SECTION IV
In those happy times, when a genealogical tree could strike its root into every soil, when the luxuriant plant could flourish and fructify without a seed of truth, the ambition of the House of Este-Brunswick was easily gratified with a Roman pedigree. The name of 420 or Atto, so
familiar to the Italian line, was deduced as a manifest corruption from the Latin original of Attius or Acctus, or Actius : and this fanciful identity, an article of faith in the court of Ferrara, was not disputed in the sixteenth century by the rudeness of foreign criticism.
In a visit to Venice (1685) Ernest Augustus, Duke and afterwards Elector of Hanover, accepted, with a gracious smile, the manuscript of Theodore Damaidenus, a Belgic abbot, and the Augusta Decora Romano-Brunsvicensia* were honourably placed among the archives of his family. This splendid folio is decorated with the luxury of medals, inscriptions, and classical authorities; but the historian spins from his own bowels, and from those of his blind or fallacious guides, an unbroken thread of two thousand four hundred and thirty-six years. The first of the duke’s ancestors whom Damaidenus pretends to know is Actius Novus, one of the companions of Romulus, whose services were rewarded with a statue by the founder of the city. His great-grandson is the famous augur who divided a stone witha razor in the presence of the elder Tarquin. The Atéii or Actii are enrolled as senators while all the senators were patricians: they continued to serve in all the wars of the republic, but their civil ambition seldom aspired above the office of Edile. In the age of the Antonines, they migrated from Rome to Ateste, their riches and merit promoted them to the honours of the colony, and
“about four hundred years after Christ, Caius Actius, the thirty-third in
* I can only be acquainted with the MS. work of Damaidenus by the learned preface of Scheidius to the first volume of the Origines Guelficæ.—pp. 19—33,
z 2 lineal
lineal descent from the companion of Romulus, was chosen by his countrymen their protector and prince. But if the prætor M. Attius Balbus, a real personage of the seventh century of Rome, could have any possible affinity with our fabulous series, the genuine lustre of the Accii . would be derived from their union with the human and divine glories of the Julian race. Julia, the sister of Julius Cesar, was the wife of the pretor Attius, and by their daughter Attia, their grandson Augustus himself might be claimed as a kinsman by the Duke of Modena, and the King of Great Britain. A prudent advocate may repeat with pleasure the verses of the Hneid that celebrate the- youthful command of the Trojan Atys, the founder, according to Virgil, of the Atian family. |
Alter Atys, genus unde Atii duxere Latini; Parvus Atys, pueroque puer dilectus Iiilo.
But he will dissemble the reproach of Antony, and the apology of Cicero, which may leave a stain on the maternal descent of Augustus.* | From the fifth century of the Christian æra, the fables of Damaidenus are grafted on the romance, rather than the history, of Pigna,t who is content to deduce from that period the succession of the Accian family, and the princes of Este. The first of these princes, Caius Actius, was called to the glorious labour of defending Italy against the Goths, and his grandson, the more illustrious Foresto, opposed in arms the great invasion of Attila and the Huns. On the intelligence of the siege of Aquileia, he marched from Este and Padua with a chosen band of subjects and allies, cut his way through the barbaric host, and displayed the standard of the white Unicorn in every action of defence and attack till he was mortally wounded by a Scythian arrow. Eloquent in council, invincible in the field, an hero in his life, a Christian in his death, the glory of Foresto would be complete, if such a man had ever existed in the
* Ignobilitatem objicit, says the orator, (Philippic. iii. 6,) and we may learn from Suetonius (in Octavio, c. ii.) that Antony was still more severe on the paternal ancestors of Augustus. The Emperor himself allowed that his father was the first senator of the family.
+ Historia dei Principi di Este di Gio. Battista Pigna, in Vinegia, 1572, in 4to. I pos-, sess likewise a Latin version of the same work, Ferrariæ, 1585, in folio. It extends from the fall of the Roman empire to the year 1476. Pigna promised, but has only promised a second volume. |
world.
world. After the fall of Aquileia, the honour of his son Acarinus is saved by a prudent retreat; and the fugitives of Este withdraw at his command, and found a new city in the morasses of Ferrara. In the subsequent revolutions of Italy, the imaginary descendants of these ideal chiefs are often oppressed, and always emerge: in the cause of loyalty or patriotism, they sometimes support and sometimes resist the kings of Lombardy, and emperors of the West ; and in the light of the twelfth century, a fabulous Rinaldo 1s created to save Milan, and defeat the armies of Frederic Barbarossa. The lust of fiction is punished by the contempt of truth, and if some corrupt traces may be discerned of the separation of the German and Italian lines, the genealogist is ignorant of the fame and fortunes of the house of Este-Brunswick.
Yet this history, so pregnant with falsehoods, was composed by a man of learning and character, in a knowing age and a polite court, by the accomplished John Baptista Pigna, secretary of state te Alphonso II. duke of Ferrara.* But the artful courtier was disposed to shut his eyes and to follow his leaders. The imperfect papers of Count Faleti, who first discovered the Roman Attii, and explored in Germany a long-lost branch of the family,t were given into his hands, and he used with equal confidence the manuscript remains of Pellegrino Priscian.f The War of Attila, a Provençal romance of the fourteenth century, appeared in his eyes a genuine and contemporary work of Thomas the scribe of Nicetas, patriarch of Aquileia.$ He was probably deceived by the Lives of the Emperors, which the Count Boyardo, with more than poetic li-
* Pigna, the friend of Tasso, is the sage Elpino of the Aminte. See his various merits in the Italian Observations on that Pastoral Drama by Menage.—pp. 160—164.
+ From Pigna’s dedication I collect, that he himself signified (1560) the Duke’s orders to . Count Girolamo Faleti, whose MS. annals at the time of his death had been only carried down to AzoIX. (1216—1240.) |
1 Pellegrino Prisciano, keeper of the archives to Hercules I, (1495) had collected and written many volumes concerning the house of Este. Muratori, who praises his fidelity, complains that the far greater part of his MSS. had been shamefully consumed in fire-works. (Antichita Estense, tom. i. c. ix. p. 69.)
§ See Muratori’s preface to the Antichità Estense, p. xix. I have neither the Provençal romance which is preserved in MS. in the library of Modena, nor the Italian abridgment
printed in 1568. But Pigna (1. i. p. 11—30.) has extracted the most important and least improbable circumstances,
cence,
cence, has imposed as an Italian version of the Latin original of: Ricobaldus.* The spurious fragments had been gradually consolidated by the public credulity: fictions were changed into facts, traditions into truths, and conjectures into realities. The materials were prepared ; and while he added the last varnish to the pleasing tale, the conscience of Pigna might applaud without much scruple his own veracity and innocence.
I am fatigued with the repetition of fables, but an illustrious race must always be crowned with its proper mythology. After fixmg on the earth the solid foundations of the House of Este-Brunswick, I am desirous of proving that we are not less able to build in the air.
-Before the name of Atys was invented by Virgil, before the Attian family was propagated to modern times, a fabulous tradition had connected the princes of Troy with the dukes of Ferrara and Brunswick. But the manufactures even of the Italians in the thirteenth century were coarse and clumsy, and they could only devise that Marthus, an unknown Trojan, besieged Milan, and founded, after his own name, a smalt city in the Milanese; and that, of four brothers who sprang from this chief, the eldest was the father of the future Marquisses of Este.f It was not till after the year fourteen hundred that the romances of French chivalry passed the Alps and the Pyrenees; and I am inclined to adopt the sentence of Cervantes,f who wishes to forgive the lies of Archbishop Turpin, Charlemagne and his twelve Peers, from the grateful reflection that they afforded the first hints to the invention of Boyardo, from which the Christian poet Ludovico Ariosto has so finely composed his inimitable web. Such a magician as Ariosto can annihilate time and
* After much hesitation Muratori has published in the ninth volume of his Scriptores Rerum Italicarum (p. 279—423) this work of Ricobaldus or Boyardo. The mention of the Garter may prove that it was not composed till Hercules I. Duke of Ferrara, had been invested with that order by Edward IV. King of England.
+ Muratori, Antichità Estense, tom. i. c. ix. p. 67,68. This tradition of Paulus Marrus (1280) is preserved by Gualvan de la Flamma (1320) in his great Chronicle of Milan, which Muratori (tom. xi. p. 534.) disdained to publish among his Scriptores Rerum Italicarum.
t See Don Quixote, part I..c. vi. p. 55. of the small edition of Madrid. The most grateful incense is the praise which one man of genius bestows on another; we are sure that he feels the merit that he applauds. Yet I do not clearly conceive the epithet of Christiano as it is applied to the most pleasing but least Christian of poets.
space ;
space; and he dispenses, by the prerogative of genius, with the laws of history, nature, and his own art.
According to the wild though delightful fictions of the Italian bards,* the house of Este-Brunswick is descended from the race of the Trojan kings. Astyanax, the son of Hector, was saved by an artifice from the victorious Greeks: Sicily gave him a retreat and a kingdom; and the valiant youth avenged on Argos and Corinth the injuries of his country. Polydore, the son of Astyanax, fixed his residence in Calabria, and Flovian, the grandson of Polydore, (a brief chronology !) was the first of the race of Hector who settled at Rome. By his two sons two noble branches arose from the same stem: the one is decorated by the Imperial titles of Constantine and Charlemagne ; the other, after a long and splendid succession, is illustrated by the name of Ruggiero, or Roce, the favourite hero of Ariosto and his readers. In the spirit of chivalry his strength and valour are his first virtues: the adverse ranks of -battle are pierced by his lance or shivered by his sword ; and the effects of his resistless charge are compared to the explosion of the Gran Diavolo, a thundering piece of ordnance in the arsenal of Ferrara. In more equal combat he stands invincible against the foremost paladins of France; and the two pagan champions, Mandricardo the Tartar, and Rodomonte the African, are slain after two desperate encounters by the hand of Roger. These martial terrors are softened by youth and beauty, by the generosity of his temper, his courteous manners, and the tenderness of his heart. He burns with a pure and honourable flame for the fair amazon Bradamante, and if he is seduced by the arts of Alcina, if he is fired by the naked charms of Angelica, his affections are constantly fixed on his noble spouse, the destined mother of the house of Este. Their white eagle was depicted on his shield, as the hereditary symbol of the Trojan line: the arms of Hector he possessed by the double claim of inheritance and conquest; and if his horse Frontin and his sword Bajisarda were obtained by less worthy means, Roger was guiltless of the theft, and they became his own, since he was able to defend them. But the hero disdamed. the use of supernatural aid; and indignantly cast into a well,
* The original pedigree is recorded, and perhaps invented by Count Matteo Boyardo, (Orlando Inamorato, 1. iii. c. v.) but I cannot gravely refer to all the passages of Ariosto who should be familiar to évery reader of taste.
the
the magic shield which dazzled the eyes and benumbed the serises of all beholders. -
By his mother, a Saracen princess, the unborn Roger was transported from Italy to Africa, and the helpless infant was saved and educated by the enchanter Atlas. His first arms were pointed against the monsters of the desert, and he passed the sea under the imperial standard of Agramante, who invaded France with all the powers of the pagan of Mahometan world. The destinies of the house of Este require his conversion ; but the event is artfully delayed, and the trembling balance is suspended. by the master-hand of the poet. Tender of his life, and careless of his fame, the African magician presumes to oppose the decrees of heaven ; secludes his pupil from the world, fascinates his eyes, sends him to wander through the air on a hippogrif, and dissolves his cousage in the isle of luxury and love. The example of his Christian ancestors is a weighty argument for an illiterate soldier; and he assures his mistress, that for her sake, he is ready to undergo a baptism not only of water but of fire. But a man of honour, a loyal knight, is apprehensive of the reproach of deserting his benefactor and his party, an unfortunate benefactor, and a falling party. A seasonable wound allows the Christians to vanquish under the walls of Paris; but in a single combat which must determine the Worzp's DEBATE, the lover of Bradamante is forced to encounter her brother Rinaldo, till he is delivered from the . fatal conflict by the treachery and flight of the African monarch. A shipwreck, a desert island, an hermit, and a prophecy assist the operation of grace: every scruple is satisfied, every duty is accomplished, every obstacle is removed ; and the poem concludes with the nuptials and last victory of the Christian heros
But as the poet has used and abused the privilege of anticipation, he displays in a variety of pictures the fortunes of Roger and his descendants. Seven years after his baptism the Paladin will be slain by a perfidious assassin; his widow will be delivered of a son in the fruitful
‘country between the Adige and the Brenta; and the warlike youth,
after he has avenged his father, will be invested by the Emperor with
.the Lordship of Este, and accepted as their native prince by the re-
maining Trojans of the colony of Antenor. The visionary forms of her future progeny pass in rapid succession before the eyes of Bradamante, . and
anda friendly sage foretels their names and actions in a mixed strain of history and fable. According to the popular opinion,* the establishment of the Saxon branch is ascribed to the marriage of Albert-Azo, in the tenth century, with an imaginary daughter of the Emperor Otho the Great. The Italian states of the princes of Este are described, Ferrara, amidst the waters of the Po, the soft Reggio, and the turbulent Modena; their wars against the Venetians and the Popes are discreetly announced; and the prospect is always closed by the fame, the virtues, and the fraternal union of Alphonso I. and Cardinal Ippolito. The Duke was the sovereign, the Cardinal affected to be the patron, of Ariosto; they will live in the everlasting life of their poet. “ Myriads, perhaps, of heroic names, are pluaged by time into the stream of oblivion: whilst a few are saved by the grateful and melodious swans, end honourably deposited : in the temple of immortality.”
