germanicus soon reached the scene of the late slaughter, and caused the
bones of the soldiers of Varus to be buried. But in doing this he was
obliged to enter the mountain defiles in which the former army had met
its fate. Hermann and his men watched the Romans intently from forest
and hilltop. When they had fairly entered the narrow valleys, the adroit
chief appeared before them at the head of a small troop, which retreated
as if in fear, drawing them onward until the whole army had entered the
pass.

Then the fatal signal was given, and the revengeful Germans fell upon
the legionaries of Germanicus as they had done upon those of Varus,
cutting them down in multitudes. But Germanicus was a much better
soldier than Varus. He succeeded in extricating the remnant of his men,
after they had lost heavily, and in making an orderly retreat to his
ships, which awaited him upon the northern coast whence he had entered
the country. There were two other armies, one of which had invaded
Germany from the coast of Friesland, and was carried away by a flood,
narrowly escaping complete destruction. The third had entered from the
Rhine. This was overtaken by Hermann while retreating over the long
bridges which the Romans had built across the marshes of Münsterland,
and which were now in a state of advanced decay. Here it found itself
surrounded by seemingly insuperable dangers, being, in part of its
route, shut up in a narrow dell, into which the enemy had turned the
waters of a rapid stream. While defending their camp, the waters poured
upon the soldiers, rising to their knees, and a furious tempest at the
same time burst over their heads. Yet discipline, again prevailed. They
lost heavily, but succeeded in cutting their way through their enemies
and reaching the Rhine.

In the next year, 17 A.D., Germanicus again invaded Germany, sailing
with a thousand ships through the northern seas and up the Ems. Flavus,
the brother of Hermann, who had remained in the service of Rome, was
with him, and addressed his patriotic brother from the river-side,
seeking to induce him to desert the German cause, by painting in
glowing colors the advantage of being a Roman citizen. Hermann, furious
at his desertion of his country, replied to him with curses, as the only
language worthy to use to a traitor, and would have ridden across the
stream to kill him, but that he was held back by his men.

A battle soon succeeded, the Germans falling into an ambuscade artfully
laid by the Roman leader, and being defeated with heavy loss. Germanicus
raised a stately monument on the spot, as a memorial of his victory. The
sight of this Roman monument in their country infuriated the Germans,
and they attacked the Romans again, this time with such fury, and such
slaughter on both sides, that neither party was able to resume the fight
when the next day dawned. Germanicus, who had been very severely
handled, retreated to his ships and set sail. On his voyage the heavens
appeared to conspire against him. A tempest arose in which most of the
vessels were wrecked and many of the legionaries lost. When he returned
to Rome, shortly afterwards, a fort on the Taunus was the only one which
Rome possessed in Germany. Hermann had cleared his country of the foe.
Yet Germanicus was given a triumph, in which Thusnelda walked, laden
with chains, to the capitol.

The remaining events in the life of this champion of German liberty were
few. While the events described had been taking place in the north of
Germany, there were troubles in the south. Here a chieftain named
Marbodius, who, like Hermann, had passed his youth in the Roman armies,
was the leader of several powerful tribes. He lacked the patriotism of
Hermann, and sought to ally himself with the Romans, with the hope of
attaining to supreme power in Germany.

Hermann sought to rouse patriotic sentiments in his mind, but in vain,
and the movements of Marbodius having revealed his purposes, a coalition
was formed against him, with Hermann at its head. He was completely
defeated, and southern Germany saved from Roman domination, as the
northern districts had already been.

Peace followed, and for several years Hermann remained general-in-chief
of the German people, and the acknowledged bulwark of their liberties.
But envy arose; he was maligned, and accused of aiming at sovereignty,
as Marbodius had done; and at length his own relations, growing to hate
and fear him, conspired against and murdered him.

Thus ignobly fell the noblest of the ancient Germans, the man whose
patriotism saved the realm of the Teutonic tribes from becoming a
province of the empire of Rome. Had not Hermann lived, the history of
Europe might have pursued a different course, and the final downfall of
the colossus of the south been long averted, Germany acting as its
bulwark of defence instead of becoming the nursery of its foes.




_ALBOIN AND ROSAMOND._


Of the Teutonic invaders of Italy none are invested with more interest
than the Lombards,--the Long Beards, to give them their original title.
Legend yields us the story of their origin, a story of interest enough
to repeat. A famine had been caused in Denmark by a great flood, and the
people, to avoid danger of starvation, had resolved to put all the old
men and women to death, in order to save the food for the young and
strong. This radical proposition was set aside through the advice of a
wise woman, named Gambara, who suggested that lots should be drawn for
the migration of a third of the population. Her counsel was taken and
the migration began, under the leadership of her two sons. These
migrants wore beards of prodigious length, whence their subsequent name.

They first entered the land of the Vandals, who refused them permission
to settle. This was a question to be decided at sword's point, and war
was declared. Both sides appealed to the gods for aid, Gambara praying
to Freya, while the Vandals invoked Odin, who answered that he would
grant the victory to the party he should first behold at the dawn of the
coming day.

The day came. The sun rose. In front of the Danish host were stationed
their women, who had loosened their long hair, and let it hang down over
their faces. "Who are these with long beards?" demanded Odin, on seeing
these Danish amazons. This settled the question of victory, and also
gave the invaders a new name, that of Longobardi,--due, in this legend,
to the long hair of the women instead of the long beards of the men.
There are other legends, but none worth repeating.

The story of their king Alboin, with whom we have particularly to deal,
begins, however, with a story which may be in part legendary. They were
now in hostile relations with the Gepidæ, the first nation to throw off
the yoke of the Huns. Alboin, son of Audoin, king of the Longobardi,
killed Thurismund, son of Turisend, king of the Gepidæ, in battle, but
forgot to carry away his arms, and thus returned home without a trophy
of his victory. In consequence, his stern father refused him a seat at
his table, as one unworthy of the honor. Such was the ancient Lombard
custom, and it must be obeyed.

The young prince acknowledged the justice of this reproof, and
determined to try and obtain the arms which were his by right of
victory. Selecting forty companions, he boldly visited the court of
Turisend, and openly demanded from him the arms of his son. It was a
daring movement, but proved successful. The old king received him
hospitably, as the custom of the time demanded, though filled with grief
at the loss of his son. He even protected him from the anger of his
subjects, whom some of the Lombards had provoked by their insolence of
speech. The daring youth returned to his father's court with the arms
of his slain foe, and won the seat of honor of which he had been
deprived.

Turisend died, and Cunimund, his son, became king. Audoin died, and
Alboin became king. And now new adventures of interest occurred. In his
visit to the court of Turisend, Alboin had seen and fallen in love with
Rosamond, the beautiful daughter of Cunimund. He now demanded her hand
in marriage, and as it was scornfully refused him, he revenged himself
by winning her honor through force and stratagem. War broke out in
consequence, and the Gepidæ were conquered, Rosamond falling to Alboin
as part of the trophies of victory.

We are told that in this war Alboin sought the aid of Bacan, chagan of
the Avars, promising him half the spoil and all the land of the Gepidæ
in case of victory. He added to this a promise of the realm of the
Longobardi, in case he should succeed in winning for them a new home in
Italy, which country he proposed to invade.

About fifteen years before, some of his subjects had made a warlike
expedition to Italy. Their report of its beauty and fertility had
kindled a spirit of emulation in the new generation, and inspired the
young and warlike king with ambitious hopes. His eloquence added to
their desire. He not only described to them in glowing words the land of
promise which he hoped to win, but spoke to their senses as well, by
producing at the royal banquets the fairest fruits that grew in that
garden land of Europe. His efforts were successful. No sooner was his
standard erected, and word sent abroad that Italy was his goal, than the
Longobardi found their strength augmented by hosts of adventurous youths
from the surrounding peoples. Germans, Bulgarians, Scythians, and others
joined in ranks, and twenty thousand Saxon warriors, with their wives
and children, added to the great host which had flocked to the banners
of the already renowned warrior.

It was in the year 568 that Alboin, followed by the great multitude of
adventurers he had gathered, and by the whole nation of the Longobardi,
ascended the Julian Alps, and looked down from their summits on the
smiling plains of northern Italy to which his success was thenceforward
to give the name of Lombardy, the land of the Longobardi.

Four years were spent in war with the Romans, city after city, district
after district, falling into the hands of the invaders. The resistance
was but feeble, and at length the whole country watered by the Po, with
the strong city of Pavia, fell into the hands of Alboin, who divided the
conquered lands among his followers, and reduced their former holders to
servitude. Alboin made Pavia his capital, and erected strong
fortifications to keep out the Burgundians, Franks, and other nations
which were troubling his new-gained dominions. This done, he settled
down to the enjoyment of the conquest which he had so ably made and so
skilfully defended.

History tells us that the Longobardi cultivated their new lands so
skilfully that all traces of devastation soon vanished, and the realm
grew rich in its productions. Their freemen distinguished themselves
from the other German conquerors by laboring to turn the waste and
desert tracts into arable soil, while their king, though unceasingly
watchful against his enemies, lived among his people with patriarchal
simplicity, procuring his supplies from the produce of his farms, and
making regular rounds of inspection from one to another. It is a picture
fitted for a more peaceful and primitive age than that turbulent period
in which it is set.

But now we have to do with Alboin in another aspect,--his domestic
relations, his dealings with his wife Rosamond, and the tragic end of
all the actors in the drama of real life which we have set out to tell.
The Longobardi were barbarians, and Alboin was no better than his
people; a strong evidence of which is the fact that he had the skull of
Cunimund, his defeated enemy and the father of his wife, set in gold,
and used it as a drinking cup at his banquets.

Doubtless this brutality stirred revengeful sentiments in the mind of
Rosamond. An added instance of barbarian insult converted her outraged
feelings into a passion for revenge. Alboin had erected a palace near
Verona, one of the cities of his new dominion, and here he celebrated
his victories with a grand feast to his companions in arms. Wine flowed
freely at the banquet, the king emulating, or exceeding, his guests in
the art of imbibing. Heated with his potations, in which he had drained
many cups of Rhætian or Falernian wine, he called for the choicest
ornament of his sideboard, the gold-mounted skull of Cunimund, and drank
its full measure of wine amid the loud plaudits of his drunken guests.

"Fill it again with wine," he cried; "fill it to the brim; carry this
goblet to the queen, and tell her that it is my desire and command that
she shall rejoice with her father."

Rosamond's heart throbbed with grief and rage on hearing this inhuman
request. She took the skull in trembling hands, and murmuring in low
accents, "Let the will of my lord be obeyed," she touched it to her
lips. But in doing so she breathed a silent prayer, and resolved that
the unpardonable insult should be washed out in Alboin's blood.

If she had ever loved her lord, she felt now for him only the bitterness
of hate. She had a friend in the court on whom she could depend,
Helmichis, the armor-bearer of the king. She called on him for aid in
her revenge, and found him willing but fearful, for he knew too well the
great strength and daring spirit of the chief whom he had so often
attended in battle. He proposed, therefore, that they should gain the
aid of a Lombard of unequalled strength, Peredeus by name. This
champion, however, was not easily to be won. The project was broached to
him, but the most that could be gained from him was a promise of
silence.

Failing in this, more shameful methods were employed. Such was
Rosamond's passion for revenge that the most extreme measures seemed to
her justifiable. Peredeus loved one of the attendants of the queen.
Rosamond replaced this frail woman, sacrificed her honor to her
vengeance, and then threatened to denounce Peredeus to the king unless
he would kill the man who had so bitterly wronged her.

Peredeus now consented. He must kill the king or the king would kill
him, for he felt that Rosamond was quite capable of carrying out her
threat. Having thus obtained the promise of the instruments of her
vengeance, the queen waited for a favorable moment to carry out her dark
design. The opportunity soon came. The king, heavy with wine, had
retired from the table to his afternoon slumbers. Rosamond, affecting
solicitude for his health and repose, dismissed his attendants, closed
the palace gates, and then, seeking her spouse, lulled him to rest by
her tender caresses.

Finding that he slumbered, she unbolted the chamber door, and urged her
confederates to the instant performance of the deed of blood. They
entered the room with stealthy tread, but the quick senses of the
warrior took the alarm, he opened his eyes, saw two armed men advancing
upon him, and sprang from his couch. His sword hung beside him, and he
attempted to draw it, but the cunning hand of Rosamond had fastened it
securely in the scabbard. The only weapon remaining was a small
foot-stool. This he used with vigor, but it could not long protect him
from the spears of his assailants, and he quickly fell dead beneath
their blows. His body was buried beneath the stairway of the palace, and
thus tragically ended the career of the founder of the kingdom of
Lombardy.

But the story of Rosamond's life is not yet at an end. The death of
Alboin was followed by another tragic event, which brought her guilty
career to a violent termination. The wily queen had not failed to
prepare for the disturbances which might follow the death of the king.
The murder of Alboin was immediately followed by her marriage with
Helmichis, whose ambition looked to no less a prize than the throne of
Lombardy. The queen was surrounded by a band of faithful Gepidæ, with
whose aid she seized the palace and made herself mistress of Verona, the
Lombard chiefs flying in alarm. But the assassination of the king who
had so often led them to victory filled the Longobardi with indignation,
the chiefs mustered their bands and led them against the stronghold of
the guilty couple, and they in their turn, were forced to fly for their
lives. Helmichis and Rosamond, with her daughter, her faithful Gepidæ,
and the spoils of the palace, took ship down the Adige and the Po, and
were transported in a Greek vessel to the port of Ravenna, where they
hoped to find shelter and safety.

Longinus, the Greek governor of Ravenna, gave willing refuge to the
fugitives, the more so as the great beauty of Rosamond filled him with
admiration. She had not been long there, indeed, before he offered her
his hand in marriage. Rosamond, moved by ambition or a return of his
love, accepted his offer. There was, it is true, an obstacle in the way.
She was already provided with a husband. But the barbarian queen had
learned the art of getting rid of inconvenient husbands. Having,
perhaps, grown to detest the tool of her revenge, now that the purpose
of her marriage with him had failed, she set herself to the task of
disposing of Helmichis, this time using the cup instead of the sword.

As Helmichis left the bath he received a wine-cup from the hands of his
treacherous wife, and lifted it to his lips. But no sooner had he tasted
the liquor, and felt the shock that it gave his system, than he knew
that he was poisoned. Death, a speedy death, was in his veins, but he
had life enough left for revenge. Seizing his dagger, he pressed it to
the breast of Rosamond, and by threats of instant death compelled her to
drain the remainder of the cup. In a few minutes both the guilty
partners in the death of Alboin had breathed their last.

When Longinus was, at a later moment, summoned into the room, it was to
find his late guests both dead upon the floor. The poison had faithfully
done its work. Thus ended a historic tragedy than which the stage
possesses few of more striking dramatic interest and opportunities for
histrionic effect.




_THE CAREER OF GRIMOALD._


The Avars, led by Cacan, their king, crossed, in the year 611, the
mountains of Illyria and Lombardy, killed Gisulph, the grand duke, with
all his adherents, in battle, and laid siege to the city of Friuli,
behind whose strong walls Romilda, the widow of Gisulph, had taken
refuge. These events formed the basis of the romantic, and perhaps
largely legendary, story we have to tell.

One day, so we are told, Romilda, gazing from the ramparts of the city,
beheld Cacan, the young khan of the Avars, engaged in directing the
siege. So handsome to her eyes appeared the youthful soldier that she
fell deeply in love with him at sight, her passion growing until, in
disregard of honor and patriotism, she sent him a secret message,
offering to deliver up to him the city on condition of becoming his
wife. The khan, though doubtless despising her treachery to her people,
was quick to close with the offer, and in a short time Friuli was in his
hands.

This accomplished, he returned to Hungary, taking with him Romilda and
her children, of whom there were four sons and four daughters. Cacan
kept his compact with the traitress, marrying her with the primitive
rites of the Hungarians. But her married life was of the shortest. He
had kept his word, and such honor as he possessed was satisfied. The
morning after his marriage, moved perhaps by detestation of her
treachery, he caused the hapless Romilda to be impaled alive. It was a
dark end to a dark deed, and the perfidy of the woman had been matched
by an equal perfidy on the part of the man.

The children of Romilda were left in the hands of the Avars. Of her
daughters, one subsequently married a duke of Bavaria and another a duke
of Allemania. The four sons, one of whom was Grimoald, the hero of our
story, managed to escape from their savage captors, though they were
hotly pursued. In their flight, Grimoald, the youngest, was taken up
behind Tafo, the oldest; but in the rapid course he lost his hold and
fell from his brother's horse.

Tafo, knowing what would be the fate of the boy should he be captured,
turned and galloped upon him lance in hand, determined that he should
not fall alive into the hands of his cruel foes. But Grimoald's
entreaties and Tafo's brotherly affection induced him to change his
resolution, and, snatching up the boy, he continued his flight, the
pursuing Avars being now close at hand.

Not far had they ridden before the same accident occurred. Grimoald
again fell, and Tafo was now obliged to leave him to his fate, the
fierce pursuers being too near to permit him either to kill or save the
unlucky boy. On swept Tafo, up swept the Avars, and one of them,
halting, seized the young captive, threw him behind him on his horse,
and rode on after his fellows.

Grimoald's peril was imminent, but he was a child with the soul of a
warrior. As his captor pushed on in the track of his companions, the
brave little fellow suddenly snatched a knife from his belt, and in an
instant had stabbed him to the heart with his own weapon Tossing the
dead body from the saddle, Grimoald seized the bridle and rode swiftly
on, avoiding the Avars, and in the end rejoining his flying brothers. It
was a deed worthy the childhood of one who was in time to become a
famous warrior.

The fugitives reached Lombardy, where Tafo was hospitably received by
the king, and succeeded his father as Grand Duke of Friuli. Grimoald was
adopted by Arigil, Duke of Benevento, in whose court he grew to manhood,
and in whose service his courage and military ability were quickly
shown. There were wars between Benevento and the Greeks of southern
Italy, and in these the young soldier so greatly distinguished himself
that on the death of Arigil he succeeded him as Duke of Benevento.

Meanwhile, troubles arose in Lombardy. Tafo had been falsely accused, by
an enemy of the queen, of criminal relations with her, and was put to
death by the king. Her innocence was afterwards proved, and on the death
of Ariowald the Lombards treated her with the greatest respect, and
raised Rotharis, her second husband, to the throne. He, too, died, and
Aribert, uncle of the queen, was next made king. On his death, his two
sons, Bertarit and Godebert, disputed the succession. A struggle ensued
between the rival brothers, in the course of which Grimoald was brought
into the dispute.

The events here briefly described had taken place while Grimoald was
engaged in the Greek wars of his patron, Duke Arigil. When he succeeded
the latter in the ducal chair, the struggle between Bertarit and
Godebert was going on, and the new Duke of Benevento declared in favor
of the latter, who was his personal friend.

