The makers of history.—The flight from Schweinfurth.

Happy times, and prosperous people, it has been said, afford but small materials for history. But great events, which were to shape the history of Europe for centuries to come, were convulsing Germany in those middle years of the sixteenth century. And the amount of misery suffered by the hod–men and day–labourers in this history–building business, was in proportion to the greatness of the work in hand. That "great man" Charles V. was a notable provider of "fine subjects" for history. Poor, gouty, narrow–minded specimen of humanity as he was, rising up early, and late taking rest, at his weary kingcraft and history–making, with a very unsound mind in a scarcely sounder body; with "vast views," analogous to those of the sailor, who having expended the first of his fairy–granted wishes on "as much rum as ever he could drink," could only utilise the third of them by asking for "a little more rum;" and with a "large intelligence," equal to the most extended application of the theory of that wise monkey who drew the chestnuts from the fire at the cost of other paws than his own: this "great figure in history" was a scourge to mankind, useful after the fashion of many other such scourges, to admonish men of the folly, meanness, and absurdity of permitting earth to be harassed by such.

During the winter of 1552, this Charles, suffering much from gout, and greatly troubled in mind about the proceedings of the great Church Council, so necessary for "healing the wounds of Christendom,"—for coupling up the unruly cattle of the great European team, that is to say, so that he, Charles, might have a somewhat less desperately difficult job of it, in driving them,—had taken up his quarters at Innspruck. All paternal care having been well taken for the good government of his German subjects, the Interim duly published, refractory preachers chained up, and good faithful Maurice of Saxony having brought the rebellious Magdeburgers to reason, the mighty Imperial intellect flattered itself that all was safe behind in Germany, and gave itself up to watching the goings on of the bishops down the valley below there at Trent, and endeavouring to persuade them to give such assurance of personal safety to the Protestant divines, as might induce them to trust themselves on the southern side of the Alps. For the smell of the blood of John Huss was strong on the threshold of the council chamber, and the Protestant representatives, driven up again and again to the doorway, could not be got to pass it.

But Germany was not in a loyal mood towards its Imperial master. The princes were discontented at arbitrary infringements of the powers and privileges of the Diet. They were angry at a recent attempt, inspired by the "vast views," to impose upon them as successor to the Imperial dignity that insolent, odious Philip II., who had come from Spain to be presented to the Electors, and, having thoroughly disgusted every one of them, had returned to that more congenial country. And they were revolted by the Imperial cruelty, faithlessness, and tyranny in the detention of the Landgrave of Hesse in prison; and by the general prospect held out by the Imperial wisdom, that Germany would ere long be as well and orderly governed a country as Spain. Then the burghers were of course discontented enough. It is the nature of such people to be so, as paternal rulers are too well aware.

In this state of things, Maurice of Saxony, whom the Emperor had made Elector, when he deposed the unfortunate John Frederick, began to show his real colour. That good faithful Maurice, of whose attached fidelity to his fortunes, Charles in his Imperial sagacity, and the profound political insight of the Imperial ministers had not the slightest doubt,—crafty, able, Maurice thought that the time was now come for throwing off a mask long carefully worn, and striking a blow for himself and for Germany, that should effectually clip the "vast views" and dangerous talons of the Imperial eagle.

So he suddenly drew together and put in motion the forces long prepared, and kept afoot on various skilfully devised pretexts, rendered specious by an abundance of "able" falsehoods, and made a dash at the wholly unprepared Imperial eagle at Innspruck, which all but caught him in his nest.

Charles had to escape as best he might across the snows in dreadful weather, with gnashing of teeth, gout in his legs, and et tu Brute! in his heart, to remote Villach among the Alps; where, with a foretaste of the later St. Just mood of thought on life and king–craft, he had to wait in very un–Imperial sort, till some accommodation could be come to with his numerous enemies.

This was effected on the 2nd of August 1552, at Passau, by a treaty of peace, which recognised, and in some degree secured the Germanic liberties, destroyed the life's labour of that mighty Imperial intelligence, and thenceforth limited very considerably the horizon of those Imperial vast views.

But, "quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi." For monarch's madness, subjects pay the smart. The law is inexorable. Despite treaties of peace, with whatsoever oaths, parchments, and seals of the Empire, the amount of misery due by normal action of cause and effect for the "vast views," which Charles had passed his life in endeavouring to carry out, had to be paid. And that particular little fraction of suffering, with which the present story is concerned, was assessed and levied in manner following.