. According to the philosophers, who can discern an endless involution of germs or organized bodies, the future animal exists in the female pa-
‘rent; and the male is no more than an accidental cause which stimulates
the first motion and energy of life. The genealogist who embraces this system should confine his researches to the female line—the series of. mothers; and scandal may whisper that this mode of proceeding: will be always the safest and most assured. But the moral connexionf of a pedigree is differently marked by the influence of law and customs: the male sex is deeméd more noble than the female; the association of cur idea pursues the regular descent of hdnours and estates from father to son; and their wives, howsoever essential, are considered only in the light of foreign auxiliaries. This rule, indeed, will be sometimes broken by an exception; the sole remaining daughter of an ancient and powerful family will assume the character of a son, and her children, who inherit the fortunes, may be assimilated to the name, of her own ancestors. The origin of her less conspicuous husband may gradually disappear; but if she be. married to an equal, their common posterity will celebrate the union of two. illustrious houses.
# See Ricobaldus, or rather Boyardo, (tom. ix. p. 314. Scriptor. Rerum Italic.) and Pigna, (1.i: p. 73—76.) Yet Pigna had learned from Count Faleti the true descent of the dukes of Sexony and Brunswick.
+ Hume's Essays, vol. it. p. 192, 193, > VOL. ZL, AA This
This last remark may be applied to the family of Estx-Bauwswrex, which so prosperously grafted the fruits of Italy on a Gefman. stem. The antiquity and importance of the Guelphs, to whose name and pas sessions they succeeded, is acknowledged in the twelfth century (1152) by Otho, Bishop of Frisingen.* “In the Roman empire, (says that con temporary writer,) two famous families have flourished till the present time on the confines of Gaul and Germany; the Henrys of Gueibelinga and the Guelphs of Altdorf, the one productive of emperors, the other of great dukes. By the contests of such men, armed with power, and ambitious of renown, has the peace of the republic been often endasgered.” An equal opposition te the Franconian and Swabian emperors must redound to the honour of a subject family, and the praise is the — less questionable, as the historian himself was issued from the rival house. This curious passage unfolds the seeds of the two factions. of the church and the empire; and it likewise appears that the name of Guelph, as well as of Henry, was no more than a personal and Christian appellation, the frequent use of which might, denote, in the language of posterity, the succession of an entire dynasty. Between the ascending and descending series of the Guelphs the connexion is formed by the marriage of Cunegonde, the daughter of the first, and the mother of the second race. The nobility and riches of Azo were not inferior to those of his consort; but, after their sons and grandsons had been ins vested with the duchies of Bavaria and Saxony, the distant fame of an Italian marquis was gradually lost; and these princes, adhering to their maternal ancestors, assumed the more popular character of native Germans.
About the end of the twelfth century a short chronicle was composed by a monk of Weingarten, to immortalize in this world, as well as in the next, the Lords of Altdorf, the founders and benefactors of his convent.” After a diligent search into such chronicles and charters as were then extant, he fairly confésses that his visible horizon is bounded. by the age of Charlemagne, by. the well-known Welf or Guelph, the fathes .
* Otho. Frisingensis, I. ii. c. 2. in Muratori Script. Rerum Italic. tom, vi. p, 699, 700. + Chronicon Weingartense, from the Vienna MS. in Origines Guelfcæ, tom. v. p. 31, 32, * 88. It had been published less correctly by Canisius and Leibnits. |
Of
of the Empress Judith. But he is persuaded that the ancestors of his first hero were men of valour and renown, |
Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona;
that, for ages, before the introduction of Christianity, they flourished in riches and honours; that they governed their own people, and that their name went forth into foreign lands. Such presumptions are more satisfactory to a rational mind, than his romance of a Trojan colony and descent, than an absurd marriage with Kathilina, the daughter of a Roman senator, whose name might be translated into Whelp in the German or English idioms. The conjectures of Leibnitz, or his disciple Eccard, are follies of a graver kind; they build without materials an edifice of characters and adventures, and grasping some shadowy semblances, they forcibly derive the Guelphs from a brother of Odoacer, King of the Heruli, who extinguished the Roman empire (476) in Italy and the West. From the beginning of the historic period the chronicle of Weingarten extumerates only six generations, Guelph the father of Judith, Ethico, Henry, Rodolph, and the two last Guelphs the father and brother of Cunegonde; a number scarcely sufficient for an interval of two hundred and
- fifty yéars. The probable chasms have indeed been supplied by the in
dustry of Leibnitz and Eccard. The names of Guelph or Welf I., Ethico I; Welf or Wolfhard II, Ethico II, Henry, Rodolph I. the brother of St. Conrad, Welf III., Rodolph IE, Welf or Wolfhard IV,, and Welf V. are enrolled in their list; but a descent of ten generations reverses the difficulty, and the scene is now crowded by the new actors. At the two extremities, the chain of the ancient Guelphs is strongly rivetted in truth; but the mtermediate links cannot be discriminated with clearness and: certainty.* |
The nuptials of Azo had transplanted the Este family from Italy to Crermany, from the Po to the Danube. His grandson Henry the Black, and his great grandson Henry the Proud, acquired by marriage new and ample possessions on the Elbe and Weser; and Henry the Lion, the heir of these possessions, is the first of his race to whom the title of Brunswick can be strictly appropriated. . The Lion was the tenth male in
® See the first and fifth books of the Origites Guelfcæ. — AA Q lineal
lineal descent from thé Marquis Adalbert: and his maternal pedigree might be derived from the dukes, the emperors, and the hero of Saxony," I. The genius of Henry the Fowler might govern the kingdom of Germany with one hand, and the duchy of Saxony with the other; and’ the arts and cities of that savage region are ascribed to his political institutions. Otho I. by a rare felicity was not inferior in personal merit to his father: but the majesty of a Roman empire appeared incompatible with the office of a provincial duke; the pursuit of Italian realms car‘ ried him far away to the south; and his ancient patrimony was left ex posed to the inroads of the Slavi and the Danes. It became necessary: to station a soldier on the banks of the Elbe; ner would that soldien have been obeyed by the Saxon chiefs, unless the splendour of his birth, and the extent of his. property had already given him a leading influence jn the country. About the middle of the ninth century the noble race ‘of Billing, an indigenous chieftain or prince, emits the first ray of his+ toric light: his blood was mingled with. that of the French conquerors,
Francorum claré de stirpe potentiim,
and his daughter Oda is celebrated as the grandmother of Henry the Fowler. The valiant Herman, the son of the second, and the great ‘ gtandson of the first Billing, was appointed military governor, and at. length created hereditary Duke of Saxony by his cousin Otho the Great (960): and four descents, Bernard L, Bernard II., Ordulph, and Magnus, continued the lineal succession till. the beginning of the twelfth century. In the wars against the northern barbarians, these dukes were seldom successful; but they asserted their own prerogatives and the liberties of the nation; their independence sometimes provoked the jealousy of the emperors; nor did the royal maids of Norway and Hungary disdain the alliance of such powerful vassals. The maie line of the Billmgs was extinct in Duke Magnus (1106): his eldest daughter Wulfilda had been given to Henry the Black, afterwards Duke of Bavaria: “the modern duchies of Luneburgh and Saxe-Lawenburgh were her princely inheritance: and her children, of the family of the Este-
" ® For these Saxon genealogies, see the Dissertations of Eccard, with the annotations of Scheidius, in the fourth volume of the Origines Guellicer and the Prolegomena of the latter especially. Tom. ui. p. 10, &c.
| Guelphs,
Guelphs, succeeded to. these territories on either side of the Elbe, which are still enjoyed by the Electoral branch of the House of Brunswick. EI. From their original patrimony the five Saxon Emperors, Henry the Fowler, the three Othos, and Henry the Saint may be styled without impropriety of the ancient House of Brunswick. But their connexion with the Este-Guelphs can be found only in female alliances; and their blood may have been transfused by three streams of imperfect clearness. Their common source is derived from Henry the Fowler, the King at least of Germany, and the son and grandson of the Dukes
‘of Saxony, Otho (880) and Ludolph (858). Otho enjoyed the glory of
refusing the crown; and of Ludolph it may be sufficient to affirm, that he was the sole hope and honour of an illustrious race, that his birth was equal to his fortune, his virtue to his birth, and his beauty to his virtue. We have reason to believe, though we have not a right to asgert, that his uncle Ecbert was sanctified in the chaste embraces of St. Ida;* that his father Bruno is the founder of Brunswick ( Brunonis vicus) ; gad that his grandfather, an elder Bruno, was the friend of Witikind, ‘with whom he fought under the standard: of freedom, and with whom he yielded to the God of the Christians. In the fifth ascending degree the proselyté must be the progenitor of a Saint, ef Bruno, archbishop of Colegne and brother of the Emperor Otho I. His domestic biographer thus describes the merits of this Saxon family: “ As far as reaches the memory of man, the grandsires of the grandsires are all most noble: nor would it be easy to find an ebscure or degenerate member in the whole series.”
E now return to the three channels of communication between the old and the new House of Brunswick, between the Saxon. Emperors and
the Este-Guelphs. 1. According to the monk of Weingarten, the father of Cunegonde, Guelph IV., was the son of Count Rodolph of Alt-
dorf, and of his wife Itha, the daughter of Richlinda, daughter of the Emperor Otho I. But the children, alas! of the great Otho: are conspiuous in history; Richlinda is invisible; and her existence can only be saved by degradirig her to the rank of an illegitimate daughter, whose
* The original Life of St. Ida is published by Leibnits, Script. Brunswic. tom. i. p. 175—
+ Ruotgerus spud Struvium, Corpus Hist. Germanicæ, p. 216.
alliance,
alliance, however, might be an object of ambition to the proudest vassal of Germany. 2. The matrimonial conquest of Henry the Black had extended over Luneburgh and the Elbe; Brunswick and the Weser were embraced by those of his son Henry the Proud, whose nuptials with Gertrude, the daughter of Richenza and the Emperor Lothaire II. (1126), enriched and illustrated the Guelphic line. Richenza, the female parent of an heiress, was herself an. heiress, and the daughter of an heiress, From her father, Duke Henry, she claimed the county or prin cipality of Nordheim in the southern part of the Electorate of Hanover; from her mother, Gertrude, she derived the city and country of Brunswick, which had been enjoyed by four successive generations of her ancestors. Gertrude alone represented her childless brother Ecbert II. Margrave of Misnia and Brunswick: he was the son of Ecbert I. of Ludolph, of Bruno II., and of Bruno I.; whose pedigree would emerge inte a brighter day, as the younger son of Henry, Duke of Bavaria, a younger brother of the Emperor Otho I. This highest. step trembles indeed under our feet: yet the evidence of local chronicles must not be despised; inheritance is the most natural mode of possession; and in the’ tenth century the Margrave Bruno I. possessed the patrimonial estate of the ancient House of Brunswick. 3. Our last and best dependence is on the maternal grandfather of Henry the Lion; on Lothaire £1. who was successively Count of Supplingeburgh, Duke of Saxony, King of Germany, and Emperor of the Romans. His father, Count Gebehard, fell in battle (1075), and is numbered among the slain with the first princes of the empire. It is almost certain that he was the son of Otho, Duke of Swabia: it is absolutely certain that the father of Duke Otho was Ezo, Count Palatine, a noble courtier, who obtained in marriage Matilda, the daughter of the Emperor Otho IL, by the fortune, as it is fabled, of a game at dice. The slight defect in the genealogy of Lothaire IT. is overbalanced by the general consent of the twelfth century that he was the heir, as well as the successor, of Otho the Great; and the three probable connexions of the ancient and new houses of Brunswick will be consolidated into one rational belief. It may not be super- - fluous to add that the Empress Theophano, the consort of Otho IL, was a Greek princess of the Basilian or Macedonian dynasty; which held the sceptre of Constantinople, and derived a splendid and.specious eri-
| gin
gin from the royal race of the Arsacides of Parthia. Reason may suspect, and fancy will pronounce, that the French colours, on the fields of Minden, were presented to the descendant of a king, who had received the Roman eagles, after the defeat of Crassus.*
III. After a brave resistance and a prudent submission, Witikind, the Saxon hero, ended his life in the bosom of peace and Christianity. His son Wicbert was not less eminent in the church than in the state: his grandson Walbert was educated in the manners, and promoted to the dignities of the French court. After a chasm of one or two generations, four brothers of the race of Witikind appear with the title of Count, in his native country of Westphalia. Among these Theoderic is illustrated by the temporal and spiritual honours of his daughter St. Matilda, the Queen of Henry the Fowler, and the mother of the Saxon Emperors.f By this female descent, the Este-Guelphs and many other noble families participate of the blood of Witikind: but his male posterity is extinguished or lost; and m the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, I cannot discover any name which is connected by the writers of the time, with the name of the hero. Yet some fabulous claims were cherished m silence, and four hundred years after his death, the chronicle of a French monk deduces from the four brothers, the father and the uncles. of St. Matilda, the nobility of all Saxony, Italy, Germany, Gaul, Normandy, Bavaria; Swabia, Hungary, Bohemia, Tuscany, atid Polans,Ÿ a strange profusion, which much debases the value of the gift. Vanity may grasp these ideal trophies: the electors of Saxony, and the Dukes of Savoy may embrace the shades of their visionary fathers, but the hundred heads of the male children of Witikind dissolve into air, as soon as they are touched by the spear of criticism. | | |
Our accurate knowledge of the origin, establishment, and alliances of the Este-Guelphs may now smile at the errors and fables of a darker age. After. the-separation of the House of Este by the two Marriages of the Marquis Azo, the two diverging branches of his posterity insen-
* History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. v. p. 148. + Vita S® Mathild, in Leibnits. Scrip. Bruns. tom. i, p. 194, 1 Alberic. trium Fontium. Chron. in Leibnits. Accessiones Historic, tom. ii. p. 257.
