Gerard[ 10] de Truchses, Count Waldbourg, who was archbishop and elector of Cologne in 1583, scandalized his see, and all the Roman Catholic powers, by turning Protestant. According to himself, his conversion was owing to "the goodness of God, who had revealed to him the darkness and the errors of popery;" but according to his enemies, it was owing to his love for the beautiful Agnes de Mansfeld, canoness of Gersheim; she was a daughter of one of the greatest Protestant houses in Germany; and her two brothers, bigoted Calvinists, and jealous of the honour of their family, conceived themselves insulted by the public homage which a Catholic priest, bound by his vows, dared to pay to their sister. They were yet more incensed on discovering that the love was mutual, and loudly threatened vengeance to both. Gerard renounced the Catholic faith, and the lovers were united. He was excommunicated and degraded, of course; but he insisted on his right to retain his secular dominions and privileges, and refused to resign the electorate, which the emperor, meantime, had awarded to Ernest of Bavaria, bishop of Liege. The contest became desperate. The whole of that beautiful and fertile plain, from the walls of Cologne to the Godesberg, grew "familiar with bloodshed as the morn with dew;" and Gerard displayed qualities which showed him more fitted to win and wear a bride, than to do honour to any priestly vows of sanctity and temperance. Attacked on all sides,—by his subjects, who had learned to detest him as an apostate, by the infuriated clergy, and by the Duke of Bavaria, who had brought an army to enforce his brother's claims,—he carried on the struggle for five years, and at last, reduced to extremity, threw himself, with a few faithful friends, into the castle of Godesberg. After a brave defence, the castle was stormed and taken by the Bavarians, who left it nearly in the state we now see it—a heap of ruins.
Gerard escaped with his wife, and fled to Holland, where Maurice, Prince of Orange, granted him an asylum. Thence he sent his beautiful and devoted wife to the court of Queen Elizabeth, to claim a former promise of protection, and supplicate her aid, as the great support of the Protestant cause, for the recovery of his rights. He could not have chosen a more luckless ambassadress; for Agnes, though her beauty was somewhat impaired by the persecutions and anxieties which had followed her ill-fated union, was yet most lovely and stately, in all the pride of womanhood; and her misfortunes and her charms, as well as the peculiar circumstances of her marriage, excited the enthusiasm of all the English chivalry. Unhappily the Earl of Essex was among the first to espouse her cause with all the generous warmth of his character, and his visits to her were so frequent, and his admiration so indiscreet, that Elizabeth's jealousy was excited even to fury. Agnes was first driven from the court, and then ordered to quit the kingdom. She took refuge in the Netherlands, where she died soon afterwards; and Gerard, who never recovered his dominions, retired to Strasbourg, where he died. So ends this sad eventful history, which, methinks, would make a very pretty romance. The tower of Godesberg, lasting as their love and ruined as their fortunes, still remains one of the most striking monuments in that land, where almost every hill is crowned with its castle, and every castle has its tale of terror, or of love.[ 11]
Another beautiful picture, which, merely as a picture, has dwelt on my remembrance, was the city of Coblentz and the fort of Ehrenbreitstein, as viewed from the bridge of boats under a cloudless moon. The city, with its fantastic steeples and masses of building, relieved against the clear deep blue of the summer sky—the lights which sparkled in the windows reflected in the broad river, and the various forms and tall masts of the craft anchored above and opposite—the huge hill, with its tiara of fortifications, which, in the sunshine and in the broad day, had disappointed me by its formality, now seen under the soft moonlight, as its long lines of architecture and abrupt angles were projected in brightness or receded in shadow, had altogether a most sublime effect. But apropos to moonlights and pictures—of all the enchanted and enchanting scenes ever lighted by the full round moon, give me Heidelberg! Not the Colosseum of Rome—neither in itself, nor yet in Lord Byron's description, and I have both by heart—can be more grand; and in moral interest, in poetical associations, in varying and wondrous beauty, the castle of Heidelberg has the advantage. In the course of many visits, Heidelberg became to me familiar as the face of a friend, and its remembrance still "haunts me as a passion." I have known it under every changeful aspect which the seasons, and the hours, and the changeful moods of my own mind, could lend it. I have seen it when the sun, rising over the Geisberg, first kindled the vapours as they floated away from the old towers, and when the ivy and the wreathed verdure on the walls sparkled with dewy light: and I have seen it when its huge black masses stood against the flaming sunset; and its enormous shadow, flung down the chasm beneath, made it night there, while daylight lingered around and above. I have seen it when mantled in all the bloom and foliage of summer, and when the dead leaves were heaped on the paths, and choked the entrance to many a favourite nook. I have seen it when crowds of gay visitors flitted along its ruined terraces,[ 12] and music sounded near; and with friends, whose presence endeared every pleasure; and I have walked alone round its desolate precincts, with no companions but my own sad and troubled thoughts. I have seen it when clothed in calm and glorious moonlight. I have seen it when the winds rushed shrieking through its sculptured halls, and when grey clouds came rolling down the mountains, folding it in their ample skirts from the view of the city below. And what have I seen to liken to it by night or by day, in storm or in calm, in summer or in winter! Then its historical and poetical associations—
MEDON.
