Odd Bits of History: Being Short Chapters Intended to Fill Some Blanks

by Henry W. Wolff

III.—THE EARLY ANCESTORS OF OUR QUEEN.[5]

Thanks to Cook, thanks to our all-reporting newspaper-press, and thanks, not least, to our truly Athenian craving continually for "some new thing," Ammergau has become almost a household word among us. Everybody has heard of its "Passion Play." Every tenth year sees Britons rushing in shoals to the picturesque banks of the Ammer, to witness there, while it may be witnessed, the last surviving specimen of that popular religious drama which in bygone times helped the Church so materially, and over so wide an area, to impress her truths upon men's minds. But I question, if among all those thousands of sight-seeing Britons, who gather as interested spectators, there are many who realize in what very close relation that same little valley stands to the early fortunes of the ancient House whose Head now occupies our Throne. How many, indeed, among us can be said to know very much at all about that family? And yet the history of that race ought to be of some interest to us. In these latter days it has become intertwined with the history of our own nation. It is marked by striking contrasts of ups and downs, at one time leading the Guelphs on a rapid triumphal progress up to the very steps of the Imperial Throne, then again dropping them down to the obscure level of paltry insignificance. It tells of a race endowed with a strong individuality—manly, chivalrous, generous; but generally also headstrong and reckless. It is interwoven with pathetic legend. Its early beginnings are lost in the dim haze of a prehistoric age. Its latter end has not yet come. There is no dynasty now surviving equally ancient—there is but one which can join in the boast which up to a few decades ago the Guelphs could make:—that on the throne on which it was planted centuries ago it has retained its hold to the present generation. That other dynasty is the family, Slav by descent, of the Obotrite Grand Dukes of Mecklenburg—the same race whom our Alfred the Great speaks of as "Apdrede." The present grand dukes are the direct descendants of that terrible Prince Niklot, of the twelfth century, whom among German princes only the Guelph, Henry the Lion, was found strong enough to subdue. But before Bodrician Niklot had mounted his barbarian throne, Henry the Generous had already been installed as chief over Lüneburg—the principality over which his family continued to rule down to 1866, when the cruel Fortune of War decided against its last Guelph chief. In the adjoining Duchy of Brunswick, over which, as forming part of ancient Saxony, the Guelphs were set as heads in 1127, the family continued to hold sway till 1884, when Death removed the last scion of their older line, in the person of the late Duke of Brunswick. The Guelph pedigree, however, goes very much farther back than the time of Henry. Long even before Guelph Odoacer, at the head of his Teuton hordes, dethroned that caricature of an Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, there were Guelph "Agilolfings" leading to battle, as trusted chiefs, their own Scyrian tribes. What the later history of the family might have been, if to its constitutional valour and generosity had been joined the less showy, but far more useful, qualities of prudence and judgment, we may now, by the light of past events, readily conjecture. The Guelphs were in Henry's day by far the strongest dynasty in Germany—at a period when for the Imperial throne above all things a strong dynasty was needed. Had Germany elected Henry the Generous as Emperor, as everybody expected that she would, the Guelphs might still be wearing the crown of Charlemagne, and Germany might have a different tale to tell, both of her past experiences and of her present position. For it deserves to be noticed that all the troubles which came upon the Empire, by minute subdivision of its territory, and by the setting up of "opposition emperors," sprang directly and demonstrably from contests provoked with the Guelphs. It was Henry IV.'s resistance to Welf IV. that led to the multiplication of vassal crowns, which subsequently became a curse to Germany. It was the Powers pledged to the support of the Guelphs—most notably the Popes and our Cœur-de-Lion—who put forward those troublesome "opposition emperors," the forerunners and direct cause of the ruinous Interregnum—"die kaiserlose, die schreckliche Zeit"—and by such means of the political prostration of the country enduring through centuries.

But our interest, in England, lies more with the Guelphs than with Germany. One cannot help sympathizing with a race which, being evidently designed for greatness, advanced towards it with giant strides, only to find the prize at which it ambitiously grasped snatched from its hand in the very moment of seeming attainment.

