Historical Miniatures

“Is it? How do you prove that?”

“From the third book of Moses, the twentieth and twenty-first chapters: ‘If any one taketh his brother’s wife, it is evil.’”

“Yes, but in the fifth book of Moses, five and twentieth chapter, fifth verse, it is commanded.”

“What, in Christ’s name, are you saying?”

“Certainly it is: ‘If brothers dwell together, and one die without children, his brother shall take his wife and raise up seed to his brother.”

“Damnation! This cursed book.”

“Moreover: Abraham married his half-sister; Jacob married two sisters: Moses’ father married his aunt.”

“That is the Bible, is it? Thank you! Then I prefer the Decretals and the Councils. The Pope must dissolve the marriage.”

“Is it then to be dissolved?”

“Didn’t you know? Yes, it is. If Julius II could grant a dispensation, Clement VII can grant an absolution.”

“It is not just towards the Queen.”

“The country demands it—the kingdom—the nation! The King’s conscience....”

“Oh! is it the fair Anne?”

“No, not she!”

“Is it....”

“Don’t ask any more.”

“Then I answer, Margaret of Valois.”

“I give no answer at all, but I am not responsible for your life, if you talk out of season! The Bible won’t help you there.”

“It would be a useful reform, if we could cancel the Old Testament as a Jewish book.”

“But we cannot cancel the Psalms of David, which are our only Church canticles. Luther himself has taken his hymns from the Psalter, and ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’ from the Proverbs of Solomon; he has borrowed the melody from the Graduale Romanum.”

“But we must relegate the law of Moses to the Apocrypha, otherwise we are Pharisees and Jewish Christians. What have we to do with circumcision, the paschal lamb, and levitical marriage? Wait till I am Pope.”

“Must we really wait so long?”

“Hush! The noon-bell is ringing. Do not let us neglect our duties. The flesh must have its due, in order not to burn. Come with me to Westminster; then you can go on to Chelsea afterwards.”

Henry VIII was twelve years old when he was engaged to the widow of his brother Arthur. At fourteen he protested against the marriage, which was distasteful to him, but at eighteen he married Katherine, the aunt of the Emperor Charles V. Cardinal Wolsey would have gladly brought about a divorce, for he wished for a successor to the throne in order to keep the power in his own hands. This power he had misused to such an extent that the fact that there was such a thing as Parliament had almost been forgotten. Wolsey wished to have the King married to a powerful princess, and thought for a time of Margaret of Valois, but under no circumstances did he wish to take a wife for him from the English nobility. But when he aroused the King’s conscience with regard to his marriage with Katherine, he had let loose a storm which he could not control, much less guide in the desired direction, for the King’s passion for Anne Boleyn was now irresistible.

Then the Cardinal had recourse to plotting, and this brought about his downfall. For six years negotiations went on, and the King was true to Anne. He wrote letters which can still be read and which display a great and honourable love. Most of them were signed “Henry Tudor, Rex, your true and constant servant,” and began “My mistress and friend.” Anne answered coldly, but her love to Percy was nipt in the bud by a marriage being arranged for him. After all the learned authorities had been consulted, and much controversy had taken place regarding the third and the fifth books of Moses, the Pope sent a Nuncio with secret instructions to get rid of the whole matter by postponing it. But Henry did not yield, though his feelings for Katherine, whom he respected, cost him a terrible struggle. The trial began in the chapter-house of Blackfriars in the presence of the King and Queen. But Katherine stood up, threw herself at the King’s feet, and found words which touched the tyrant. She challenged the right of the court to try her, appealed to the Pope, and returned to Bridewell. It is there that we find her in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, singing sorrowfully a beautiful song:

    “Orpheus with his lute made trees    And the mountain tops that freeze    Bow themselves when he did sing.”

The divorce proceedings had gone on for some years; people had sided alternately with the King and with the Queen, and often sympathised with both, when suddenly rumour announced the outbreak of a pestilence.

It was not the Black Death or the boil-pest, but the English “sweating-sickness.” This hitherto unknown disease had first broken out in the same year when the wars of the Roses ended on the field of Bosworth; but it was entirely confined to England, passing neither to Scotland nor Ireland. It was so mysteriously connected with English blood, that in Calais only Englishmen and no Frenchmen were attacked by it. Since then the sickness had twice appeared among the English. Now it returned and broke out in London.

