A happy accident has preserved to us three autobiographies of well-known German nobles of different periods of the 16th century, those of Berlichingen, of Schärtlin, and of Schweinichen; one of them, so long as the German language lasts, will be intimately associated with the name of the greatest German poet. These three men, who flourished in the beginning, the middle, and the end of this celebrated century, were widely different in character and destiny, but all three were landed proprietors, and each of them has recorded the events of his life, so as to give an instructive insight into the social condition of his circle. The best known is Götz von Berlichingen; his memoirs were first published in 1731. The halo, with which three hundred years after his death, Goethe's charming poem has invested him, will make it difficult for the reader of his biography to separate the ideal delineation of the poet from the figure of the historical Götz. And yet this is necessary. For however modestly and lovingly Goethe has portrayed his character, he appears quite different in history. When as an old man, in a time to which he was a stranger, he wrote his life, he loved to dwell on the knightly exploits of his wild youth. It was not his line to enter into political questions; if he found himself in a crisis he acted according to the advice of his patrons,--the great sovereigns, who employed his strong arm and steadfast will for their own objects. When the peasant army broke into his territories, he and his kinsmen were utterly at a loss what to do, and wrote for advice. The answer was suppressed by his mother-in-law and wife, and he was left to his own judgment, and had not sufficient adroitness to withdraw himself from the thronging insurgents. Had he been like many of his cotemporaries, such as Max Stumpf, he would have abandoned the peasants in spite of all his vows. But although not really faithful to them, true to the letter of his word, he adhered to them till the four weeks were passed, for which he had bound himself though he was not in fact their leader but their prisoner. After that he lived some years in close imprisonment, then for a long time in strict confinement at his castle. He was surrounded by a new generation, engaged in vehement strife, and he himself was grieving the while that he had acted in the peasant struggle as an honourable knight, and that still true to his word, he had even now to count the steps which he was allowed to take beyond the gates of his castle. After sixteen years of solitary seclusion he was in his old age twice called to take part in the warfare of a younger race, which neither brought him adventures nor any opportunity to acquire fame or booty. When at last he died in peace at his Castle of Hornburg, at the age of eighty-two, Luther had been dead sixteen years, and the Emperor Charles V. had been interred in a cloister four years before; but the long period from the year 1525 occupies few pages in his autobiography, although it was written in the last year of his life. There will be given here fragments from his account of the Nuremberg feud.
Götz von Berlichingen.
"1512. Now I will not conceal from any one that I was desirous of coming to blows with the Nurembergers; I revolved the thing in my mind, and thought that I must pick a quarrel with the priest, the Bishop of Bamberg, that I might bring the Nurembergers into play. I waylaid ninety-five merchants who were under the safe conduct of the Bishop; I was so kind that I did not seize any of their goods, except those belonging to the Nurembergers; of these there were about thirty. I attacked them on the Monday after Our Lord's Ascension-day, about eight or nine in the morning, and rode along with them all Tuesday, that night, and Wednesday: I had my good friend Hans von Selbitz with me, and altogether our party amounted to thirty. But the other travellers were numerous; these I drove away in small bodies to whatever places they appeared to belong. My comrade, Hans von Selbitz, also an enemy of the Bishop of Bamberg, about a fortnight afterwards burnt his castle and a city, called, if I remember it rightly, Vilseck, so that this affair bore double fruit.
"In order that every one may know why and wherefore I quarrelled with and attacked the men of Nuremberg, I will state the causes. Fritz von Littwach, a Margrave's page, with whom I had been brought up as a boy, who had been my companion-in-arms, and who was very good to me, once disappeared mysteriously in the neighbourhood of Onolzbach, being made prisoner and carried off, so that for a long time no one knew where he was or who had carried him away. Long afterwards, the Margrave caught a man, who gave him and the knights accompanying him many true tidings. Then it became known where Fritz von Littwach had been taken to; so I begged and prayed of my patron and relation Herr Hans von Seckendorf, who was the Margrave's majordomo, that he would procure me the confession of the traitor. Thereby it was discovered that those in the service of the Nurembergers had done the deed, and it might be assumed that he had been taken to one of their houses or a public gaol. This was one of my grounds of complaint against the Nurembergers.
"Further, I had hired a servant called Georg von Gaislingen, who had promised to enter my service, but who had been, when with his Junker Eustach von Lichtenstein, stabbed and severely wounded by the men of Nuremberg; his Junker had been so likewise, but survived. Although many others besides the Nurembergers were hostile to Fritz von Littwach, yet I never perceived any one who had 'belled the cat,' as they say, or had taken up the matter, except poor truehearted Götz von Berlichingen: these are the grounds of offence that I have everywhere and in every way notified and proved against the Nurembergers, every day in which I have negotiated with them before the commissaries of his Imperial Majesty, and also before the ecclesiastical and temporal princes.[[62]]
"I will now show further what happened to me and my relations in the Nuremberg feud. The States of the Empire ordered out four hundred horsemen against me, amongst whom were counts and lords, knights and vassals; their challenges are still in existence. I and my brother were put repeatedly under the ban of the Empire, and in certain cities the priests and monks fulminated fire and flame at me from the pulpit, and gave me up to be eaten by the birds of the air, and everything that we had was taken from us, so that we could not possess a foot's breadth of anything. There was no time for festivities; we were obliged to conceal ourselves, and yet I was able to do my enemies some injury, both to their possessions and otherwise, so that his Imperial Majesty several times interposed and directed his commissaries to negotiate between us, to regulate all things and bring about a reconciliation; thereby his Imperial Majesty hindered many of my projects, and occasioned me more than two hundred thousand gulden' worth of loss, for I intended to have carried off both gold and money from the Nurembergers. It was my project then, by God's help, to overthrow, beat, and imprison all the Nuremberg soldiers, and even the burgomaster himself, who wore a large gold chain about his neck, and held a mace in his hand, and also all their horsemen and their standard bearer, when they were on their way to Hohenkrähen; I was already prepared for it with horse and foot, so that it was quite certain I should have got them into my hands. But there were some good lords and friends of whom I took counsel, whether I should on the appointed day appear before his Imperial Majesty, or put my project in execution. Their true and faithful counsel was, that I should honour his Imperial Majesty with a visit that day, which counsel I followed to my great and evident loss.