A scheme of treachery, of a singular character, put an end to their
friendship and to the life of Godebert. A man who was skilled in the
arts of dissimulation, and who was secretly in the pay of Bertarit,
persuaded Godebert that his seeming friend, Duke Grimoald, was really
his enemy, and was plotting his destruction. He told the same story to
Grimoald, making him believe that Godebert was his secret foe. In proof
of his words he told each of them that the other wore armor beneath his
clothes, through fear of assassination by his assumed friend.

The suspicion thus artfully aroused produced the very state of things
which the agent of mischief had declared to exist. Each of the friends
put on armor, as a protection against treachery from the other, and when
they sought to test the truth of the spy's story it seemed fully
confirmed. Each discovered that the other wore secret armor, without
learning that it had just been assumed.

The two close friends were thus converted by a plotting Iago into
distrustful enemies, each fearing and on guard against assassination by
the other. The affair ended tragically. Grimoald was no sooner fully
convinced of the truth of what had been told him than he slew his
supposed enemy, deeming it necessary to save his own life. The dark
scheme had succeeded. Treason and falsehood had sown death between two
friends.

Bertarit, his rival removed, deemed the throne now securely his. But the
truth underlying the tragedy we have described became known, and the
Lombards, convinced of the innocence of Grimoald, and scorning the
treachery by which he had been led on to murder, dismissed Bertarit's
pretensions and placed Grimoald on the throne. His career had been a
strange but highly successful one. From his childhood captivity to the
Avars he had risen to the high station of King of Lombardy, a position
fairly earned by his courage and ability.

We are not yet done with the story of this distinguished warrior.
Bertarit had taken the field against him, and civil war desolated
Lombardy, an unhappy state of affairs which was soon taken advantage of
by the foes of the distracted kingdom. The enemy who now appeared in the
field was Constans, the Greek emperor, who laid siege to Benevento,
hoping to capture it while Grimoald was engaged in hostilities with
Bertarit in the north.

Grimoald had left his son, Romuald, in charge of the city. On learning
of the siege he despatched a trusty friend and officer, Sesuald by
name, with some troops, to the relief of the beleaguered stronghold,
proposing to follow quickly himself with the main body of his army.

And now occurred an event nobly worthy of being recorded in the annals
of human probity and faithfulness, one little known, but deserving to be
classed with those that have become famous in history. When men erect
monuments to courage and virtue, the noble Sesuald should not be
forgotten.

This brave man fell into the hands of the emperor, who sought to use him
in a stratagem to obtain possession of Benevento. He promised him an
abundance of wealth and honors if he would tell Romuald that his father
had died in battle, and persuade him to surrender the city. Sesuald
seems to have agreed, for he was led to the walls of the city that he
might hold the desired conference with Romuald. Instead, however, of
carrying out the emperor's design, he cried out to the young chief, "Be
firm, Grimoald approaches"; then, hastily telling him that he had
forfeited his life by those words, he begged him in return to protect
his wife and children, as the last service he could render him.

Sesuald was right. Constans, furious at his words, had his head
instantly struck off; and then, with a barbarism worthy of the times,
had it flung from a catapult into the heart of the city. The ghastly
trophy was brought to Romuald, who pressed it to his lips, and deeply
deplored the death of his father's faithful friend.

This was the last effort of the emperor. Fearing to await the arrival
of Grimoald, he raised the siege and retreated towards Naples, hotly
pursued by the Lombards. The army of Grimoald came up with the
retreating Greeks, and a battle was imminent, when a Lombard warrior of
giant size, Amalong by name, spurring upon a Greek, lifted him from the
saddle with his lance, and rode on holding him poised in the air. The
sight of this feat filled the remaining Greeks with such terror that
they broke and fled, and their hasty retreat did not cease till they had
found shelter in Sicily.

After this event Bertarit, finding it useless to contend longer against
his powerful and able opponent, submitted to Grimoald. Yet this did not
end their hostile relations. The Lombard king, distrusting his late foe,
of whose treacherous disposition he already had abundant evidence, laid
a plan to get rid of him by murdering him in his bed. This plot was
discovered by a servant of the imperilled prince, who aided his master
to escape, and, the better to secure his retreat, placed himself in his
bed, being willing to risk death in his lord's service.

Grimoald discovered the stratagem of the faithful fellow, but, instead
of punishing him for it, he sought to reward him, attempting to attach
him to his own service as one whose fidelity would make him valuable to
any master. The honest servant refused, however, to desert his old lord
for a new service, and entreated so earnestly for permission to join
his master, who had taken refuge in France, that Grimoald set him free,
doubtless feeling that such faithfulness was worthy of encouragement.

In France Bertarit found an ally in Chlotar II., who took up arms
against the Lombards in his aid. Grimoald, however, defeated him by a
shrewd stratagem. He feigned to retreat in haste, leaving his camp,
which was well stored with provisions, to fall into the hands of the
enemy. Deeming themselves victorious, the Franks hastened to enjoy the
feast of good things which the Lombards had left behind. But in the
midst of their repast Grimoald suddenly returned, and, falling upon them
impetuously, put most of them to the sword.

In the following year (666 A.D.) he defeated another army by another
stratagem. The Avars had invaded Lombardy, with an army which far
out-numbered the troops which Grimoald could muster against them. In
this state of affairs he artfully deceived his foes as to the strength
of his army by marching and countermarching his men within their view,
each time dressed in uniform of different colors, and with varied
standards and insignia of war. The invaders, deeming that an army
confronted them far stronger than their own, withdrew in haste, leaving
Grimoald master of the field.

We are further told of the king of the Lombards whose striking history
we have concisely given, that he gave many new laws to his country, and
that in his old age he was remarkable for his bald head and long white
beard. He died in 671, sixty years after the time when his mother acted
the traitress, and suffered miserably for her crime. After his death,
the exiled Bertarit was recalled to the throne of Lombardy, and Romuald
succeeded his father as Duke of Benevento, the city which he had held so
bravely against the Greeks.




_WITTEKIND, THE SAXON PATRIOT._


As Germany, in its wars with the Romans, found its hero in the great
Arminius, or Hermann; and as England, in its contest with the Normans,
found a heroic defender in the valiant Hereward; so Saxony, in its
struggle with Charlemagne, gave origin to a great soul, the indomitable
patriot Wittekind, who kept the war afoot years after the Saxons would
have yielded to their mighty foe, and, like Hereward, only gave up the
struggle when hope itself was at an end.

The career of the defender of Saxony bears some analogy to that of the
last patriot of Saxon England. As in the case of Hereward, his origin is
uncertain, and the story of his life overlaid with legend. He is said to
have been the son of Wernekind, a powerful Westphalian chief,
brother-in-law of Siegfried, a king of the Danes; yet this is by no
means certain, and his ancestry must remain in doubt. He came suddenly
into the war with the great Frank conqueror, and played in it a
strikingly prominent part, to sink again out of sight at its end.

The attempt of Charlemagne to conquer Saxony began in 772. Religion was
its pretext, ambition its real cause. Missionaries had been sent to the
Saxons during their great national festival at Marclo. They came back
with no converts to report. As the Saxons had refused to be converted by
words, fire and sword were next tried as assumed instruments for
spreading the doctrines of Christ, but really as effective means for
extending the dominion of the monarch of the Franks.

In his first campaign in Saxony, Charlemagne marched victoriously as far
as the Weser, where he destroyed the celebrated Irminsúl, a famous
object of Saxon devotion, perhaps an image of a god, perhaps a statue of
Hermann that had become invested with divinity. The next year, Charles
being absent in Italy, the Saxons broke into insurrection, under the
leadership of Wittekind, who now first appears in history. With him was
associated another patriot, Alboin, Duke of Eastphalia.

Charles returned in the succeeding year, and again swept in conquering
force through the country. But a new insurrection called him once more
to Italy, and no sooner had he gone than the eloquent Wittekind was
among his countrymen, entreating them to rise in defence of their
liberties. A general levy took place, every able man crowded to the
ranks, and whole forests were felled to form abatis of defence against a
marching enemy.

Again Charles came at the head of his army of veterans, and again the
poorly-trained Saxon levies were driven in defeat from his front. He now
established a camp in the heart of the country, and had a royal
residence built at Paderborn, where he held a diet of the great vassals
of the crown and received envoys from foreign lands. Hither came
delegates from the humbled Saxons, promising peace and submission, and
pledging themselves by oaths and hostages to be true subjects of Charles
the Great. But Wittekind came not. He had taken refuge at the court of
Siegfried, the pagan king of the Danes, where he waited an opportunity
to strike a new blow for liberty.

Not content with their pledges and promises, the conqueror sought to win
over his new subjects by converting them to Christianity in the
wholesale way in which this work was then usually performed. The Saxons
were baptized in large numbers, the proselyting method pursued being, as
we are told, that all prisoners of war _must_ be baptized, while of the
others all who were reasonable _would_ be baptized, and the inveterately
unreasonable might be _bribed_ to be baptized. Doubtless, as a historian
remarks, the Saxons found baptism a cool, cleanly, and agreeable
ceremony, while their immersion in the water had little effect in
washing out their old ideas and washing in new ones.

The exigencies of war in his vast empire now called Charlemagne to
Spain, where the Arabs had become troublesome and needed chastisement.
Not far had he marched away when Wittekind was again in Saxony, passing
from tribe to tribe through the forests of the land, and with fiery
eloquence calling upon his countrymen to rise against the invaders and
regain the freedom of which they had been deprived. Heedless of their
conversion, disregarding their oaths of allegiance, filled with the
free spirit which had so long inspired them, the chiefs and people
listened with approval to his burning words, seized their arms, and flew
again to war. The priests were expelled from the country, the churches
they had built demolished, the castles erected by the Frank monarch
taken and destroyed, and the country was laid waste up to the walls of
Cologne, its Christian inhabitants being exterminated.

But unyielding as Wittekind was, his great antagonist was equally
resolute and persistent. When he had finished his work with the Arabs,
he returned to Saxony with his whole army, fought a battle in 779 in the
dry bed of the Eder, and in 780 defeated Wittekind and his followers in
two great battles, completely disorganizing and discouraging the Saxon
bands, and again bringing the whole country under his control. This
accomplished, he stationed himself in their country, built numerous
fortresses upon the Elbe, and spent the summer of 780 in missionary
work, gaining a multitude of converts among the seemingly subdued
barbarians. The better to make them content with his rule he treated
them with great kindness and affability, and sent among them
missionaries of their own race, being the hostages whom he had taken in
previous years, and who had been educated in monasteries. All went well,
the Saxons were to all appearance in a state of peaceful satisfaction,
and Charles felicitated himself that he had finally added Saxony to his
empire.

He deceived himself sadly. He did not know the spirit of the free-born
Saxons, or the unyielding perseverance of their patriotic leader. In the
silent depths of their forests, and in the name of their ancient gods,
they vowed destruction to the invading Franks, and branded as traitors
all those who professed Christianity except as a stratagem to deceive
their powerful enemy. Entertaining no suspicion of the true state of
affairs, Charlemagne at length left the country, which he fancied to be
fully pacified and its people content. With complete confidence in his
new subjects, he commissioned his generals, Geil and Adalgis, to march
upon the Slavonians beyond the Elbe, who were threatening France with a
new barbarian invasion.

They soon learned that there was other work to do. In a brief time the
irrepressible Wittekind was in the field again, with a new levy of
Saxons at his back, and the tranquillity of the land, established at
such pains, was once more in peril. Theoderic, one of Charlemagne's
principal generals, hastily marched towards them with what men he could
raise, and on his way met the army sent to repel the Slavonians. They
approached the Saxon host where it lay encamped on the Weser, behind the
Sundel mountain, and laid plans to attack it on both sides at once. But
jealousy ruined these plans, as it has many other well-laid schemes. The
leaders of the Slavonian contingent, eager to rob Theoderic of glory,
marched in haste on the Saxons, attacked them in their camp, and were so
completely defeated and overthrown that but a moity of their army
escaped from the field. The appearance of these fugitives in the camp of
Theoderic was the first he knew of the treachery of his fellow generals
and their signal punishment.

The story of this dreadful event was in all haste borne to Charlemagne.
His army had been destroyed almost as completely as that of Varus on a
former occasion, and in nearly the same country. The distressing tidings
filled his soul with rage and a bitter thirst for revenge. He had done
his utmost to win over the Saxons by lenity and kindness, but this
course now seemed to him useless, if not worse than useless. He
determined to adopt opposite measures and try the effect of cruelty and
severe retribution. Calling together his forces until he had a great
army under his command, he marched into Saxony torch and sword in hand,
and swept the country with fire and steel. All who would not embrace
Christianity were pitilessly exterminated. Thousands were driven into
the rivers to be baptized or drowned. Carnage, desolation, and
destruction marked the path of the conqueror. Never had a country been
more frightfully devastated by the hand of war.

All who were concerned in the rebellion were seized, so far as Charles
could lay hands on them. When questioned, they lay all the blame on
Wittekind. He was the culprit, they but his instruments. But Wittekind
had vanished, the protesting chiefs and people were in the conqueror's
hands, and, bent on making an awful example, he had no less than four
thousand five hundred of them beheaded in one day. It was a frightful
act of vengeance, which has ever since remained an ineradicable blot on
the memory of the great king.

[Illustration: THE BAPTISM OF WITTEKIND.]

Its effect was what might have been anticipated. Instead of filling the
Saxons with terror, it inspired them with revengeful fury. They rose as
one man, Wittekind and Alboin at their head, and attacked the French
with a fury such as they had never before displayed. The remorseless
cruelty with which they had been treated was repaid in the blood of the
invaders, and in the many petty combats that took place the hardy and
infuriated barbarians proved invincible against their opponents. Even in
a pitched battle, fought at Detmold, in which Wittekind led the Saxons
against the superior forces of Charlemagne, they held their own against
all his strength and generalship, and the victory remained undecided.
But they were again brought to battle upon the Hase, and now the
superior skill and more numerous army of the great conqueror prevailed.
The Saxons were defeated with great slaughter, and the French advanced
as far as the Elbe. The war continued during the succeeding year, by the
end of which the Saxons had become so reduced in strength that further
efforts at resistance would have been madness.

The cruelty which Charlemagne had displayed, and which had proved so
signally useless, was now replaced by a mildness much more in conformity
with his general character; and the Saxons, exhausted with their
struggles, and attracted by the gentleness with which he treated them,
showed a general disposition to submit. But Wittekind and his
fellow-chieftain Alboin were still at large, and the astute conqueror
well knew that there was no security in his new conquest unless they
could be brought over. He accordingly opened negotiations with them,
requesting a personal conference, and pledging his royal word that they
should be dealt with in all faith and honesty. The Saxon chiefs,
however, were not inclined to put themselves in the power of a king
against whom they had so long and desperately fought without stronger
pledge than his bare word. They demanded hostages. Charlemagne, who
fully appreciated the value of their friendship and submission, freely
acceded to their terms, sent hostages, and was gratified by having the
indomitable chiefs enter his palace at Paderborn.

Wittekind was well aware that his mission as a Saxon leader was at an
end. The country was subdued, its warriors slain, terrorized, or won
over, and his single hand could not keep up the war with France. He,
therefore, swore fealty to Charlemagne, freely consented to become a
Christian, and was, with his companion, baptized at Attigny in France.
The emperor stood his sponsor in baptism, received him out of the font,
loaded him with royal gifts, and sent him back with the title of Duke of
Saxony, which he held as a vassal of France. Henceforward he seems to
have observed good faith to Charlemagne, for his name now vanishes from
history, silence in this case being a pledge of honor and peacefulness.

But if history here lays him down, legend takes him up, and yields us a
number of stories concerning him not one of which has any evidence to
sustain it, but which are curious enough to be worth repeating. It gives
us, for instance, a far more romantic account of his conversion than
that above told. This relates that, in the Easter season of 785,--the
year of his conversion,--Wittekind stole into the French camp in the
garb of a minstrel or a mendicant, and, while cautiously traversing it,
bent on spying out its weaknesses, was attracted to a large tent within
which Charlemagne was attending the service of the mass. Led by an
irresistible impulse, the pagan entered the tent, and stood gazing in
spellbound wonder at the ceremony, marvelling what the strange and
impressive performance meant. As the priest elevated the host, the
chief, with astounded eyes, beheld in it the image of a child, of
dazzling and unearthly beauty. He could not conceal his surprise from
those around him, some of whom recognized in the seeming beggar the
great Saxon leader, and took him to the emperor. Wittekind told
Charlemagne of his vision, begged to be made a Christian, and brought
over many of his countrymen to the fold of the true church by the
shining example of his conversion.

Legend goes on to tell us that he became a Christian of such hot zeal
as to exact a bloody atonement from the Frisians for their murder of
Boniface and his fellow-priests a generation before. It further tells us
that he founded a church at Enger, in Westphalia, was murdered by
Gerold, Duke of Swabia, and was buried in the church he had founded, and
in which his tomb was long shown. In truth, the people came to honor him
as a saint, and though there is no record of his canonization, a saint's
day, January 7, is given him, and we are told of miracles performed at
his tomb.

So much for the dealings of Christian legend with this somewhat
unsaintly personage. Secular legend, for it is probably little more, has
contented itself with tracing his posterity, several families of Germany
deriving their descent from him, while he is held to have been the
ancestor of the imperial house of the Othos. Some French genealogists go
so far as to trace the descent of Hugh Capet to this hero of the Saxon
woods. In truth, he has been made to some extent the Roland or the
Arthur of Saxony, though fancy has not gone so far in his case as in
that of the French paladin and the Welsh hero of knight-errantry, for,
though he and his predecessor Hermann became favorite characters in
German ballad and legend, the romance heroes of that land continued to
be the mythical Siegfried and his partly fabulous, partly historical
companions of the epical song of the Nibelung.




_THE RAIDS OF THE SEA-ROVERS._


While Central and Southern Europe was actively engaged in wars by land,
Scandinavia, that nest of pirates, was as actively engaged in wars by
sea, sending its armed galleys far to the south, to plunder and burn
wherever they could find footing on shore. Not content with plundering
the coasts, they made their way up the streams, and often suddenly
appeared far inland before an alarm could be given. Wherever they went,
heaps of the dead and the smoking ruins of habitations marked their
ruthless course. They did not hesitate to attack fortified cities,
several of which fell into their hands and were destroyed. They always
fought on foot, but such was their strength, boldness, and activity that
the heavy-armed cavalry of France and Germany seemed unable to endure
their assault, and was frequently put to flight. If defeated, or in
danger of defeat, they hastened back to their ships, from which they
rarely ventured far and rowed away with such speed that pursuit was in
vain. For a long period they kept the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts
of Europe in such terror that prayers were publicly read in the churches
for deliverance from them, and the sight of their dragon beaked ships
filled the land with terror.