Among the various allies whom able Maurice of Saxony had induced to join him against the Emperor, was one Albert of Brandenburg, who, having been Grand Master of the Teutonic Order of Knights, then the rulers of a considerable portion of the country now called Prussia, was so deeply moved by the doctrines of Luther, that for conscience sake he was obliged to play false to his brother knights, and seize on their territory as an independent state for himself. Now this Albert, being at the head of a powerful force of mercenary soldiers, veterans ready for anything,—except honest callings and peaceful labour,—and being as M. Bonnet writes,[114] "one of those brilliant types of the medieval soldier of fortune, brave, adroit, indefatigable, given to plunder, cruel, faithless, and lawless," was by no means willing, when his chief Maurice made peace at Passau, to allow all his brilliance to be rusted for want of action. Peace to him was like a hard frost to a fox–hunter. Besides his Protestant feelings were very strongly stimulated by the contemplation of the rich and very defenceless territories of those malignant Papists, the Bishops of Bamberg and WÜrzburg.

So he refused to join in, or be bound by the treaty of Passau, and determined to carry on the war on his own account. Which he did after so brilliantly Ishmaelitish a fashion, that a cry of mad dog was raised, and he was put to the ban of the Empire. Being thus driven from harrying the countries of the two prince–bishops, and obliged to look round for some shelter from his pursuers, he dashed at neighbouring Schweinfurth, seized it as a stronghold for himself and his troops; and was there besieged by the bishops, in conjunction with the NÜrembergers and the Duke of Brunswick.

Which interrupted very disagreeably the morning Homer readings and the evening Greek psalm–singing in the quiet little home we were just now peeping into.

Deliration of princes indeed! Better, if fighting must needs be, to have a quarrel of your own to fight for, like the bold Magdeburgers, with Interim at their gates! But these hapless Schweinfurth citizens had their city turned to the uses of a badger–baiting tub for neither fault, quarrel, nor interest of their own. Let the upshot of the struggle be as it might, they had only ruin and destruction to fear from it. And this siege lasted for fourteen months! "For fourteen whole months did we live in the greatest possible straits, while the city was besieged;" writes Olympia to her sister. "If I were to attempt to recount to you all we went through, I should send you, not a letter, but a large volume. By day and by night we were in the midst of the missiles of the besiegers." The lawlessness of the troops within the town was a dreadful addition to their calamities. The homes of the citizens were constantly liable to predatory visits from bands of soldiers, whose "bravery, adroitness, cruelty, thievishness, and faithlessness" were quite as "brilliant" as their master's.

In the ordinary and fitting course of things, pestilence soon made its appearance in a city thus circumstanced; and, together, with an excessive scarcity of food, completed the misery of its inhabitants. It now became GrÜnthler's duty to be found in the van of the struggle, and in the hottest of the danger. And as usual in the annals of a profession, which has, more rarely, probably, than has been the case in any other department of human effort, been found wanting in the high estimate and full discharge of its duties in times of danger and difficulty, the physician was early and late at his post, struggling hand to hand with his enemy. But the fight had to be carried on under great disadvantages. All the stock of medicines in the town was exhausted. And drugs formed a larger portion of the means and appliances at the command of the skilled physician in those days, than is now the case. The sickness spread with fearful rapidity. "By contagion among the soldiers," writes Olympia,[115] "who are excessively crowded in the city, so malignant a form of disease has attacked almost the entire population, that nearly one half of the people have perished, terror and mental distress contributing no small part to the result."

Before long GrÜnthler was struck down in the midst of his labours. Help there was none. Every man was too much engrossed by his own desperate fight with the misery around him. Medicine there was none, food but little. And Olympia watched alone and helpless by the bedside of her husband; sustained only by the belief that her fervent and unceasing prayers might move Heaven to that miraculous interference with the unseen working of the material laws, which even then mankind had ceased to expect in cases where their operation is seen and comprehended. Even Olympia, whose love for her husband poured itself forth in such earnest supplications, that the fever in his blood might not produce the effect upon his organism, which in other men it did produce,—Olympia herself would not have prayed, that water closing over his head should fail to drown him.

Not the less did her belief sustain her in those long hours of dreadful desolation and sickening dread. She was comforted;—though at the cost of a lower ideal of the nature of the Creator than she would have attained had such comfort been impossible to her; and, therefore, at the cost of a proportionate inferiority in her own moral nature.