"I knew when the Frankfort fair was to take place, when the Nurembergers were to go on foot from Würzburg to Frankfort by the Spessart. I made a reconnaissance and fell upon five or six; amongst them there was a merchant whom I attacked for the third time, having in half a year, twice made him prisoner and once deprived him of property; the others were mere bale packers of Nuremberg: I made semblance as if I would cut off their heads and hands, though I was not in earnest; but they were obliged to kneel down and lay their heads upon a block; I then gave one of them a kick behind, and a box on the ear to the others: this was the way I punished them, and then let them go their way. The merchant whom I had so frequently waylaid crossed himself and said: 'I should sooner have thought that the heavens would fall in than that you should have waylaid me to-day, for only some days ago, about a hundred of our merchants were standing in the market-place of Nuremberg, the talk turned upon you, and I heard that you were then in the forests at Hagenschiess waylaying and seizing property.' I myself wondered that in so short a time the rumour of my riding hither and thither should have reached Nuremberg. Soon after, his Imperial Majesty took the matter in hand, and arranged it at Würzburg."--Thus far Götz.
Schärtlin von Burtenbach.
Sebastian Schärtlin does not exactly belong to the same class. He was not of noble origin, and had to thank his military talents for his knighthood. He was born in the year 1498, and studied arms under Fronsperg. From 1518 to 1557 he was actively employed in almost all the military affairs of Germany, in the service of the Emperor, and in that of the city of Augsburg. For a time also he served in the French army, as on account of his participation in the Smalkaldic war he had been obliged to leave Germany. He had more than once commanded large armies, and was in great repute as a bold and experienced general; he is an interesting contrast to Götz. The one the noble cavalier, the other the citizen Landsknechte leader; Götz the jovial companion-at-arms, Schärtlin the practical man of business. The lives of both were full of adventures and not free from inexcusable deeds: both died at a great age; but Götz dissipated his time and property in plundering expeditions and knightly deeds, while Schärtlin helped to decide the fate of Germany. Götz understood so little his own times and his interest, that he, the aristocrat, allowed himself to be made use of by the democratic peasants as a man of straw; Schärtlin understood his own time so well, that after the unfortunate Smalkaldic war he withdrew into Switzerland a rich man, and a few years afterwards was reinstated triumphantly in all his honours. Götz had all his life a strong hankering after the merchant's gold, yet after all his daring plundering expeditions had but little in his coffers; Schärtlin made money in all his campaigns, bought one property after another, and knew how to command the highest price for his services. Both gave proof of character and of party fidelity; both were honourable soldiers, and the knightly consciences of both were according to our judgment too lax. Götz, at whose want of prudence we sometimes smile, though fond of booty, was yet in his way painfully conscientious; Schärtlin was the cautious but agreeable egotist. All the good qualities of decaying knighthood were united in the simple soul of the possessor of Hornburg, whilst the Herr von Burtenbach was, on the contrary, thoroughly a son of the new time; soldier, negotiator, and diplomat. Both were with the Imperial army which invaded France in 1544; Schärtlin, in the prime of life as a general, Götz as an old gray-headed knight with a small troop of vassals: the same year Schärtlin was created Imperial Lord High Steward and Captain General, and acquired seven thousand gulden. Götz rode, ill and lonely, in the rear of the returning army back to his castle. Both have written their lives in a firm soldier's hand; that of Götz is less skilful and well arranged, but his biography will be read with greater sympathy than that of Schärtlin: Götz takes pleasure in relating his knightly adventures, as good comrades recall their recollections of old times over a glass of good wine; Schärtlin gives a perspicuous statement in chronological order, and favours the reader with many dry but instructive details of great political transactions; but respecting himself, he prefers giving an account of his gains and his vexatious quarrels with his landed neighbours.
These quarrels, nevertheless, however uniform their course, claim the greatest interest here; for it is precisely by them that we discover how much the proceedings of the landed nobility had changed since the beginning of the century. There is the same love of feuds, as in the youthful days of the Berlichingen; deeds of violence still continue to abound, and numerous duodecimo wars are planned; but the old feeling of self-dependence is broken, the spirit of public tranquillity and of courts of justice hovers over the disputants, neighbours and kind friends interpose, and the lawless seldom defy the Imperial mandate or the will of the reigning princes without punishment. Sudden surprises and insidious devices take the place of open feuds; instead of the cross-bow and sword, adversaries make use of not less destructive weapons--calumny, bribery, and intrigues. Satirical songs had for a century been paid for and listened to with pleasure, and the travelling singers made themselves feared, as they ridiculed a niggardly host in their songs at a hundred firesides.