In 845 a party of them assailed and took Paris, from which they were
bought off by the cowardly and ineffective method of ransom, seven
thousand pounds of silver being paid them. In 853 another expedition,
led by a leader named Hasting, one of the most dreaded of the Norsemen,
again took Paris, marched into Burgundy, laying waste the country as he
advanced, and finally took Tours, to which city much treasure had been
carried for safe-keeping. Charles the Bald, who had bought off the
former expedition with silver, bought off this one with gold, offering
the bold adventurer a bribe of six hundred and eighty-five pounds of the
precious metal, to which he added a ton and a half of silver, to leave
the country.

From France, Hasting set sail for Italy, where his ferocity was aided by
a cunning which gives us a deeper insight into his character. Rome, a
famous but mystical city to the northern pagans, whose imaginations
invested it with untold wealth and splendor, was the proposed goal of
the enterprising Norseman, who hoped to make himself fabulously wealthy
from its plunder. With a hundred ships, filled with hardy Norse pirates,
he swept through the Strait of Gibraltar and along the coasts of Spain
and France, plundering as he went till he reached the harbor of Lucca,
Italy.

As to where and what Rome was, the unlettered heathen had but the
dimmest conception. Here before him lay what seemed a great and rich
city, strongly fortified and thickly peopled. This must be Rome, he told
himself; behind those lofty walls lay the wealth which he so earnestly
craved; but how could it be obtained? Assault on those strong
fortifications would waste time, and perhaps end in defeat. If the city
could be won by stratagem, so much the better for himself and his men.

The shrewd Norseman quickly devised a promising plan within the depths
of his astute brain. It was the Christmas season, and the inhabitants
were engaged in the celebration of the Christmas festival, though,
doubtless, sorely troubled in mind by that swarm of strange-shaped
vessels in their harbor, with their stalwart crews of blue-eyed
plunderers.

Word was sent to the authorities of the city that the fleet had come
thither from no hostile intent, and that all the mariners wished was to
obtain the favor of an honorable burial-place for their chieftain, who
had just died. If the citizens would grant them this, they would engage
to depart after the funeral without injury to their courteous and
benevolent friends. The message--probably not expressed in quite the
above phrase--was received in good faith by the unsuspecting Lombards,
who were glad enough to get rid of their dangerous visitors on such
cheap terms, and gratified to learn that these fierce pagans wished
Christian burial for their chief. Word was accordingly sent to the ships
that the authorities granted their request, and were pleased with the
opportunity to oblige the mourning crews.

Not long afterwards a solemn procession left the fleet, a coffin, draped
in solemn black, at its head, borne by strong carriers. As mourners
there followed a large deputation of stalwart Norsemen, seemingly
unarmed, and to all appearance lost in grief. With slow steps they
entered the gates and moved through the streets of the city, chanting
the death-song of the great Hasting, until the church was reached, and
they had advanced along its crowded aisle to the altar, where stood the
priests ready to officiate at the obsequies of the expired freebooter.

The coffin was set upon the floor, and the priests were about to break
into the solemn chant for the dead, when suddenly, to the surprise and
horror of the worshippers, the supposed corpse sprang to life, leaped up
sword in hand, and with a fierce and deadly blow struck the officiating
bishop to the heart. Instantly the seeming mourners, who had been chosen
from the best warriors of the fleet, flung aside their cloaks and
grasped their arms, and a carnival of death began in that crowded
church.

It was not slaughter, however, that Hasting wanted, but plunder. Rushing
from the church, the Norsemen assailed the city, looting with free hand,
and cutting down all who came in their way. No long time was needed by
the skilful freebooters for this task, and before the citizens could
recover from the mortal terror into which they had been thrown, the
pagan plunderers were off again for their ships, laden with spoil, and
taking with them as captives a throng of women and maidens, the most
beautiful they could find.

This daring affair had a barbarous sequel. A storm arising which
threatened the loss of his ships, the brutal Hasting gave orders that
the vessels should be lightened by throwing overboard plunder and
captives alike. Saved by this radical method, the sea-rovers quickly
repaid themselves for their losses by sailing up the Rhone, and laying
the country waste through many miles of Southern France.

The end of this phase of Hasting's career was a singular one. In the
year 860 he consented to be baptized as a Christian, and to swear
allegiance to Charles the Bald of France, on condition of receiving the
title of Count of Chartres, with a suitable domain. It was a wiser
method of disarming a redoubtable enemy than that of ransoming the land,
which Charles had practised with Hasting on a previous occasion. He had
converted a foe into a subject, upon whom he might count for defence
against those fierce heathen whom he had so often led to battle.

While France, England, and the Mediterranean regions formed the favorite
visiting ground of the Norsemen, they did not fail to pay their respects
in some measure to Germany, and during the ninth century, their period
of most destructive activity, the latter country suffered considerably
from their piratical ravages. Two German warriors who undertook to guard
the coasts against their incursions are worthy of mention. One of these,
Baldwin of the Iron Arm, Count of Flanders, distinguished himself by
seducing Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald of France, who, young as
she was, was already the widow of two English kings, Ethelwolf and his
son Ethelbold. Charles was at first greatly enraged, but afterwards
accepted Baldwin as his son-in-law, and made him lord of the district.
The second was Robert the Strong, Count of Maine, a valiant defender of
the country against the sea-kings. He was slain in a bloody battle with
them, near Anvers, in 866. This distinguished warrior was the ancestor
of Hugh Capet, afterwards king of France.

For some time after his death the Norsemen avoided Germany, paying their
attentions to England, where Alfred the Great was on the throne. About
880 their incursions began again, and though they were several times
defeated with severe slaughter, new swarms followed the old ones, and
year by year fresh fleets invaded the land, leaving ruin in their paths.

Up the rivers they sailed, as in France, taking cities, devastating the
country, doing more damage each year than could be repaired in a decade.
Aix-la-Chapelle, the imperial city of the mighty Charlemagne, fell into
their hands, and the palace of the great Charles, in little more than
half a century after his death, was converted by these marauders into a
stable. Well might the far-seeing emperor have predicted sorrow and
trouble for the land from these sea-rovers, as he is said to have done,
on seeing their many-oared ships from a distance. Yet even his foresight
could scarcely have imagined that, before he was seventy years in the
grave, the vikings of the north would be stabling their horses in the
most splendid of his palaces.

The rovers attacked Metz, and Bishop Wala fell while bravely fighting
them before its gates. City after city on the Rhine was taken and burned
to the ground. The whole country between Liège, Cologne, and Mayence was
so ravaged as to be almost converted into a desert. The besom of
destruction, in the hands of the sea-kings, threatened to sweep Germany
from end to end, as it had swept the greater part of France.

The impunity with which they raided the country was due in great part to
the indolent character of the monarch. Charles the Fat, as he was
entitled, who had the ambitious project of restoring the empire of
Charlemagne, and succeeded in combining France and Germany under his
sceptre, proved unable to protect his realm from the pirate rovers. Like
his predecessor, Charles the Bald of France, he tried the magic power of
gold and silver, as a more effective argument than sharpened steel, to
rid him of these marauders. Siegfried, their principal leader, was
bought off with two thousand pounds of gold and twelve thousand pounds
of silver, to raise which sum Charles seized all the treasures of the
churches. In consideration of this great bribe the sea-rover consented
to a truce for twelve years. His brother Gottfried was bought off in a
different method, being made Duke of Friesland and vassal of the
emperor.

These concessions, however, did not put an end to the depredations of
the Norsemen. There were other leaders than the two formidable brothers,
and other pirates than those under their control, and the country was
soon again invaded, a strong party advancing as far as the Moselle,
where they took and destroyed the city of Treves. This marauding band,
however, dearly paid for its depredations. While advancing through the
forest of Ardennes, it was ambushed and assailed by a furious multitude
of peasants and charcoal-burners, before whose weapons ten thousand of
the Norsemen fell in death.

This revengeful act of the peasantry was followed by a treacherous deed
of the emperor, which brought renewed trouble upon the land. Eager to
rid himself of his powerful and troublesome vassal in Friesland, Charles
invited Gottfried to a meeting, at which he had the Norsemen
treacherously murdered, while his brother-in-law Hugo was deprived of
his sight. It was an act sure to bring a bloody reprisal. No sooner had
news of it reached the Scandinavian north than a fire of revengeful rage
swept through the land, and from every port a throng of oared galleys
put to sea, bent upon bloody retribution. Soon in immense hordes they
fell upon the imperial realm, forcing their way in mighty hosts up the
Rhine, the Maese, and the Seine, and washing out the memory of
Gottfried's murder in torrents of blood, while the brand spread ruin far
and wide.

The chief attack was made on Paris, which the Norsemen invested and
besieged for a year and a half. The march upon Paris was made by sea and
land, the marauders making Rouen their place of rendezvous. From this
centre of operations Rollo--the future conqueror and Duke of Normandy,
now a formidable sea-king--led an overland force towards the French
capital, and on his way was met by an envoy from the emperor, no less a
personage than the Count of Chartres, the once redoubtable Hasting, now
a noble of the empire.

"Valiant sirs," he said to Rollo and his chiefs, "who are you that come
hither, and why have you come?"

"We are Danes," answered Rollo, proudly; "all of us equals, no man the
lord of any other, but lords of all besides. We are come to punish these
people and take their lands. And you, by what name are you called?"

"Have you not heard of a certain Hasting," was the reply, "a sea-king
who left your land with a multitude of ships, and turned into a desert a
great part of this fair land of France?"

"We have heard of him," said Rollo, curtly. "He began well and ended
badly."

"Will you submit to King Charles?" asked the envoy, deeming it wise,
perhaps, to change the subject.

"We will submit to no one, king or chieftain. All that we gain by the
sword we are masters and lords of. This you may tell to the king who has
sent you. The lords of the sea know no masters on land."

Hasting left with his message, and Rollo continued his advance to the
Seine. Not finding here the ships of the maritime division of the
expedition, which he had expected to meet, he seized on the boats of the
French fishermen and pursued his course. Soon afterwards a French force
was met and put to flight, its leader, Duke Ragnold, being killed. This
event, as we are told, gave rise to a new change in the career of the
famous Hasting. A certain Tetbold or Thibaud, of Northman birth, came to
him and told him that he was suspected of treason, the defeat of the
French having been ascribed to secret information furnished by him.
Whether this were true, or a mere stratagem on the part of his
informant, it had the desired effect of alarming Hasting, who quickly
determined to save himself from peril by joining his old countrymen and
becoming again a viking chief. He thereupon sold his countship to
Tetbold, and hastened to join the army of Norsemen then besieging Paris.
As for the cunning trickster, he settled down into his cheaply bought
countship, and became the founder of the subsequent house of the Counts
of Chartres.

The siege of Paris ended in the usual manner of the Norseman invasions
of France,--that of ransom. Charles marched to its relief with a strong
army, but, instead of venturing to meet his foes in battle, he bought
them off as so often before, paying them a large sum of money, granting
them free navigation of the Seine and entrance to Paris, and confirming
them in the possession of Friesland. This occurred in 887. A year
afterwards he lost his crown, through the indignation of the nobles at
his cowardice, and France and Germany again fell asunder.

The plundering incursions continued, and soon afterwards the new
emperor, Arnulf, nephew of Charles the Fat, a man of far superior energy
to his deposed uncle, attacked a powerful force of the piratical
invaders near Louvain, where they had encamped after a victory over the
Archbishop of Mayence. In the heat of the battle that followed, the
vigilant Arnulf perceived that the German cavalry fought at a
disadvantage with their stalwart foes, whose dexterity as foot-soldiers
was remarkable. Springing from his horse, he called upon his followers
to do the same. They obeyed, the nobles and their men-at-arms leaping to
the ground and rushing furiously on foot upon their opponents. The
assault was so fierce and sudden that the Norsemen gave way, and were
cut down in thousands, Siegfried and Gottfried--a new Gottfried
apparently--falling on the field, while the channel of the Dyle, across
which the defeated invaders sought to fly, was choked with their
corpses.

This bloody defeat put an end to the incursions of the Norsemen by way
of the Rhine. Thenceforward they paid their attention to the coast of
France, which they continued to invade until one of their great leaders,
Rollo, settled in Normandy as a vassal of the French monarch, and served
as an efficient barrier against the inroads of his countrymen.

As to Hasting, he appears to have returned to his old trade of
sea-rover, and we hear of him again as one of the Norse invaders of
England, during the latter part of the reign of Alfred the Great.




_THE CAREER OF BISHOP HATTO._


We have now to deal with a personage whose story is largely legendary,
particularly that of his death, a highly original termination to his
career having arisen among the people, who had grown to detest him. But
Bishop Hatto played his part in the history as well as in the legend of
Germany, and the curious stories concerning him may have been based on
the deeds of his actual life. It was in the beginning of the tenth
century that this notable churchman flourished as Archbishop of Mayence,
and the emperor-maker of his times. In connection with Otho, Duke of
Saxony, he placed Louis, surnamed the Child,--for he was but seven years
of age,--on the imperial throne, and governed Germany in his name. Louis
died in 911, while still a boy, and with him ended the race of
Charlemagne in Germany. Conrad, Duke of Franconia, was chosen king to
succeed him, but the astute churchman still remained the power behind
the throne.

In truth, the influence and authority of the church at that time was
enormous, and many of its potentates troubled themselves more about the
affairs of the earth than those of heaven. Hatto, while a zealous
churchman, was a bold, energetic, and unscrupulous statesman, and
raised himself to an almost unlimited power in France and Southern
Germany by his arts and influence, Otho of Saxony aiding him in his
progress to power. Two of his opponents, Henry and Adelhart, of
Babenberg, took up arms against him, and came to their deaths in
consequence. Adalbert, the opponent of the Norsemen, was his next
antagonist, and Hatto, through his influence in the diet, had him put
under the ban of the empire.

Adalbert, however, vigorously resisted this decree, taking up arms in
his own defence, and defeating his opponent in the field. But soon,
being closely pressed, he retired to his fortress of Bamberg, which was
quickly invested and besieged. Here he defended himself with such energy
that Hatto, finding that the outlawed noble was not to be easily subdued
by force, adopted against him those spiritual weapons, as he probably
considered them, in which he was so trained an adept.

Historians tell us that the priest, with a pretence of friendly purpose,
offered to mediate between Adalbert and his enemies, promising him, if
he would leave his stronghold to appear before the assembled nobles of
the diet, that he should have a free and safe return. Adalbert accepted
the terms, deeming that he could safely trust the pledged word of a high
dignitary of the church. Leaving the gates of his castle, he was met at
a short distance beyond by the bishop, who accosted him in his
friendliest tone, and proposed that, as their journey would be somewhat
long, they should breakfast together within the castle before starting.

Adalbert assented and returned to the fortress with his smooth-tongued
companion, took breakfast with him, and then set out with him for the
diet. Here he was sternly called to answer for his acts of opposition to
the decree of the ruling body of Germany, and finding that the tide of
feeling was running strongly against him, proposed to return to his
fortress in conformity with the plighted faith of Bishop Hatto. Hatto,
with an aspect of supreme honesty, declared that he had already
fulfilled his promise. He had agreed that Adalbert should have a free
and safe return to his castle. This had been granted him. He had
returned there to breakfast without opposition of any sort. The word of
the bishop had been fully kept, and now, as a member of the diet, he
felt free to act as he deemed proper, all his obligations to the accused
having been fulfilled. Just how far this story accords with the actual
facts we are unable to say, but Adalbert, despite his indignant protest,
was sentenced to death and beheaded.

Hatto had reached his dignity in the church by secular instead of
ecclesiastic influence, and is credited with employing his power in this
and other instances with such lack of honor and probity that he became
an object of the deepest popular contempt and execration. His name was
derided in the popular ballads, and he came to be looked upon as the
scapegoat of the avarice and licentiousness of the church in that
irreligious mediæval age. Among the legends concerning him is one
relating to Henry, the son of his ally, Otho of Saxony, who died in 912.
Henry had long quarrelled with the bishop, and the fabulous story goes
that, to get rid of his high-spirited enemy, the cunning churchman sent
him a gold chain, so skilfully contrived that it would strangle its
wearer.

[Illustration: THE MOUSE-TOWER ON THE RHINE.]

The most famous legend about Hatto, however, is that which tells the
manner of his death. The story has been enshrined in poetry by
Longfellow, but we must be content to give it in plain prose. It tells
us that a famine occurred in the land, and that a number of peasants
came to the avaricious bishop to beg for bread. By his order they were
shut up in a great barn, which then was set on fire, and its miserable
occupants burned to death.

And now the cup of Hatto's infamy was filled, and heaven sent him
retribution. From the ruins of the barn issued a myriad of mice, which
pursued the remorseless bishop, ceaselessly following him in his every
effort to escape their avenging teeth. At length the wretched sinner,
driven to despair, fled for safety to a strong tower standing in the
middle of the Rhine, near Bingen, with the belief that the water would
protect him from his swarming foes. But the mice swam the stream,
invaded the tower, and devoured the miserable fugitive. As evidence of
the truth of this story we are shown the tower, still standing, and
still known as the Mäusethurm, or Mouse Tower. It must be said, however,
that this tradition probably refers to another Bishop Hatto, of
somewhat later date. Its utterly fabulous character, of course, will be
recognisable by all.

So much for Bishop Hatto and his fate. It may be said, in conclusion,
that his period was one of terror and excitement in Germany, sufficient
perhaps to excuse the overturning of ideas, and the replacement of
conceptions of truth and honor by their opposites. The wild Magyars had
invaded and taken Hungary, and were making savage inroads into Germany
from every quarter. The resistance was obstinate, the Magyars were
defeated in several severe battles, yet still their multitudes swarmed
over the borders, and carried terror and ruin wherever they came. These
invaders were as ferocious in disposition, as fierce in their onsets, as
invincible through contempt of death, and as formidable through their
skilful horsemanship, as the Huns had been before them. So rapid were
their movements, and so startling the suddenness with which they would
appear in and vanish from the heart of the country, that the terrified
people came to look upon them as possessed of supernatural powers. Their
inhuman love of slaughter and their destructive habits added to the
terror with which they were viewed. They are said to have been so
bloodthirsty, that in their savage feasts after victory they used as
tables the corpses of their enemies slain in battle. It is further said
that it was their custom to bind the captured women and maidens with
their own long hair as fetters, and drive them, thus bound, in flocks
to Hungary.