sibly
sibly became strangers and aliens to each other:. the intercourse of the distant nations of Europe was rare and hazardous; and the fall of the empire had separated the worlds of Italy and Germany. A tradition still survived in the court of Ferrara, that in some remote. age, an hero of their bloed -had transported his hopes and fortune beyond the Alps: but the date, the characters, and the consequences of: his emigration were soon obliterated by ignorance and supplied by fiction.* In the tenth century, the valiant Azo, an Italian noble, attended the standard and deserved the esteem Of Otho the Great. Alda, a natural daughter of the Emperor, was the reward of his services: she was endowed with the imaginary fief of Fausburch or Friburgh in Saxony, and the twins, Fulk and Hugo, were the offspring of their marriage. Hugo returned to his native country, and propagated the race of the Marquisses of Este, Dukes of Ferrara and Modena; while Fulk remained in Germany, supported the falling house of Saxony, and transmitted to his descendant some great county or duchy, in the unknown regions of the north. The Dukes of Brunswick, on the other hand, preserved a faint remembrance of their Italian origin: the title of their ancestors was familiar to their ear; but they had forgotten thé name of Este, and their misguided tenderness confounded the Margtisses of Montferrat or Mantua with their real kinsmen.f About the middle of the sixteenth century the mist was in some measure dispelled by the inquiries of Count Faleti, who had been sent into Germany by Hercules II., duke of Ferrara, and the perfect connexion of the two branches was finally restored by the faithful service of Leibnitz and Muratori. | |
- Of the first Guelph the rank is ascertained and the name is illustrated by the marriage of his daughter Judith with the Emperor Lewis the Pious, the son and successor of Charlemagne.t The magnitude of the
* Ricobald. in Muratori. Script. Rerum Italic. tom. ix: p. 315—317—321.
+ Leibnitz. Opp. tom. iv. P. ii. p. 83.: Edit. Dutems,
t The Chronological and Alphabetical indexes of the sixth volume of the Historians of France, will direct the more curious reader to all the original texts which speak of the Empress Judith., The best proofs of the nobility of | Guelph are the testimonies of Thegan (p. 79), of the Astronomer (p. 102), of the Annals of Eginhard (p. 178), of those of St. Bertin (p. 207), and of the Saxon Chronicle (p. 219). . Ve
| French
French empire had almost excluded the choice. of a foreign princess : nor. could the leaders of.a. warlike nation disdain the alliance of the peers whose. judgment had raised them to the throne. The. father of Judith was of the noblest race of the Bavarians: the nobility of -her . Saxon mother was equally conspicuous; Guelph is indifferently described by the style of Count, or Duke, or Prince; and the more honourable appellation of Freeman (vir egregiæ libertatis) may be applied to the situation as well as the character of. the independent chief. After the decease of his first wife, Lewis the. Pious invited the fairest and most.noble damsels: the heart, or rather the. heart of the -Emperor.was disputed in these nuptial games ; and the beauty of Judith -was rewarded with a fond and feeble husband, whom she continued to govern till the last hour of his life. The loud praises’ of her wit and learning, her courage and piety, announce at least the pretensions of ‘the Exepress; and she might excuse the invectives that were pointed -against the daigerous seduction of her graces and charms. During ten years ($19—-890) of specious prosperity, the daughter of Guelph enjoyed and embellished the feasts of an itinerant court. But the vices of the state and the calamities of the age were gradually ascribed to her influence :. Bernard, Duke of Septimania, was known to be her favourite, and was believed to be her lover; she wished to provide a kingdom for her infant Charles: and the three sons of Lewis, by his first wife, conspired against the stepmother whom they had provoked. By the sucoessful rebels she was twice torn from the palace, and imimured, under the monastic veil, in the cloisters of Poitiers and Tortona (830—834). The Emperor was twice restored: he embraced his wife with the credulity:of love: Judith and her favourite asserted their innocence with , oaths and challenges: her days were concluded (843) in peace and honous; amd the posterity of Guelph reigned in-France (840—987) till the sixth generation. | Conrad and Rodolph, two of the sons of Guelph, had abandoned their paternal seat to share.the prosperous and adverse fortunes of their sister. When she was degraded to a nun they were shaven as priests : but they stood beside the throne as princes of the blood. Conrad I. had two sons, Conrad II. and Hugh, from his ecclesiastical benefices surnamed the Abbot. Their ambitious spirit maintained their hereditary VOL. III. BB rank,
186 | ANTIQUITLES OF THE,
rank, and they appear conspicuous in. the government of provinces, and in the annals of peace and war. Accordmy to some learned antiquaries, Conrad I. left a third son, the famous Robert the Strong, the father of the kings of France, of the third race. Their optmion will mot sustain the rigour of critical mquiry: but the text of an original.chronicle is alleged in its favour; and a series of an hundred kings still hangs by the various reading. of a single vowel.*
Yet a kingdom may be found to which the purest history will assert the title of the Guelphic line. Conrad IT. and his son Rodolph . were ‘Dukes or Marquisses of the Trans-Jurane Burgundy whith includes the Pays de Vaud, the happy spot where Iam now writing. In the shipwreck of the Carlovingian monarchy (888), Rodolph, with the applause of his bishops and nobles, assumed a‘royal crown at the abbey of St. Maurice; his sceptre was the martyr’s lance, enriched with a‘uail of the true cross, and the second kingdom of Burgundy. which he founded, subsisted one hundred and forty-four ‘years in a lineal :suocession of four princes. The independence of Redolph ‘I. (888-212) ‘was confirmed by two victories, ‘and finally acknowledged in a diet. of ‘the German empire. His son Rodolph I. (912-937) twice attempted ue conquest of Italy, and his retreat was purchased by a fair equiva-
; his domimien extended over the French or ‘western ‘part iof Suitveriandl Franche-Comté, Savoy, Dauphiné, and Provence; and the country between the Rhone and the Alps adopted:the new appel- ‘lation of the kingdom of Arles. The long reign (987—99$) ef Conrad the son of Rodolph El. was glorious and pacific, and the ‘friendship of the great Otho was the firmest bulwark of his throne. His. son. Rodolph ITI. surnamed the Lazy, was the spectator, perhaps the. cause of the decay.and dissolution of his-government, (993—1082%). After his ‘death, the sovereignty of the kmgdom of Artes or Burgundy devolved as a fief or legacy to his nephew the Emperor Conrad the Salic; the - ‘effective:power «was usurped by the vassals, but the regal titles ef this
* Fratres or Fratris is the question, of which the opposite sides .are strongly argued by Foncemagne (Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p. 558—567) and Scheidius. (Prefat. ad Origin. Guelfic. tom. ii. p. 24—+#3.) " Oo | collateral
coHateral line may reflect some dignity on the fathers of the house of Brunswick.* 7
While the ancestors of the kings of Burgundy pursued the path of ambition, their kinsmen, the elder branch of the Guelphs, preferred a life of independence in the free possession of their allodial . estates ‘of Bavaria and Swabia. From Guelph, the father of the Empress Judith, these estates descended to the first or second Ethico, whose lofty spirit is commemorated in a curious tale by the monk of Weingarten.t As seen as Henry, the son of Ethico, had attained the age of manhood, the aspiring youth, without his father’s privity or consent, attached himself to the: Emperor, obtained his favour, deserved his esteem, and attended with assiduous zeal the long circuits of the court and army. By the advice of the princes, and at the solicitation. of his sovereign, | the son.of Ethico consented to receive a fief or benefice of four thousand mansi ot measutes:-of land, in the Upper: Bavaria, and to perform the hemage of a faithful client. Henry, surnamed of the golden chariot, long flourished in the wealth and dignity of the palace; but. his father was deeply wounded by this sacrifice of honour to:interest, by. this base abdication of the nobtlity and freedom of the Guelphic name. After peuring-a complaint inte the bosam of his friends, the high-minded Ethieo reselved to conceal his shame from the world. He quitted (says the mank) his regal edifices, and rich possessions, retired with only twelve companions to the solitary mansion of Ambirgo, amidst the mountains, and there ended his days without seeing or forgiving his degenerate son. The acquisition in the ninth century of such a fief as Ethico disdained, would satisfy the pride of the noblest family .in Europe.
Had a rent-roll of the Guelphic possessions ‘been preserved, an uncouth list of castles and villages, which have long been transferred to new owners, would offend the ear, without iaforming the mind of the English reader. The authors of the family were of Bavarian extraction;
# See the fourth book of the Origines Guelfice, (tom. ii.) and the Baron de Zurlauben, (Hist. de l'Académie, tom. xxxvi. p. 142—159,)
+ In this imperfect review of the history of the Guelpbs,. the Chrogicle of Weingarten (Origines Guelficæ, tom. v. p. 32—35) may be considered as the text, and the Oxigines Guelfice (tom. ii. l. 4 and 5.) as the Commentary. . | |
BBQ but
but their principal seat was in Swabia, in the neighbourhood of the lake of Constance, and the Austrian prefecture of Altorf and Ravensperg,* is derived from the ancient Guelphs, who, according to the fashion of the times, had abstained from the use.of any local denominations. Their various estates, as they might be acquired by. donation, marriage, or purchase, were scattered over the wide extent of Bavaria and Swabia, from the mountains of Tirol to the plains of Alsace; and several free communities of the Grisons were once the slaves of these powerful landlords. In their household they displayed the pomp and pride of regal economy ; and the domestic offices of stewards, butlers, marshals, chamberlains, and standard-bearers, were exercised by counts, or by nobles of an equal rank. Their first officer, the Advocate, represented their person and maintained their cause in the imperial or ducal court; and they enjoyed the singular privilege of protecting, without effusion of blood, all persons who were legally proscribed till they had answered or satisfied the demands of justice. ‘The episcopal churches of Frisingen, Augsburgh, Constance, and Coire, and the monasteries of popular sanctity, were endowed by their devotion with liberal grants of lands.and peasants. Even the humiliating tribute which the kings of Burgundy and the Guelphs of Altorf were bound to offer at the shrine of St. Othmar, was an annual commemoration of the antiquity. of their house. .They made atonement for the guilt of their ancestors, who, in the eighth century, had governed the Duchy of Alemannia, and had abused their power in the persecution of the saint.
The darkness of German history in the ninth and tenth centuries, has cast a veil over the lives and characters of the ancient Guelphs. But it may be presumed that they were illiterate and valiant ; that they plundered churches in their youth and restored them in their old age; that they were fond of arms, horses and hunting ; and that they resisted with equal spirit the exercise of arbitrary and legal power. St. Conrad,t alone of his race (892)—(976), by seeking a place in heaven, has deserved a memorial on earth. After his education in the school, and his service
* See Géographie de Busching, tom. vii. p. 130—137, and tom. viii. p. 644—647. : + The Life of St. Conrad (Leibmitz, Scriptores Rerum Brunswicensium, tom. ii. p. 1—14,) may be illustrated by the Origines Guelfice, (tom. ii, p. 206——212,) and the proofs or docu- - ments of the fifth Book (Nos. % 8, 9.) )
in
in the chapter of Constance, he was raised by a free election to the Episcopal chair (934), which he.continued to fill forty-two years. The church: was enriched by his patrimony and defended by his kindred: the Bishop of Constance did not affect the austere life of an hermit, and his tem~ perate manners were those of a German noble; but his chastity was immaculate from sin or scandal, he was assiduous in prayer, and his religious merits were crowned by the pilgrimage of Jerusalem.* The miracles of St. Conrad are fancied with some degree of taste; he voided harmless, a spider which he had bravely swallowed: in the communioncup; and he delivered two souls, who, in the form of birds, were enduring their purgatory in the water-fall of the Rhine. But the most marvellous scene was exhibited at the church and abbey of Einsidlen, the Loretto of Switzerland, which, under the name of our Lady of the Hernsits, is annually visited by many thousand pilgrims.f The clergy; nobility, and people, had flocked to the feast of the dedication, (948) ; but at the’ midnight hour of the vigil, the Bishop of-Constance was favoured with an extraordinary vision. The heavens were opened ; Jesus Christ, arrayed in the episcopal habit, accompanied by the Virgin Mary, and attended by a choir of angels, descended from on high to officiate at .his own altar: the saints and martyrs assumed the characters of priests and deacons, and the whole consecration was performed according to the ritual of the church. In the morning the bishop arose; he related his dream; a voice from the sky or the roof announced that the place was already holy; and this visionary act has been acknowledged by the decrees of Rome. One hundred and forty-seven years after his death, Conrad was canonized by Pope Calixtus II. (1123): the Guelphic name was honoured by this celestial kinsman, and the liberal devotion of Henry the Black, duke of Bavaria, declared him the worthy nephew of the saint. L
* From the word ferfio in the Life of St. Conrad, (c. vi.) it is supposed that he thrice visited Jerusalem. I am more inclined to suspect that mense has been dropt by a careless transcriber : three pilgrimages are useless and improbable.