The King, who had said that “no one but God could separate him from Anne,” was alarmed, and did not know what to think—whether it was a warning or a trial. The symptoms of the sickness were perspiration and a desire to sleep; but if one yielded to the desire, one might be dead in three hours. In London the citizens died like flies: Sir Thomas More lost a daughter; the Cardinal, who had come to preside at Hampton Court, had his horses put to the carriage again, and hurried away. Finally one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting was attacked. Then the King lost all presence of mind, sent Anne home to her father, and fled himself from place to place, from Waltham to Hunsdon. He reconciled himself to Katherine, lived in a tower without a servant, prepared his will, and was ready for death.

Then there came the news that Anne herself had been seized by the sickness. The King had lost his chamberlain, and now wrote letter after letter. Then he fled again to Hatfield and Tittenhanger.

But Anne recovered, the pestilence ceased, and Henry resumed the divorce proceedings. The Cardinal and the Nuncio wavered, and in the seventh year the King lost patience. He had now found the man he sought for. Sir Thomas More would not declare Katherine’s marriage null. The new man was Thomas Cranmer, who hated the Pope and the monks, and dreamt of a free England—free, that is, from Rome. The King and his new friend worked in secret at something which Cardinal Wolsey did not know, and one day the preliminaries were settled, the papers were in order, and the mine exploded.

The King’s galley pushed off from the Tower. It did not look so brilliant as the Cardinal’s had once been. Cranmer sat by the King.

“I shall not sleep in the Tower any more,” said the King. “I am leaving it now, Thomas; this is my removal. I move to Whitehall, for that will be the name of York Palace; because I, as a Lancastrian, hate York, and because my white rose shall dwell in my castle. Now, you will sit in the Tower, my hell-dog! To think that this Satan of a Cardinal has deceived me for six years. What troubles his plotting has caused me! Six years! I have always hated the man, but I needed him, for he was clever.”

The King glanced at the north side of the Thames. “And I have lived in the city which has not been my own; Rome possesses a third of it. I have lived like a beggar, but now—London is mine. The Temple, St. James’s, Whitehall, Westminster to begin with; then the rest.”

The galley reached York Palace, and the King hastened in with his body-guard, without giving the password or answering the chamberlain’s questions. He went straight to the Cardinal’s room, and laid some letters before him: “Read! you snake! your lying letters behind my back.”

The Cardinal’s face seemed to shrink to half its size, and resembled a death’s-head. He did not, however, fall on his knees, but raised his head for the last time: “I appeal to the Pope.”

“There is no Pope in England! Nay, I am the Pope, and therefore you are no longer Cardinal! Accordingly, I have granted myself a dispensation, and married Anne Boleyn yesterday! In a few days I shall have her crowned. And then we will dwell here! Here! But you will live in the Tower. Go, or I throw you out.”

Thus England became free; a third part of London, which had belonged to the monks, reverted to the Crown, and afterwards the whole country followed.

The King had obtained his beloved Anne, but after three years she was beheaded, for having dishonoured the King by adultery. After that the King married four times. Cardinal Wolsey died before he came to the scaffold; Sir Thomas More was beheaded; and Cromwell, who at first defended Wolsey, but afterwards became a “malleus monachorum,” was also beheaded. All this seems very confused and tragic, but from this confusion a free, independent, and powerful England emerged. When the Germans were preparing to cast off the yoke of Rome in the Thirty Years’ War, England had already completed her task.

THE WHITE MOUNTAIN

While the peace negotiations were being carried on in Osnabrück and Münster, the Thirty Years’ War still flamed up here and there, more perhaps to keep the troops in practice, to provide support for the soldiers, and to have booty at command, than to defend any faith or the adherents of it.

All talk of religion had ceased, and the powers now played with their cards exposed. Protestant Saxony, the first State to support Lutheranism, worked in conjunction with Catholic Austria, and Catholic France with Protestant Sweden. In the battle of Wolfenbüttel, 1641, French Catholics fought against German Catholics, the latter of whom, however, later on carried the body of Johan Baner in their ranks.