We may conclude with a touching story told of these unquiet and
misery-haunted times. Ulrich, Count of Linzgau, was, so the story goes,
taken prisoner by the Magyars, and long held captive in their hands.
Wendelgarde, his beautiful wife, after waiting long in sorrow for his
return, believed him to be dead, and resolved to devote the remainder of
her life to charity and devotion. Crowds of beggars came to her castle
gates, to whom she daily distributed alms. One day, while she was thus
engaged, one of the beggars suddenly threw his arms around her neck and
kissed her. Her attendants angrily interposed, but the stranger waved
them aside with a smile, and said,--

"Forbear, I have endured blows and misery enough during my imprisonment
without needing more from you; I am Ulrich, your lord."

Truly, in this instance, charity brought its reward.




_THE MISFORTUNES OF DUKE ERNST._


In the reign of Conrad II., Emperor of Germany, took place the event
which we have now to tell, one of those interesting examples of romance
which give vitality to history. On the death of Henry II., the last of
the great house of the Othos, a vast assembly from all the states of the
empire was called together to decide who their next emperor should be.
From every side they came, dukes, margraves, counts and barons, attended
by hosts of their vassals; archbishops, bishops, abbots, and other
churchmen, with their proud retainers; Saxons, Swabians, Bavarians,
Bohemians, and numerous other nationalities, great and small; all
marching towards the great plain between Worms and Mayence, where they
gathered on both sides of the Rhine, until its borders seemed covered by
a countless multitude of armed men. The scene was a magnificent one,
with its far-spreading display of rich tents, floating banners, showy
armor, and everything that could give honor and splendor to the
occasion.

We are not specially concerned with what took place. There were two
competitors for the throne, both of them Conrad by name. By birth they
were cousins, and descendants of the emperor Conrad I. The younger of
these, but the son of the elder brother, and the most distinguished for
ability, was elected, and took the throne as Conrad II. He was to prove
one of the noblest sovereigns that ever held the sceptre of the German
empire. The election decided, the great assembly dispersed, and back to
their homes marched the host of warriors who had collected for once with
peaceful purpose.

[Illustration: PEASANT WEDDING PROCESSION.]

Two years afterwards, in 1026, Conrad crossed the Alps with an army, and
marched through Italy, that land which had so perilous an attraction for
German emperors, and so sadly disturbed the peace and progress of the
Teutonic realm. Conrad was not permitted to remain there long. Troubles
in Germany recalled him to his native soil. Swabia had broken out in hot
troubles. Duke Ernst, step-son of Conrad, claimed Burgundy as his
inheritance, in opposition to the emperor himself, who had the better
claim. He not only claimed it, but attempted to seize it. With him were
united two Swabian counts of ancient descent, Rudolf Welf, or Guelph,
and Werner of Kyburg.

Swabia was in a blaze when Conrad returned. He convoked a great diet at
Ulm, as the legal means of settling the dispute. Thither Ernst came, at
the head of his Swabian men-at-arms, and still full of rebellious
spirit, although his mother, Gisela, the empress, begged him to submit
and to return to his allegiance.

The angry rebel, however, soon learned that his followers were not
willing to take up arms against the emperor. They declared that their
oath of allegiance to their duke did not release them from their higher
obligations to the emperor and the state, that if their lord was at feud
with the empire it was their duty to aid the latter, and that if their
chiefs wished to quarrel with the state, they must fight for themselves.

This defection left the rebels powerless. Duke Ernst was arrested and
imprisoned on a charge of high treason. Eudolf was exiled. Werner, who
took refuge in his castle, was besieged there by the imperial troops,
against whom he valiantly defended himself for several months. At
length, however, finding that his stronghold was no longer tenable, he
contrived to make his escape, leaving the nest to the imperialists empty
of its bird.

Three years Ernst remained in prison. Then Conrad restored him to
liberty, perhaps moved by the appeals of his mother Gisela, and promised
to restore him to his dukedom of Swabia if he would betray the secret of
the retreat of Werner, who was still at large despite all efforts to
take him.

This request touched deeply the honor of the deposed duke. It was much
to regain his ducal station; it was more to remain true to the fugitive
who had trusted and aided him in his need.

"How can I betray my only true friend?" asked the unfortunate duke, with
touching pathos.

His faithfulness was not appreciated by the emperor and his nobles. They
placed Ernst under the ban of the empire, and thus deprived him of rank,
wealth, and property, reducing him by a word from high estate to abject
beggary. His life and liberty were left him, but nothing more, and,
driven by despair, he sought the retreat of his fugitive friend Werner,
who had taken refuge in the depths of the Black Forest.

Here the two outlaws, deprived of all honest means of livelihood, became
robbers, and entered upon a life of plunder, exacting contributions from
all subjects of the empire who fell into their hands. They soon found a
friend in Adalbert of Falkenstein, who gave them the use of his castle
as a stronghold and centre of operations, and joined them with his
followers in their freebooting raids.

For a considerable time the robber chiefs maintained themselves in their
new mode of life, sallying from the castle, laying the country far and
wide under contribution, and returning to the fortress for safety from
pursuit. Their exactions became in time so annoying, that the castle was
besieged by a strong force of Swabians, headed by Count Mangold of
Veringen, and the freebooters were closely confined within their walls.
Impatient of this, a sally in force was made by the garrison, headed by
the two robber chiefs, and an obstinate contest ensued. The struggle
ended in the death of Mangold on the one side and of Ernst and Werner on
the other, with the definite defeat and dispersal of the robber band.

Thus ended an interesting episode of mediæval German history. But the
valor and misfortunes of Duke Ernst did not die unsung. He became a
popular hero, and the subject of many a ballad, in which numerous
adventures were invented for him during his career as an opponent of the
emperor and an outlaw in the Black Forest. For the step-son of an
emperor to be reduced to such a strait was indeed an event likely to
arouse public interest and sympathy, and for centuries the doings of the
robber duke were sung.

In the century after his death the imagination of the people went to
extremes in their conception of the adventures of Duke Ernst, mixing up
ideas concerning him with fancies derived from the Crusades, the whole
taking form in a legend which is still preserved in the popular ballad
literature of Germany. This strange conception takes Ernst to the East,
where he finds himself opposed by terrific creatures in human and brute
form, they being allegorical representations of his misfortunes. Each
monster signifies an enemy. He reaches a black mountain, which
represents his prison. He is borne into the clouds by an old man; this
is typical of his ambition. His ship is wrecked on the Magnet mountain;
a personification of his contest with the emperor. The nails fly out of
the ship and it falls to pieces; an emblem of the falling off of his
vassals. There are other adventures, and the whole circle of legends is
a curious one, as showing the vagaries of imagination, and the strong
interest taken by the people in the fortunes and misfortunes of their
chieftains.




_THE REIGN OF OTHO II._


Otho II., Emperor of Germany,--Otho the Red, as he was called, from his
florid complexion,--succeeded to the Western Empire in 973, when in his
eighteenth year of age. His reign was to be a short and active one, and
attended by adventures and fluctuations of fortune which render it
worthy of description. Few monarchs have experienced so many of the ups
and downs of life within the brief period of five years, through which
his wars extended.

As heir to the imperial title of Charlemagne, he was lord of the ancient
palace of the great emperor, at Aix-la-Chapelle, and here held court at
the feast of St. John in the year 978. All was peace and festivity
within the old imperial city, all war and threat without it. While Otho
and his courtiers, knights and ladies, lords and minions, were enjoying
life with ball and banquet, feast and frivolity, in true palatial
fashion, an army was marching secretly upon them, with treacherous
intent to seize the emperor and his city at one full swoop. Lothaire,
King of France, had in haste and secrecy collected an army, and, without
a declaration of hostilities, was hastening, by forced marches, upon
Aix-la-Chapelle.

It was an act of treachery utterly undeserving of success. But it is not
always the deserving to whom success comes, and Otho heard of the rapid
approach of this army barely in time to take to flight, with his
fear-winged flock of courtiers at his heels, leaving the city an easy
prey to the enemy. Lothaire entered the city without a blow, plundered
it as if he had taken it by storm, and ordered that the imperial eagle,
which was erected in the grand square of Charles the Great, should have
its beak turned westward, in token that Lorraine now belonged to France.

Doubtless the great eagle turned creakingly on its support, thus moved
by the hand of unkingly perfidy, and impatiently awaited for time and
the tide of affairs to turn its beak again to the east. It had not long
to wait. The fugitive emperor hastily called a diet of the princes and
nobles at Dortmund, told them in impassioned eloquence of the faithless
act of the French king, and called upon them for aid against the
treacherous Lothaire. Little appeal was needed. The honor of Germany was
concerned. Setting aside all the petty squabbles which rent the land,
the indignant princes gathered their forces and placed them under Otho's
command. By the 1st of October the late fugitive found himself at the
head of a considerable army, and prepared to take revenge on his
perfidious enemy.

Into France he marched, and made his way with little opposition, by
Rheims and Soissons, until the French capital lay before his eyes. Here
the army encamped on the right bank of the Seine, around Montmartre,
while their cavalry avenged the plundering of Aix-la-Chapelle by laying
waste the country for many miles around. The French were evidently as
little prepared for Otho's activity as he had been for Lothaire's
treachery, and did not venture beyond the walls of their city, leaving
the country a defenceless prey to the revengeful anger of the emperor.

The Seine lay between the two armies, but not a Frenchman ventured to
cross its waters; the garrison of the city, under Hugh Capet,--Count of
Paris, and soon to become the founder of a new dynasty of French
kings,--keeping closely within its walls. These walls proved too strong
for the Germans, and as winter was approaching, and there was much
sickness among his troops, the emperor retreated, after having
devastated all that region of France. But first he kept a vow that he
had made, that he would cause the Parisians to hear a _Te Deum_ such as
they had never heard before. In pursuance of this vow, he gathered upon
the hill of Montmartre all the clergymen whom he could seize, and forced
them to sing his anthem of victory with the full power of their lungs.
Then, having burned the suburbs of Paris, and left his lance quivering
in the city gate, he withdrew in triumph, having amply punished the
treacherous French king. Aix-la-Chapelle fell again into his hands; the
eyes of the imperial eagle were permitted once more to gaze upon
Germany, and in the treaty of peace that followed Lorraine was declared
to be forever a part of the German realm.

Two years afterwards Otho, infected by that desire to conquer Italy
which for centuries afterwards troubled the dreams of German emperors,
and brought them no end of trouble, crossed the Alps and descended upon
the Italian plains, from which he was never to return. Northern Italy
was already in German hands, but the Greeks held possessions in the
south which Otho claimed, in view of the fact that he had married
Theophania, the daughter of the Greek emperor at Constantinople. To
enforce this claim he marched upon the Greek cities, which in their turn
made peace with the Arabs, with whom they had been at war, and gathered
garrisons of these bronzed pagans alike from Sicily and Africa.

For two years the war continued, the advantage resting with Otho. In 980
he reached Rome, and there had a secret interview with Hugh Capet, whom
he sustained in his intention to seize the throne of France, still held
by his old enemy Lothaire. In 981 he captured Naples, Taranto, and other
cities, and in a pitched battle near Cotrona defeated the Greeks and
their Arab allies. Abn al Casem, the terror of southern Italy, and
numbers of his Arab followers, were left dead upon the field.

On the 13th of July, 982, the emperor again met the Greeks and their
Arab allies in battle, and now occurred that singular adventure and
reverse of fortune which has made this engagement memorable. The battle
took place at a point near the sea-shore, in the vicinity of Basantello,
not far from Taranto, and at first went to the advantage of the
imperial forces. They attacked the Greeks with great impetuosity, and,
after a stubborn defence, broke through their ranks, and forced them
into a retreat, which was orderly conducted.

It was now mid-day. The victors, elated with their success and their
hopes of pillage, followed the retreating columns along the banks of the
river Corace, feeling so secure that they laid aside their arms and
marched leisurely and confidently forward. It was a fatal confidence. At
one point in their march the road led between the river and a ridge of
serried rocks, which lay silent beneath the mid-day sun. But silent as
they seemed, they were instinct with life. An ambuscade of Arabs
crouched behind them, impatiently waiting the coming of the unsuspecting
Germans.

Suddenly the air pealed with sound, the "Allah il Allah!" of the
fanatical Arabs; suddenly the startled eyes of the imperialists saw the
rugged rocks bursting, as it seemed, into life; suddenly a horde of
dusky warriors poured down upon them with scimitar and javelin,
surrounding them quickly on all sides, cutting and slashing their way
deeply into the disordered ranks. The scattered troops, stricken with
dismay, fell in hundreds. In their surprise and confusion they became
easy victims to their agile foes, and in a short time nearly the whole
of that recently victorious army were slain or taken prisoners. Of the
entire force only a small number broke through the lines of their
environing foes.

The emperor escaped almost by miracle. His trusty steed bore him
unharmed through the crowding Arabs. He was sharply pursued, but the
swift animal distanced the pursuers, and before long he reached the
sea-shore, over whose firm sands he guided his horse, though with little
hope of escaping his active foes. Fortunately, he soon perceived a Greek
vessel at no great distance from the shore, a vision which held out to
him a forlorn hope of escape. The land was perilous; the sea might be
more propitious; he forced his faithful animal into the water, and swam
towards the vessel, in the double hope of being rescued and remaining
unknown.

He was successful in both particulars. The crew willingly took him on
board, ignorant of his high rank, but deeming him to be a knight of
distinction, from whom they could fairly hope for a handsome ransom. His
situation was still a dangerous one, should he become known, and he
could not long hope to remain incognito. In truth, there was a slave on
board who knew him, but who, for purposes of his own, kept the perilous
secret. He communicated by stealth with the emperor, told him of his
recognition, and arranged with him a plan of escape. In pursuance of
this he told the Greeks that their captive was a chamberlain of the
emperor, a statement which Otho confirmed, and added that he had
valuable treasures at Rossano, which, if they would sail thither, they
might take on board as his ransom.

The Greek mariners, deceived by the specious tale, turned their vessel's
prow towards Rossano, and on coming near that city, shifted their
course towards the shore. Otho had been eagerly awaiting this
opportunity. When they had approached sufficiently near to the land, he
suddenly sprang from the deck into the sea, and swam ashore with a
strength and swiftness that soon brought him to the strand. In a short
time afterwards he entered Rossano, then held by his forces, and joined
his queen, who had been left in that city.

This singular adventure is told with a number of variations by the
several writers who have related it, most of them significant of the
love of the marvellous of the old chroniclers. One writer tells us that
the escaping emperor was pursued and attacked by the Greek boatmen, and
that he killed forty of them with the aid of a soldier, named Probus,
whom he met on the shore. By another we are told that the Greeks
recognized him, that he enticed them to the shore by requesting them to
take on board his wife and treasures, which had been left at Rossano,
and that he sent young men on board disguised as female attendants of
his wife, by whose aid he seized the vessel. All the stories agree,
however, in saying that Theophania jeeringly asked the emperor whether
her countrymen had not put him in mortal fear,--a jest for which the
Germans never forgave her.

To return to the domain of fact, we have but further to tell that the
emperor, full of grief and vexation at the loss of his army, and the
slaughter of many of the German and Italian princes and nobles who had
accompanied him, returned to upper Italy, with the purpose of collecting
another army.

All his conquests in the south had fallen again into the hands of the
enemy, and his work remained to be done over again. He held a grand
assembly in Verona, in which he had his son Otho, three years old,
elected as his successor. From there he proceeded to Rome, in which city
he was attacked by a violent fever, brought on by the grief and
excitement into which his reverses had thrown his susceptible and
impatient mind. He died December 7, 983, and was buried in the church of
St. Peter, at Rome.

The fancy of the chroniclers has surrounded his death with legends,
which are worth repeating as curious examples of what mediæval writers
offered and mediæval readers accepted as history. One of them tells the
story of a naval engagement between Otho and the Greeks, in which the
fight was so bitter that the whole sea around the vessels was stained
red with blood. The emperor won the victory, but received a mortal
wound.

Another story, which does not trouble itself to sail very close to the
commonplace, relates that Otho met his end by being whipped to death on
Mount Garganus by the angels, among whom he had imprudently ventured
while they were holding a conclave there. These stories will serve as
examples of the degree of credibility of many of the ancient chronicles
and the credulity of their readers.




_THE FORTUNES OF HENRY THE FOURTH._


At the festival of Easter, in the year 1062, a great banquet was given
in the royal palace at Kaiserswerth, on the Rhine. The Empress Agnes,
widow of Henry III., and regent of the empire, was present, with her
son, then a boy of eleven. A pious and learned woman was the empress,
but she lacked the energy necessary to control the unquiet spirits of
her times. Gentleness and persuasion were the means by which she hoped
to influence the rude dukes and haughty archbishops of the empire, but
qualities such as these were wasted on her fierce subjects, and served
but to gain her the contempt of some and the dislike of others. A plot
to depose the weakly-mild regent and govern the empire in the name of
the youthful monarch was made by three men, Otto of Norheim, the
greatest general of the state, Ekbert of Meissen, its most valiant
knight, and Hanno, Archbishop of Cologne, its leading churchman. These
three men were present at the banquet, which they had fixed upon as the
occasion for carrying out their plot.

The feast over, the three men rose and walked with the boy monarch to a
window of the palace that overlooked the Rhine. On the waters before
them rode at anchor a handsome vessel, which the child looked upon with
eyes of delight.

[Illustration: SCENE OF MONASTIC LIFE.]

"Would you like to see it closer?" asked Hanno. "I will take you on
board, if you wish."

"Oh, will you?" pleaded the boy. "I shall be so glad."

The three conspirators walked with him to the stream, and rowed out to
the vessel, the empress viewing them without suspicion of their design.
But her doubts were aroused when she saw that the anchor had been raised
and that the sails of the vessel were being set. Filled with sudden
alarm she left the palace and hastened to the shore, just as the
kidnapping craft began to move down the waters of the stream.

At the same moment young Henry, who had until now been absorbed in
gazing delightedly about the vessel, saw what was being done, and heard
his mother's cries. With courage and resolution unusual for his years he
broke, with a cry of anger, from those surrounding him, and leaped into
the stream, with the purpose of swimming ashore. But hardly had he
touched the water when Count Ekbert sprang in after him, seized him
despite his struggles, and brought him back to the vessel.

The empress entreated in pitiful accents for the return of her son, but
in vain; the captors of the boy were not of the kind to let pity
interfere with their plans; on down the broad stream glided the vessel,
the treacherous vassals listening in silence to the agonized appeals of
the distracted mother, and to the mingled prayers and demands of the
young emperor to be taken back. The country people, furious on learning
that the emperor had been stolen, and was being carried away before
their eyes, pursued the vessel for some distance on both sides of the
river. But their cries and threats were of no more avail than had been
the mother's tears and prayers. The vessel moved on with increasing
speed, the three kidnappers erect on its deck, their only words being
those used to cajole and quiet their unhappy prisoner, whom they did
their utmost to solace by promises and presents.