+ One hundred thousand according to the moderate calculation of Mr. Coxe! The English traveller lashes our Lady of the Hermits with the spirit of a protestant rather than of a phi- Josophers and his excellent translator corrects him with the enthusiasm, not of a bigot, but of a poet.
- As
As soon as St. Conrad was. received inta heaven he should have sex cured an act of indemnity for the obsolete sins of his fanuly. But Sto ' QOthmar was still inexorable, and the effects of his revenge were felt by the tenth generation of the Guelphs. By the grand-daughter, perhaps, of the Emperor Otho L, Rodolph JI. of Altorf, had two sons, Henry and Guelph. The eldest, an impatient youth, demied the. annual payment of his sin-offering ; but the denial was soon followed by his um timely death. After hunting the roe-buck in the monntains, he reposed his wearied limbs under the shadow of a rock, an huge fragment fell on his head, and the vindictive saint might behold him rollmg down the precipice. The submission of his brotherGuelph IV. was:rewarded with a longer and more glorious life. Rich in lands and potent in arms, he long tormented his neighbour the Bishop of Frisingen, attended the Emperor to his corenation at Rome, and afterwards joined against: him in a successful rebellion. His nuptials with. Imiza; dawghter of the Count of Luxenburgh, and niece of the Empress St. Cunegonde, were productive of two children, of Guelph V. who: succeeded his father, and of Cunegonde or Cuniza the future hewess.of ber family, who was. given in marriage to the Marquis Azo, with eleven. bundred: or eleven thousand mansi of land* in the valley. of Elisina:in Lombardy.t The portion appears te have been worthy of a prince ;. but the situation, . the measure, and the value of the estate,. cannot naw. be.exactly defined. .
After Europe was moulded into the feudal system, an independent chieftaia would have stood naked and.alone ; the fear of injury was stimulated by the ambition of favour, and the descendants of Ethico and Henry were more inclined to follow the example of the son, than to sympathize : with the feelings of the father. Guelph V., the brother
+ From the customs and charters of Lombardy Muratori attempts to determine the usual mansus ; (Antichita Estense, tom. i. p. 3—5 ;) and his evaluation would produce two hundred, or more probably twenty thousand English acres. But he finds that some mansi were of more ample diménsions ; and I could acquiesce in the loose definition of as much land as will maintain a peasant with his family.
+ Leibnitz understands the Val d’Elsa in Tuscany, and his opinion is approved by Ecard aud Fontanini ; (Origines Guelficæ, tom. ii. p.223, 224.) But Gruber dissents from his text ; and Muratori wishes to read Vallis Lusina, the village and manor of Lusis in the Veronese territory, which soon afterwards appear in the possession of the Marquis Azo.
of
. of Camsegonde, -was invested with the Dachy of ‘Carinthia, and the
Marquisate of Verona (1047); an important province, which included the country of Tirol, and commanded the passage of the Rhetian Alps. But the servant of Henry. HII. maintäined the vigour of his character, and'the pride of his birth. An Italian diet was summoned according to custom.in the plain of Roncaglia. Guelph, at the head of his vassals, waited three days without seeing or hearing from the Emperor : on the fourth he sounded the trumpet of retreat, and, though he met. Henry on the way, neither threats, nor prayers, nor promises, could prevail on
him to retura. An arbitrary tax of a thousand marks had been imposed
en the-citizens of Verona; their Marquis in arms flew to their relief, and ‘the concessions of the Emperor could scarcely purchase an igneminious escape. This aet of patriotism or rebellion, for which he is said to have-testified seme remorse, concludes the story of the Duke of Cariuthia. ‘He died (1055) childless, in the prime of life, the last male of his family. Desirous of exchanging the temporal goods which he was absut te dose, for.an-evérlasting possession in heaven, Guelph endowed the Abbey of Wenigarten with the rich gift of his estates and vassals. ‘Fwo-of his‘principal servants accepted the testament ; but after his funeral, they were resisted: in the execution of this rash and unjust deed, which offended even the prejudices ef thé age. Imiza his mother was not ignorant that her daugtiter Cunegonde had left a son; she dispatched messengers mto Italy, and the youth on: his arrival annulled ‘the donation, and asserted his:own night as. the true and legitimate heir. of the ‘ancient: Guelplis. — —
Two streams of noble blood, the tro families of Este and the Guelphs, were united in the son of Azo and Cunegonde, who obtained. the mater- ‘al name of his grandfather and uncle. By the. marriage settlement, which seems to have excluded the younger children, Guelph VI. was. assured of the patrimony of his father: he already possessed the inheri-. tance of his mother (1055 :) his fortune was adequate to his birth, .and. his warlike, ambitious spirit soared above his fortune. An Italian by nature and. education, he was a German by adoption ; and from the age: of manhood the Lord of. Altorf-had fixed. his residence and his hopes in. œhe.country that was the seat of government. In the diet of Goslar: 107 {) ‘he was invested by the Emperor Henry IV. with the duchy. of
Bayaria,,
Bavaria, which in that age extended to the confines of Hungary, andhis nuptials were celebrated with Judith the daughter of Baldwin, count of Flanders, and the widow of a titular King of England.* These titles . are illustrious: but the Brunswick princes, who are lovers of truth and freedom, will permit me to observe that they were dearly purchased by. the sacrifice of virtue. His first wife was Ethelinda the daughter of Henry, duke of Bavaria: their alliance was consecrated by oaths, and while fortune smiled Guelph was a tender husband and a pious son, But after Henry, in the storms of faction, had been proscribed by the Emperor, the Lord of Altorf deserted the father, repudiated the daughter, and basely solicited the spoils of a friend with whom it was his duty to fall. Gold and silver are the idols of a venal court; the Guelphic patrimony was injured by his profuse ambition; and his ascent to one of the most eminent dignities of the republic was disgraced by the publie reproach of ingratitude and perjury.f By the early and obstinate revolt . of the Duke-of Bavaria against his imperial benefactor, these reproaches will be tinged: with a blacker dye, if the defence of the church does not absolve from all moral obligations. Whatsoever were his sins, they were expiated, however, by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land : the greater part of his army was buried in the plains of Asia Minor ; and he died on his return, at Paphos, in the Isle of Cyprus (1101). His life had been prolonged to an advanced period; yet he survived only four years the longevity of his father the Marquis Azo, The articles of settlement were rigorously exacted by the Bavarian duke: but the sons of the second marriage, Fulk and Hugh, opposed their elder brother in the passes of the Alps, and his imsatiate avarice yielded to a more equal treaty of paftition.
By the Queen Dowager of England, the first Guelphic duke of Bavar ria-had two sons, Guelph VII. and Henry, surnamed the Black. The eldest, at the age of seventeen (1089), was sent into Italy, and com: manded by his Parents to ascend the nuptial bed of Matilda the Great,
* Of Tout, : son of Earl Godwin and younger brother of Harold, against whom, with a Norwegian army, he had unsuccessfully disputed the crown.
+ Cunctis detestantibus, quod clarissimam et inopinatissimam in Republica dignitatem tata feda ambitione polluissst, says Lambert, with a sense and style far above the eleventh century. countess
countess of Tuscany, who had attained the autumnal ripeness of forty- — three years. This heroine, the spiritual daughter of Gregory VII. was twice married: but interest rather than love directed her choice, and her virginity was twice insulted by a crooked dwarf, and an impotent boy. * * ONE &© OR 6 NM &© © &© &©& À & *# & Their conjugal union was hopeless ;* but six years (1089—1095) elapsed between the marriage and the divorce; and the government of Tuscany. was administered in their joint names, till the imperious temper of Matilda provoked the grandson of Azo to reveal a secret which her pride would have concealed from the world. On his father’s decease Guelph VII. succeeded to the duchy of Bavaria (1101), of which he had already obtained the revetsion: his power ranked him among the first princes of Germany ; and when he represented the majesty of the empire, a sword of state was carried before him. The Bavarians applauded the mildness of hia sway and his paternal care in the education of the noble youth. At Rome he appeared with dignity as the mediator between the Emperor and the Pope. The French, who saw him at Troyes, at the head of a great embassy, were astonished by the huge corpulence and sonorous voiee, which, in his person, however, were not the attributes of mahhood. After a réign of nineteen years he died (1120), most assuredly, without children ; and his younger brother Henry the Black reunited all the subordinate fiefs and allodial estates of the family in Germany and Italy.f
Till the beginaimg of the twelfth century the provincial honours of the Marquisses of Este, the Lords of Altorf, and even the Dukes of Bavaria, were those of a private though illustrious family : and the series of their names and actions must be painfully extracted from the occasional hints of charters and chronicles. During a subsequent period of an hundred years the Este-Guelphs, the princes of the Brunswick line,
* For more particular information see Cosmas, Dean of the church of Prague, whom I only know by the Abrége Chronologique de l'Histoire d'Italie of the most accurate St. Marc (tom. iv. p. 1253). Some faults and fables may weaken his credit, but of the i impotence. of Guelph WII. I cannot entertain & doubt.
+ See the two first Guelphs of Bavaria in the sixth book of the Origines Guelfice, tom. ii. VOL. III. cc - are
are the first actors in the revolutions of the empire: their lives and cha- ‘racters are deeply impressed on the annals of the times; and our loose memorials will assume the tone of an historical narrative.
After thedeath of his elder brother, Henry the Black, son of Guelph VI. and grandson of the Marquis Azo, had succeeded to the duchy of Bavaria and the estates of the family. He survived only six years (1120 —1126) ; but his political weight on a vacancy of the throne contributed to fix the right of election in the German arjstocracy. The royal funeralof Henry V. was solemnly performed ; and the Duke, with the sacerdotal and noble attendants, subscribed a writ of summons which speaks the language of liberty and resentment. The diet was held in the neighbourhood of Mentz; the separate tribes, the Franks, the Swabians, the Bavarians, encamped on either side of the Rhine, and the immediate vassals, with their numerous and warlike followers, composed an assembly, or rather army, of sixty thousand soldiers and freemen. But the arch-: bishop, a dexterous statesman, removing the scene from the camp to the cathedral, transferred the right of voting from the many: to the few, and as the comparative few were still too many in his eyes, the previous nomination of an emperor was devolved on a select committee of ten princes and prelates, the first rudiments of the electoral college. Three candidates, Leopold, Marquis of Austria, Lothaire, Duke of Saxony, and Frederic, Duke of Swabia, were unanimously named : and the two former, after a modest refusal for themselves, engaged to support the choice of the majority. The evasions of the Duke of Swabia betrayed a secret and offensive presumption of hereditary right. He was the son of Frederic of Stauffen, a soldier of fortune: but his mother Agnes was the daughter and sister of the two last emperors. He shared with his brother Conrad the rich inheritance of the Ghibelline or Franconian house, and his ambition might be coloured by the examples of the preceding reigns. These examples and this ambition the electors had resolved to crush by the free choice of Lothaire of Saxony : but the attempt was dangerous, as long as the Bavarian duke might cast into the opposite scale the votes of his dependant bishops, and the swords of his military vassals, His personal attachment, for he had given-his sister to Frederic, insensibly yielded to stronger arguments of public or private interest. Henry the
. Black
Biack appeared in the cathedral of Mentz, and no sooner had he assented to the wishes of the majority, than the Saxon was proclaimed in triumph, and the Swabian fled in despair.
