History of Friedrich II of Prussia - Frederick the Great Chapter XI. - Bayarian Kurfursts in Brandenburg.
by Thomas Carlyle
Young Ludwig Kurfurst of Brandenburg, Kaiser Ludwig's eldest son,
having come of years, the Tutors or Statthalters went home,--not
wanted except in cases of occasional absence henceforth;--and the
young man endeavored to manage on his own strength. His success
was but indifferent; he held on, however, for a space of twenty
years, better or worse. "He helped King Edward III. at the Siege
of Cambray (A.D. 1339);" [Michaelis, i. 279.] whose French
politics were often connected with the Kaiser's: it is certain,
Kurfurst Ludwig "served personally with 600 horse [on good
payment, I conclude] at that Siege of Cambray;"--and probably saw
the actual Black Prince, and sometimes dined with him, as English
readers can imagine. In Brandenburg he had many checks and
difficult passages, but was never quite beaten out, which it was
easy to have been.
A man of some ability, as we can gather, though not of enough:
he played his game with resolution, not without skill; but from
the first the cards were against him. His Father's affairs going
mostly ill were no help to his, which of themselves went not well.
The Brandenburgers, mindful of their old Ascanier sovereigns, were
ill affected to Ludwig and the new Bavarian sort. The Anhalt
Cousinry gloomed irreconcilable; were never idle, digging
pitfalls, raising troubles. From them and others Kurfurst Ludwig
had troubles enough; which were fronted by him really not amiss;
which we wholly, or all but wholly, omit in this place.
A RESUSCITATED ASCANIER; THE FALSE WALDEMAR.
The wickedest and worst trouble of their raising was that of the
resuscitated Waldemar (A.D. 1345): "False Waldemar," as he is now
called in Brandenburg Books. Waldemar was the last, or as good as
the last, of the Ascanier Markgraves; and he, two years before
Ludwig ever saw those countries, died in his bed, twenty-five good
years ago; and was buried, and seemingly ended. But no; after
twenty-five years, Waldemar reappears: "Not buried or dead, only
sham-buried, sham-dead; have been in the Holy Land all this while,
doing pilgrimage and penance; and am come to claim my own again,--
which strangers are much misusing!" [Michaelis, i. 279.]
Perkin Warbeck, POST-MORTEM Richard II., Dimitri of Russia, Martin
Guerre of the CAUSES CELEBRES: it is a common story in the world,
and needs no commentary now. POST-MORTEM Waldemar, it is said,
was a Miller's Man, "of the name of Jakob Rehback;" who used to be
about the real Waldemar in a menial capacity, and had some
resemblance to him. He showed signets, recounted experiences,
which had belonged to the real Waldemar. Many believed in his
pretension, and took arms to assert it; the Reich being in much
internal battle at the time; poor Kaiser Ludwig, with his Avignon
Popes and angry Kings Johann, wading in deep waters. Especially
the disaffected Cousinry, or Princes of Anhalt, believed and
battled for POST-MORTEM Waldemar; who were thought to have got him
up from the first. Kurfurst Ludwig had four or five most sad years
with him;--all the worse when the PFAFFEN-KAISER (King Johann's
son) came on the stage, in the course of them (A.D. 1346), and
Kaiser Ludwig, yielding not indeed to him, but to Death, vanished
from it two years after; [Elected, 1314; Muhldorf, and Election
COMPLETE, 1322; died, 1347, age 60.] leaving Kurfurst Ludwig to
his own shifts with the Pfaffen-Kaiser. Whom he could not now
hinder from succeeding to the Reich. He tried hard; set up, he and
others, an Anti-Kaiser (GUNTHER OF SCHWARTZBURG, temporary Anti-
Kaiser, whom English readers can forget again): he bustled,
battled, negotiated, up and down; and ran across, at one time, to
Preussen to the Teutsch Ritters,--presumably to borrow money:--but
it all would not do. The Pfaffen-Kaiser carried it, in the Diet
and out of the Diet: Karl IV. by title; a sorry enough Kaiser,
and by nature an enemy of Ludwig's.
It was in this whirl of intricate misventures that Kurfurst Ludwig
had to deal with his False Waldemar, conjured from the deeps upon
him, like a new goblin, where already there were plenty, in the
dance round poor Ludwig. Of which nearly inextricable goblin-
dance; threatening Brandenburg, for one thing, with annihilation,
and yet leading Brandenburg abstrusely towards new birth and
higher destinies,--how will it be possible (without raising new
ghosts, in a sense) to give readers any intelligible notion?--
Here, flickering on the edge of conflagration after duty done,
is a poor Note which perhaps the reader had better, at the risk of
superfluity, still in part take along with him:--
"Kaiser Henry VII., who died of sacramental wine, First of the
Luxemburg Kaisers, left Johann still a boy of fifteen, who could
not become the second of them, but did in time produce the Second,
who again produced the Third and Fourth.