The vessel continued its course until it reached Cologne, where the
imperial captive was left under the charge of the archbishop, his two
confederates fully trusting him to keep close watch and ward over their
precious prize. The empress was of the same opinion. After vainly
endeavoring to regain her lost son from his powerful captors, she
resigned the regency and retired with a broken heart to an Italian
convent, in which the remainder of her sad life was to be passed.

The unhappy boy soon learned that his new lot was not to be one of
pleasure. He had a life of severe discipline before him. Bishop Hanno
was a stern and rigid disciplinarian, destitute of any of the softness
to which the lad had been accustomed, and disposed to rule all under his
control with a rod of iron. He kept his youthful captive strictly
immured in the cloister, where he had to endure the severest discipline,
while being educated in Latin and the other learning of the age.

The regency given up by Agnes was instantly assumed by the ambitious
churchman, and a decree to that effect was quickly passed by the lords
of the diet, on the grounds that Hanno was the bishop of the diocese in
which the emperor resided. The character of Hanno is variously
represented by historians. While some accuse him of acts of injustice
and cruelty, others speak of him as a man of energy, yet one whose holy
life, his paternal care for his see, and his zealous reformation of
monasteries and foundation of churches, gained him the character of a
saint.

Young Henry remained but a year or two in the hands of this stern
taskmaster. An imperative necessity called Hanno to Italy, and he was
obliged to leave the young monarch under the charge of Adalbert,
Archbishop of Bremen, a personage of very different character from
himself. Adalbert, while a churchman of great ability, was a courtier
full of ambitious views. He was one of the most polished and learned men
of his time, at once handsome, witty, and licentious, his character
being in the strongest contrast to the stern harshness of Hanno and the
coarse manners of the nobles of that period.

It would have been far better, however, for Henry could he have remained
under the control of Hanno, with all his severity. It is true that the
kindness and gentleness of Adalbert proved a delightful change to the
growing boy, and the unlimited liberty he now enjoyed was in pleasant
contrast to his recent restraint, while the gravity and severe study of
Hanno's cloister were agreeably replaced by the gay freedom of
Adalbert's court, in which the most serious matters were treated as
lightly as a jest. But the final result of the change was that the boy's
character became thoroughly corrupted. Adalbert surrounded his youthful
charge with constant alluring amusements, using the influence thus
gained to obtain new power in the state for himself, and places of honor
and profit for his partisans. He inspired him also with a contempt for
the rude-mannered dukes of the empire, and for what he called the stupid
German people, while he particularly filled the boy's mind with a
dislike for the Saxons, with whom the archbishop was at feud. All this
was to have an important influence on the future life of the growing
monarch.

It was more Henry's misfortune than his fault that he grew up to manhood
as a compound of sensuality, levity, malice, treachery, and other mean
qualities, for his nature had in it much that was good, and in his
after-life he displayed noble qualities which had been long hidden under
the corrupting faults of his education. The crime of the ambitious
nobles who stole him from his pious and gentle mother went far to ruin
his character, and was the leading cause of the misfortunes of his life.

As to the character of the youthful monarch, and its influence upon the
people, a few words may suffice. His licentious habits soon became a
scandal and shame to the whole empire, the more so that the mistresses
with whom he surrounded himself were seen in public adorned with gold
and precious stones which had been taken from the consecrated vessels of
the church. His dislike of the Saxons was manifested in the scorn with
which he treated this section of his people, and the taxes and enforced
labors with which they were oppressed.

The result of all this was an outbreak of rebellion. Hanno, who had
beheld with grave disapproval the course taken by Adalbert, now exerted
his great influence in state affairs, convoked an assembly of the
princes of the empire, and cited Henry to appear before it. On his
refusal, his palace was surrounded and his person seized, while Adalbert
narrowly escaped being made prisoner. He was obliged to remain in
concealment during the three succeeding years, while the indignant
Saxons, taking advantage of the opportunity for revenge, laid waste his
lands.

The licentious young ruler found his career of open vice brought to a
sudden end. The stern Hanno was again in power. Under his orders the
dissolute courtiers were dispersed, and Henry was compelled to lead a
more decorous life, a bride being found for him in the person of Bertha,
daughter of the Italian Margrave of Susa, to whom he had at an earlier
date been affianced. She was a woman of noble spirit, but,
unfortunately, was wanting in personal beauty, in consequence of which
she soon became an object of extreme dislike to her husband, a dislike
which her patience and fidelity seemed rather to increase than to
diminish.

The feeling of the young monarch towards his dutiful wife was overcome
in a singular manner, which is well worth describing. Henry at first was
eager to free himself from the tie that bound him to the unloved Bertha,
a resolution in which he was supported by Siegfried, Archbishop of
Mayence, who offered to assist him in getting a divorce. At a diet held
at Worms, Henry demanded a separation from his wife, to whom he
professed an unconquerable aversion. His efforts, however, were
frustrated by the pope's legate, who arrived in Germany during these
proceedings, and the licentious monarch, finding himself foiled in these
legal steps, sought to gain his end by baser means. He caused beautiful
women and maidens to be seized in their homes and carried to his palace
as ministers to his pleasure, while he exposed the unhappy empress to
the base solicitations of his profligate companions, offering them large
sums if they could ensnare her, in her natural revulsion at his
shameless unfaithfulness.

But the virtue of Bertha was proof against all such wiles, and the story
goes that she turned the tables on her vile-intentioned husband in an
amusing and decisive manner. On one occasion, as we are informed, the
empress appeared to listen to the solicitations of one of the would-be
seducers, and appointed a place and time for a secret meeting with this
profligate. The triumphant courtier duly reported his success to Henry,
who, overjoyed, decided to replace him in disguise. At the hour fixed he
appeared and entered the chamber named by Bertha, when he suddenly found
himself assailed by a score of stout servant-maids, armed with rods,
which they laid upon his back with all the vigor of their arms. The
surprised Lothario ran hither and thither to escape their blows, crying
out that he was the king. In vain his cries; they did not or would not
believe him; and not until he had been most soundly beaten, and their
arms were weary with the exercise, did they open the door of the
apartment and suffer the crest-fallen reprobate to escape.

This would seem an odd means of gaining the affection of a truant
husband, but it is said to have had this effect upon Henry, his wronged
wife from that moment gaining a place in his heart, into which she had
fairly cudgelled herself. The man was really of susceptible disposition,
and her invincible fidelity had at length touched him, despite himself.
From that moment he ceased his efforts to get rid of her, treated her
with more consideration, and finally settled down to the fact that a
beautiful character was some atonement for a homely face, and that
Bertha was a woman well worthy his affection.

We have now to describe the most noteworthy event in the life of Henry
IV., and the one which has made his name famous in history,--his contest
with the great ecclesiastic Hildebrand, who had become pope under the
title of Gregory VII. Though an aged man when raised to the papacy,
Gregory's vigorous character displayed itself in a remarkable activity
in the enhancement of the power of the church. His first important step
was directed against the scandals of the priesthood in the matter of
celibacy, the marriage of priests having become common. A second decree
of equal importance followed. Gregory forbade the election of bishops by
the laity, reserving this power to the clergy, under confirmation by the
pope. He further declared that the church was independent of the state,
and that the extensive lands held by the bishops were the property of
the church, and free from control by the monarch.

These radical decrees naturally aroused a strong opposition, in the
course of which Henry came into violent controversy with the pope.
Gregory accused Henry openly of simony, haughtily bade him to come to
Rome, and excommunicated the bishops who had been guilty of the same
offence. The emperor, who did not know the man with whom he had to deal,
retorted by calling an assembly of the German bishops at Worms, in which
the pope was declared to be deposed from his office.

The result was very different from that looked for by the volatile young
ruler. The vigorous and daring pontiff at once placed Henry himself
under interdict, releasing his subjects from their oath of allegiance,
and declaring him deprived of the imperial dignity. The scorn with which
the emperor heard of this decree was soon changed to terror when he
perceived its effect upon his people. The days were not yet come in
which the voice of the pope could be disregarded. With the exception of
the people of the cities and the free peasantry, who were opposed to
the papal dominion, all the subjects of the empire deserted Henry,
avoiding him as though he were infected with the plague. The Saxons flew
to arms; the foreign garrisons were expelled; the imprisoned princes
were released; all the enemies whom Henry had made rose against him; and
in a diet, held at Oppenheim, the emperor was declared deposed while the
interdict continued, and the pope was invited to visit Augsburg; in
order to settle the affairs of Germany. The election of a successor to
Henry was even proposed, and, to prevent him from communicating with the
pope, his enemies passed a decree that he should remain in close
residence at Spires.

The situation of the recently great monarch had suddenly become
desperate. Never had a decree of excommunication against a crowned ruler
been so completely effective. The frightened emperor saw but one hope
left, to escape to Italy before the princes could prevent him, and
obtain release from the interdict at any cost, and with whatever
humiliation it might involve. With this end in view he at once took to
flight, accompanied by Bertha, his infant son, and a single knight, and
made his way with all haste towards the Alps.

The winter was one of the coldest that Germany had ever known, the Rhine
remaining frozen from St. Martin's day of 1076 to April, 1077. About
Christmas of this severe winter the fugitives reached the snow-covered
Alps, having so far escaped the agents of their enemies, and crossed
the mountains by the St. Bernard pass, the difficulty of the journey
being so great that the empress had to be slid down the precipitous
paths by ropes in the hands of guides, she being wrapped in an ox-hide
for protection.

Italy was at length reached, after the greatest dangers and hardships
had been surmounted. Here Henry, much to his surprise, found prevailing
a very different spirit from that which he had left behind him. The
nobles, who cordially hated Gregory, and the bishops, many of whom were
under interdict, hailed his coming with joy, with the belief "that the
emperor was coming to humiliate the haughty pope by the power of the
sword." He might soon have had an army at his back, but that he was too
thoroughly downcast to think of anything but conciliation, and to the
disgust of the Italians insisted on humiliating himself before the
powerful pontiff.

Gregory was little less alarmed than the emperor on learning of Henry's
sudden arrival in Italy. He was then on his way to Augsburg, and, in
doubt as to the intentions of his enemy, took hasty refuge in the castle
of Canossa, then held by the Countess Matilda, recently a widow, and the
most powerful and influential princess in Italy.

But the alarmed pope was astonished and gratified when he learned that
the emperor, instead of intending an armed assault upon him, had applied
to the Countess Matilda, asking her to intercede in his behalf with the
pontiff. Gregory's acute mind quickly perceived the position in which
Henry stood, and, with great severity, he at first refused to speak of a
reconciliation, but referred all to the diet; then, on renewed
entreaties, he consented to receive Henry at Canossa, if he would come
alone, and as a penitent. The castle was surrounded with three walls,
within the second of which Henry was admitted, his attendants being left
without. He had laid aside every badge of royalty, being clothed in
penitential dress and barefoot, and fasting and praying from morning to
evening. For a second and even a third day was he thus kept, and not
until the fourth day, moved at length by the solicitations of Matilda
and those about him, did Gregory grant permission for Henry to enter his
presence. An interview now took place, in which the pope consented to
release the penitent emperor from the interdict. One of the conditions
of this release was he should leave to Gregory the settlement of affairs
in Germany, and to give up all exercise of his imperial power until he
should be granted permission to exercise it again.

This agreement was followed by a solemn mass, after which Gregory spoke
to the following effect: As regarded the crimes of which Henry had
accused him, he could easily bring evidence in disproof of the charges
made, but he would invoke the judgment of God alone. "May the body of
Jesus Christ, which I am about to receive," he said, "be the witness of
my innocence. I beseech the Almighty thus to dispel all suspicions, if
I am innocent; to strike me dead on the spot, if guilty."

He then received one-half the Sacred Host, and turning to the king,
offered him the remaining half, bidding him to follow his example, if he
held himself to be guiltless. Henry refused the ordeal, doubtless
because he did not dare to risk the penalty, and was glad enough to
escape from the presence of the pope, a humble penitent.

This ended Henry's career of humiliation. It was followed by a period of
triumph. On leaving the castle of Canossa he found the people of
Lombardy so indignant at his cowardice, that their scorn induced him to
break the oath he had just taken, gather an army, and assail the castle,
in which he shut up the pope so closely that he could neither proceed to
Augsburg nor return to Rome.

This siege, however, was not of long continuance. Henry soon found
himself recalled to Germany, where his enemies had elected Rudolf, Duke
of Swabia, emperor in his stead. A war broke out, which continued for
several years, at the end of which Gregory, encouraged by a temporary
success of Rudolf's party, pronounced in his favor, invested him with
the empire as a fief of the papacy, and once more excommunicated Henry.
It proved a false move. Henry had now learned his own power, and ceased
to fear the pope. He had strong support in the cities and among the
clergy, whom Gregory's severity had offended, and immediately convoked a
council, by which the pope was again deposed, and the Archbishop of
Ravenna elected in his stead, under the title of Clement III.

In this year, 1080, a battle took place in which Rudolf was mortally
wounded, and the party opposed to Henry left without a leader, though
the war continued. And now Henry, seeing that he could trust his cause
in Germany to the hands of his lieutenants, determined to march upon his
pontifical foe in Italy, and take revenge for his bitter humiliation at
Canossa.

He crossed the Alps, defeated the army which Matilda had raised in the
pope's cause, and laid siege to Rome, a siege which continued without
success for the long period of three years. At length the city was
taken, Wilprecht von Groitsch, a Saxon knight, mounting the walls, and
making his way with his followers into the city, aided by treachery from
within. Gregory hastily shut himself up in the castle of St. Angelo, in
which he was besieged by the Romans themselves, and from which he bade
defiance to Henry with the same inflexible will as ever. Henry offered
to be reconciled with him if he would crown him, but the vigorous old
pontiff replied that, "He could only communicate with him when he had
given satisfaction to God and the church." The emperor, thereupon,
called the rival pope, Clement, to Rome, was crowned by him, and
returned to Germany, leaving Clement in the papal chair and Gregory
still shut up in St. Angelo.

But a change quickly took place in the fortunes of the indomitable old
pope. Robert Guiscard, Duke of Normandy, who had won for himself a
principality in lower Italy, now marched to the relief of his friend
Gregory, stormed and took the city at the head of his Norman
freebooters, and at once began the work of pillage, in disregard of
Gregory's remonstrances. The result was an unusual one. The citizens of
Rome, made desperate by their losses, gathered in multitudes and drove
the plunderers from their city, and Gregory with them. The Normans, thus
expelled, took the pope to Salerno, where he died the following year,
1085, his last words being, "I have loved justice and hated iniquity,
therefore do I die in exile."

As for his imperial enemy, the remainder of his life was one of
incessant war. Years of battle were needed to put down his enemies in
the state, and his triumph was quickly followed by the revolt of his own
son, Henry, who reduced his father so greatly that the old emperor was
thrown into prison and forced to sign an abdication of the throne. It is
said that he became subsequently so reduced that he was forced to sell
his boots to obtain means of subsistence, but this story may reasonably
be doubted. Henry died in 1106, again under excommunication, so that he
was not formally buried in consecrated ground until 1111, the interdict
being continued for five years after his death.




_ANECDOTES OF MEDIÆVAL GERMANY._


THE WIVES OF WEINSBERG.

In the year of grace 1140 a German army, under Conrad III., emperor,
laid siege to the small town of Weinsberg, the garrison of which
resisted with a most truculent and disloyal obstinacy. Germany, which
for centuries before and after was broken into warring factions, to such
extent that its emperors could truly say, "uneasy lies the head that
wears a crown," was then divided between the two strong parties of the
Welfs and the Waiblingers,--or the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, as
pronounced by the Italians and better known to us. The Welfs were a
noble family whose ancestry could be traced back to the days of
Charlemagne. The Waiblingers derived their name from the town of
Waiblingen, which belonged to the Hohenstaufen family, of which the
Emperor Conrad was a representative.

And now, as often before and after, the Guelphs, and Ghibellines were at
war, Duke Welf holding Weinsberg vigorously against his foes of the
imperial party, while his relative, Count Welf of Altorf, marched to his
relief. A battle ensued between emperor and count, which ended in the
triumph of the emperor and the flight of the count. And this battle is
worthy of mention, as distinguished from the hundreds of battles which
are unworthy of mention, from the fact that in it was first heard a
war-cry which continued famous for centuries afterwards. The German
war-cry preceding this period had been "Kyrie Eleison" ("Lord, have
mercy upon us!" a pious invocation hardly in place with men who had
little mercy upon their enemies). But now the cry of the warring
factions became "Hie Weif," "Hie Waiblinger," softened in Italy into
"The Guelph," "The Ghibelline," battle-shouts which were long afterwards
heard on the field of German war, and on that of Italy as well, for the
factions of Germany became also the factions of this southern realm.

So much for the origin of Guelph and Ghibelline, of which we may further
say that a royal representative of the former party still exists, in
King Edward VII. of England, who traces his descent from the German
Welfs. And now to return to the siege of Weinsberg, to which Conrad
returned after having disposed of the army of relief. The garrison still
were far from being in a submissive mood, their defence being so
obstinate, and the siege so protracted, that the emperor, incensed by
their stubborn resistance, vowed that he would make their city a
frightful example to all his foes, by subjecting its buildings to the
brand and its inhabitants to the sword. Fire and steel, he said, should
sweep it from the face of the earth.

[Illustration: THUSNELDA IN THE GERMANICUS TRIUMPH.]

Weinsberg at length was compelled to yield, and Conrad, hot with anger,
determined that his cruel resolution should be carried out to the
letter, the men being put to the sword, the city given to the flames.
This harsh decision filled the citizens with terror and despair. A
deputation was sent to the angry emperor, humbly praying for pardon, but
he continued inflexible, the utmost concession he would make being that
the women might withdraw, as he did not war with them. As for the men,
they had offended him beyond forgiveness, and the sword should be their
lot. On further solicitation, he added to the concession a proviso that
the women might take away with them all that they could carry of their
most precious possessions, since he did not wish to throw them destitute
upon the world.

The obdurate emperor was to experience an unexampled surprise. When the
time fixed for the departure of the women arrived, and the city gates
were thrown open for their exit, to the astonishment of Conrad, and the
admiration of the whole army, the first to appear was the duchess, who,
trembling under the weight, bore upon her shoulders Duke Welf, her
husband. After her came a long line of other women, each bending beneath
the heavy burden of her husband, or some dear relative among the
condemned citizens.

Never had such a spectacle been seen. So affecting an instance of
heroism was it, and so earnest and pathetic were the faces appealingly
upturned to him, that the emperor's astonishment quickly changed to
admiration, and he declared that women like these had fairly earned
their reward, and that each should keep the treasure she had borne.
There were those around him with less respect for heroic deeds, who
sought to induce him to keep his original resolution, but Conrad, who
had it in him to be noble when not moved by passion, curtly silenced
them with the remark, "An emperor keeps his word." He was so moved by
the scene, indeed, that he not only spared the men, but the whole city,
and the doom of sword and brand, vowed against their homes, was
withdrawn through admiration of the noble act of the worthy wives of
Weinsberg.