The Swedish Generals thought little of peace, but when the negotiations dragged on to the seventh year, they thought the time had come to have some regard to it. “He who takes something, has something,” Wrangel wrote to his son.

Hans Christoph von Königsmarck, who continued Johan Baner’s traditions, had lately been with him at Zusmarshausen, and was now sent eastward in the direction of Bohemia. Since, besides cavalry, he had only five hundred foot-soldiers, he did not know what to do, but wandered about at random, and looked for booty. But nothing was to be found, for Johan Baner had already laid the district waste.

“Then they marched farther,” like Xenophon, and found the woods which bordered the highways’ cut down; the fields were covered with weeds, and in the trees hung corpses; the churches had been burnt, but watch was kept in the churchyards in order that the corpses should not be eaten.

One night Königsmarck himself was leading a small detachment in search of provisions. They rode into a wood where they saw a light burning. But it was only a red glow as if from a charcoal pile or a smithy. They dismounted from their horses, and stole on foot to the place. When they reached it, they heard voices singing a “Miserere” in low tones, and they saw men, women, and children sitting round an oven, the last remains of a village.

Königsmark went forward alone, and, hidden behind a young fir-tree, he beheld a spectacle.... He had seen such sights before, but not under such circumstances. In an iron scoop on the oven some game was being roasted; it might have been an enormous hare, but was not. Like a hare, it was very spindle-shanked and lean over back and breast; only the hinder-parts seemed well developed; the head was placed, between the two fore-paws.... No! they were not fore-paws, but two five-fingered hands, and round the neck a charred rope was knotted. It was a man who had been hung, and whom they had cut down in order to eat him.

The General was not squeamish by nature, and had in his life passed through many experiences, but this went beyond all bounds. He was at first angry, and wished to interrupt the cannibals’ meal, but when he saw the little children sitting on their mothers’ knees with tufts of grass in their mouths, he was seized with compassion. The cannibals themselves looked like corpses or madmen, and the eyes and expectations of all were fastened on the oven. At the same time they sang “Lord, have mercy,” and prayed for pardon for the grievous sin which they were obliged to commit. “What does it really matter to me?” said the General to himself; “I only wish I had not seen it.” He returned to his men, and they marched on.

The wood became thinner, and they came to an open place where was something resembling a heap of stones, out of which there arose a single pillar. In the half-twilight which reigned they could not see distinctly, but on the pillar something seemed to be moving. The “something” resembled a man, but had only one arm.

“It is not a man, for he would have two arms,” said one of the soldiers.

“It would be strange, if a man could not have an arm missing.”

“Strange indeed! Perhaps it is a pillar-saint.”

“Give him a charge of powder, and we shall soon see.”

At the rattle of arms which was now heard there, rose a howl so terrible and multitudinous, that no one thought it came from the pillar-saint. At the same time the apparent heap of stones moved and became a living mass.

“They are wolves! Aim! Fire!”

A volley was fired, and the wolves fled. Königsmarck rode through the smoke, and now saw a one-armed Imperialist standing on the chimney, which was all that was left of a burnt cottage. “Come down, and let us look at you,” he said.

The maimed man clambered down with his single arm, showing incredible agility. “We ought to have him to scale the wall with a storming-party,” said the General to himself.

Then the examination commenced.

“Are you alone?”

“Alone now—thanks to your grace, for the wolves have been round me for six hours.”

“What is your name? Where do you come from? Whither do you wish to go?”

“My name is Odowalsky; I come from Vienna; and I shall go to hell, if I don’t get help.”

“Will you go with us?”

“Yes, as sure as I live! With anybody, if only I can live. I have lost my arm; I was given a house; they burnt it, and threw me out on the highway—with wife and child, of course!”

“Listen; do you know the way to Prague?”

“I can find the way to Prague, to the Hradschin and the Imperial treasure-house, Wallenstein’s palace, the royal castle, Wallenstein’s dancing-hall, and the Loretto Convent. There there is multum plus Plurimum.”

“What is your rank in the army?”

“First Lieutenant.”

“That is something different. Come with me, and you shall have a horse, Mr. First Lieutenant, and then let us see what you are good for.”

