Maximilian, son of Frederick III., was taken prisoner when a revolt broke out at Bruges. His jester formed a scheme for his liberation; he provided horses for flight, and a rope-ladder by which he might descend from the window of his prison. Then the jester plunged into the canal which encircled the castle to swim across. But the town kept swans in the moat, and when these swans saw the man swimming, they rushed at him with their great flapping wings and beaks, and so beat, pinched, and frightened the poor fellow, that he made the best of his retreat.
The smaller German Courts, says Dr. Doran,[131] followed the fashion set by the emperors, and Lips was so great a favourite that he actually sat in the council-chamber when the Margrave Philip was presiding. As may be gathered, however, from the following incident, the position of a fool was not always an enviable one. Thus when the Duke Ludwig of Bavaria was murdered on the bridge over the Danube at Kehlheim in 1231, the perpetrators of the crime laid it on the Duke’s fool, Stich, who was charged with having stabbed his patron with a bread-knife, because he had exasperated him by his bad jokes. “Ah,” said the unfortunate man, as he stood at the gallows, “that some one ought to be hanged for murdering the Duke I can very well comprehend, but that that some one should be me I do not comprehend at all.”
It would seem that as late as the sixteenth century the fool could be bought and sold, for when Louis II. of Hungary visited Erlau in 1520, he found that the governor possessed one of the best-trained hawks and one of the merriest fools that he had ever seen, both of which he obtained for between three and four thousand pounds. Another famous fool was Jenni von Stocken, who was attached to the household of Leopold the Pious. And of Killian, the fool of Albert of Austria, it is said that, when he was asked why, being so wise, he should play the fool, he replied, “The more thoroughly I play the fool, the wiser do men account me, and there is my son, who thinks himself wise, and whom everybody knows to be a fool.”
But, as it has been often remarked, although the fool was mostly in request for his tricks and his waggery, he was frequently employed as a political adviser; and when the Elector Frederick was threatened with invasion, he consulted his fool Klaus as to whether he should treat with the enemy, who said to him, “Give me your best mantle, and I will tell you.” Whereupon Klaus tore the mantle in two, and presented himself before his master with one half hanging from his shoulders. The Elector inquiring what he meant by so strange an act, Klaus replied, “If you treat with the foe, you will soon look as ridiculous with half your dominions as I do with half a cloak.”
The unbridled language of the Court fool was oftentimes as amazing as it was insulting; for when one morning Philip, Landgrave of Baden, complained of a headache to his fool Peter after a drinking bout, and asked him his remedy, the latter replied, “Drink again to-day.” “Then I shall only suffer more to-morrow,” added the Prince. “Then,” rejoined Peter, “you must drink still more.” “But how would such a remedy end?” asked the Landgrave. “Why,” said Peter, “in your being a bigger fool than I am.”
And, as Dr. Doran tells us, the qualifications for a Court fool were extraordinary, as may be gathered from the following incident. A cowherd, Conrad Pocher, was once sent afield with a sickly boy to attend him, when, out of compassion, he hung him to the branch of a tree. He was tried for murder, but defended himself with such humour—arguing that he had greatly helped the little cow-boy—that Philip the Upright, Elector Palatine, made him official jester. Another cowherd who gained a similar distinction was Clause Hintze, Court fool to Duke John Frederick of Stettin, who so gained his patron’s favour as to be made by him lord of the village of Butterdorf. One of his successors was Hans Miesko, a wretched imbecile, but who was specially honoured at his death by a funeral sermon being preached over him.
And among those who were fools in a non-professional capacity may be mentioned the celebrated Baron von Gundling at the Court of Frederick William I., and also David Fassman, who, for losing a key entrusted to him by Frederick, was condemned to carry a heavy wooden one an ell long round his neck for several days. Incidents of this kind, as Dr. Doran observes, makes it difficult to decide which was the greater fool, it being “inconceivable that reasonable creatures should be guilty of the absurd follies attributed to them.” One day Frederick II. commissioned Baron von Poelnitz to procure a pair of turkeys. These he sent with the message, “Here are the turkeys, sire.” Annoyed at the style of note, Frederick ordered the leanest ox that could be found to be decked ridiculously with flowers, and the horns to be gilded, after which the animal was tied up in front of the Baron’s house, with this inscription: “Here is the ox, Poelnitz.”
Many of the French kings had their fools, and in the Court accounts for 1404 we find an entry of forty-seven pairs of shoes for Hancelin Coc, fool of Charles VI. And when the fleet of Philip was destroyed by that of Edward III., no one except a Court fool had the courage to tell the King. Going into the royal chamber, he kept muttering “Those cowardly Englishmen! The chicken-hearted Britons!”
“How so, cousin?” asked Philip, “how so?”
“Why, because they have not courage enough to jump into the sea like your French sailors, who went headlong over from their ships, leaving those to the enemy, who did not care to follow them!”—by which artful means the King learnt his defeat.