A KING IN A QUANDARY.

From an old chronicle we extract the following story, which is at once
curious and interesting, as a picture of mediæval manners and customs,
though to all seeming largely legendary.

Henry, the bishop of Utrecht, was at sword's point with two lords, those
of Aemstel and Woerden, who hated him from the fact that a kinsman of
theirs, Goswin by name, had been deposed from the same see, through the
action of a general chapter. In reprisal these lords, in alliance with
the Count of Gebria, raided and laid waste the lands of the bishopric.
Time and again they visited it with plundering bands, Henry manfully
opposing them with his followers, but suffering much from their
incursions. At length the affair ended in a peculiar compact, in which
both sides agreed to submit their differences to the wager of war, in a
pitched battle, which was to be held on a certain day in the green
meadows adjoining Utrecht.

When the appointed day came both sides assembled with their vassals, the
lords full of hope, the bishop exhorting his followers to humble the
arrogance of these plundering nobles. The Archbishop of Cologne was in
the city of Utrecht at the time, having recently visited it. He, as
warlike in disposition as the bishop himself, gave Henry a precious
ring, saying to him,--

"My son, be courageous and confident, for this day, through the
intercession of the holy confessor St. Martin, and through the virtue of
this ring, thou shalt surely subdue the pride of thy adversaries, and
obtain a renowned victory over them. In the meantime, while thou art
seeking justice, I will faithfully defend this city, with its priests
and canons, in thy behalf, and will offer up prayers to the Lord of
Hosts for thy success."

Bishop Henry, his confidence increased by these words, led from the
gates a band of fine and well armed warriors to the sound of warlike
trumpets, and marched to the field, where he drew them up before the
bands of the hostile lords.

Meanwhile, tidings of this fray had been borne to William, king of the
Romans, who felt it his duty to put an end to it, as such private
warfare was forbidden by law. Hastily collecting all the knights and
men-at-arms he could get together without delay, he marched with all
speed to Utrecht, bent upon enforcing peace between the rival bands. As
it happened, the army of the king reached the northern gate of the city
just as the bishop's battalion had left the southern gate, the one party
marching in as the other marched out.

The archbishop, who had undertaken the defence of the city, and as yet
knew nothing of this royal visit, after making an inspection of the city
under his charge, gave orders to the porters to lock and bar all the
gates, and keep close guard thereon.

King William was not long in learning that he was somewhat late, the
bishop having left the city. He marched hastily to the southern gate to
pursue him, but only to find that he was himself in custody, the gates
being firmly locked and the keys missing. He waited awhile impatiently.
No keys were brought. Growing angry at this delay, he gave orders that
the bolts and bars should be wrenched from the gates, and efforts to do
this were begun.

While this was going on, the archbishop was in deep affliction. He had
just learned that the king was in Utrecht with an army, and imagined
that he had come with hostile purpose, and had taken the city through
the carelessness of the porters. Followed by his clergy, he hastened to
where the king was trying to force a passage through the gates, and
addressed him appealingly, reminding him that justice and equity were
due from kings to subjects.

"Your armed bands, I fear, have taken this city," he said, "and you have
ordered the locks to be broken that you may expel the inhabitants, and
replace them with persons favorable to your own interests. If you
propose to act thus against justice and mercy, you injure me, your
chancellor, and lessen your own honor. I exhort you, therefore, to
restore me the city which you have unjustly taken, and relieve the
inhabitants from violence."

The king listened in silence and surprise to this harangue, which was
much longer than we have given it. At its end, he said,--

"Venerable pastor and bishop, you have much mistaken my errand in
Utrecht. I come here in the cause of justice, not of violence. You know
that it is the duty of kings to repress wars and punish the disturbers
of peace. It is this that brings us here, to put an end to the private
war which we learn is being waged. As it stands, we have not conquered
the city, but it has conquered us. To convince you that no harm is meant
to Bishop Henry and his good city of Utrecht, we will command our men to
repair to their hostels, lay down their arms, and pass their time in
festivity. But first the purpose for which we have come must be
accomplished, and this private feud be brought to an end."

That the worthy archbishop was delighted to hear these words, need not
be said. His fears had not been without sound warrant, for those were
days in which kings were not to be trusted, and in which the cities
maintained a degree of political independence that often proved
inconvenient to the throne. As may be imagined, the keys were quickly
forthcoming and the gates thrown open, the king being relieved from his
involuntary detention, and given an opportunity to bring the bishop's
battle to an end.

He was too late; it had already reached its end. While King William was
striving to get out of the city, which he had got into with such ease,
the fight in the green meadows between the bishops and the lords had
been concluded, the warlike churchman coming off victor. Many of the
lords' vassals had been killed, more put to flight, and themselves taken
prisoners. At the vesper-bell Henry entered the city with his captives,
bound with ropes, and was met at the gates by the king and the
archbishop. At the request of King William he pardoned and released his
prisoners, on their promise to cease molesting his lands, and all ended
in peace and good will.


COURTING BY PROXY.

Frederick von Stauffen, known as the One-eyed, being desirous of
providing his son Frederick (afterwards the famous emperor Frederick
Barbarossa) with a wife, sent as envoy for that purpose a handsome young
man named Johann von Würtemberg, whose attractions of face and manner
had made him a general favorite. It was the beautiful daughter of Rudolf
von Zähringen who had been selected as a suitable bride for the future
emperor, but when the handsome ambassador stated the purpose of his
visit to the father, he was met by Rudolf with the joking remark, "Why
don't you court the damsel for yourself?"

The suggestion was much to the taste of the envoy. He took it seriously,
made love for himself to the attractive Princess Anna, and won her love
and the consent of her father, who had been greatly pleased with his
handsome and lively visitor, and was quite ready to confirm in earnest
what he had begun in jest.

Frederick, the One-eyed, still remained to deal with, but that worthy
personage seems to have taken the affair as a good joke, and looked up
another bride for his son, leaving to Johann the maiden he had won. This
story has been treated as fabulous, but it is said to be well founded.
It has been repeated in connection with other persons, notably in the
case of Captain Miles Standish and John Alden, in which case the fair
maiden herself is given the credit of admonishing the envoy to court for
himself. It is very sure, however, that this latter story is a fable. It
was probably founded on the one we have given.


THE BISHOP'S WINE-CASKS.

Adalbert of Treves was a bandit chief of note who, in the true fashion
of the robber barons of mediæval Germany, dwelt in a strong-walled
castle, which was garrisoned by a numerous band of men-at-arms, as fond
of pillage as their leader, and equally ready to follow him on his
plundering expeditions and to defend his castle against his enemies.
Our noble brigand paid particular heed to the domain of Peppo, Bishop of
Treves, whose lands he honored with frequent unwelcome visits,
despoiling lord and vassal alike, and hastening back from his raids to
the shelter of his castle walls.

This was not the most agreeable state of affairs for the worthy bishop,
though how it was to be avoided did not clearly appear. It probably did
not occur to him to apply to the emperor, Henry II., the mediæval German
emperors having too much else on hand to leave them time to attend to
matters of minor importance. Peppo therefore naturally turned to his own
kinsmen, friends, and vassals, as those most likely to afford him aid.

Bishop Peppo could wield sword and battle-axe with the best bishop,
which is almost equivalent to saying with the best warrior, of his day,
and did not fail to use, when occasion called, these carnal weapons. But
something more than the battle-axes of himself and vassals was needed to
break through the formidable walls of Adalbert's stronghold, which
frowned defiance to the utmost force the bishop could muster. Force
alone would not answer, that was evident. Stratagem was needed to give
effect to brute strength. If some way could only be devised to get
through the strong gates of the robber's stronghold, and reach him
behind his bolts and bars, all might be well; otherwise, all was ill.

In this dilemma, a knightly vassal of the bishop, Tycho by name,
undertook to find a passage into the castle of Adalbert, and to punish
him for his pillaging. One day Tycho presented himself at the gate of
the castle, knocked loudly thereon, and on the appearance of the guard,
asked him for a sup of something to drink, being, as he said, overcome
with thirst.

He did not ask in vain. It is a pleasant illustration of the hospitality
of that period to learn that the traveller's demand was unhesitatingly
complied with at the gate of the bandit stronghold, a brimming cup of
wine being brought for the refreshment of the thirsty wayfarer.

"Thank your master for me," said Tycho, on returning the cup, "and tell
him that I shall certainly repay him with some service for his good
will."

With this Tycho journeyed on, sought the bishopric, and told Peppo what
he had done and what he proposed to do. After a full deliberation a
definite plan was agreed upon, which the cunning fellow proceeded to put
into action. The plan was one which strongly reminds us of that adopted
by the bandit chief in the Arabian story of the "Forty Thieves," the
chief difference being that here it was true men, not thieves, who were
to be benefited.

Thirty wine casks of capacious size were prepared, and in each was
placed instead of its quota of wine a stalwart warrior, fully armed with
sword, shield, helmet, and cuirass. Each cask was then covered with a
linen cloth, and ropes were fastened to its sides for the convenience of
the carriers. This done, sixty other men were chosen as carriers, and
dressed as peasants, though really they were trained soldiers, and each
had a sword concealed in the cask he helped to carry.

The preparations completed, Tycho, accompanied by a few knights and by
the sixty carriers and their casks, went his way to Adalbert's castle,
and, as before, knocked loudly at its gates. The guard again appeared,
and, on seeing the strange procession, asked who they were and for what
they came.

"I have come to repay your chief for the cup of wine he gave me," said
Tycho. "I promised that he should be well rewarded for his good will,
and am here for that purpose."

The warder looked longingly at the array of stout casks, and hastened
with the message to Adalbert, who, doubtless deeming that the gods were
raining wine, for his one cup to be so amply returned, gave orders that
the strangers should be admitted. Accordingly the gates were opened, and
the wine-bearers and knights filed in.

Reaching the castle hall, the casks were placed on the floor before
Adalbert and his chief followers, Tycho begging him to accept them as a
present in return for his former kindness. As to receive something for
nothing was Adalbert's usual mode of life, he did not hesitate to accept
the lordly present, and Tycho ordered the carriers to remove the
coverings. In a very few seconds this was done, when out sprang the
armed men, the porters seized their swords from the casks, and in a
minute's time the surprised bandits found themselves sharply attacked.
The stratagem proved a complete success. Adalbert and his men fell
victims to their credulity, and the fortress was razed to the ground.

The truth of this story we cannot vouch for. It bears too suspicious a
resemblance to the Arabian tale to be lightly accepted as fact. But its
antiquity is unquestionable, and it may be offered as a faithful picture
of the conditions of those centuries of anarchy when every man's hand
was for himself and might was right.




_FREDERICK BARBAROSSA AND MILAN._


A proud old city was Milan, heavy with its weight of years, rich and
powerful, arrogant and independent, the capital of Lombardy and the lord
of many of the Lombard cities. For some twenty centuries it had existed,
and now had so grown in population, wealth, and importance, that it
could almost lay claim to be the Rome of northern Italy. But its day of
pride preceded not long that of its downfall, for a new emperor had come
to the German throne, Frederick the Red-bearded, one of the ablest,
noblest, and greatest of all that have filled the imperial chair.

Not long had he been on the throne before, in the long-established
fashion of German emperors, he began to interfere with affairs in Italy,
and demanded from the Lombard cities recognition of his supremacy as
Emperor of the West. He found some of them submissive, others not so.
Milan received his commands with contempt, and its proud magistrates
went so far as to tear the seal from the imperial edict and trample it
underfoot.

In 1154 Frederick crossed the Alps and encamped on the Lombardian plain.
Soon deputations from some of the cities came to him with complaints
about the oppression of Milan, which had taken Lodi, Como, and other
towns, and lorded it over them exasperatingly. Frederick bade the proud
Milanese to answer these complaints, but in their arrogance they refused
even to meet his envoys, and he resolved to punish them severely for
their insolence.

But the time was not yet. He had other matters to attend to. Four years
passed before he was able to devote some of his leisure to the Milanese.
They had in the meantime managed to offend him still more seriously,
having taken the town of Lodi and burnt it to the ground, for no other
crime than that it had yielded him allegiance. After him marched a
powerful army, nearly one hundred and twenty thousand strong, at the
very sight of whose myriad of banners most of the Lombard cities
submitted without a blow. Milan was besieged. Its resistance was by no
means obstinate. The emperor's principal wish was to win it over to his
side, and probably the authorities of the city were aware of his lenient
disposition, for they held out no long time before his besieging
multitude.

All that the conqueror now demanded was that the proud municipality
should humble itself before him, swear allegiance, and promise not to
interfere with the freedom of the smaller cities. On the 6th of
September a procession of nobles and churchmen defiled before him,
barefooted and clad in tattered garments, the consuls and patricians
with swords hanging from their necks, the others with ropes round their
throats, and thus, with evidence of the deepest humility, they bore to
the emperor the keys of the proud city.

"You must now acknowledge that it is easier to conquer by obedience than
with arms," he said. Then, exacting their oaths of allegiance, placing
the imperial eagle upon the spire of the cathedral, and taking with him
three hundred hostages, he marched away, with the confident belief that
the defiant resistance of Milan was at length overcome.

He did not know the Milanese. When, in the following year, he attempted
to lay a tax upon them, they rose in insurrection and attacked his
representatives with such fury that they could scarcely save their
lives. On an explanation being demanded, they refused to give any, and
were so arrogantly defiant that the emperor pronounced their city
outlawed, and wrathfully vowed that he would never place the crown upon
his head again until he had utterly destroyed this arrant nest of
rebels.

It was not to prove so easy a task. Frederick began by besieging
Cremona, which was in alliance with Milan, and which resisted him so
obstinately that it took him seven months to reduce it to submission. In
his anger he razed the city to the ground and scattered its inhabitants
far and wide.

Then came the siege of Milan, which was so vigorously defended that
three years passed before starvation threw it into the emperor's hands.
So virulent were the citizens that they several times tried to rid
themselves of their imperial enemy by assassination. On one occasion,
when Frederick was performing his morning devotions in a solitary spot
upon the river Ada, a gigantic fellow attacked him and tried to throw
him into the stream. The emperor's cries for help brought his attendants
to the spot, and the assailant, in his turn, was thrown into the river.
On another occasion an old, misshapen man glided into the camp, bearing
poisoned wares which he sought to dispose of to the emperor. Frederick,
fortunately, had been forewarned, and he had the would-be assassin
seized and executed.

It was in the spring of 1162 that the city yielded, hunger at length
forcing it to capitulate. Now came the work of revenge. Frederick
proceeded to put into execution the harsh vow he had made, after
subjecting its inhabitants to the greatest humiliations which he could
devise.

For three days the consuls and chief men of the city, followed by the
people, were obliged to parade before the imperial camp, barefooted and
dressed in sackcloth, with tapers in their hands and crosses, swords,
and ropes about their necks. On the third day more than a hundred of the
banners of the city were brought out and laid at the emperor's feet.
Then, in sign of the most utter humiliation, the great banner of their
pride, the Carocium--a stately iron tree with iron leaves, drawn on a
cart by eight oxen--was brought out and bowed before the emperor.
Frederick seized and tore down its fringe, while the whole people cast
themselves on the ground, wailing and imploring mercy.

The emperor was incensed beyond mercy, other than to grant them their
lives. He ordered that a part of the wall should be thrown down, and
rode through the breach into the city. Then, after deliberation, he
granted the inhabitants their lives, but ordered their removal to four
villages, several miles away, where they were placed under the care of
imperial functionaries. As for Milan, he decided that it should be
levelled with the ground, and gave the right to do this, at their
request, to the people of Lodi, Cremona, Pavia, and other cities which
had formerly been oppressed by proud Milan.

[Illustration: THE AMPHITHEATRE AT MILAN.]

The city was first pillaged, and then given over to the hands of the
Lombards, who--such was the diligence of hatred--are said to have done
more in six days than hired workmen would have done in as many months.
The walls and forts were torn down, the ditches filled up, and the once
splendid city reduced to a frightful scene of ruin and desolation. Then,
at a splendid banquet at Pavia, in the Easter festival, the triumphant
emperor replaced the crown upon his head.

His triumph was not to continue, nor the humiliation of Milan to remain
permanent. Time brings its revenges, as the proud Frederick was to
learn. For five years Milan lay in ruins, a home for owls and bats, a
scene of desolation to make all observers weep; and then arrived its
season of retribution. Frederick's downfall came from the hand of God,
not of man. A frightful plague broke out in the ranks of the German
army, then in Rome, carrying off nobles and men alike in such numbers
that it looked as if the whole host might be laid in the grave.
Thousands died, and the emperor was obliged to retire to Pavia with but
a feeble remnant of his numerous army, nearly the whole of it having
been swept away. In the following spring he was forced to leave Italy
like a fugitive, secretly and in disguise, and came so nearly falling
into the hands of his foes, that he only escaped by one of his
companions placing himself in his bed, to be seized in his stead, while
he fled under cover of the night.

Immediately the humbled cities raised their heads. An alliance was
formed between them, and they even ventured to conduct the Milanese back
to their ruined homes. At once the work of rebuilding was begun. The
ditches, walls, and towers were speedily restored, and then each man
went to work on his own habitation. So great was the city that the work
of destruction had been but partial. Most of the houses, all the
churches, and portions of the walls remained, and by aid of the other
cities Milan soon regained its old condition.

In 1174 Frederick reappeared in Italy, with a new army, and with hostile
intentions against the revolted cities. The Lombards had built a new
city, in a locality surrounded by rivers and marshes, and had enclosed
it with walls which they sought to make impregnable. This they named
Alexandria, in honor of the pope and in defiance of the emperor, and
against this Frederick's first assault was made. For seven months he
besieged it, and then broke into the very heart of the place, through a
subterranean passage which the Germans had excavated. To all appearance
the city was lost, yet chance and courage saved it. The brave defenders
attacked the Germans, who had appeared in the market-place; the tunnel,
through great good fortune, fell in; and in the end the emperor was
forced to raise the siege in such haste that he set fire to his own
encampment in his precipitate retreat.

On May 29, 1176, a decisive battle was fought at Lignano, in which Milan
revenged itself on its too-rigorous enemy. The Carocium was placed in
the middle of the Lombard army, surrounded by three hundred youths, who
had sworn to defend it unto death, and by a body of nine hundred picked
cavalry, who had taken a similar oath.

Early in the battle one wing of the Lombard army wavered under the sharp
attack of the Germans, and threw into confusion the Milanese ranks.
Taking advantage of this, the emperor pressed towards their centre,
seeking to gain the Carocium, with the expectation that its capture
would convert the disorder of the Lombards into a rout. On pushed the
Germans until the sacred standard was reached, and its decorations torn
down before the eyes of its sworn defenders.