Of the very early history of the Guelphs we have fairly definite, but only very fragmentary, information. They were leaders of the Scyri, we learn—a Teuton race of the Semnone family, mentioned by Pliny, by Zosimus, and by Jornandes—who poured over Germany, in the days of Valentinian, along with hosts of other German tribes, and who, having been all but exterminated by the Goths, united with some other septs of the same family, the Rugii, the Heruli, the Turcilingi, to form a composite nation which, for convenience, adopted the common name of Bajuvarii. Bavarians accordingly the Guelphs originally were, as the historian Theganus is careful to point out—not Swabians, as German historians have often named them; Bavarians, as seems to be evidenced, among other things, by the dark features and black hair which for a long time distinguished them—more especially from their opponents of a full century, the fair-haired and light-complexioned Hohenstaufens. Of the confederate Bajuvarii, the Agilolfings or Guelphs still continued chiefs. Under a Guelph, Eticho—whom Priscus Rhetor praises as a man of exceptional capacity and high character—we find the nation attaching themselves as auxiliaries to the host of Attila, and rendering the Hunnish king signal service. Eticho was by no means a mere rough warrior. He fully appreciated Roman culture and civilization—which led the eunuch, Chrysaphas, to propose to him the murder of his chief. The honest Guelph rejected such suggestion with scorn. From the midst of the Bajuvarii went forth the Guelph Odoacer on his march to Rome. The Bajuvarii were then settled on the banks of the Danube—roughly speaking in what is now Austria, plus Bavaria and the Tyrol. Hence we find the earliest known seats of the Guelphs in the Bavarian Highlands. Ammergau was theirs, and Hohenschwangau was one of their earliest castles, founded, indeed, by a Guelph. When, after a revolt of the Rugii—which was successfully suppressed by Odoacer—some of the allied tribes dispersed, to seek new homes in the tempting districts on the banks of the Ens and around the lake of Constance—both at the time sorely devastated and depopulated by the Goths—the Guelphs, without giving up their old seats, accompanied their men. And thus it came about that the earliest castle which we hear of as having been built by the Guelphs is supposed to have stood in Thurgau, of which country the Guelphs subsequently became Counts. This is all mere inference; but as such it seems legitimate. For the monastery of Rheinau is known to have been founded by a Guelph. And such monasteries were never built far away from the founder's stronghold. Hence the Guelphs' connection with the Black Forest, of which the Guelph St. Conrad is the venerated patron saint; and hence their connection with Alsace, of which they were long Counts—such powerful Counts that Pepin the Short judged it advisable to reduce them to the position of removable governors—missi cameræ. [S. Odilia, the patron saint of Alsace, whose name is a household word among her own countrymen, and about whom Goethe grew enthusiastic, was an undoubted Guelph.] Hence, also, their connection with the whilom country of the Burgundians, among the nobles of which land we find a Guelph chief, in 605, standing up manfully against the aggressive usurpations of Protadius, a Frankish major-domo, and acting as spokesman.

As missi cameræ the Guelphs had a serious brush with the Church—the only tiff, practically speaking, which ever occurred between them and Rome. Of this quarrel, in which the Guelphs were probably in the right, we find a tradition kept up for some centuries. The Abbot of St. Gall figured in those days in Germany as the exact counterpart to the rich and grasping "Abbot of Canterbury" of our ballad. For some pilfering of crown lands the Guelph Warin, as a conscientious missus cameræ, had Abbot Othmar imprisoned, which brought about the Abbot's death. Rome at once canonized her "martyr," and exacted heavy retribution from his "persecutors," not merely in the shape of severe penances and the foundation of masses, but by the more substantial satisfaction of large transfers of landed estates to the injured abbey—Affeltangen and Wiesendangen, and I know not how many properties more, till even to the pious Guelphs the demands appeared to grow beyond all measure of reason. It is true, they recouped themselves elsewhere—quod si cui minus credibile videatur, say the monkish chroniclers—"which, if to any it appear a little incredible, let him read the ancient histories, and he will find nearly all their territories to have been violently taken and held by them of others."

It is with Warin's son Isembart, living in the time of Charlemagne, that the better known history of the Guelphs begins. He was the hero of that ridiculous fable about the "pups," which has been invented to explain their adoption of their peculiar name. Isembart's wife Irmentrude, it is said, having uncharitably reproached a poor beggarwoman for having borne triplets—which she held to be a proof of unfaithful conduct towards her husband—was punished for her gratuitous accusation by being herself made to bear at one birth, not three sons, but twelve. To screen herself from the same reproach which she had unkindly fastened upon the beggar, she hit upon the rather inept device of having eleven of those newly-born sons drowned as supposed "whelps." The twelfth she kept—and he is said to have become "Welf," the founder of the race. The other eleven were happily rescued by their father, who came up just in time to save them. Ten of them lived to become founders of princely houses. The eleventh became a bishop. One of them is said to have been Thassilo, the reputed ancestor of the Hohenzollerns. The real meaning of all this legend obviously is that, by survival and intermarriage with other illustrious families of Europe, the Guelphs have in course of time become, in a sense, the parent of most reigning lines—Zähringens, Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Capets, Bourbons, and the rest of them.

The fable of children being sent to be drowned as "whelps"—and in every instance happily rescued—is, as it happens, by no means peculiar to the Guelphs. It occurs in the Black Forest, in connection with a family bearing the name of "Hund." It occurs in Lower Lorraine in that pretty trouvère legend recording the doings of "Helias," the "Chevalier au Cygne," whom we moderns know as "Lohengrin." It is interesting to note that, along with that fable, Guelph tradition in Bavaria shares with the tradition of Lorraine the far more attractive and poetical myth of an enchanted swan—the swan, in fact, of "Lohengrin"—a bird specifically emblematizing purity—whence the extinct "Order of the Swan" of the Margraves of Brandenburg. That order was an aristocratic "Social Purity League," which Frederick William IV. would gladly have revived, could he but have found sufficient candidates for it among his nobility. But his proposal met with very scanty support. Hence, also, the equally ancient "Order of the Swan" of Cleves, having a like object.