‘The difference of an hereditary or elective monarchy is of small moment to a dying man; nor did Henry survive many months the diet of : Mentz. . In his last moments (1126) the fears of superstition prevailed : but he contrived to expire in the habit of a monk, and thus disappointed the infernal spirits who might have formed some pretensions to the soul of the duke. The devotion of Conrad his eldest son is far more edifying and meritorious. The noble youth embraced the solitary life of a priest: renouncing a princely inheritance, the pride of the world, exercise of arms, and the hope of posterity. His birth and virtue must have raised him to the archbishopric of Cologne, had he not escaped from this new temptation to the Abbey of Clairvaux in France, where he pronounced the vow of a Cistercian monk, under the austere discipline of St. Bernard. Even this discipline was too soft for his increasing fervour; he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and buried himself in the cell of an hermit of the desert. The decay of his health, which ‘had been broken by immoderate penance, compelled him to return : he found a grave at Bari, on the sea coast of Italy ; his memory is still revered by the people ; and in the present century (1722) the relics of St. Conrad have been carried in procession to obtain from heaven the blessing of seasonable rain. |
As the eldest son was dead to the world, the feudal and allodial estates were divided between the two surviving brothers, Henry. the Proud and Guelph VIÏE; but the right of primogeniture was considered, and Henry alone, in his twenty-fifth year, succeeded to the title and office of Duke of Bavaria. His character may be estimated by the first acts of his government in the provincial diet of Ratisbon ; every complaint was heard, every wrong redressed, every crime punished ; and the civil judge was protected by the military commander. In a circuit round the province, he reconciled the quarrels of his vassals, and exacted. the most. effectual sureties of oaths and pledges for the suspension of private war; the castles of the disobedient were demolished, their persons were proscribed, and Bavaria enjoyed a respite of ten years (1126-——1136) from the disorders of the feudal system. The duke had levied a tax on the citi-.
; cc2 zens
zens of Ratisbon, but the produce was surely inadequate to the expense of a stone bridge of fifteen arches, which he constructed over the deap and rapid stream of the Danube. Churches and convents are the menuments of the middje age ; and a work of public use attests the sense as well as the riches of the founder.
‘The marriage of Gertrude, the daughter and heiress of the Emperor Lothaire, with Henry the Proud, was not accomplished till after his father’s death; but it may be presumed that his desertion of a brother-in: law for a stranger was purchased by the hope or promise of this valuable alliance, The nuptial feast was celebrated, in the summer (1126), on the banks of a pleasant river: the spacious meadows were covered with tents and edifices of timber, and the scene might have presented a pleasing and pastoral image, if the sound of arms, the riot of mtemperance, and the pride of rank, could have been excluded from an assembly. of German nobles. A general invitation attracted twenty or thirty thousand guests; the princes, barons, and knights, their numerous retinues, and the crowd of meaner spectators; and the festival was continued several weeks by the profuse hospitality of the bridegroom, who bere away. the prize in all the tournaments of chivalry. In the rising troubles of the empire, the services of the Duke of Bavaria recommended him to the confidence and gratitude of his august father (1126—1135). The Ghibelline brothers rose in arms against the successful candidate, and Conrad accepted the title of King ; their adherents were numerous in Italy and Germany, and they seduced the fidelity of Albert, Archbishop of Mentz, the master-mover in the election of Lothaire. “ Embrace the prelate, (says Henry in a private letter,) but trust him not. Honey is on his lips, but his heart is. filled with the blackest gall.” The swerd of the Duke of Bavaria was not less useful than his political sagacity; amd Lothaire stimulated his courage by exhorting him te march, like Judas Maccabæus, against the enemies of the Lord. Their power extended. from the Upper Danube to the Lower Rhine; the artificial strength of the. province had suggested a vulgar saying, that the dukes ef Swabia never moved without a castle.at their horse’s tail; but their best. reliance was on the firm and faithful support of the cities of Spires and Ulm. The reduction of these cities may be aseribed te the valour and conduct: of the Guelphic prince : he surprized and vanquished bis uncle Fredé-
ric,
tic, who was advancing to the relief of Spites ; and the walls, even the buildings of Ulm, were levelled to the ground by his irresistible assault. After a series of losses and defeats, the Ghibelline brothers resigned their pretensions, and implored their pardon, and Lothaire, without a rival, was acknowledged sole monarch of the German Empire.
From Lothaire II. and his consort Richenza, the inheritance of Brunswick would legally descend to their daughter, whose husband, the Duke of Bavaria, already enjoyed in right of his mother the Saxon patrimony of the House of Billing. Before his accession their ducal office had been exercised by the emperor himself: he now wished to devolve it on some faithful client; and what client could be more faithful than his adoptive son? The Guelphs, by their female alliance, possessed a natural command on the banks of the Elbe and Weser; the genius of Henry the Proud was equal to the double administration of Saxony and Bavaria ; precedents might be found of a similar union ; and the complaint of pluralities was over-ruled by affection and silenced by authority. Few Christian kings in the twelfth century could vie with the power and domimion of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, Supreme Governor of the Danish, Slavic, and Hungarian borders; mor was a fair occasion heglected of restoring an Italian province to the elder branch of the Marquisses of Este, and, perhaps, of Tuscany. As the representative of the Cæsars, and the King of the Lombards, Lothaire II. contested the illegitimate donation of the Countess Matilda to the Roman Church; but he accepted, as a compromise, the investiture of her patrimony, which was widely diffused from the Adriatic and the Po to the Tiber and the Tuscan sea. An annual quit-rent of one hundred marks of silver declared the supremacy of the pope, and the reversion was granted to Henry the Proud, on condition that he should swear fidelity and perform homage to the Apostolic See. The fortunate Henry was now raised above the level of a subjeet : he is addressed by his august father as the presumptive heir of the monarchy, and had Lothaire returned victorious
from the Apukan war, a loyal diet might have gratified his wish in the election of a successor: the House of Brunswick might at this day be seated on the throne of Germany; and if the sense and spirit of the Gesiphs had kept inviolate their hereditary domains, they might have
| rekindled
rekindled the lustre of the Imperial Crown, and asserted the pretogatives of Otho and Charlemagne.
While Lothaire II. accomplished the indispensable pilgrimage of his Roman coronation, his son-in-law was left behind to maintain peace or to prosecute war in the Teutonic kingdom (1133). Ina second expedition, the Emperor prepared to vindicate the altar and the throne from the schism of an anti-pope, and the rebellion of a king of Sicily. The powers of Germany obeyed his summons (1136) ; fifteen hundred knights and men at arms marched under the banner of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria; Henry the Proud appeared as the second person in the host; the Italians beheld their future sovereign; and instead of the cold service of a vassal or mercenary, he displayed the active consciousness that he was labouring for himself. On the first descent from the Rhetian Alps the great grandson of the Marquis Azo stormed the castles of the lakes and mountains, visited the patrimony of his fathers, and granted, as the superior lord, the fief of Este to his cousins of the younger branch. From Verona to Turin, and from Turin to Ravenna, he led or followed the royal standard, oppressed the proud, interceded for the prostrate, and subscribed the feudal laws, which Lothaire promulgated in the Diet of Roncaglia. After celebrating the festival of Christmas, the Emperor (1107) divided his forces; with the main body he marched along the Adriatic coast into the heart of Apulia, while Henry the Proud passed the Apennine at the head of three thousand German horse. The bishops and magistrates who had been expelled by popular insurrection were reinstated by his arms: Florence was besieged, Lucca was pardoned : he inflamed the territory and burst the gates of Sienna; the provinces were reduced ; and to his Saxon and Bavarian honours Henry added a third title of Duke of Tuscany. As the vassal of St. Peter, he conducted Pope Innocent II. from the synod of Pisa to the siege of Bari, a march of five hundred miles, through a schismatic people, an hostile country, a line of fortified towns, and the garrisons of Normans and Saracens’ in the service of Roger, king of Sicily. The powers of Henry were inadequate to the siege of Rome; but in his progress to the south, the abbey of Mount Cassin, the principality of Capua, and the ecclesiastical province #f Beneventum, were compelled to acknowledge their Jawful governors.
Tn
In the most perilous assaults his Germans were guided, and rallied, and checked by the hand of a master, and against the pontiff himself his vassal presumed to vindicate the rights of conquest and of the empire. After the interview of Lothaire and Innocent, the Teutonic army moved from the Upper to the Lower sea; the prudent valour of the Duke was equally conspicuous in the successful sieges of Bari and Salerno, and he might claim an ample share in the glory of his father, whose epitaph proclaims that he had driven the infidels from the continent of Italy.
But these conquests were preserved only in the epitaph which was speedily to be inscribed on the sepulchre of Lothaire. An Apulian summer had melted the strength of the hardy Germans; their retreat was spiritless and slow, and the Emperor, who felt the decay of life, had
scarcely descended from the Alps when he expired (Dec. 3, 1137), in.
a nameless village of Bavaria, leaving the possession of Saxony and the hope of the Empire to his adoptive son. The claims. of Henry. were founded on the superior advantages of merit and fortune. But the epithet of the proud betrays a vice in his character most offensive to a freeborn people : and his monopoly of power alarmed. the jealousy of his peers, who were apprehensive that the lord of so many provinces might subvert the balance of the constitution. The conspiracy of. the ecclesiastical and secular princes was encouraged by the policy of Rome, alike unmindful of ancient injuries and recent services. The Guelphs, who represented the House of Saxony, were sacrificed to the heirs of the Ghibelline or Franconian line; and the ambitious Conrad, who had abdicated the royal title, again ascended the steps of the throne (1138). An hasty, irregular meeting, anticipated the summons and the forms of election, but their choice was ratified by the consent of the nation.. The Empress dowager Richenza and her Saxon vassals were compelled to attend the diet, and to renounce the cause of their own .candidate. Even Henry himself desisted from the fruitless contest, and the imperial ornaments which he had received from his dying father were delivered with many a sigh, after many a delay, into the hands of a rival. A barbarous people is attached to visible symbols: nor could the. Germans acknowledge their lawful sovereign unless they beheld the crown and sceptre, the sword and the lance, which had been consecrated by ancient use and popular superstition,
But.
But the pride 4nd power of Henry could. neither stoop to obey nor expect to be forgiven. The question was agitated whether two duchies could legally be vested in the same person, and it was soon decided in the negative by those who wished to oppress, and those-who aspired to. succeed the reigning duke. Perhaps Henry might have been allowed to retain either Saxony or Bavaria: but his spirit scorned the ignominious option: his refusal was interpreted as a crime; by the sentence of revenge, envy and avarice assembled in a diet, he was stripped of all his possessions, and the head of the rebel was proscribed with the tremendous ceremonies which accompany the ban of the empire. The duchies of Saxony and Bavaria were respectively granted to their first and most powerful vassals, to Albert the Bear, Margrave of Brandenburgh, and to Leopold, Margrave of Austria. Leopold was the half-brother.of the Emperor, and as the father of Albert had married a younger daughter of Duke Magnus, he disputed with the Guelphs the inheritance of the house of Billing. Bavaria, from the impulse of fear or affection, sabmitted on the first approach of the Austrians, and so rapid was the revolution, so universally was he deserted, that Henry the Proud, with only four followers, escaped from the banks of- the Danube to those of the Weser and the Elbe. There indeed he made a vigorous and successful stand. Richenza embraced her daughter, and appealed to her fathers: the Saxons were impatient of a foreign master, the allodial estates of Brunswick and Luneburgh poured forth a swarm of soldiers; and no sooner had they recovered from their first astonishment, than the Guelphic vassals of Swabia and Bavaria resorted: in crowds to the standard of their lord. . The son-in-law of Lothaire found an army, and that army had a general; his pride was stimulated by shame and resentment; the Bear fled before the Lion, (I use the quaint language of the age,) and Albert of Brandenburgh sought a refuge in the court of his benefactor. Exasperated by this haughty defiance, Conrad himself marched against the rebel at the head of a royal army: but.on a nearer survey of his strength the Emperor halted, doubtful of the event; a parley was sounded, a negociation was opened, a diet was announced. In a general, perhaps 4 more impartial assembly, Henry prepared to defend the justice of his cause by arguments as well as by arms, when, aiter a short illness, in his thirty-seventh year (1139), his worldly contentions were terminated
by
by the hand of death. A death thus premature, thus sudden, thus seasonable, might awaken suspicions of poison: and these suspicions have been propagated and believed by the zeal of party: but they are not justified by the character of the times, of the nation, or of the personal adversaries of the Duke of Saxony. The Germans of the twelfth century might be often cruel, but they were seldom perfidious.
