cleared off, leaving the knights and Switzers to do battle. Under cover of a strong fire, “so that nothing could be seen for smoke,” Stromer tried to form a “Wagenburg” (waggon fortress), by having the carts driven round so as to form a circle about the men and guns, hoping to be able to wait in this extemporised fort till reinforcements should arrive from Affalterbach. Götz boasts that it was he who prevented this manœuvre from being executed. For he killed one of the drivers, and so interrupted the completion of the circle. The Brandenburgers were thus enabled to rush in, and compelled the citizens to take to flight. At this juncture the reinforcements came up, but it was too late. A general rush for safety to the town took place. On the bridge over the moat there was so great a crush of refugees that many were forced over into the water. Luckily the cannon on the Frauen Thor kept the Markgraf at a safe distance. Within the town a terrible panic had occurred. Götz, indeed, says that the place could easily have been taken—a statement not very easy to believe. At any rate, the Markgraf did not attempt it, but marched back to Schwabach to hold a service of thanksgiving, whilst the Nurembergers revenged themselves on the peasants whom they had taken prisoner. Intense indignation was felt and expressed against the Markgraf: prisoners were torn to pieces in the streets. At last a curious peace was arranged, to begin on July 1st, but not before. Each side tried to damage the other as much as possible before that day came, and the Council, in order to get in a good final blow, burned the Markgraf’s castle of Schönberg at the last moment. A peace thus inaugurated did not, as may be imagined, produce any lasting good feeling between the two parties. In the very next year fresh trouble arose over one Heinz Baum, a Nuremberg citizen who had come down in the world and been put into prison by his creditors. As soon as he was released, he left the town, threw up his citizenship, and, after writing various threatening letters to the Council, he surprised Hans Tucher, a Nuremberg patrician, when riding out to his country seat, and kept him prisoner till he was ransomed. With the Markgraf’s secret support, Baum proceeded to seize and keep in the stocks till ransom was paid all the citizens he could lay his hands on. Though the Emperor outlawed him, he pursued his way unhindered, protected by the Markgraf, till 1512, when Nuremberg bought off his chief supporter, and Heinz Baum retired to Bamberg, where he died poor but unpunished.
The importance of Nuremberg was still further enhanced by the part she took in the war of the Bavarian Succession. In 1503 George the Rich of Bavaria had died without male issue. According to the feudal right, his lands ought to have gone to the male heir, but, hating as he did his natural successors, his cousins Albrecht of Bavaria and Wolfgang, he had made his daughter his sole heiress, and married her to her cousin Ruprecht (third son of the powerful Philip, Elector of the Palatinate), whom he adopted as his son and made governor of a great part of the country. On the death of Duke George, Ruprecht succeeded, but Albrecht and Wolfgang raised such strenuous protest that the Emperor, after repeated attempts to arrange a compromise, was obliged to outlaw Ruprecht and all his supporters, his father the Elector Philip included. War was the inevitable result. The Emperor and other princes, amongst whom was the Markgraf of Brandenburg, gave their support to Albrecht, who promised them a share in what was conquered. Many of Philip’s possessions were close to Nuremberg. Albrecht was therefore able to entice her to fight for him, promising her in return for her aid 40,000 gulden, with all the Palatinate towns and the value of all George’s towns that she might manage to take. With the aid of three special cannon, called the Owl, the Falcon, and the Fishermaid, capable of shooting balls of 263 pounds weight, the Nuremberg army captured a considerable number of Palatinate towns. But even after the deaths first of Ruprecht and then of his brave widow, who had carried on the struggle like another Margaret of Anjou, the war still dragged on on behalf of their little sons, and the Palatinate party were actually getting a little the best of it when, at a Reichstag in Cologne, Maximilian at length arranged a successful compromise.
Nuremberg was allowed to keep what she had taken, and now had more land than any other free town in the Empire. It was a doubtful blessing. She was involved in constant wars to keep it, in further quarrels with the Markgraf over the rights of Fraisgericht,—of jurisdiction in matters of life and death in the newly acquired towns, and she had to pay largely increased contributions to the Empire. Altogether she was impoverished rather than benefited by her new property.
We have now to trace the story of the celebrated feud with Götz von Berlichingen—the warrior knight, the chivalrous and charitable, the brave, free-booting noble, Götz of the Iron Hand. Such is the character Goethe gave him when he centred in him, as the heroic champion of the privileges of the Free Knights, the interest of his Shakesperian drama. Truth, however, compels us to declare, that though men like Götz or Franz von Sickingen, the Robin Hoods of Germany, had the qualities of a certain rough justice and courage, they were, for the rest, wholly undeniable brigands. The love of destruction, disorder, and rapine, and the hatred of authority were their chief motives. They used their rights as pretexts for violence and devoted themselves to brigandage as to a legitimate vocation and organised industry. They were, indeed, little better than leaders of bands of robbers, the wolves of civilisation.
“One day,” says Götz, “as I was on the point of making an attack, I perceived a pack of wolves descending on a flock of sheep. This incident seemed to me a good omen. We were going to begin the fight. A shepherd was near us, guarding his sheep, when, as if to give us the signal, five wolves threw themselves simultaneously on the flock. I saw it and noted it gladly. I wished them success and ourselves too, saying, ‘Good luck, dear comrades, success to you everywhere!’ I took it as a very good augury that we had begun the attack together!”