As regards the "whelps" of the Guelphs, the existence of very different and contradictory versions helps to show what a made-up story the whole legend is. The only authority for it is the monk Bucelinus, who himself quotes no more ancient source. And he is said to have invented it for the mere purpose of showing off his monkish Latin, in order to deduce from the Latin word for "whelp"—catulus—an imaginary descent, supposed to be complimentary, from a fabulous Roman senator "Catilina," and through him from the ancient Trojan kings. In opposition to this, it is a fact that there were "Welfs" long before Isembart. The name Guelph, therefore, could not have been first suggested by Irmentrude's unsuccessful stratagem. Isembart lived in the ninth century. But, as early as the fifth, Odoacer had a brother named "Welf." "Welf" and "Eticho" were, in fact, the two traditional names of the family, from prehistoric days downward. Sir Andrew Halliday's suggestion, that the name may have been first taken from an ensign which the Guelphs are supposed to have borne in battle, is equally wide of the mark. For that ensign, we know, from the Agilolfings down to the Hanovers, never was a "whelp" at all, but a "lion." In truth the name "Welf" has nothing whatever to do with "whelp," but is derived from "hwelpe," "huelfe"—help. As Eticho means "hero," so Welf means "helper"—auxiliator. The popular Latin rendering for it in olden days was "Bonifacius." "Salvator" would be a more exact rendering, but would obviously be liable to misinterpretation. In confirmation of this theory, we find that, migrating into Italy about Charlemagne's time, a Guelph, on becoming Count of Lucca, as a matter of course assumes the name of "Bonifacius." And in his line, for further confirmation, we observe the same peculiarity which marks the Guelphs, that is, the naming of all sons of the family, without distinction, by the style of "Count"—a practice altogether unknown in those days among other families.

So much for the name and origin of the Guelphs. Now I must ask the reader to return with me to Ammergau, which is peculiarly sacred to the memory of Eticho, styled the Second, who was probably the son of Isembart. Eticho lived in the days of Emperor Lewis the Pious, who in second nuptials married the Guelph's sister Judith. The birth, by Judith, of little Charles—who became "Charles the Bald"—gave rise to that unnatural war between Lewis and his three elder sons, in the course of which alike Judith and two of her brothers were imprisoned in Tortona, from which place of confinement Bonifacius II. of Lucca, marching to their relief, avowedly as a kinsman, loyally rescued them. Eticho's daughter, Lucardis, again married an emperor, Arnulf of Carinthia—of whom Carlyle need not have spoken quite so unkindly, as of a "Carolingian Bastard," seeing that he made a far better ruler than any of his legitimate kinsmen of his own time. Thanks to Lucardis it was that Eticho was driven to seek a refuge, as a hermit, in the wild seclusion of Ammergau. He went there to mourn, with twelve chosen companions, the loss of Guelph independence, which his son Henry, so he thought, had at the instigation of his sister ingloriously bartered away for a "mess of pottage"—a pretty substantial one, it must be owned. In truth, Henry did exceedingly well for his house. This is how the Saxon Annalist relates the story:—Henry, ambitious for wealth and power, agreed to swear fealty to the Emperor, if in return, in addition to his own lands, he were given in fee as much territory as he could drive around with a car, or else with a plough—on that point the versions differ—in the time between sunrise and the conclusion of the Emperor's afternoon nap. Arnulf thought the bargain a cheap one for himself. However, Henry had stationed relays of the swiftest horses that he could procure at various points, and with their help he raced round the coveted territory with such marvellous speed that—having started from the Lech—by the time when the Emperor awoke he had actually reached the Isar. The Emperor was just beginning to move restlessly in his chair and to show signs of returning consciousness, when Henry arrived at the foot of a mountain which he had designed as the extreme limit of his new possessions. If his mare would but last out the journey, one brisk gallop would carry him to the appointed goal. Unfortunately, the mare refused—in consequence of which, for many centuries the Guelphs would not mount a mare. The hill which Henry thus narrowly failed to obtain still goes by the name of Mährenberg, the "Mare's mountain." Arnulf considered that he had been "done." But, having pledged his word, he held himself bound. Eticho, grieved, mourned out his life in his hermit's cell in Ammergau. Henry—who was after his adventure named Heinricus cum aureo curru—does not appear to have made any particular effort to propitiate his father. But when the old man was dead, he carried his remains with great pomp and show to the monastery of Altomünster, very near his own new seat of Altorf, where he raised a gorgeous tomb to Eticho's memory, at which Guelph chiefs made it a practice to kneel for generations after, thus evidencing their respect for an ancestor who came to be looked upon as specifically the champion of independence. The homage paid became a cult; and in Ammergau shortly after rose up, where Eticho's cell had stood, a wooden memorial church, to be replaced, in 1350, by a much larger monastery, built at the expense of Emperor Lewis the Bavarian, a descendant of Eticho. The monastery is still known as "Ettal"—that is, "Eticho's Thal," "Etichonis vallis."