This indignity to the treasured emblem of their liberties gave renewed
courage to the disordered band. Their ranks re-established, they charged
upon the Germans with such furious valor as to drive them back in
disorder, cut through their lines to the emperor's station, kill his
standard-bearer by his side, and capture the imperial standard.
Frederick, clad in a splendid suit of armor, rushed against them at the
head of a band of chosen knights. But suddenly he was seen to fall from
his horse and vanish under the hot press of struggling warriors that
surged back and forth around the standard.

This dire event spread instant terror through the German ranks. They
broke and fled in disorder, followed by the death-phalanx of the
Carocium, who cut them down in multitudes, and drove them back in
complete disorder and defeat. For two days the emperor was mourned as
slain, his unhappy wife even assuming the robes of widowhood, when
suddenly he reappeared, and all was joy again. He had not been seriously
hurt in his fall, and had with a few friends escaped in the tumult of
the defeat, and, under the protection of night, made his way with
difficulty back to Pavia.

This defeat ended the efforts of Frederick against Milan, which had,
through its triumph over the great emperor, regained all its old proud
position and supremacy among the Lombard cities. The war ended with the
battle of Lignano, a truce of six years being concluded between the
hostile parties. For the ensuing eight years Frederick was fully
occupied in Germany, in wars with Henry the Lion, of the Guelph faction.
At the end of that time he returned to Italy, where Milan, which he had
sought so strenuously to humiliate and ruin, now became the seat of the
greatest honor he could bestow. The occasion was that of the marriage of
his son Henry to Constanza, the last heiress of Naples and Sicily of the
royal Norman race. This ceremony took place in Milan, in which city the
emperor caused the iron crown of the Lombards to be placed upon the head
of his son and heir, and gave him away in marriage with the utmost pomp
and festivity. Milan had won in its great contest for life and death.

We may fitly conclude with the story of the death of the great
Frederick, who, in accordance with the character of his life, died in
harness. In his old age, having put an end to the wars in Germany and
Italy, he headed a crusade to the Holy Land, from which he was never to
return. It was the most interesting in many of its features of all the
crusades, the leaders of the host being, in addition to Frederick
Barbarossa, Richard Coeur de Lion of England, the hero of romance, the
wise Philip Augustus of France, and various others of the leading
potentates of Europe.

It is with Frederick alone that we are concerned. In 1188 he set out, at
the head of one hundred and fifty thousand trained soldiers, on what was
destined to prove a disastrous expedition. Entering Hungary, he met with
a friendly reception from Bela, its king. Reaching Belgrade, he held
there a magnificent tournament, hanged all the robber Servians he could
capture for their depredations upon his ranks, and advanced into Greek
territory, where he punished the bad faith of the emperor, Isaac, by
plundering his country. Several cities were destroyed in revenge for the
assassination of pilgrims and of sick and wounded German soldiers by
their inhabitants. This done, Frederick advanced on Constantinople,
whose emperor, to save his city from capture, hastened to place his
whole fleet at the disposal of the Germans, glad to get rid of these
truculent visitors at any price.

Reaching Asia Minor, the troubles of the crusaders began. They were
assailed by the Turks, and had to cut their way forward at every step.
Barbarossa had never shown himself a greater general. On one occasion,
when hard pressed by the enemy, he concealed a chosen band of warriors
in a large tent, the gift of the Queen of Hungary, while the rest of the
army pretended to fly. The Turks entered the camp and began pillaging,
when the ambushed knights broke upon them from the tent, the flying
soldiers turned, and the confident enemy was disastrously defeated.

But as the army advanced its difficulties increased. A Turkish prisoner
who was made to act as a guide, being driven in chains before the army,
led the Christians into the gorges of almost impassable mountains,
sacrificing his life for his cause. Here, foot-sore and weary, and
tormented by thirst and hunger, they were suddenly attacked by ambushed
foes, stones being rolled upon them in the narrow gorges, and arrows and
javelins poured upon their disordered ranks. Peace was here offered
them by the Turks, if they would pay a large sum of money for their
release. In reply the indomitable emperor sent them a small silver coin,
with the message that they might divide this among themselves. Then,
pressing forward, he beat off the enemy, and extricated his army from
its dangerous situation.

As they pushed on, the sufferings of the army increased. Water was not
to be had, and many were forced to quench their thirst by drinking the
blood of their horses. The army was now divided. Frederick, the son of
the emperor, led half of it forward at a rapid march, defeated the Turks
who sought to stop him, and fought his way into the city of Iconium.
Here all the inhabitants were put to the sword, and the crusaders gained
an immense booty.

Meanwhile the emperor, his soldiers almost worn out with hunger and
fatigue, was surrounded with the army of the sultan. He believed that
his son was lost, and tears of anguish flowed from his eyes, while all
around him wept in sympathy. Suddenly rising, he exclaimed, "Christ
still lives, Christ conquers!" and putting himself at the head of his
knights, he led them in a furious assault upon the Turks. The result was
a complete victory, ten thousand of the enemy falling dead upon the
field. Then the Christian army marched to Iconium, where they found
relief from their hunger and weariness.

After recruiting they marched forward, and on June 10, 1190, reached
the little river Cydnus, in Cilicia. Here the road and the bridge over
the stream were so blocked up with beasts of burden that the progress of
the army was greatly reduced. The bold old warrior, impatient to rejoin
his son Frederick, who led the van, would not wait for the bridge to be
cleared, but spurred his war-horse forward and plunged into the stream.
Unfortunately, he had miscalculated the strength of the current. Despite
the efforts of the noble animal, it was borne away by the swift stream,
and when at length assistance reached the aged emperor he was found to
be already dead.

Never was a man more mourned than was the valiant Barbarossa by his
army, and by the Germans on hearing of his death. His body was borne by
the sorrowing soldiers to Antioch, where it was buried in the church of
St. Peter. His fate was, perhaps, a fortunate one, for it prevented him
from beholding the loss of the army, which was almost entirely destroyed
by sickness at the city in which his body was entombed. His son
Frederick died at the siege of Acre, or Ptolemais.

As regards the Germans at home, they were not willing to believe that
their great emperor could be dead. Their superstitious faith gave rise
to legendary tales, to the effect that the valiant Barbarossa was still
alive, and would, some day, return to yield Germany again a dynasty of
mighty sovereigns. The story went that the noble emperor lay asleep in a
deep cleft of Kylfhaüser Berg, on the golden meadow of Thuringia. Here,
his head resting on his arm, he sits by a granite block, through which,
in the lapse of time, his red beard has grown. Here he will sleep until
the ravens no longer fly around the mountain, when he will awake to
restore the golden age to the world.

Another legend tells us that the great Barbarossa sits, wrapped in deep
slumber, in the Untersberg, near Salzberg. His sleep will end when the
dead pear-tree on the Walserfeld, which has been cut down three times
but ever grows anew, blossoms. Then will he come forth, hang his shield
on the tree, and begin a tremendous battle, in which the whole world
will join, and in whose end the good will overcome the wicked, and the
reign of virtue return to the earth.




_THE CRUSADE OF FREDERICK II._


A remarkable career was that of Frederick II. of Germany, grandson of
the great Barbarossa, crowned in 1215 under the immediate auspices of
the papacy, yet during all the remainder of his life in constant and
bitter conflict with the popes. He was, we are told, of striking
personal beauty, his form being of the greatest symmetry, his face
unusually handsome, and marked by intelligence, benevolence, and
nobility. Born in a rude age, his learning would have done honor to our
own. Son of an era in which poetry was scarcely known, he cultivated the
gay science, and was one of the earliest producers of the afterwards
favorite form known as the sonnet. An emperor of Germany, nearly his
whole life was spent in Sicily. Though ruler of a Christian realm, he
lived surrounded by Saracens, studying diligently the Arabian learning,
dwelling in what was almost a harem of Arabian beauties, and hesitating
not to give expression to the most infidel sentiments. The leader of a
crusade, he converted what was ordinarily a tragedy into a comedy,
obtained possession of Jerusalem without striking a blow or shedding a
drop of blood, and found himself excommunicated in the holy city which
he had thus easily restored to Christendom. Altogether we may repeat
that the career of Frederick II. was an extraordinary one, and amply
worthy our attention.

The young monarch had grown up in Sicily, of which charming island he
became guardian after the death of his mother, Constanza. He was crowned
at Aix-la-Chapelle, having defeated his rival, Otho IV.; but spent the
greater part of his life in the south, holding his pleasure-loving court
at Naples and Palermo, where he surrounded himself with all the
refinements of life then possessed by the Saracens, but of which the
Christians of Europe were lamentably deficient.

It was in 1220 that Frederick returned from Germany to Italy, leaving
his northern kingdom in the hands of the Archbishop of Cologne, as
regent. At Rome he received the imperial crown from the hands of the
pope, and, his first wife dying, married Yolinda de Lusignan, daughter
of John, ex-king of Jerusalem, in right of whom he claimed the kingdom
of the East.

Shortly afterwards a new pope came to the papal chair, the gloomy
Gregory IX., whose first act was to order a crusade, which he desired
the emperor to lead. Despite the fact that he had married the heiress of
Jerusalem, Frederick was very reluctant to seek an enforcement of his
claim upon the holy city. He had pledged himself when crowned at
Aix-la-Chapelle, and afterwards on his coronation at Rome, to undertake
a crusade, but Honorius III., the pope at that time, readily granted him
delay. Such was not the case with Gregory, who sternly insisted on an
immediate compliance with his pledge, and whose rigid sense of decorum
was scandalized by the frivolities of the emperor, no less than was his
religious austerity by Frederick's open intercourse with the Sicilian
Saracens.

The old contest between emperor and pope threatened to be opened again
with all its former virulence. It was deferred for a time by Frederick,
who, after exhausting all excuses for delay, at length yielded to the
exhortations of the pope and set sail for the Holy Land. The crusade
thus entered upon proved, however, to be simply a farce. In three days
the fleet returned, Frederick pleading illness as his excuse, and the
whole expedition came to an end.

Gregory was no longer to be trifled with. He declared that the illness
was but a pretext, that Frederick had openly broken his word to the
church, and at once proceeded to launch upon the emperor the thunders of
the papacy, in a bull of excommunication.

Frederick treated this fulmination with contempt, and appealed from the
pope to Christendom, accusing Rome of avarice, and declaring that her
envoys were marching in all directions, not to preach the word of God,
but to extort money from the people.

"The primitive church," he said, "founded on poverty and simplicity,
brought forth numberless saints. The Romans are now rolling in wealth.
What wonder that the walls of the church are undermined to the base, and
threaten utter ruin."

For this saying the pope launched against him a more tremendous
excommunication. In return the partisans of Frederick in Rome, raising
an insurrection, expelled the pope from that city. And now the
free-thinking emperor, to convince the world that he was not trifling
with his word, set sail of his own accord for the East, with as numerous
an army as he was able to raise.

A remarkable state of affairs followed, justifying us in speaking of
this crusade as a comedy, in contrast with the tragic character of those
which had preceded it. Frederick had shrewdly prepared for success, by
negotiations, through his Saracen friends, with the Sultan of Egypt. On
reaching the Holy Land he was received with joy by the German knights
and pilgrims there assembled, but the clergy and the Knight Templars and
Hospitallers carefully kept aloof from him, for Gregory had despatched a
swift-sailing ship to Palestine, giving orders that no intercourse
should be held with the imperial enemy of the church.

It was certainly a strange spectacle, for a man under the ban of the
church to be the leader in an expedition to recover the holy city. Its
progress was as strange as its inception. Had Frederick been the leader
of a Mohammedan army to recover Jerusalem from the Christians, his camp
could have been little more crowded with infidel delegates. He wore a
Saracen dress. He discussed questions of philosophy with Saracen
visitors. He received presents of elephants and of dancing-girls from
his friend the sultan, to whom he appealed: "Out of your goodness, and
your friendship for me, surrender to me Jerusalem as it is, that I may
be able to lift up my head among the kings of Christendom."

Camel, the sultan, consented, agreeing to deliver up Jerusalem and its
adjacent territory to the emperor, on the sole condition that Mohammedan
pilgrims might have the privilege of visiting a mosque within the city.
These terms Frederick gladly accepted, and soon after marched into the
holy city at the head of his armed followers (not unarmed, as in the
case of Coeur de Lion), took possession of it with formal ceremony,
allowed the Mohammedan population to withdraw in peace, and repeopled
the city with Christians, A.D. 1229.

He found himself in the presence of an extraordinary condition of
affairs. The excommunication against him was not only maintained, but
the pope actually went so far as to place Jerusalem and the Holy
Sepulchre under interdict. So far did the virulence of priestly
antipathy go that the Templars even plotted against Frederick's life.
Emissaries sent by them gave secret information to the sultan of where
he might easily capture the emperor. The sultan, with a noble
friendliness, sent the letter to Frederick, cautioning him to beware of
his foes.

The break between emperor and pope had now reached its highest pitch of
hostility. Frederick proclaimed his signal success to Europe. Gregory
retorted with bitter accusations. The emperor, he said, had presented to
the sultan of Babylon the sword given him for the defence of the faith;
he had permitted the Koran to be preached in the Holy Temple itself; he
had even bound himself to join the Saracens, in case a Christian army
should attempt to cleanse the city and temple from Mohammedan
defilements.

In addition to these charges, accusations of murder and other crimes
were circulated against him, and a false report of his death was
industriously circulated. Frederick found it necessary to return home
without delay. He crowned himself at Jerusalem, as no ecclesiastic could
be found who would perform the ceremony, and then set sail for Italy,
leaving Richard, his master of the horse, in charge of affairs in
Palestine.

Reaching Italy, he soon brought his affairs into order. He had under his
command an army of thirty thousand Saracen soldiers, with whom it was
impossible for his enemies to tamper. A bitter recrimination took place
with the pope, in which the emperor managed to bring the general
sentiment of Europe to his side, offering to convict Gregory of himself
entering into negotiations with the infidels. Gregory, finding that he
was getting the worst of the controversy with his powerful and alert
enemy, now prudently gave way, having a horror of the shedding of blood.
Peace was made in 1230, the excommunication removed from the emperor,
and for nine years the conflict between him and the papacy was at an
end.

We have told the story of Frederick's crusade, but the remainder of his
life is of sufficient interest to be given in epitome. In his government
of Sicily he showed himself strikingly in advance of the political
opinions of his period. He enacted a system of wise laws, instituted
representative parliaments, asserted the principle of equal rights and
equal duties, and the supremacy of the law over high and low alike. All
religions were tolerated, Jews and Mohammedans having equal freedom of
worship with Christians. All the serfs of his domain were emancipated,
private war was forbidden, commerce was regulated, cheap justice for the
poor was instituted, markets and fairs were established, large libraries
collected, and other progressive institutions organized. He established
menageries for the study of natural history, founded in Naples a great
university, patronized medical study, provided cheap schools, aided the
development of the arts, and in every respect displayed a remarkable
public spirit and political foresight.

Yet splendid as was his career of development in secular affairs, his
private life, as well as his public conduct, was stained with flagrant
faults, and there was much in his doings that was frowned upon by the
pope. New quarrels arose; new wars broke out; the emperor was again
excommunicated; the unfortunate closing years of Frederick's career
began. Again there were appeals to Christendom; again Frederick's
Saracens marched through Italy; such was their success that the pope
only escaped by death from falling into the hands of his foe. But with a
new pope the old quarrel was resumed, Innocent IV. flying to France to
get out of reach of the emperor's hands, and desperately combating him
from this haven of refuge.

The incessant conflict at length bowed down the spirit of the emperor,
now growing old. His good fortune began to desert him. In 1249 his son
Enzio, whom he had made king of Sicily, and who was the most chivalrous
and handsome of his children, was taken prisoner by the Bolognese, who
refused to accept ransom for him, although his father offered in return
for his freedom a silver ring equal in circumference to their city. In
the following year his long-tried friend and councillor, Peter de
Vincis, who had been the most trusted man in the empire, was accused of
having joined the papal party and of attempting to poison the emperor.
He offered Frederick a beverage, which he, growing suspicious, did not
drink, but had it administered to a criminal, who instantly expired.

Whether Peter was guilty or not, his seeming defection was a sore blow
to his imperial patron. "Alas!" moaned Frederick, "I am abandoned by my
most faithful friends; Peter, the friend of my heart, on whom I leaned
for support, has deserted me and sought my destruction. Whom can I
trust? My days are henceforth doomed to pass in sorrow and suspicion."

His days were near their end. Not long after the events narrated, while
again in the field at the head of a fresh army of Saracens, he was
suddenly seized with a mortal illness at Firenzuola, and died there on
the 13th of December, 1250, becoming reconciled with the church on his
deathbed. He was buried at Palermo.

Thus died one of the most intellectual, progressive, free-thinking, and
pleasure-loving emperors of Germany, after a long reign over a realm in
which he seldom appeared, and an almost incessant period of warfare
against the head of a church of which he was supposed to be the imperial
protector. Seven crowns were his,--those of the kingdom of Germany and
of the Roman empire, the iron diadem of Lombardy, and those of Burgundy,
Sicily, Sardinia, and Jerusalem. But of all the realms under his rule
the smiling lands of Sicily and southern Italy were most to his liking,
and the scene of his most constant abode. Charming palaces were built by
him at Naples, Palermo, Messina, and several other places, and in these
he surrounded himself with the noblest bards and most beautiful women of
the empire, and by all that was attractive in the art, science, and
poetry of his times. Moorish dancing-girls and the arts and learning of
the East abounded in his court. The Sultan Camel presented him with a
rare tent, in which, by means of artfully contrived mechanism, the
movements of the heavenly bodies were represented. Michael Scott, his
astrologer, translated Aristotle's "History of Animals." Frederick
studied ornithology, on which he wrote a treatise, and possessed a
menagerie of rare animals, including a giraffe, and other strange
creatures. The popular dialect of Italy owed much to him, being elevated
into a written language by his use of it in his love-sonnets. Of the
poems written by himself, his son Enzio, and his friends, several have
been preserved, while his chancellor, Peter de Vincis, is said to have
originated the sonnet.

We have already spoken of his reforms in his southern kingdom. It was
his purpose to introduce similar reforms into the government of Germany,
abolishing the feudal system, and creating a centralized and organized
state, with a well-regulated system of finance. But ideas such as these
were much too far in advance of the age. State and church alike opposed
them, and Frederick's intelligent views did not long survive him.
History must have its evolution, political systems their growth, and the
development of institutions has never been much hastened or checked by
any man's whip or curb.