It was in 1495 that Maximilian, ever anxious to promote peace and order within the borders of his Empire, abrogated by edict the right of private war under the penalty of the ban of the Empire—a penalty which involved the dooms of outlawry and excommunication. Thus the “last of the Knights” gave the death-blow to the chivalry of the Middle Ages. Hitherto every German noble holding fief directly from the Emperor had been on his own property a petty monarch, as it were, subordinate to the Imperial authority alone. These proud military barons,—an ever-increasing host of petty lords, since the rule of inheritance in Germany was division among the male heirs—esteemed above all other privileges the right of making war on each other, or on the towns, with no other ceremony than that of three days’ notice in writing (Fehdebrief). The evils and dangers of this privilege are clear, but they were left untouched by the Golden Bull. With the advance of civilisation, which was ever opposed to the feudal system, this Faustrecht had come to be regarded as intolerable by such princes, bishops and free towns as suffered from the consequent disorder of the country and the marauding expeditions of the free-knights. For the residence of every baron had become, as we have seen, a fortress from which, as his passions or avarice dictated, a band of marauders sallied forth to back his quarrel or to collect an extorted revenue from the merchants who presumed to pass through his domain. Princes and bishops, abbots and wealthy merchants of the towns banded together, therefore, to enforce the new ordinance and to suppress the petty feudatories, who, like Götz, struggled to maintain their privilege and independence. Under Sigismund various efforts had been made to suppress the harrying of the knights and many robber-nests on solitary rocks were taken. When taken the robbers, especially those of the lower class, were made short work of and dealt with in various ways—ways best illustrated by a visit to the torture chambers of the castle. There was one Hans Schuttensamen, for instance, on whose head the Council put a price. A citizen of Bamberg came forward and claimed the reward, saying he had shot him. After he had received the money his story was found to be a stretch of the imagination and he was burnt accordingly. Ten years later (1474) the robber also got burnt.
So bitterly were these knights hated and feared that even the great tourneys, such as the one recorded in 1446,[20] when all the neighbouring nobles came in from the surrounding country and tilted and displayed their skill and valour in the market-place, were very unpopular with the peace-loving burghers.
Nuremberg, then, joined the Swabian League to suppress such knights as chose still to indulge in the forbidden Club Law or Faustrecht. It was not long before she came into direct collision with Götz von Berlichingen of the Iron Hand. Götz, who had a fine gift for chastising the gutter-blooded citizens of a free town, had long been anxious to try conclusions with the men of Nuremberg. He carried out his intention on a very futile pretext. The Nurembergers, it seems, had pursued and fought in the adjacent woods some unknown knights, who had refused, when challenged, to give their names as honest knights and fled. Now, some years after, Hans von Geislingen, brother of one George, who was the Squire of Eustace of Lichtenstein and was killed on this occasion, demanded blood-money for his brother, and on being refused, he seized some Nuremberg citizens and merchants’ caravans. He was outlawed, but this did not prevent Götz von Berlichingen from helping him. George, he declared, had been his page (a statement that had the defect of being untrue), and he demanded a large sum of money in compensation. When this was refused Götz did not send an Absagebrief, or letter of notice of war, but merely a note saying that he was considering, with his friends, how to get compensation. His bitterness was further increased by the action of the Council, who shortly afterwards decapitated Sebastian von Seckendorf, a knight who had long been a source of annoyance, and whom they had at last been successful in catching. Suddenly, and without warning, Götz and his friends swooped down on a party of fifty-five Nuremberg merchants who were travelling back from the fair at Leipzig, under the escort of the Bishop of Bamberg. These he plundered and took prisoners as they were crossing the Rednitz, near Forcheim. Götz did not treat his prisoners too gently, but used the art of torture to persuade them to offer huge ransoms. The news of this seizure caused consternation and surprise in Nuremberg. Götz’s letter of notice came only nine days later to the Council. Spies were sent out to discover his whereabouts: the town was prepared for a siege, and 800 mercenary soldiers were hired. Götz was outlawed. But the Council were accused of being slack to avenge, what they called “a handful of small merchants, not of patrician families,” and Maximilian was not willing to be plunged into an Imperial war “to recover a merchant’s sack of pepper.” What he did do was to attempt to bring about one of his favourite compromises. The Markgraf was appointed to arbitrate, and his award was that Nuremberg should pay a certain sum. As is not unusual in the case of arbitrations, the money was not paid. Götz, laughing at the sentence of outlawry that had been passed upon him, protected by the princes who resented peace and order in an Empire, continued to ravage, burn and pillage, until the Swabian League was renewed, at the end of 1512, to keep the “eternal peace,” at which Maximilian aimed. Nuremberg once more joined the League, on Maximilian’s injunction, though she distrusted the alliance with the Markgraf thereby involved. The League, however, decided in January 1513 to take strong measures to repress the outlawed nobles and to destroy the castles of the robber-knights. But the Emperor objected, and said that he wanted to arrive at a peaceful compromise with Götz. The Nurembergers replied that they would be content if the latter paid over a sum of money sufficient to compensate the merchants for the losses they had suffered. At the same time they took prisoner a robber-knight who was a friend of the Markgraf, and to procure his release the Markgraf promised to arrange peace for them with Hans von Geislingen. This he succeeded in doing. Götz, however, remained at war, proud and obstinate in spite of all mediation. Again and again the League threatened war, the Emperor temporised, and Götz plundered, until at last Maximilian got it arranged that Götz should pay 14000 florins damages. These were subscribed chiefly by his supporters, such as the Bishop of Würzburg, who also persuaded him to cease from his career of robbery.