Odowalsky received a horse, and the General bade him ride beside him. He talked confidentially with him the whole night till they again rejoined the main body of the army.

Some days later Königsmarck stood with his little troop on the White Mountain left of Prague—“Golden Prague,” as it was called. It was late in the evening of the fifteenth of June. He had Odowalsky at his side, and seemed to be particularly good friends with him. But the troop knew nothing of the General’s designs, and, as they saw that he went towards Prague, his officers were astounded, for the town was well fortified, and defended by a strong body of armed citizens.

“One can at any rate look at the show,” Königsmarck answered to all objections; “that costs nothing.”

They halted on the White Mountain, without, however, pitching a camp. They saw nothing of the beautiful town, for it was dark, but they heard the church and convent bells.

“This, then, is the White Mountain, where the war broke out just thirty years ago,” said Königsmarck to Odowalsky.

“Yes,” answered the Austrian. “It was then the Bohemian revolt broke out, your King Frederick V of the Palatinate was slain here, and there was great rejoicing at his death.”

“If you forget who you are, forget not who I am.”

“We will not quarrel about something that happened so long ago! But, as a matter of fact, the revolt was crushed, and the Protestants had to withdraw. What did they get by their trouble—the poor Bohemians? Hussites, Taborites, Utraquists sacrificed their lives, but Bohemia is still Catholic! It was all folly!”

“Do you belong to the Roman Church, First Lieutenant?”

“I don’t belong to any Church at all; I belong to the army. And now we will take Prague with a coup de main.”

So it fell out. At midnight the foot-soldiers clambered over the wall, threw the sentinels into the moat, cut down the guards at the gates, and took that side of the town.

For three days the part of the city which lay on the left bank of the Moldau was plundered, and Königsmarck is said to have sent five waggons laden with gold and silver to the north-west through Germany, as his own share of the spoil. Odowalsky received six thousand thalers for his trouble, and later on was raised to the Swedish House of Peers with the title of “Von Streitberg.”

But the right bank had not been captured. It was defended by ten thousand citizens, assisted by students, monks, and Jews. From ancient times there had been a large Jewish colony in Prague; the Jews were said to have escaped thither direct from Jerusalem during the last German crusade, and for that reason the island in the Moldau is still called Jerusalem. On this occasion the Jews so distinguished themselves that they received as a token of honour from the Emperor Ferdinand III a great flag, which can be still seen in their synagogue. Königsmarck could not take the Old Town, but had to send for help to Wittenberg. The latter actually plundered Tabor and Budweis, but Prague, which had been plundered, did not attract him. Then the Count Palatine Karl Gustav had to come, and formally besieged the eastern portion of the town.

Königsmarck dwelt in the Castle, where he could see the old hall of the States-General, from the window of which Count Thurn had thrown the Imperial governors Martiniz and Slavata; the Protestants say that they fell on a dungheap, but the Catholics maintain that it was an elder-bush.

Meanwhile Count Karl Gustav, who was a cousin of Frederick V, had as little success before Prague as the former. He became ill, and was sure that he had been poisoned. But he recovered, and was about to be reinforced by Wrangel, when news arrived that the Peace of Westphalia had been concluded.

With that the Thirty Years’ War was at an end. Sweden received two million thalers and some places of importance; these were enfeoffed to Germany, and in exchange Sweden had three votes in the German Reichstag.

But Germany’s population was only a quarter of what it had been, and, while it had formerly been one State under the Emperor, it was now split up into three hundred little States. However, the liberty of faith affirmed in the Confession of Augsburg, 1555, was recovered, and extended to the reformed districts. It was dearly bought, but with it North Germany had also obtained freedom from Rome, and that could not be too dearly purchased.

Out of chaos comes creation and new creation. From the Germanic chaos emerged North Germany, the seed of which was Brandenberg, later on developing into Prussia, and finally the German Empire, which received the imperial crown at Versailles, but not from the hands of Rome.

THE GREAT CZAR

On the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland lay the little village Strelna, halfway between Petersburg and the half-completed Peterhof. At the end of the village, on the edge of the Strelka stream, stood a simple country-house under oaks and pines. It was painted green and red, and the window-shutters were still fastened, for it was only four o’clock on a summer morning.