"Johann was already King of Bohemia; the important young
gentleman, Ottocar's grandson, whom we saw 'murdered at Olmutz
none yet knows by whom,' had left that throne vacant, and it
lapsed to the Kaiser; who, the Nation also favoring, duly put in
his son Johann. There was a competitor, 'Duke of the Tyrol,' who
claimed on loose grounds; 'My wife was Aunt of the young murdered
King,' said he; 'wherefore'--! Kaiser, and Johann after him,
rebutted this competitor; but he long gave some trouble, having
great wealth and means. He produced a Daughter, Margaret Heiress
of the Tyrol,--with a terrible MOUTH to her face, and none of the
gentlest hearts in her body:--that was perhaps his principal feat
in the world. He died 1331; had styled himself 'King of Bohemia'
for twenty years,--ever since 1308;--but in the last two years of
his life he gave it up, and ceased from troubling, having come to
a beautiful agreement with Johann.
"Johann, namely, wedded his eldest Son to this competitor's fine
Daughter with the mouth (Year 1329): 'In this manner do not
Bohemia and the Tyrol come together in my blood and in yours, and
both of us are made men?' said the two contracting parties.--Alas,
no: the competitor Duke, father of the Bride, died some two years
after, probably with diminished hopes of it; and King Johann lived
to see the hope expire dismally altogether. There came no
children, there came no--In fact Margaret, after a dozen years of
wedlock, in unpleasant circumstances, broke it off as if by
explosion; took herself and her Tyrol irrevocably over to Kaiser
Ludwig, quite away from King Johann,--who, his hopes of the Tyrol
expiring in such dismal manner, was thenceforth the bitter enemy
of Ludwig and what held of him."
Tyrol explosion was in 1342. And now, keeping these preliminary
dates and outlines in mind, we shall understand the big-mouthed
Lady better, and the consequences of her in the world.
MARGARET WITH THE POUCH-MOUTH.
What principally raised this dance of the devils round poor
Ludwig, I perceive, was a marriage he had made, three years before
Waldemar emerged; of which, were it only for the sake of the
Bride's name, some mention is permissible. Margaret of the Tyrol,
commonly called, by contemporaries and posterity, MAULTASCHE
(Mouthpoke, Pocket-mouth), she was the bride:--marriage done at
Innspruck, 1342, under furtherance of father Ludwig the Kaiser:--
such a mouth as we can fancy, and a character corresponding to it.
This, which seemed to the two Ludwigs a very conquest of the
golden-fleece under conditions, proved the beginning of their
worst days to both of them.
Not a lovely bride at all, this Maultasche; who is verging now
towards middle life withal, and has had enough to cross her in the
world. Was already married thirteen years ago; not wisely nor by
any means too well. A terrible dragon of a woman. Has been in
nameless domestic quarrels; in wars and sieges with rebellious
vassals; claps you an iron cap on her head, and takes the field
when need is: furious she-bear of the Tyrol. But she has immense
possessions, if wanting in female charms. She came by mothers from
that Duke of Meran whom we saw get his death (for cause), in the
Plassenburg a hundred years ago. [Antes, p.102.] Her ancestor was
Husband to an Aunt of that homicided Duke: from him, principally
from him, she inherits the Tyrol, Carinthia, Styria; is herself
an only child, the last of a line: hugest Heiress now going. So
that, in spite of the mouth and humor, she has not wanted for
wooers,--especially prudent Fathers wooing her for their sons.
In her Father's lifetime, Johann King of Bohemia, always awake to
such symptoms of things, and having very peculiar interests in
this case, courted and got her for his Crown-Prince (as we just
saw), a youth of great outlooks, outlooks towards Kaisership
itself perhaps; to whom she was wedded, thirteen years ago, and
duly brought the Tyrol for Heritage: but with the worst results.
