"Now when I came with such an answer to my lord, he was sore displeased, and made all kinds of projects, and wished to take the fish by force. Meanwhile there came intelligence that Duke Friedrich was again going to fish the next day, and would have a guard with him. Then my lord said to me: 'Hans, we'll have some sport; reckon how many horsemen we can muster; we will go and frighten Duke Friedrich a little at the Arnsdorf pond.' But I would not consent to this, and objected to any such plan, as their hearts would have been much embittered thereby towards each other. Duke Friedrich had also many Poles, servants of the nobility, with him, and they were powerful. His Princely Grace however would not give it up, but promised me he would not speak an angry word to any one, and I should see how he would drive away Duke Friedrich and his followers; thereupon I made a reckoning, and found that we could bring together a force of nineteen horsemen, three trumpeters, six arquebusiers, and two lackeys, wherewith Duke Heinrich was well content, and commanded me to take with us one waggon with fish barrels, as Duke Friedrich would not be so uncourteous as to refuse to present us with some fish.
"Early in the morning his Princely Grace left his castle for Perschdorf. There he received information that Duke Friedrich had gone in a little boat on the pond. On hearing this, his Princely Grace said to me: 'Hans, now is the time, advance.' Now Duke Friedrich had placed a sentinel at the end of the dam, who as soon as he observed anything, was to fire a shot as a signal. As soon therefore as this shot was fired by the Duke's sentinel, I caused one of the trumpeters to blow, and then another, and afterwards all three together. Then, as I was afterwards told, a great tumult arose, and Duke Friedrich and his attendants called out for their armour, and Duke Friedrich was in so great terror on the pond, that they could hardly prevent his fainting. At last he sprang out of the boat and waded in the mud, so that he lost his breath. When the arquebusiers whom Duke Friedrich had with him, heard the trumpeters, they ran among the bushes on the meadow; so that there was no one to be seen when he called for his guard, and some shots that fell on the lappets of Duke Friedrich's coat, and on his steed, were the only answer, and he made off to Liegnitz with all speed. As soon as the others saw that their lord was riding away, they followed his example, and only nine horsemen remained by the reservoirs; among them Leuthold von der Saale, Balthasar Rostitz, and Muschelwitz. So when his Princely Grace approached them, they took off their hats, and my lord greeted them graciously, and inquired where their master was; to which they replied that they did not know. Whereupon my lord replied, that he had not come as an enemy, but as a brother, and added: 'I have brought with me a fish-barrel, hoping that my brother would hold friendly intercourse with me, and not be uncourteous, but make me a present of a dish of fish. And as I am expecting foreign guests, I will take twenty large pike, sixty of round pike, and a score of large carp.' Those who were to have fished withdrew, and von Saale protested that his Princely Grace should not take away the fish. My lord, however, did not enter into parley about it, but compelled the peasants who had run away to descend to the reservoir and catch the fish. And his Princely Grace packed the fish himself in the barrel, and commanded the Junkers to tell Duke Friedrich that he should not have fled from him and his troopers, as he had come with friendly intentions; but it was clear that a bad conscience could not conceal itself. Also that Duke Friedrich might come the next morning and help him eat the fish; and he added: 'But if your Lord will not come, do so yourselves if you are honest men, and be not afraid as you have been to-day.' After this his Princely Grace said to me: 'Hans, did I not tell you beforehand that I would drive away my brother? Are you content? I will in like manner drive him from Liegnitz, you will see: it will not take long.' Thus we returned to Gröditzberg in good spirits."
Thus far Schweinichen. The reader will have no difficulty in discovering that no one thought of attacking the Duke in his castle. When winter drew on he himself became weary of this caprice, and determined to make another expedition through Germany, which Schweinichen very wisely opposed, but for which he afterwards exerted his wits to procure money.
In the year 1675, a century after Duke Heinrich and his faithful Hans had undertaken their first wild expedition through Germany, there appeared in Silesia on the great heath of Kolzenau, which since the war had lain waste and desolate, a strange and monstrous animal, such as in the grim time of yore had rent the Silesian thickets with its horns, when the first Piastens ranged through the woods with the hunting-spear and arrow. And above in the royal castle at Liegnitz, the last Piasten Duke, the young Georg Friedrich celebrated his birthday with his nobles. As the rare venison was placed on his table, the joyful sounds of the trumpet rang through the city, and the cannons thundered as often as the health of the new Duke was drunk. But thoughtful people in the country, trembled on account of the wild monster that had come into their woods and to their young lord, as an ill omen from the olden time; and they shook their heads and prophesied misfortune. The last elk that was slain in Silesia was for the last joyous repast of the last of the Piasten. A few days after he died; and when his coffin was borne in the evening through the streets of Liegnitz, pitch wreaths were burnt at every corner, and hundreds of boys dressed in black, carried white wax tapers before their deceased lord. The German Silesians grieved over the fall of the great Sclavonic dynasty, which had once led their fathers into this land, and had first shown through them to the world, that the union of men in a free community is more beneficial to a country, than despotic government over slaves. But this truth had afforded no safeguard for the lives of the lords of this country.