After the decease of Henry the Proud (1139), the eldest hope of the Guelphic line reposed on his only son, the third Henry, an orphan of ten years of age, who afterwards claimed the royal appellation of the Lion, either from his father, his character, or his armorial ensigns. The personal resentments which had been excited by the pride of the late duke might be disarmed by the tender innocence of his successor; but political enemies, and some of them were bishops, are rarely moved by generosity or compassion, and the young Lion must have been caught in the toils had not his brave and: faithful Saxons defended with persevering arms the child of the nation. His grandmother Richenza, a woman, as it should seem, of sense and spirit, possessed the affection, and assumed the regency of the country: but her daughter Gertrude, a blooming and impatient widow, was too soon (1141) persuaded to form an hostile connexion, and her. second marriage.with Henry, Margrave of Austria, the brother and successor of Leopold, appeared to countenance the usurpation of Bavaria. Yet this alliance was productive of a truce and a treaty, and the son of Gertrude, renouncing by his mother’s advice the Bavarian duchy, was acknowledged as Duke of Saxony by the Emperor and empire; a specious act, which ensured some years of domestic peace, without any material injury, to the right of the minor. The education of Henry the Lion was that of a Saxon and a soldier, to support the inclemency of the seasons, to disdain the temptations .of luxury, to manage the horse and the lance, and to contend with his equals in the exercise of military and even civil virtues, and to disguise the superior gifts of fortune, perhaps of nature, by the winning graces of modesty and gentleness. At eighteen (1147) the Duke of Saxony and, as he still deemed himself, of Bavaria, was introduced at the diet of Frankfort into an assembly of men and princes; and the recent institution of knighthood supplied the national custom of delivering the éword and spear to a noble youth. Europe was then agitated by the
VOL. III. | D D | pre-
preparations of the second crusade: the Emperor Conrad and the King of France had listened to the voice of St. Bernard, and while the flame of enthusiasm was kindled in every martial bosom, the. spirit of Henry would prompt him to. march, and might lead him to perish in the dangerous adventure. But the northern states of Germany, with their allies of Denmark and Poland, preferred an holy warfare less remote, more beneficial, and equally meritorious, against the idolatrous Slavi of the Baltic coast; and one hundred and sixty thousand soldiers of Christ were speedily enrolled to convert or exterminate his enemies. The Duke.of Saxony, with a numerous body of his vassals and subjects, unfurled the banner of the cross; and although this first campaign was ’ neither successful nor glorious, he shewed himself on a splendid theatre to the Christians and Pagans of.the North. After the return of the Emperor from the Holy Land, Henry the Lion endeavoured, without success, to wrest Bavaria from his Austrian competitor; but while he was detained.on the Danube, a messenger announced that Conrad had entered Saxony with a great army. “Command my vassals (replied the dauntless chief) to assemble at Brunswick: on Christmas-day they shall find me at their head.”. The term was short,.the distance was long, the passes were guarded; yet the Duke was faithful to his appointment. Disguising his person, with only three attendants, he darted swift and | secret through the hostile country, appeared on the fifth day in the camp of Brunswick, and forced his imperial adversary ta sound a precipitate retreat. (1150.)
During the minority of Henry, a vahant uncle, Guelph VIIT., asserted in arms the cause of his nephew: but if the proscription of the father . and the renunciation of the son were admitted as legal acts, he claimed Bavaria as the patrimony of his ancestors. His reasons were specious; his troops were drawn from the hereditary estates of Swabia and Italy; the subsidies of the kings of Sicily and Hungary fomented the rebel lion; he often prevailed in the battles and sieges of a ten years’ war; and: if Guelph was sometimes crushed by the weight of imperial power his : invincible spirit rose more terrible from every defeat. Jt was at one of these battles that the contending shouts of Hye Guelph! Hye Ghibelline! produced the names of the two factions so famous after . wards and so fatal in the annals of Italy. It was in one. of these sieges
| that
that a splendid example was displayed of conjugal tenderness and faith. As an offended sovereign, Conrad had refused all terms of capitulation to the garrison of Winesberg; but as a courteous knight he permitted the women to depart with such of their precious effects as they themselves could transport. The gates of the town were thrown open; and a long procession of matrons, each bearing a husband, or at least a man, on her shoulders, passed in safety through the applauding camp. This moral story, which is told (if I am not mistaken) by the Spectator, may be supported, however, by ancient evidence: but the wife of Guelph, the Duchess Ita, must be excluded from the honourable list; since her
-husband was actually in the field, attempting with insufficient forces
the relief of Winesberg. After seven campaigns, (1140—1147,) these destructive hostilities were suspended by the engagement of the rival chiefs in the second crusade; but no sooner had they reached Constantinople, than Guelph, urider the pretence of sickness, deserted the service of the holy sepulchre. He returned by sea; and, after a secret conspiracy with the king of Sicily and the senators of Rome, passed through Italy, descended from the Alps, and resumed an impious war against the absent’ servants of the cross. . In the battle of -Flocberg (1150) against Henry, the son of Conrad, he strové to cover the retreat of his fainting troops; their heavy armour protected them from mortal wounds; but three hundred of his knights were made prisoners; the treatment of their leader, a supposed captive, was debated in the Emperor’s counci, and his triumph was announced to the east and west. The captive, alas! was ‘still free and vigorous, and obstinate. Instead of suing for pardon, he stipulated a treaty (1151); and the favours of the court were the reward of his long opposition. But the mind of Guelph was still hostile to the persecutors of his family, and he joined with his peers, who refused: to attend their nnpopular sovereign in his Roman pilgrimage.
After the decease of Conrad, the unanimous election of his nephew Frederic Barbarossa (1152) appeared to open a new prospect of concord and peace. The aspiring monarch, who already grasped the kingdoms of Italy, embraced the Margrave of Austria and the Guelphic princes as his friends and kinsmen, and sincerely laboured to terminate their Bavarian quarrel by an amicable compromise, or a judicial sentence.
DD . The
- The claimant pressed a speedy decision; but the actual possessor inter-
posed so many evasions and delays, that the final settlement was postponed till the Emperor should have returned from his Roman coronation. Frederic passed the Alps with a court and army not unworthy of the successor of Charlemagne (1154): the uncle and the nephew were desirous of showing their power and proving their loyalty, and the gallant squadrons that marched under the banner of the Lion were equal in number to those of the Emperor himself. -From the siege of Tortona and the camp of Milan, in which the name of Henry is mentioned with honour, I hasten to the Vatican (1155). A transient harmony prevailed between the spiritual and temporal monarchs of Christendom: but the imperial crown had scarcely been placed on the head of Frederic, when the alarm-bell rang from the Capitol, and the august rites were disturbed by an assault of the Romans from the bridge of St. Angelo. The Germans stood in arms and battle-array; after a conflict of some hours, they slew or drove into the river a thousand rebels, without losing a single man; and the glory of the day was ascribed to the Duke of Saxony, who fought in the foremost ranks. At his entreaty the Pope relaxed the strictness of ecclesiastical discipline: the Emperor declared him the firmest pillar of his throne; and as Frederic was young and brave he might express the genuine feelings of affection and esteem. On his first entrance mto Italy, Henry had exercised the rights of progeniture and dominion, in renewing the preceding grants to his cousins the Marquisses of Este. The son of Cunegonde was many years older than the children of Garsenda: and the descendant of the former was already in the fourth, while the ‘posterity of the latter was only in the second, degree from their common parent.
Without involving Germany in a civil war, the restitution of Bavaria could no longer be delayed. The Emperor had pledged his word; the diets had pronounced their sentence; and the performance was imperiously urged by the arguments, the services, and the power of Henry the Lion, who had received the homage of the nobles, and the oaths and hostages of the city of Ratisbon. A fair compensation, however, was yielded to his father-in-law, the uncle of Frederic Barbarossa, as soon as he desisted from a possession of eighteen ‘years; and the agreement, which had been discussed in many private assemblies, was consummated
by
by a public ceremony in the plain of Ratisbon (1156). Henry, Margrave of Austria, resigned the seven banners, or symbols, of the Bavarian duchy, into the hands of the Emperor, who delivered them to Henry the Lion: but the Guelphic prince immediately returned two of these banners which were used by Frederic in the investiture of his uncle. The Margrave of Austria was created an independent duke: his territories, with the addition of three neighbouring counties, were for ever enfranchised from the dominion of Bavaria: the right of succession was extended to his female heirs, and his extraordinary privileges seemed to raise him above a subject of the empire. By this act the circle of the Duke of Bavaria was circumscribed: but the bishops of the province still attended his courts: and he stretched a real or nominal jurisdiction over the three remaining marches of Tirol, Styria, and Istria, as far as the shores of the Adriatic gulf. "
After his return to allegiance, Guelph VIII. had been content with the vague appellation of Duke, till it was fixed and realized by the acquisition of the Italian provinces, in which his elder brother, his uncle, and perhaps his more distant ancestors, had formerly reigned. From the liberality of his nephew, Frederic Barbarossa, (1153,) he received the titles and possessions of Duke of Spoleto, Marquis of Tuscany, Prince of Sardinia, and Lord of the house or patrimony of the Countess Matilda, against whose donation, as the heir of her second husband, he might lawfully protest. Her allodial estates on either bank of the Po, on either side of the Apennine, had been dilapidated by waste and rapine; but the powerof the Emperor, and the prudence of Guelph, reduced them into the form of a well regulated and productive domam. At the head of a strong army he performed the circuit of the Duchy and the Marquisate: invested seven Counts with as many banners; garrisoned the castles with his faithful vassals, dictated his charters to his own notaries, revived in his parliaments the authority of the royal laws, and bridled, with a firm hand, the ambitious independence of the Tuscan cities. Pisa alone was a free and flourishing republic: but the Pisans, in every division, adhered to the Emperor ; they respected the dignity of his Lieutenant, and it was only through the medium of their maritime conquests that Guelph could assume the title of Prince of Sardinia.
. The. prosperity of Henry the Lion had now reached its summit, and . | | he
he might justly fear the revolution of the descending wheel. A,so- . vereign, the most opulent and fortunate of his age, was reduced to the state of a culprit, a suppliant, an exile ; and the last fifteen years of his life (1180—1195) exemplified the sage remark of antiquity, that no man should be pronounced happy before the hour of his death.
To the resentment, legitimate or unjust, of the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, the cause of his ruin must-be ascribed. The long union of these princes had been apparently cemented by a singular conformity: they had both passed the middle season of life without any male posterity. On both sides they entertained and encouraged a fond hope of. surviving and inheriting; but amidst their professions and professions, each was tempted to hate and despise the other for indulging the same. wish which he secretly cherished in his own bosom. The Duke of Saxony was first awakened from this dream of ambition, and.his prospects. were blasted by the birth (1165) of a royal infant, who at the age of four years was crowned King of Germany and heir apparent of the Roman Empire. Such a natural event, such a just exclusion might disappoint a presumptive successor; but he could loudly complain of the avarice and treachery of his friend, who grasped with disingenuous arts the inheritance of their common uncle. . I have already enumerated the titles and possessions of Guelph VIII. who reigned in the middle provinces of Italy, and aspired to found in its native soil a second. dynasty of the. house of Este-Brunswick. His designs were seconded by the fair promise of a son, the ninth and last of his respectable name. The youth was educated in the arts of policy and war; during his father’s absence beyond the sea or the mountains, he supported the weight of government; and his firm humanity protected the Italian subjects ageinst the rapine and violence of the German soldiers. But this new Marcellus was only shewn to the world. The father had retired to the banks of the Danube, apprehensive of losing the merit of a pilgrimage in the guilt of a schism: the son was permitted to lead his forces and to follow. the Emperor: but Guelph IX. perished in this unfortunate campaign, a premature victim not of the enemy’s sword, but of the epidemical disease which swept away so many thousands at the siege of Rome, After this. irreparable loss the Tuscan prince considered Henry. the Lion as the sole representative of the Guelphic name: a will was drawn in favour
of
‘of his nephew; but as the Cesar of the twelfth century was always ' prodigal and often poor, he required, for the assurance of so many pro-
vinces, the grateful retribution of a gift, a loan, or a fine. The demand could not be refused, but the ill-timed parsimony of the new Cato so long
hesitated, that the peevish old man was offended by the hesitation which
bespoke a doubt of his honour or the expectation of his speedy death.
So fair an opportunity of supplanting his cousin was seized by the vigi-
lant and dexterous Frederic; he stepped forwards with an immediate offer of the money; the offer was eagerly accepted; the pride of family yielded to the impulse of passion, and Guelph VIII. surrendered to a Ghibelline heir, all his feudal and allodial estates in Italy and Swabia, reserving only the enjoyment of them during his own life. The mortification of Henry was embittered by a tardy sense of his own folly; his wounded spirit was inflamed by fresh injuries and new suspicions, and he accused the Emperor of tampering with his servants to betray their trust and deliver his castles, as soon as they should hear of their master's
-death or his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
While this deep animosity rankled in his breast, Henry the Lion was
‘summoned (1174) to attend the Emperor beyond the Alps, and to draw
his sword against the rebels of Lombardy. He disobeyed the summons,
‘and his disobedience might be justified by the spirit of the times and of
the constitution. The strict military duty of a vassal was confined to
‘the defence of Germany, and the imperial coronation at Rome. At the
cordnation of Frederic, the Duke had signalized his valour and fidelity.