In 1781, when the tomb of Frederick was opened, centuries after his
death, the institutions he had advocated were but in process of being
adopted in Europe. The body of the great emperor was found within the
mausoleum, wrapped in embroidered robes, the feet booted and spurred,
the imperial crown on its head, in its hand the ball and sceptre, on its
finger a costly emerald. For five centuries and more Frederick had
slept in state, awaiting the verdict of time on the ideas in defence of
which his life had been passed in battle. The verdict had been given,
the ideas had grown into institutions, time had vouchsafed the
far-seeing emperor his revenge.




_THE FALL OF THE GHIBELLINES._


The death of Frederick II., in 1250, was followed by a series of
misfortunes to his descendants, so tragical as to form a story full of
pathetic interest. His son Enzio, a man of remarkable beauty and valor,
celebrated as a Minnesinger, and of unusual intellectual qualities, had
been taken prisoner, as we have already told, by the Bolognese, and
condemned by them to perpetual imprisonment, despite the prayers of his
father and the rich ransom offered. For twenty-two years he continued a
tenant of a dungeon, and in this gloomy scene of death in life survived
all the sons and grandsons of his father, every one of whom perished by
poison, the sword, or the axe of the executioner. It is this dread story
of the fate of the Hohenstauffen imperial house which we have now to
tell.

No sooner had Frederick expired than the enemies of his house arose on
every side. Conrad IV., his eldest son and successor, found Germany so
filled with his foes that he was forced to take refuge in Italy, where
his half-brother, Manfred, Prince of Taranto, ceded to him the
sovereignty of the Italian realm, and lent him his aid to secure it. The
royal brothers captured Capua and Naples, where Conrad signalized his
success by placing a bridle in the mouth of an antique colossal horse's
head, the emblem of the city. This insult made the inhabitants his
implacable foes. His success was but temporary. He died suddenly, as
also did his younger brother Henry, poisoned by his half-brother
Manfred, who succeeded to the kingship of the South. But with the
Guelphs in power in Germany, and the pope his bitter foe in Italy, he
was utterly unable to establish his claim, and was forced to cede all
lower Italy, except Taranto, to the pontiff. But a new and less
implacable pope being elected, the fortunes of Manfred suddenly changed,
and he was unanimously proclaimed king at Palermo in 1258.

But the misfortunes of his house were to pursue him to the end. In
northern Italy, the Guelphs were everywhere triumphant. Ezzelino, one of
Frederick's ablest generals, was defeated, wounded, and taken prisoner.
He soon after died. His brother Alberich was cruelly murdered, being
dragged to death at a horse's tail. The other Ghibelline chiefs were
similarly butchered, the horrible scenes of bloodshed so working on the
feelings of the susceptible Italians that many of them did penance at
the grave of Alberich, arrayed in sackcloth. From this circumstance
arose the sect of the Flagellants, who ran through the streets,
lamenting, praying, and wounding themselves with thongs, as an atonement
for the sins of the world.

In southern Italy, Manfred for a while was successful. In 1259 he
married Helena, the daughter of Michael of Cyprus and Ætolia, a maiden
of seventeen years, and famed far and wide for her loveliness. So
beautiful were the bridal pair, and such were the attractions of their
court, which, as in Frederick's time, was the favorite resort of
distinguished poets and lovely women, that a bard of the times declared,
"Paradise has once more appeared upon earth."

Manfred, like his father and his brother Enzio, was a poet, being
classed among the Minnesingers. His marriage gave him the alliance of
Greece, and the marriage of Constance, his daughter by a former wife, to
Peter of Aragon, gained him the friendship of Spain. Strengthened by
these alliances, he was able to send aid to the Ghibellines in Lombardy,
who again became victorious.

The Guelphs, alarmed at Manfred's growing power, now raised a Frenchman
to the papal throne, who induced Charles of Anjou, the brother of the
French monarch, to strike for the crown of southern Italy. Charles, a
gloomy, cold-blooded and cruel prince, gladly accepted the pope's
suggestions, and followed by a powerful body of French knights and
soldiers of fortune, set sail for Naples in 1266. Manfred had unluckily
lost the whole of his fleet in a storm, and was not able to oppose this
threatening invasion, which landed in Italy in his despite.

Nor was he more fortunate with his land army. The clergy, in the
interest of the Guelph faction, tampered with his soldiers and sowed
treason in his camp. No sooner had Charles landed, than a mountain pass
intrusted to the defence of Riccardo di Caseta was treacherously
abandoned, and the French army allowed to advance unmolested as far as
Benevento, where the two armies met.

In the battle that followed, Manfred defended himself gallantly, but,
despite all his efforts, was worsted, and threw himself desperately into
the thick of the fight, where he fell, covered with wounds. The bigoted
victor refused him honorable burial, on the score of heresy, but the
French soldiers, nobler-hearted than their leader, and touched by the
beauty and valor of their unfortunate opponent, cast each of them a
stone upon his body, which was thus buried under a mound which the
natives still know as the "rock of roses."

The wife and children of Manfred met with a pitiable fate. On learning
of the sad death of her husband Helena sought safety in flight, with her
daughter Beatrice and her three infant sons, Henry, Frederick, and
Anselino; but she was betrayed to Charles, who threw her into a dungeon,
in which she soon languished and died. Of her children, her daughter
Beatrice was afterwards rescued by Peter of Aragon, who exchanged for
her a son of Charles of Anjou, whom he held prisoner; but the three boys
were given over to the cruellest fate. Immured in a narrow dungeon, and
loaded with chains, they remained thus half-naked, ill-fed, and untaught
for the period of thirty-one years. Not until 1297 were they released
from their chains and allowed to be visited by a priest and a physician.
Charles of Anjou, meanwhile, filled with the spirit of cruelty and
ambition, sought to destroy every vestige of the Hohenstauffen rule in
southern Italy, the scene of Frederick's long and lustrous reign.

The death of Manfred had not extinguished all the princes of Frederick's
house. There remained another, Conradin, son of Conrad IV., Duke of
Swabia, a youthful prince to whom had descended some of the intellectual
powers of his noted grand-sire. He had an inseparable friend, Frederick,
son of the Margrave of Baden, of his own age, and like him enthusiastic
and imaginative, their ardent fancies finding vent in song. One of
Conradin's ballads is still extant.

As the young prince grew older, the seclusion to which he was subjected
by his guardian, Meinhard, Count von Görtz, became so irksome to him
that he gladly accepted a proposal from the Italian Ghibellines to put
himself at their head. In 1267 he set out, in company with Frederick,
and with a following of some ten thousand men, and crossed the Alps to
Lombardy, where he met with a warm welcome at Verona by the Ghibelline
chiefs.

Treachery accompanied him, however, in the presence of his guardian
Meinhard and Louis of Bavaria, who persuaded him to part with his German
possessions for a low price, and then deserted him, followed by the
greater part of the Germans. Conradin was left with but three thousand
men.

The Italians proved more faithful. Verona raised him an army; Pisa
supplied him a large fleet; the Moors of Luceria took up arms in his
cause; even Rome rose in his favor, and drove out the pope, who
retreated to Viterbo. For the time being the Ghibelline cause was in the
ascendant. Conradin marched unopposed to Rome, at whose gates he was met
by a procession of beautiful girls, bearing flowers and instruments of
music, who conducted him to the capitol. His success on land was matched
by a success at sea, his fleet gaining a signal victory over that of the
French, and burning a great number of their ships.

So far all had gone well with the youthful heir of the Hohenstauffens.
Henceforth all was to go ill. Conradin marched from Rome to lower Italy,
where he encountered the French army, under Charles, at Scurcola, drove
them back, and broke into their camp. Assured of victory, the Germans
grew careless, dispersing through the camp in search of booty, while
some of them even refreshed themselves by bathing.

While thus engaged, the French reserve, who had watched their movements,
suddenly fell upon them and completely put them to rout. Conradin and
Frederick, after fighting bravely, owed their escape to the fleetness of
their steeds. They reached the sea at Astura, boarded a vessel, and were
about setting sail for Pisa, when they were betrayed into the hands of
their pursuers, taken prisoners, and carried back to Charles of Anjou.

They had fallen into fatal hands; Charles was not the man to consider
justice or honor in dealing with a Hohenstauffen. He treated Conradin
as a rebel against himself, under the claim that he was the only
legitimate king, and sentenced both the princes, then but sixteen years
of age, to be publicly beheaded in the market-place at Naples.

Conradin was playing at chess in prison when the news of this unjust
sentence was brought to him. He calmly listened to it, with the courage
native to his race. On October 22, 1268, he, with Frederick and his
other companions, was conducted to the scaffold erected in the
market-place, passing through a throng of which even the French
contingent looked on the spectacle with indignation. So greatly were
they wrought up, indeed, by the outrage, that Robert, Earl of Flanders,
Charles's son-in-law, drew his sword, and cut down the officer
commissioned to read in public the sentence of death.

"Wretch!" he cried, as he dealt the blow, "how darest thou condemn such
a great and excellent knight?"

Conradin met his fate with unyielding courage, saying, in his address to
the people,--

"I cite my judge before the highest tribunal. My blood, shed on this
spot, shall cry to heaven for vengeance. Nor do I esteem my Swabians and
Bavarians, my Germans, so low as not to trust that this stain on the
honor of the German nation will be washed out by them in French blood."

Then, throwing his glove to the ground, he charged him who should raise
it to bear it to Peter, King of Aragon, to whom, as his nearest
relative, he bequeathed all his claims. The glove was raised by Henry,
Truchsess von Waldberg, who found in it the seal ring of the unfortunate
wearer. Thence-forth he bore in his arms the three black lions of the
Stauffen.

In a minute more the fatal axe of the executioner descended, and the
head of the last heir of the Hohenstauffens rolled upon the scaffold.
His friend, Frederick, followed him to death, nor was the bloodthirsty
Charles satisfied until almost every Ghibelline in his hands had fallen
by the hand of the executioner.

Enzio, the unfortunate son of Frederick who was held prisoner by the
Bolognese, was involved in the fate of his unhappy nephew. On learning
of the arrival of Conradin in Italy he made an effort to escape from
prison, which would have been successful but for an unlucky accident. He
had arranged to conceal himself in a cask, which was to be borne out of
the prison by his friends, but by an unfortunate chance one of his long,
golden locks fell out of the air-hole which had been made in the side of
the cask, and revealed the stratagem to his keepers.

During his earlier imprisonment Enzio had been allowed some alleviation,
his friends being permitted to visit him and solace him in his
seclusion; but after this effort to escape he was closely confined, some
say, in an iron cage, until his death in 1272.

Thus ended the royal race of the Hohenstauffen, a race marked by
unusual personal beauty, rich poetical genius, and brilliant warlike
achievements, and during whose period of power the mediæval age and its
institutions attained their highest development.

As for the ruthless Charles of Anjou, he retained Apulia, but lost his
possessions in Sicily through an event which has become famous as the
"Sicilian Vespers." The insolence and outrages of the French had so
exasperated the Sicilians that, on the night of March 30, 1282, a
general insurrection broke out in this island, the French being
everywhere assassinated. Constance, the grand-daughter of their old
ruler, and Peter of Aragon, her husband, were proclaimed their
sovereigns by the Sicilians, and Charles, the son of Charles of Anjou,
fell into their hands.

Constance was generous to the captive prince, and on hearing him remark
that he was happy to die on a Friday, the day on which Christ suffered,
she replied,--

"For love of him who suffered on this day I will grant thee thy life."

He was afterwards exchanged for Beatrice, the daughter of the unhappy
Helena, whose sons, the last princes of the Hohenstauffen race, died in
the prison in which they had lived since infancy.




_THE TRIBUNAL OF THE HOLY VEHM._


The ideas of law and order in mediæval Germany were by no means what we
now understand by those terms. The injustice of the strong and the
suffering of the weak were the rule; and men of noble lineage did not
hesitate to turn their castles into dens of thieves. The title "robber
baron," which many of them bore, sufficiently indicates their mode of
life, and turbulence and outrage prevailed throughout the land.

But wrong did not flourish with complete impunity; right had not
entirely vanished; justice still held its sword, and at times struck
swift and deadly blows that filled with terror the wrong-doer, and gave
some assurance of protection to those too weak for self-defence. It was
no unusual circumstance to behold, perhaps in the vicinity of some
baronial castle, perhaps near some town or manorial residence, a group
of peasants gazing upwards with awed but triumphant eyes; the spectacle
that attracted their attention being the body of a man hanging from the
limb of a tree above their heads.

Such might have been supposed to be some act of private vengeance or
bold outrage, but the exulting lookers-on knew better. For they
recognized the body, perhaps as that of the robber baron of the
neighboring castle, perhaps that of some other bold defier of law and
justice, while in the ground below the corpse appeared an object that
told a tale of deep meaning to their experienced eyes. This was a knife,
thrust to the hilt in the earth. As they gazed upon it they muttered the
mysterious words, "_Vehm gericht_," and quickly dispersed, none daring
to touch the corpse or disturb the significant signal of the vengeance
of the executioners.

But as they walked away they would converse in low tones of a dread
secret tribunal, which held its mysterious meetings in remote places,
caverns of the earth or the depths of forests, at the dread hour of
midnight, its members being sworn by frightful oaths to utter secrecy.
Before these dark tribunals were judged, present or absent, the
wrong-doers of the land, and the sentence of the secret Vehm once given,
there was no longer safety for the condemned. The agents of vengeance
would be put upon his track, while the secret of his death sentence was
carefully kept from his ears. The end was sure to be a sudden seizure, a
rope to the nearest tree, a writhing body, the signal knife of the
executioners of the Vehm, silence and mystery.

Such was the visible outcome of the workings of this dreaded court, of
whose sessions and secrets the common people of the land had exaggerated
conceptions, but whose sudden and silent deeds in the interest of
justice went far to repress crime in that lawless age. We have seen the
completion of the sentence, let us attend a session of this mysterious
court.

Seeking the Vehmic tribunal, we do not find ourselves in a midnight
forest, nor in a dimly-lighted cavern or mysterious vault, as peasant
traditions would tell us, but in the hall of some ancient castle, or on
a hill-top, under the shade of lime-trees, and with an open view of the
country for miles around. Here, on the seat of justice, presides the
graf or count of the district, before him the sword, the symbol of
supreme justice, its handle in the form of the cross, while beside it
lies the _Wyd_, or cord, the sign of his power of life or death. Around
him are seated the _Schöffen_, or ministers of justice, bareheaded and
without weapons, in complete silence, none being permitted to speak
except when called upon in the due course of proceedings.

The court being solemnly opened, the person cited to appear before it
steps forward, unarmed and accompanied by two sureties, if he has any.
The complaint against him is stated by the judge, and he is called upon
to clear himself by oath taken on the cross of the sword. If he takes
it, he is free. "He shall then," says an ancient work, "take a farthing
piece, throw it at the feet of the court, turn round and go his way.
Whoever attacks or touches him, has then, which all freemen know, broken
the king's peace."

This was the ancient custom, but in later times witnesses were examined,
and the proceedings were more in conformity with those of modern
courts. If sentence of death was passed, the criminal was hanged at
once on the nearest tree. The minor punishments were exile and fine. If
the defendant refused to appear, after being three times cited, the
sentence of the Vehm was pronounced against him, a dreadful sentence,
ending in,--

"And I hereby curse his flesh and his blood; and may his body never
receive burial, but may it be borne away by the wind, and may the ravens
and crows, and wild birds of prey, consume and destroy him. And I
adjudge his neck to the rope, and his body to be devoured by the birds
and beasts of the air, sea, and land; but his soul I commend to our dear
Lord, if He will receive it."

These words spoken, the judge cast forth the rope beyond the limits of
the court, and wrote the name of the condemned in the book of blood,
calling on the princes and nobles of the land, and all the inhabitants
of the empire, to aid in fulfilling this sentence upon the criminal,
without regard to relationship or any ties of kindred or affection
whatever.

The condemned man was now left to the work of the ministers of justice,
the Schöffen of the court. Whoever should shelter or even warn him was
himself to be brought before the tribunal. The members of the court were
bound by a terrible oath, to be enforced by death, not to reveal the
sentence of the Holy Vehm, except to one of the initiated, and not to
warn the culprit, even if he was a father or a brother. Wherever the
condemned was found, whether in a house, a street, the high-road, or the
forest, he was seized and hanged to the nearest tree or post, if the
servants of the court could lay hands on him. As a sign that he was
executed by the Holy Vehm, and not slain by robbers, nothing was taken
from his body, and the knife was thrust into the ground beneath him. We
may further say that any criminal taken in the act by the Vehmic
officers of justice did not need to be brought before the court, but
might be hanged on the spot, with the ordinary indications that he was a
victim to the secret tribunal.

A citation to appear before the Vehm was executed by two Schöffen, who
bore the letter of the presiding count to the accused. If they could not
reach him because he was living in a city or a fortress which they could
not safely enter, they were authorized to execute their mission
otherwise. They might approach the castle in the night, stick the
letter, enclosing a farthing piece, in the panel of the castle gate, cut
off three chips from the gate as evidence to the count that they had
fulfilled their mission, and call out to the sentinel on leaving that
they had deposited there a letter for his lord. If the accused had no
regular dwelling-place, and could not be met, he was summoned at four
different cross-roads, where was left at the east, west, north, and
south points a summons, each containing the significant farthing coin.

It must not be supposed that the administration of justice in Germany
was confined to this Vehmic court. There were open courts of justice
throughout the land. But what were known as _Freistuhls,_ or free
courts, were confined to the duchy of Westphalia. Some of the sessions
of these courts were open, some closed, the Vehm constituting their
secret tribunal.

Though complaints might be brought and persons cited to appear from
every part of Germany, a free court could only be held on Westphalian
ground, on the red earth, as it was entitled. Even the emperor could not
establish a free court outside of Westphalia. When the Emperor Wenceslas
tried to establish one in Bohemia, the counts of the empire decreed that
any one who should take part in it would incur the penalty of death. The
members of these courts consisted of Schöffen, nominated by the graf, or
presiding judge, and composed of ordinary members and the Wissenden or
Witan, the higher membership. The initiation of these members was a
singular and impressive ceremony. It could only take place upon the red
earth, or within the boundaries of Westphalia. Bareheaded and ungirt,
the candidate was conducted before the tribunal, and strictly questioned
as to his qualifications to membership. He must be free-born, of
Teutonic ancestry, and clear of any accusation of crime.

This settled, a deep and solemn oath of fidelity was administered, the
candidate swearing by the Holy Law to guard the secrets of the Holy Vehm
from wife and child, father and mother, sister and brother, fire and
water, every creature on whom rain falls or sun shines, everything
between earth and heaven; to tell to the tribunal all offences known to
him, and not to be deterred therefrom by love or hate, gold, silver, or
precious stones. He was now intrusted with the ver

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