Heritage, namely, could not be had without strife with Austria,
which likewise had claims. Far worse, the marriage itself went
awry: Johann's Crown-Prince was "a soft-natured Herr," say the
Books: why bring your big she-bear into a poor deer's den? Enough,
the marriage came to nothing, except to huge brawlings far enough
away from us: and Margaret Pouch-mouth has now divorced her
Bohemian Crown-Prince as a Nullity; and again weds, on similar
terms, Kaiser Ludwig's son, our Brandenburg Kurfurst,--who hopes
possibly that HE now may succeed as Kaiser, on the strength of his
Father and of the Tyrol. Which turned out far otherwise.
The marriage was done in the Church of Innspruck, 10th February,
1342 (for we love to be particular), "Kaiser Ludwig," happy man,
"and many Princes of the Empire, looking on;" little thinking what
a coil it would prove. "At the high altar she stript off her
veil," symbol of wifehood or widowhood, "and put on a
JUNGFERNKRANZ (maiden's-garland)," symbolically testifying how
happy Ludwig junior still was. They had a son by and by; but their
course otherwise, and indeed this-wise too, was much checkered.
King Johann, seeing the Tyrol gone in this manner, gloomed
terribly upon his Crown-Prince; flung him aside as a Nullity,
"Go to Moravia, out of sight, on an apanage, you; be Crown-Prince
no longer!"--And took to fighting Kaiser Ludwig; colleagued
diligently with the hostile Pope, with the King of France;
intrigued and colleagued far and wide; swearing by every method
everlasting enmity to Kaiser Ludwig; and set up his son Karl as
Pfaffen-Kaiser. Nay, perhaps he was at the bottom of POST-OBIT
Waldemar too. In brief, he raised, he mainly, this devils'-dance,
in which, Kaiser Ludwig having died, poor Kurfurst Ludwig, with
Maultasche hanging on him, is sometimes near his wits' end.
Johann's poor Crown-Prince, finding matters take this turn,
retired into MAHREN (Moravia) as bidden; "Margrave of Mahren;"
and peaceably adjusted himself to his character of Nullity and to
the loss of Maultasche;--chose, for the rest, a new Princess in
wedlock, with more moderate dimensions of mouth; and did produce
sons and daughters on a fresh score. Produced, among others, one
Jobst his successor in the apanage or Margrafdom; who, as JOBST,
or Jodocus, OF MAHREN, made some noise for himself in the next
generation, and will turn up again in reference to Brandenburg in
this History.
As for Margaret Pouch-mouth, she, with her new Husband as with her
old, continued to have troubles, pretty much as the sparks fly
upwards. She had fierce siegings after this, and explosive
procedures,--little short of Monk Schwartz, who was just inventing
gunpowder at the time. We cannot hope she lived in Elysian harmony
with Kurfurst Ludwig;--the reverse, in fact; and oftenest with the
whole breadth of Germany between them, he in Brandenburg, she in
the Tyrol. Nor did Ludwig junior ever come to be Kaiser, as his
Father and she had hoped; on the contrary, King Johann of
Bohemia's people,--it was they that next got the Kaisership and
kept it; a new provocation to Maultasche.
Ludwig and she had a son, as we said; Prince of the Tyrol and
appendages, titular Margraf of Mahren and much else, by nature:
but alas, he died about ten; a precocious boy,--fancy the wild
weeping of a maternal She-bear! And the Father had already died;
[In 1361, died Kurfurst Ludwig; 1363, the Boy; 1366, Maultasche
herself.] a malicious world whispering that perhaps she poisoned
them BOTH. The proud woman, now old too, pursed her big coarse
lips together at such rumor, and her big coarse soul,--in a gloomy
scorn appealing beyond the world; in a sorrow that the world knew
not of. She solemnly settled her Tyrol and appendages upon the
Austrian Archdukes, who were children of her Mother's Sister;
whom she even installed into the actual government, to make
matters surer. This done, she retired to Vienna, on a pension from
them, there to meditate and pray a little, before Death came;
as it did now in a short year or two. Tyrol and the appendages
continue with Austria from that hour to this, Margaret's little
boy having died.
Margaret of the Pouch-mouth, rugged dragoon-major of a woman, with
occasional steel cap on her head, and capable of swearing terribly
in Flanders or elsewhere, remains in some measure memorable to me.
Compared with Pompadour, Duchess of Cleveland, of Kendal and other
high-rouged unfortunate females, whom it is not proper to speak of
without necessity, though it is often done,--Maultasche rises to
the rank of Historical. She brought the Tyrol and appendages
permanently to Austria; was near leading Brandenburg to
annihilation, raising such a goblin-dance round Ludwig and it,
yet did abstrusely lead Brandenburg towards a far other goal,
which likewise has proved permanent for it.