In a second voluntary expedition he had freely exposed his person and his troops; but he could not submit to be the perpetual slave of obstinacy and ambition, to join in the oppression of an innocent and injured people, to persecute a Pope who was acknowledged by the greatest part of Christendom, and to prepare, by the conquest of Italy, the future servi-
‘tude of his country. The complaint of age and infirmity may seem ill-
adapted to the ripe manhood of forty-six years; but a soldier might ex-
-press no dishonourable fear of the climate, the diseases, and perhaps the
poison which had been fatal to the bravest of “his nation and family. The government of the two great duchies of Saxony and Bavaria en-, ‘gaged the full attention of Henry the Lion, and his Slavic labours in war and peace were an ample discharge of“his debt to the church and
; state. —
state. Such reasons are specious, such scruples might be sincere; but he debased their. value by offering to accept as the reward of his military ‘service the city of Goslar, which would have given him the exclusive. command of the silver mines. Frederic disdained to pay this exorbitant price, but he soon repented of his disdain: Milan had arisen from its ashes, the league of Lombardy was powerful and united; a ruinous winter was consumed in the siege, or rather blockade of Alexandria; his Germans fainted, his Bohemians retired, and his spirit was reduced to implore the aid of an enemy who smiled at his distress. The two princes had an interview at Chiavenna, near the lake of Como. Henry was still cold and inexorable, and after trying every mode of argument and prayer, the Emperor, such is the meanness of ambition, threw himself at the feet of his vassal. The unrelenting vassal, with secret joy and apparent confusion, raised his sovereign from the ground; but he listened without displeasure to aloud whisper of one of his attendants, “ Suffer, dread sir, the imperial crown to lie at your feet, speedily it must be placed on your head.” Some vague professions of loyalty faintly coloured the denial and departure of the Duke, and the Empress, who had been an indignant witness of the scene, addressed her husband in the vehemence of female passion, “ Remember what has passed, and God will remember it one day!” The admonition was needless, at least for the temporal monarch. All his subsequent misfortunes, the failure before Alexandria (1175), the loss of the battle of Lignano (1176), the ignominious treaty of Venice (1177), were imputed to the desertion of Henry the Lion; and the Emperor accused him in a public assembly of an indirect conspiracy against his life and honour.
| After the revolt of Italy the genius and fortune of Frederic still commanded the obedience of the Germans; and the ruin of the Guelphic house was the first aim of his policy and revenge. The pride of Henry has been arraigned for refusing an act of oblivion at the moderate price . of five thousand marks of silver; but such a fine would have been a confession of guilt rather than a pledge of safety; and the artful Ghibelline, after sacrificing his private resentments, would have maintained the character of an inflexible judge.
In the portraits of the uncle and the nephew, of Guelph VIII. and Henry the Lion, a contemporary (1158) has presumed to borrow the pencil
HOUGE OF BRUNSWICK. 209
peneil of Sallust;-and Radevic observes with satisfaction, that the sublime characters of Cesar and Cato had been tevived in: his own age. auch indeed was the difference of the times and the countries that the comparison could not be very perfect or precise ; the Cato of the twelfth century could not be animated by the patriotism of a citizen and-the philosophy of a Stoic: nor could the new Cesar possess the universal genius which inspired and deserved to be the first of mankind. Yet the milder Guelph might be endowed with an amiable facility of giving end forgiving, while the more rigid Henry affected the useful virtues of patience, constancy, and Justice, The tone of panegyric, the propensity ef human neture, and the lives of the two heroes, will even prompt a qnepicien that their dissimilar merits degenerated into the opposite faults ; that the boundless indulgence of the uncle was often careless and profuse; and that the inflexible severity af thé nephew was not always exesapt fra harshnesa and pride. By these who may have seen Henry the Lion, he is described with, black eyes and hair, of a majestic counte- - Rance, middle stature, and muscular strength. His nobility, riches ang power were extraneous accidents; but the. Duke.of Saxony and Bavaria stood near thisty years (1150-1180). in a lofty station, the second only im dignity and renown to que of the moss illustrious of the German emperors.
In the rudeness of the middle age, the task of government required rather a strong than a skilful hand. Servile labour and blind obediénes were imposed on the people: the clergy exercised a separate jurisdic- &on ; and thé nobles demanded only a judge and a leader, who himself followed the court and. the. standand of his supreme lord. The provinces of Henry the Lion extended to tha foot of the Alps, and the shares.ef the Baltic; his civil and religious duties transported him. befiond the wavatainag and tbe sea: yet so rapid was his motion, sa vigorous hia eommand, that the absent prince was atill present to. the hopes ef his subjects and: the fear of his:ememies. His valour had been signélized: at Bome: in the second expedition of Frederic into Etaly, the: distress, or at: Ipgst the diffieultiaa af the Emparor, wexe relieved. by the welcome arrival, of the Guelphic: troopa: the Tuscans and Swabians af the unele, the Baserians and. Saxons of’ the nephew almost: doubled: his army: amd their seasanable succour determined the success, of the siege off Crema; ene ef the: ment: dnaperate. actions of the war'of Lembanly. Henty vi * VOL, III. EE sited
sited Bavaria as often as he was called (and he was often called) ta redress injuries and pacify tumults; and the foundation of Munich is a flourishing proof of his discernment and munificence. But Henry kept his principal residence in Saxony: Brunswick was his capital: the statue of a lion commemorates his name and dominion ; he fortified the city with a ditch and well; and, according to the balance of attack and defence, such fortifications might afford a respectable protection. The silver mines of the Hartz, which have been improved by his successors, were already worked by his peasants, and in the scarcity of precious metals, this singular advantage rendered him one of the richest sovereigns in Europe. Jealous or envious of his greatness, the ecclesiastic and secular princes conspired on all sides against the Saxon Duke : from Bremen and Cologne to Magdeburgh they successively fell before him ; and a sentence of the diet ‘pronounced the injustice of their - fallen, arms (1166.) A king of Denmark was expelled by two competitors: he had acknowledged the supremacy of the empire; and.the eloquence of: prayers or of gold prevailed on Henry to vindicate his cause.. The - Duke passed the wall of the limits (1156), pillaged the city of Sleswick, and advanced fourteen days march into the country: the approach of the Danes, the want of provisions, or the holy season of Lent. compelled ‘him to retreat ; but the vessels of his Slavic subjects transported Sweno to the isles, and the fugitive. was reinstated in a third part.of his kingdom. After the reunion of the Danish monarchy, Henry contracted a public and private alliance with Waldemar I.: these ambitious princes had several personal interviews; and their confederate arms invaded by sea and land the Slavic idolaters of the Baltic.coast.
' The alternative of death or baptism had formerly been proposed to the Saxon ancestors of Henry the Lion. He presented the same alternative to the idolatrous Slavi, and a superstitious age applauded the triumph of the Catholic hero. At the end of ten years (1160—1170). of an holy war, interrupted however by some truces, the . powerful and . obstinate tribe of the Obotrites, who occupied. the present duchy of Mecklenburgh, were reduced to accept the laws and religion of the conqueror. In the open field, .in fair battle, they could not struggle with the. armg and discipline of the Germans ; and such rude bulwarks as the natives ould raise were soon overthrown by the engines that had been used in
. : .the
‘the sieges of Italy. But they often prevailed in the surprise arid stratages of excursive hostility ; and the traces of their fobtsteps were lost in. the impervious woods and morasses which overspread the face of the cauntry. On the seg they were dexterous and daring pirates ; and unless the mouths of the rivers were carefully guarded they manned their light brigantines, and ravaged with impunity the isles of Denmark and theadjacent coasts. To the first summons, Niclot, king or great prince of the Obotrites, returned an answer of ironical submission, that he would adore. Henry, añd'that Henry, if he pleased, might adore his Christ; a profane mockery, since the pagans themselves reconciled the worship of tdols with the belief of a supreme deity. Aftér the failure of a sally, the barbarian . upbraided the effeminacyof his two sons : it was incumbent on him to upbraid them by his own success ; but he fell in the rash attempt; his head, as a grateful present, was sent to the Danish king ; and a third son, who served in the Christian army, applauded with savage zeal the justice of his father’s punishment. The two brothers, Pribislaus and Wertislaus, succeeded to the command, and delayed the servitude of the nation. -In. the siege of their most important fortress, the elder hovered round the Saxon camp, while the younger assumed the more dangerous task of defending the place. After refusing an honourable capitulation, Wertislaus threw himself on the mercy of the conqueror, who sent the royal captive to Brunswick, ignominiously bound in fetters of iron, A treaty soon placed him in the more responsible situation of an hostage : the Obotrites, perhaps by his secret instigation, again rose in arms; but Wertislaus himself was the victim of rebellion, and as soon as the Duke of Saxony entered the Slavic territory, he shewed the King hanging on a gibbet. This act of cruelty may perhaps be justified by the maxims of war or policy: but if the Duke appealed to the recent massacre of Mecklenburgh, the rebels perhaps might plead the retaliation of sqme prior injuries, The fortune of the younger brother was less disastrous ; after a brave defence of his country and his gods, Pribislaus submitted, like Witikind, to the yoke of necessity, and embraced, with apparent sincerity, the religion and manners of the victorious Germans. Henry, who esteemed his valour, restored to the Christian vassal thé greatest part of the dominions which he had wrested from the pagasf nes ;‘and the reigning family of the dukes of Mecklenburgh is EE 2," . lineally
SIs ANTIQUITIES OF HE -
lineatly descended from Pribislaus, the last king. of the Obotrites . The Slavic. provinces beyond the Etbe were possessed-by Héürÿ the Fifi; not as a portion of the Germanic empire, but. as an absolute and iridependent conquest which he alone had been able to achieve: The Guelphic duke was styled the prince of princes, avid legislator of ndtions, and the three new bishops of the Obotrites. réceived froti Ms hand their pastoral crosier, a preregative which Rome had denied té- té empesors thenssel ves.