The Gulf of Finland lay smooth under the rays of the rising sun. A Dutch trading vessel, which had wished to enter the harbour and reach the Admiralty House, now furled its sails and dropped anchor. It carried a flag at its main-top which hung down idly.

Near the red and green country-house stood an ancient lime-tree with a split trunk; in the cleft a wooden platform with a railing had been fitted, and a flight of steps led up to this arbour. In this early morning hour there sat a man in the tree at an unpainted, unsteady table, writing letters. The table was covered with papers, but there was still room for a clock without a glass, a compass, a case of drawing instruments, and a large bell of bronze.

The man sat in his shirt-sleeves; he wore darned stockings which were turned down, and large shoes; his head seemed incredibly large, but was not so in reality; his neck was like that of an ox, and his body that of a giant; the hand which was now writing was coarse, and stained with tar; he wrote carelessly, with lines somewhat slanting, but quickly. The letters were short and to the point, with no introductions and no conclusions, merely signed “Pe ter,” the name divided in two, as though it had been split by the heavy hand which wrote it.

There were probably about a million men bearing that name in Russia; but this Peter was the only one of importance, and everyone recognised the signature.

The lime-tree was alive with bees, the little Strelka brook bubbled and fretted like a tea-kettle, and the sun rose gloriously; its rays fell between the leaves of the lime-tree, and threw patches of light on the strange face of one of the strangest and most incomprehensible men who have ever lived.

Just now this handsome head, with its short hair, looked like that of a wild boar; and when the writer licked his goose-quill like a school-boy, he showed teeth and a tongue like those of a memorial lion. Sometimes his features were convulsed with pain, as though he were being tortured or crucified. But then he took a new sheet, and began a new letter; his pen ran on; his mouth smiled till his eyes disappeared, and the terrible man looked roguish. Still another sheet, and a little note which was certainly directed to a lady; now the face changed to that of a satyr, melted so to speak, into harmonious lines, and finally exploded in a loud laugh which was simply cynical.

His morning correspondence was now ended. The Czar had written fifty letters. He left them unsealed. Kathia, his wife, would collect and fasten them.

The giant stretched himself, rose with difficulty, and cast a glance over the bay. With his spy-glass he saw Petersburg and his fleet, the Fort of Kronstadt, which had been commenced, and finally discovered the trading-vessel. “How did that come in without saluting?” he thought, “and dare to anchor immediately before my house!”

He rang, and a valet-de-chambre came at once, running from the row of tents which stood concealed behind the pines-trees, and where both soldiers and servants lodged.

“Take five men in a boat,” he ordered, “and hail that brig! Can you see what country it belongs to?”

“It is Dutch, your Majesty!”

“Dutch! Bring the captain here, dead or alive. At once! On the spot! But first my tea!”

“The household is asleep, most gracious lord.”

“Then wake it up, you ass! Knock at the shutters! Break the door in! Asleep in broad daylight!”

He rang again. A second servant appeared. “Tea! and brandy—plenty of brandy!”

The servants ran, the household was aroused, and the Czar occupied the interval by making notes on slate tablets. When he became impatient, he got down, and knocked at all the shutters with his stick. Then a voice was heard from within: “Wait a moment.”

“No! that I won’t; I am not born to wait. Hurry! or I will set the house on fire!”

He went into his gardens, cast a glance at his medicinal plants, plucked up some weeds, and watered here and there. He went into the cattle-sheds, and looked at some merino sheep which he himself had introduced. Here he found a trave which had been broken; he took a saw and plane, and mended it. He threw some oats in the manger of his favourite trotting-horse. He drove for the most part, when he did not go on foot; riding seemed to him unworthy of a seaman, and it was as a seaman that the Czar chiefly wished to be regarded. Then he went into the lathe-shop, sat for a while on the turning-bench, and worked. At the window stood a table with a copper-engraver’s tools; with the graving-tool he drew some lines which were wanting in the map plate. He was about to proceed to the smithy, when a woman’s voice called him under the lime-tree.

On the platform stood his wife the Czarina, in her morning dress. She had massive limbs and large feet; her face was stout and plain, her eyes were not level, but had a steady expression.