But the physician's malady was not "unto death." He recovered. As M. Bonnet writes;[116] "It required a miracle to save GrÜnthler.... Olympia's prayers and those of the Church of Schweinfurth were heard; and GrÜnthler was saved!"

Amid the horrors of this time Olympia found means to send out of the city a letter[117] to Lavinia della Rovere.

"What a good fortune is it," she writes, "in our misery to have found an opportunity of telling you of our sorrows. Weep for us, my friend; hut at the same time be thankful for our mercies. We are besieged in this town, and shut in without escape, between two great armies. But God has so kept us hitherto, that we have escaped from what seemed certain death. He has fed us, and continues to feed us, in a time of extreme scarcity. My husband, prostrated by disease, was on the brink of the grave. But He hath deigned to recall him to life in mercy to me, who could not have supported so heavy a blow.... In all these afflictions we have had but one consolation, prayer and meditation on the Holy Scriptures. Not once have I turned to look back with regret on the riches of Egypt. And I have felt that to meet death here, is preferable to the enjoyment of all the pleasures of the world elsewhere." "Egypt," and "elsewhere" of course mean Ferrara, with the necessity of concealing her religious faith. She concludes this letter, written amid so great misery, with a burst of affection, which shows how deeply the friendship of her early years had rooted itself in her heart, and how profoundly she had felt the kindness shown to her in her old time of distress.

"Once more, farewell! my own sweetest Lavinia, who livest ever in my heart's core,—quÆ mihi semper hÆres in medullis,—and whom I can never forget while life remains,—dum spiritus hos reget artus. Adieu! Adieu! and may you live in happiness!"

As the besieging forces, irritated at the length of time the Margrave had succeeded in holding the town against them, redoubled their efforts, the condition of those within the city became continually worse and worse. The houses no longer afforded the inhabitants shelter from the fire of the enemy. "During the whole of that period," writes Olympia to Curione,[118] of the latter part of the siege, "we were obliged to lie concealed in a cellar."

At length, Albert's means of resistance were exhausted; and that "brilliant" specimen of chivalry evacuated the town at the head of his soldiery, with the intention of cutting his way through the besieging forces. Great was the joy in Schweinfurth at his departure; but it was of very short duration. For while one portion of the allied troops pursued the flying Margrave, the forces of NÜremberg, and of the two Bishops, entered the town the next day, determined to treat it as a place taken by assault. They were all good Catholics, and the Schweinfurth people were almost all Protestants, unarmed, worn out by the long miseries of the siege, and much more than decimated by the pestilence.

It was a good opportunity for indulging in every evil passion, under the cloak of religious zeal. And Schweinfurth suffered all the horrors of a sack, inflicted in cold blood by fellow–countrymen, the citizens of neighbouring towns, divided from their victims only by some speculative differences of creed!

Olympia has recorded some of the incidents of that dreadful day in the letter to her sister, that has been already quoted. The soldiers, rushing into the town in complete disorder, set fire to the houses in many places. "In that moment of trepidation and panic terror," she writes, "my husband and I were rushing to the church as the safest asylum, when a soldier, altogether unknown to us, addressed us, and warned us to fly from the city if we would not be buried beneath its ruins. Had we remained in the church, we should have been suffocated by the smoke, as many were. We followed the man's advice, and made for the gate accordingly." But before they could reach it, the letter goes on to say, they fell into the hands of a party of soldiers, who stripped them of every thing, and took GrÜnthler prisoner. Escaping from their hands, he was a second time seized before they could reach the gate.[119] "Then, I can tell you, I knew what agony of mind is, if ever I knew it; then I prayed with ardour, if ever I did so. In my sore distress I cried aloud, 'Help me! Help me, Oh Lord, for Christ his sake!' nor did I cease my cry until He helped me, and set my husband free. I would that you could have seen in what a condition I was, covered with fluttering rags, for my clothes had been torn from off my back. In my flight I lost both shoes and stockings, and had to run barefoot over rough stones and rocks, so that in truth I know not how I won through. Again and again I said, 'Here I must fall and die, for I can endure no more.' Then I cried to God, 'Lord, if thou wilt, that I live, command thy angels that they carry me, for carry myself I cannot!'"

At length they reached the gate, and escaped from the horrors of the town. "And having my husband with me," says the letter to her sister, "I minded not the loss of all else, though I had only my shift—subucula—left to cover me."