I observe with 4 mixture of paix and pleasuré the: beneficial cotise-+ quewces. of war and persecution. The improvement of agriculture aid the: arts alleviated .iz some degree the servitude of the: Christian proseltés: Fhe Saxon castles ef Henry and his-vassals weré gradually incorporated: inte flourishing towtis. By thie:institutions of churches'and convents the! first.rays of knowledge were diffused ; arid: frémi. Holland, Flanders, and- Westplialia, the vacant desért was replenished with industrious colonies who have almost extinguished the matadrs and. language of the Siavie race. ‘Phe foundation. of Eubedk isa memiotable évert ix the History oF commence; . Near the mouth of the river Trave, thut falls into the Baltie, that:convenient station: had! been discoverer! dnd used'by'somie Christian: merchants: but their-iafant settlement was répeatediy: destroyed! by fine; and: the sword of the pavans:;. arid its progreës was’ discourtized: by the jealousy: of Henry the: Lion, till he had. acquired: (F157): from hist vassal, the Count of Holstein, the:absolute and imatediate property of the:soit Under the: shadow: of -his power, Lubeck arose on: a’ broad! aud) parmanent basis: the establishment: of a miñt-and‘a. castoñiiouse declared. the riches. and' the hopes of the sovéreign: the seat-of d bishop. was: tranferred to: the’ rising: city; and the grant of a muniei+ pal government secured the personal, and prepared thie’ political liberty of the .burghersi. The: proclamation: of the Duke of Saxony. tothe Danes-and Norwegians; the: Swedes: atid! Russians, discovers: a: liberak knowledge of the advantuges'of trade’ and: the methods: of encourage
ent.. They: are invited: to. frequent his-harbour of Wisby; witli the assurance: that-the' ways shall be open and secure by land and‘water that: they shall’ be. hospitably: entertained arnd).may: freely depart; -thaf the: imposition’ of duties shall be light: and easy: thet theif persons: and:
property shall. be guaded-from injury; andi that in: case of death: the effects
HOUSE OF BRUNSWICK, - OTs effects of # Sfratigér shall be catéfully preserved fot the benefit of his hétts. ‘Thé charter of Henry to the méréhants of the isle of Gothland is stilt éxtant ; the first outline of the maritime code of Wisby, as famous. in the Baltic as the Rhodian laws had been formerly in the Mediterranean. This judicious policy was tewarded with a largé and rapid increase: but fhié arts of. cultivation have far less energy and éffect than the spontäkéous vigour of nature atid freedom. The coinmerce and navigation of his favourite Colony increased with her growihg independence, and before the éd of the thirteenth century, Lubeck became the metropolis of the sixty-four cities of the Hanseatic league. That singular republic, & witlély scattered, and so loosely connected, was in possession, above two hutdred years, of the respect of kings, the naval dominion of thé Baltic, the herritig fishery, and the fiénopôly of 4 lucrative tradé. No: vogorod:in Russia, Bergen in Norway, London in England, and Brugés. ni Flanders’ wête their four principal factôries or staples. Thé ‘largé ships of their numerous and annudl fleets exported all thé productions. df thé North, and’ sailed homewards richly ladén with the precious comnidditits and manufactures Of the soutliern climates. Lubéck, an imperial city, Was soon enfranehiséd frém the dothidion of thé House oF BrüriswicK; but “Henry the Lion was revered ‘as a foiinder ; and his. gréat grandson, Duke Albert, obtäiféd' from Hevry III. (1966) the first Faplish charter of the Hanseatit towns: |
The baptism, or thé’ bléod; of so many thdiisdtid’ pagan’ might have expiatéd the siris of the €atHolid Kero: But his cénsdiénce was still widdtisfied, his silvation was’ still doubtful, and it was in the fairest gexsin of victory and péace (1 172) ‘that! he accomplistied the fashionable dévotion of 4 pilptitiagé’to the Holy Latid. His first attendant Pribislatis, kitig of thé Obotrites, exhibited’ t6 the wotld his own faith arid’ tHe’ fnñé df tHe coridueror: the ‘Bishop’ off Worms, the imperial étifbastidor, dccottipatiied hiri as far aë Constantinople ; séveral eminent peridhs-of tHe clétgy’ and nobilitÿ ittitated his éxäim iplé ;: their followers weté numitrous: d trdin of horses arid waggoiis' transported the baggage aiid’ provisibiis,: aiid’ the camip was guarded’ by twelve hündred knights OF soldiérs exercised’ in the’use of dims. After’ leaving’ Ratisbon, and the’ cotifines of Bavaria, the Guelphic prince was ‘kindly entertained by Hetty, duke of Austtia, their foriiier differetices: were buried in ob-
livion,
Jivion, and they mingled their tears at the tomb of a mother and a wife.. Hungary was the kingdom of a Christian ally; and the journey wai continued by land and water from Vienna to Belgrade: the duke preferred the more easy, though perilous, navigation of the Danube; but his progress was measured by the march of the caravan which joined him every evening on the banks of the river. From Belgrade to Nissa he, painfully advanced through the woods and morasses of Servia and. Bulgaria, whose wild inhabitants, the nominal subjects of Chnst and the Greek emperor, were more mclined to claim the privilege of rapme, than to exercise the laws of hospitality : they attacked his camp in the night; their feeble arms were repelled by his vigilance, and his genuine — piety disdained the temptation of revenge. In the journey between. Nissa and Constantinople, the way-worn pilgrims enjoyed the comforts of a civilized and friendly province, and the Emperor Manuel, who had sent an embassy to Brunswick, received Henry as the equal of kings. The wealth and luxury of the Byzantine court were ostentatiously dis« played, and after the pleasures. of the chace and banquet, the Saxon or his chaplains disputed with the Greeks on the procession of the Holy Ghost. The friendship of the twe princes was confirmed by. mutual gifts, and the Russian furs were, perhaps, overbalanced by the horses and arms, the scarlet cloth and fine linen of Germany. A stout. ship was provided for the duke and his peculiar retinue, and the voyage. from Constantinople. to St.-John of Acre, on the coast of Palestine, was disturbed by a storm, and is embellished by a miracle. - After a short journey by land he reached Jerusalem, and was saluted in-solemn procession by the patriarch and the military orders. Henry the Lion wisited the holy sepulchre and all the customary places of devotion in the city and country: the churches were adorned with the silver of the Saxon mines; and he presented the Templars with a thousand marks for the service of their perpetual crusade. Palestine applauded his liberal and magnanimous spirit, and had he not been prevented by secret jealousies, his valour might have been felt by the Turks and Saracens, In his return by a different way the Duke of Saxony was actuated ~ by motives of convenience rather than of curiosity.. He followed the sea coast of Syria to the northward: from the harbour of Seleucia or St. Simeon the vessels of the Prince of Antioch transplanted him over the
HOUSE.OF BRUNSWIÉK, 21%
the gulf to the river of Tarsus in Cilicia; and by this short passage he eacaped.the territories of a faithless Emir. From Tarsus to Constantinople his march intersected in a diagonal line the extent of Asia Minor: the mountains were of laborious ascent; the sandy plain was destitute of water and provisions; the more populous country was full of danger; suspicion, and Mahometan zeal: and Henry was the only pilgrim who, as a peaceful traveller, proceeded in safety through the Turkish dominions. But the Sultan of Iconium, Kilidge Arslan II. of the race of Selj uk, watched over his safety, embraced him as a friend, praised his religion, and claimed on the mother’s side a distant affinity with the House of Saxony. His presents, in the oriental style, were adapted to the accommodation and amusement of the noble stranger; a caftar er flowing robe of silk embroidery, the choice for himself and his followers of eighteen hundred horses, of whom thirty most sumptuously caparisoned were selected for his peculiar use; six tents of felt, and six camels to carry them; -two well-trained leopards with the proper horses and servants for that smgular mode of hunting. Such gifts might be accepted without a blush; some precious gems, more precious for the workmanship than the materials, might be honourably received fronr the Greek Emperor: but the.duke rejected the gold and silver of the Byzantine court, declaring in a tone of lofty: politeness that of such metals his own treasury was sufficiently’ provided. The avarice of Henry was confined to the acquisition of holy relics, and of these he: paported an ample store from Palestine and Greece: but the reformation has annibijlated their ideal value; the bits of wood or bone have ‘been thrown away; and the empty cases alone are preserved for their curious and costly ornaments. The journey from Constantinople ta Ratisbon and Brunswick is not marked by any accident or event. On bis return home, after a years absénce (1178), the Duke of Saxony found his name illustrious, his servants faithful, his-enemies silent, his dominions in a peaceful-and prosperous state: and to-the merits of his: pilgrimage he woukd seasonably impute this fair prespect of public and private felicity. .
Henry the Lion was twice married: but his first wife Clementia, of: the ducal House of Zæringen, gave him only a daughter, who, after being long considered as an heiress, was reduced to comfort herself on . the-
the throne of ‘Denmark. His desire of male posterity, the wish of yanity and ambition, at length determined Henry to solicit a divares; some bar of remote and invisible consanguinity afforded the pretence : every defect of Jaw or evidence was supplied by the ail-sufficient oath of the emperor: the sentence was pronounced (1163) by the spiritual court of Constance: and, without any stain en her own honour or her daughter's legitimacy, Clementia found a second husband in the princely family of Savoy. The policy of Frederic Barbarossa had eagerly solicited the separation; he wished to connect himself and his friend with the most powerful and illustrious of our English kings; and the imperial ambassadors demanded Matilda, eldest daughter of Henry EE, for the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. The fame of Heary the Lion, of his birth and merit, his riches and dominion, obtained from the father an easy consent and an ample dower : the Princess Royal of England was performed (1 168 ) at Minden im Westphalia as the bride was no more than twelve years of age, the consummation was delayed, but she remained pregnant at the departure of her hughand for the Holy Land. In his absence the duchess kept her court at Brunswick, and administered 9 nominal regency, under the guard and guidance of his most faithful servants: but her private virtues were her own; the genuine lustre of meekpess, purity, and benevalence was enhanced in the popular esteem by. devout prayer and frequent masses; and “ she was beautified (says an historian with some elegance) by the comeliness of religion.” After the return of Henry. her riper. age soon blessed him with a numerous progeny. Besides two, or. perhaps three daughters, Matilda became the mother of: four.sons, Henry, Lothaire, Otho, and William, from the youngest of whom all the princes of Brunswick. are lineally derived. By this alliance they. number among their ancestors the Plantagenets, Counts of Anjou, the Dukes of Aquitain and Normandy, the. Kings of Scotland: whose origin ‘is lost in a Highland mist, and the Kings of England, the descendants of: the’ Saxon conquerors, who drew their fabulous pedigree from the God Woden. ‘Fhe male posterity of Henry II. spon withered, almost to the root: the eldest son of the Princess Matilda waa the. presumptive heir of his uncle Kin John; ; and after. the birth of Henry EE. no more don a single life, the precarious
precarious life-of a boy, stood between his title and the throne of England. According to’ the probable order of events the children of Henry the Lion should have reigned over us five hundred years before the accession of the Hanover family.
The fair anticipation of the name of Esre-BruNswicx may denote the venerable stem before its separation into the German and Italian branches. | - A generation of mankind, the common interval between the birth of a father and that of his son, is fixed by Herodotus at the term of about thirty-three years, at the computation of three generations for one century. The experience of modern times has confirmed the reckoning of the Greek historian: and, though a royal marriage may be hastened for the important object of ‘succession, yet the same rule ‘has been verified in the families of sovereigns and ‘subjects.* It is strictly just in the twenty-two generations and the seven hundred and sixty-six years (996—1762) which have elapsed from the birth of the Marquis Azo to that of the Prince of Wales; and if.the collateral lines of Brunswick and Modena afford no more than twenty-one, and twenty genetations, the difference might be explained by some peculiar circumstances of their respective history. ,
Twenty-two generations, seven or eight hundred years, occupy a small place even in the historical period of the world. But all greatness is relative; and there are not many pedigrees, in Europe or Asia; which can establish, by clear and contemporary proofs, a similar antiquity. If the ancestors of: the Marquis Azo are lost, as they must be finally lost, in the darkness and disorder of the middle ages, it will be remembered that the use of hereditary names and armorial ensigns was unknown; thatthe descent of power and property was frequently violated ; that few events were recorded, and that few records: have been preserved. + Yet human pride may draw some comfort from the ‘reflection that the authors of the race of Este-Brunswick can never be found in a private or plebeian rank: their first appearance is with the dignity of princes ; and they start at once, perfect and in arms, like Pallas from the head of Jupiter. -
* See Herodotus, L il. c. 142, and his justification by Freret, Histoire de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xiv. p. 15—20. , VOL. III. . FF [The
[The reader will probably regret, with the editor, that Mr. Gibbon did not complete this interesting disquisition—so far, at least, as to make it reach the auspicious event of the settlement of the House of Hanover on the British Throne. That the reader may not be wholly disappointed, the editor has inserted, in this place, an Extract from Mr. Butler's Succinct History of the Geographical and Political Revolutions of the Empire of Germany, which gives some account of the House of Brunswick, from the period at which Mr. Gibbon leaves it, till the period we have mentioned, after which it is familiar to every British reader. ]
“ Henry the Black was the founder of the German Principalities possessed by his family. He married Wolphidis, the sale heiress. of Herman of Billung, the Duke of Saxony, and of his possessions on the Elbe. His son, Henry the Proud, married Gertrude, the heiress of the duchies of Saxony, Brunswick, and Hanover. Thus Henry the Proud, | “Ist. As representing Azo, his great-grandfather,—inherited some
part of the Italian possessions of the younger branch of the Estesine family: they chiefly lay on the southern side of the fall of the Po into the Adriatic :
“2d. As representing Count Boniface, the father of the Princess Mechtildis—he inherited the Italian possessions of the elder branch of the Estesine family ; they chiefly lay in Tuscany: some part of the possessions of the Princess Mechtildis.also de-
| volved to him :
“sd. As representing Cunegunda, his grandmother—he à inherited the
__. possessions of the Guelphs at Altorf:
“ ath. As representing his mother, the sole heiress of Herman of Billung—he inherited the possessions. of the Saxon family on. the Elbe :
«5th. And through his wife—he transmitted the duchies. of Saxony, Brunswick, and Hanover.
“All these possessions descended: to Henry the Lion. the son of Henry the Proud. He added to.them Bavaria,. on the cession.of Henry. Jossemargott, and Lunenburgh and Mecklenburgh by cenquest. Thus he became possessed of an extensive territory,—he himself used to describe it in four German verses. which have been thus translated.:
“ Henry
© Henry the Lion is my name:
Through all the earth I spread my fame, For, from the Elbe, unto the Rhine, Frot 1*“Hartz, unto the sea,—ALL’s MINE.
“ In other words, his possessions filled a considerable portion of the
territory between the Rhine, the Baltic, the Elbe, and the Tyber. . © Unfortunately for him, in the quarrels between the Pope and the Emperor Barbarossa, he sided with the former. The emperor confis cated his possessions, but returned him his allodial estates in Brunswick, Hanover, and Lunenburgh ; he died in 1195. By his first wife he had no issue male : his second wife was Maud, the daughter of Henry the Second, king of England. By her he had several sons, all of whom died except William, called of Winchester from his being born in that city. William of Winchester had issue Otho, called Puer, or the boy.
‘ At the decease of Otho Puer, the partition of this illustrious house commences, The subject of these sheets leads only to the Lunenburgh branches of the Guelphic shoot.of the Estesine line. .
‘ On the death of Otho the boy, Brunswick and Lunenburgh, the only remains of the splendid possessions of his grandfather, William the Proud, were divided between his two sons, John and Albert: Lunehburgh was assigned to the former, Brunswick to the latter. Thus the | former became the patriarch of,. what is called,. the Old House of Lunenburgh. Otho his son received Hanover as a fief from William Sigefred, the Bishop of Hildesheim. Otho had four sons; Otho his first son succeeded him, and dying without issue was succeeded by his brother William with the large feet. He died in 1369, without issue male: the two other sons of Otho the father also died without male issue. —
“ Thus there was a general failure of issue male of John, the patriarch of the old house of Lunenburgh. By the influence of the Emperor Charles the Fourth, Otho, elector of Saxony, who had married Elizabeth, the daughter of William, succeeded to the duchy, He died
without issue, and left it, by his will, to his uncle Winceslaus, elector of Saxony, It was contested with him by Torquatus Magnus, duke of . Saxony; the contest ended in a compromise; under which Bernard, the | eldest son of Torquatus Magnus, obtained it, and became the patriarch of the Middle House of Lunenburgh ; he died in 1434. After several F FQ : descents,