CHAPTER XII.
THE GERMAN IDEAS OF THE DEVIL IN THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
The phantasies of the human mind have also a history; they form and develop themselves with the character of a people whilst they influence it. In the century of the Reformation, these phantasies had more weight than most earthly realities. It is the dark side of German development which we there see, and to it is due the last place in the characteristic features of the period of the Reformation.
In the most ancient of the Jewish records there is no mention of the devil except in the book of Job; but at the time of Christ, Satan was considered by the Jews as the great tempter of mankind, and as having the power to enter into men and animals, out of which he could be driven by the invocations of pious men. The people estimated the power of their teachers by the authority that they exercised over the devil. When the Christian faith spread over the western empire, the Greek and Roman gods were looked upon as allies of the devil, and the superstition of many who yet clung to the later worship of Rome, made the devil the centre of their mythology.
But the conceptions which the Fathers of the Church had of the person and power of the devil, were still more changed when the German tribes overthrew the government of the Roman empire and adopted Christianity. In doing so this family of people did not lose the fullness of their own life, the highest manifestation of which was their old mythology. It is true that the names of the old gods gradually died away; what was obviously contrary to the new faith was at last set aside by the zeal of the priests, by force, and by pious artifices; but innumerable familiar shapes and figures, customs and ideas, were kept alive, nay, they not only were kept alive, but they entwined themselves in a peculiar manner with Christianity. As Christian churches were erected on the very spots where the heathen worship had been held, and as the figure of the crucified Saviour, or the name of an apostle was attached to sacred places like Donar's oak; thus the Christian saints and their traditions took the place of the old gods. The people transferred their recollections of their ancient heathen deities to the saints and apostles of the Church, and even to Christ himself, and as there was a realm in their mythology which was ruled by the mysterious powers of darkness, this was assigned to the devil. The name devil, derived from the Greek (diabolos), was changed into Fol, from the northern god Voland, his ravens and the raging nightly host were transferred to him from Wuotan, his hammer from Donar; but his black colour, his wolves or goat's form, his grandmother, the chains wherewith he was bound, and many other traditions, he inherited from the evil powers of heathendom which had ever been inimical to the benevolent ruling gods. These powerful demons, amongst whom was the dark god of death, belonged according to the heathen mythology to the primeval race of giants, which as long as the world lasted were to wage a deadly struggle with the powers of light. They formed a dark realm of shapeless primordial powers, where the deepest science of magic was cultivated. To them belonged the sea-serpent, which coiled round the earth in mighty circles, lay at the bottom of the ocean, the giant wolves which lay fettered in the interior of the earth or pursued the sun and moon, by which, at the last day, they were to be destroyed; the ice demons which from the north sent over the land snow-storms and devastating floods; and worse than all, the fiendish Helia, goddess of the dead. Besides the worship of the Asengötter, there was in heathen Germany a gloomy service for these demons, and we learn from early Christian witnesses that even before the introduction of Christianity, the priestesses and sorcerers of these dark deities were feared and hated. They were able by their incantations to the goddess of death, to bring storms upon the corn-fields and to destroy the cattle, and it was probably they who were supposed to make the bodies and weapons of warriors invulnerable. They carried on this worship by night, and sacrificed mysterious animals to the goddess of death and to the race of giants. It was these priestesses more especially--so at least we may conclude--who, as Hazusen or Hegissen, or Hexen (witches), were handed down by tradition to a late period in the middle ages.
The remembrance of these heathen beings became mixed with a wild chaos of foreign superstitions, which had been brought from all the nations of antiquity into heathen Rome, that great nursery of every superstition, and from that ancient world had penetrated into Christianity. The Strigen and Lamien, evil spirits of ancient Rome, which like vampires consumed the inward life of men, sorceresses who flew through the air, and assembled nightly to celebrate disgraceful orgies, were also handed down to the Germans, who mingled them with similar conceptions, having perhaps a like origin. It is not always possible to discover which of these notions were originally German or which were derived from other nations.