You do not sleep very soundly on the floor, and by six next morning the tingling of the Blessed Sacrament bell sufficed to rouse me in time to see how the Schwatzers honour ‘das hochwürdigste Gut,’[12] as it passed them on its way to the sick. Two little boys in red cassocks went first, bearing red banners and holy-water; two followed in red and yellow, bearing a canopy over the priest, and four men carried lanterns on long poles. The rain of the previous night had filled the road with puddles, but along the whole way the peasants were on their knees. To all who are afflicted with long illnesses, it is thus carried at least every month.
The morning was bright and hot, but the ruined castle on the neighbouring Freundsberg looked temptingly near; and we easily found a rough but not difficult path, past a number of crazy cottages, the inhabitants of which, however poor and hard worked, yet gave us the cheerful Christian greeting, ‘Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!’ as we passed. Near the summit the cottages cease; and after a short stretch in the burning sun, you appreciate the shade afforded by a tiny chapel, at the side of a crystal spring, welling up out of the ground, its waters cleverly guided into a conduit, formed of a hollowed tree, which supplies all the houses of the hill-side, and perhaps accounts for their being so thickly clustered there. The last wind of the ascent is the steepest and most slippery. The sun beat down relentlessly, but seemed to give unfailing delight to myriads of lizards, adders, and grasshoppers, who were darting and whirring over the crumbling stones in the maddest way. Historians, poets, or painters, have made some ruins so familiarly a part of the world’s life, and their grand memories of departed glories have been so often recounted, that they seem stereotyped upon them. Time has shattered and dismantled them, but has robbed them of nothing, for their glories of all ages are concrete around them still. But poor Freundsberg! who thinks of it? or of the thousand and one ruined castles which mark the ‘sky-line’ of Tirol with melancholy beauty? Each has, however, had its throb of hope and daring, and its day of triumph and mastery, often noble, sometimes—not so often as elsewhere—base. Freundsberg is no exception. For two hundred years before the Christian era it was a fortress, we know: for how long before that we know not; and then again, we know little of what befell it, till many hundred years after, in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, its lords were known as mighty men of war. It reached its highest glory under Captain Georg, son of Ulrich and a Swabian heiress whose vast dowry tended to raise the lustre of the house.
Georg von Freundsberg entered the career of arms in early youth, and rose to be a general at an age when other men are making their premières armes. At four-and-twenty he was reckoned by Charles Quint his most efficient leader. Over the Swiss, over the Venetians, wherever he led, he was victorious. The victory at Pavia was in great measure due to his prowess. His personal strength is recorded in fabulous terms; his foresight in providing for his men, and his art of governing and attaching them, were so remarkable, that they called him their father, and he could do with them whatever he would. They recorded his deeds in the terms in which men speak of a hero: they said that the strongest man might stand up against him with all his energy, and yet with the little finger of his left hand he could throw him down; that no matter at what fiery pace a horse might be running away, if he but stretched his hand across the path he brought it to a stand; that in all the Emperor’s stores there was no field-piece so heavy but he could move it with ease with one hand. They sang of him:
Georg von Freundsberg,
von grosser Sterk,
ein theurer Held;
in Streit und Krieg.
den Feind niederslieg
in aller Schlacht.