There now!—will you not leave the picture, perfect as it is, and not for ever seek in every object something more than is there?
ALDA.
I do not seek it—I find it. You will say—I have heard you say—that Heidelberg wants no beauty unborrowed of the eye; but if history had not clothed it in recollections, fancy must have invested it in its own dreams. It is true, that it is a mere modern edifice compared with all the classic, and most of the gothic ruins; yet over Heidelberg there hangs a terror and a mystery peculiar to itself: for the mind which acquiesces in decay, recoils from destruction. Here ruin and desolation make mocks with luxurious art and gay magnificence. Here it is not the equal, gradual power of time, adorning and endearing what yet it spares not, which has wrought this devastation, but savage war and elemental rage. Twice blasted by the thunderbolt, three times consumed by fire, ten times ravaged, plundered, desecrated by foes, and at last dismantled and abandoned by its own princes, it is still strong to endure and mighty to resist all that time, and war, and the elements may do against it—and, mutilated rather than decayed, may still defy centuries. The very anomalies of architecture and fantastic incongruities of this fortress-palace, are to me a fascination. Here are startling and terrific contrasts. That huge round tower—the tower of Frederic the Victorious—now "deep trenched with thunder fires," looks as if built by the Titans or the Huns; and those delicate sculptures in the palace of Otho-Henry, as if the genius of Raffaelle or Correggio had breathed on the stone. What flowing grace of outline! what luxuriant life! what endless variety and invention in those half-defaced fragments! These are the work of Italian artists, whose very names have perished;—all traces of their existence and of their destinies so utterly lost, that one might almost believe, with the peasantry, that these exquisite remains are not the work of mortal hands, but of fairies and spirits of air, evoked to do the will of an enchanter. The old palatines, the lords of Heidelberg, were a magnificent and magnanimous race. Louis III., Frederic the Victorious, Frederic II., Otho-Henry, were all men who had stepped in advance of their age. They could think as well as fight, in days when fighting, not thinking, was the established fashion among potentates and people. A liberal and enlightened spirit, and a love of all the arts that humanise mankind, seem to have been hereditary in this princely family. Frederic I. lay under the suspicion of heresy and sorcery, in consequence of his tolerant opinions, and his love of mathematics and astronomy. His personal prowess, and the circumstance of his never having been vanquished in battle, gave rise to the report, that he was assisted by evil demons; and for years, both before and after his accession, he was under the ban of the secret tribunal. Heidelberg was the scene of some of the mysterious attacks on his life, but they were constantly frustrated by the fidelity of his friends, and the watchful love of his wife.
It was at Heidelberg this prince celebrated a festival, renowned in German history, and, for the age in which it occurred, most extraordinary. He invited to a banquet all the factious barons whom he had vanquished at Seckingen, and who had previously ravaged and laid waste great part of the palatinate. Among them were the Bishop of Metz and the Margrave of Baden. The repast was plentiful and luxurious, but there was no bread. The warrior guests looked round with surprise and inquiry. "Do you ask for bread?" said Frederic, sternly; "you, who have wasted the fruits of the earth, and destroyed those whose industry cultivates it? There is no bread. Eat and be satisfied; and learn henceforth mercy to those who put the bread into your mouths." A singular lesson from the lips of an iron-clad warrior of the middle ages.
It was Frederic II. and his nephew Otho-Henry, who enriched the library, then the first in Europe next to the Vatican, with treasures of learning, and who invited painters and sculptors from Italy to adorn their noble palace with the treasures of art. In less than one hundred years those beautiful creations were defaced or utterly destroyed, and all the memorials and records of their authors are supposed to have perished at the time when the ruthless Tilly stormed the castle, and the archives and part of the library of precious MSS. were taken to litter his dragoons' horses, during a transient scarcity of straw.[ 13]—You groan!