In that plight, the fugitives had to travel ten miles that dreadful night, till they reached the village of Hammelburg. Olympia had been suffering the whole time from tertian fever, and was absolutely unable to proceed further. "Among the poorest of the poor," she writes to Curione, "I might have been taken for the queen of the beggars." At Hammelburg they met with scant hospitality. The people were afraid of giving offence to their prince–bishop by harbouring fugitives from Protestant Schweinfurth. Nevertheless, in the absolute impossibility of dragging herself out of the town, Olympia and her companions were allowed to remain there three days. On the fourth, though still very ill, and hardly able to walk with the support of her husband, the miserable wanderers were obliged again to take the road. But they were still in an enemy's country, and surrounded by danger. At the next town they reached, they were arrested and thrown into prison for several days, while the authorities of the place applied to their superiors for directions what was to be done with them. A general order had been given to put to death all fugitives from Schweinfurth; and these days were spent accordingly, as Olympia says in the letter already quoted, in an agony of hope and fear. They were at length released, and met with assistance of some charitable individuals, especially of one who, without allowing them to know his name, gave them fifteen golden crowns,[120] which enabled them to reach the residence of the Count de Reineck on the Saal. There they were kindly received, and assisted to continue their journey to Erbach, in the Odenwald.

The Counts of this picturesque little mountain town were at that time three brothers, who lived together in the castle, which may yet be seen there; and the eldest of whom had married the sister of the Count Palatine, Frederick II., the principal builder of the magnificent pile, still the boast and ornament of Heidelberg. They were zealous Protestants, who had more than once risked life and fortune in the cause, and enjoyed a very high reputation for their piety among their co–religionists, and even among their opponents, for their virtues and uprightness.

By these excellent men, and by the Countess, the wanderers were received with open arms, and comforted in every way that their miserable condition required. Olympia was not unknown to them by reputation; and the tale of sorrows she had now to tell, was not needed to make her a welcome guest at Erbach. She reached the hospitable roof utterly prostrated and broken down, almost literally naked, and having lost all that she and her husband possessed in the world. Worst and most irreparable loss of all, her books, those much–loved books, which had been the companions of her life, and with them a great quantity of her manuscripts, had perished in the burning of Schweinfurth.

It needed all the motherly care and kindness of the good Countess of Erbach, who insisted on ministering to her as she lay on a bed of sickness for several days, with her own hands, to restore her to some degree of convalescence.[121] Indeed, the shock which her system had received from the sufferings and fatigue of that awful night during the escape from the city, and the ten miles of weary wayfaring which followed it, was ultimately, though not immediately, fatal to her. She never recovered from the effects of it, though the repose and kind cares of which she was the object in the castle of Erbach, apparently restored her to some degree of health for the present.

Olympia and her husband and little brother seem to have remained some considerable time with these kind and noble hosts. She had an opportunity of observing the ordinary habits of their daily life, and has left us an interesting little sketch of the patriarchal manners prevailing in the pious household of a German country nobleman of that day.[122]

"The Count," she writes, "maintains sundry preachers in the town, and is always the first to be present at their sermons. Every day before breakfast, he gathers around him the members of his family and his servants, and reads to them a portion of one of St. Paul's Epistles. Then he kneels in prayer, together with his whole household. His next care is to visit his subjects, one by one, in their homes, when he talks familiarly with them and exhorts them to piety. For he says, that he is responsible before God for their souls. Would that all princes and lords resembled him!"

Of the Countess she writes to her sister, that "she is a woman religious before all else. Her conversation is ever of God and of the life hereafter, of which she speaks with the greatest enthusiasm and desire."

GrÜnthler's friends were meanwhile endeavouring to find some independent position for him. There is a letter from one Hubert of Heidelberg to him, among the collection of Olympia's letters,[123] in which he tells him, that all the councillors of the Palatine's court being then at Worms, "seeking means to avert, if possible, the calamities that menace Germany," he has no immediate hope of being able to obtain for him a chair in the University of Heidelberg. "But be assured," he continues, "that my house is open to you and to your family. Come to me without hesitation; and be sure that better days are in store for you;—'Grata superveniet, quÆ non sperabitur, hora.'"

But very soon after receiving this kind, though unsatisfactory letter, GrÜnthler learned from the Count of Erbach, that he had obtained for him the Professorship of Medicine at Heidelberg from his brother–in–law the Elector. Thus, once more there was an assured life and sphere of duty before them; and taking leave of their benefactors and the quiet mountain home which had refitted them after the storm, they started pilgrim–wise across the Odenwald, with full hearts and renewed hopes towards their new home.