[CHAPTER XIX.]
THE GUESTS OF THE ABBOT OF FULDA.
Of the earlier marches of Colonel Nigel Charteris it is not needful to say anything. For the first day brought them across the plains to Budweiss, where a strong garrison of the Emperor's troops lay, and the next to the Bohmerwald, crossing which they came into Bavaria, and so on the evening of the fourth day made Nuremberg. Bavaria being a country ruled by that masterful Duke Maximilian, who was a pupil of the Jesuits, though of a far more flexible mind than his cousin Ferdinand, was a stronghold of Catholicism, and, beyond a few natural grumbles at having to find quarters and food for so undesirable-looking a regiment, placed no obstacles in their way.
Nuremberg certainly showed a sullenness of the populace which seemed to indicate that below the surface there was a strong Protestant feeling, despite Maximilian's orthodoxy, but to Nigel it mattered little. His march next led him to Bamberg, a town entirely dominated by a Catholic Bishop, and a hostelry on the "Priestlane" to the Rhine, as the chain of Bishoprics was called by the untaught lewd of the Protestants. The next stage was Fulda, the seat of the Abbot of St Boniface, across the Bavarian border, and before him lay on one side the westernmost strip of the Thüringian forest, and on the other the State of Hesse Cassel.
Now and again in Bavaria Nigel heard news of the army that was with Pappenheim and Tilly. He learned that no action had been fought, that the Elector of Saxony was still maintaining a neutrality, though he had gathered large numbers of troops. Of Gustavus he learned nothing. Evidently he was still in Pomerania. Nigel anticipated a peaceful march through the territories he had yet to traverse, albeit they were territories still Protestant in the main.
The Abbot of Fulda was the chief of all the abbots of the Empire. His territory extended twenty miles to the north and fifteen from east to west. It was for the most part a fertile plain of great cultivation lying between two ranges of hills which met at the northmost angle of a rough triangle. Fulda itself was in the south of the domain and near the Bavarian border. For forty years or more the Abbots of Fulda had kept Lutheranism at bay with as much zeal as the Emperor himself, while Hesse Cassel and Thüringia, the neighbouring states, had as sedulously fostered the heresy.
Nigel and his men readily gained entry to the town, and were surprised, as they rode through, at the palace of the Abbot and the buildings inhabited by his dependants and officers as well as those of the abbey itself, where the monks continued to extol, if not to emulate, the holiness of St Boniface, whose bones lay beneath the altar in the chapel beneath the choir of the cathedral. The town reflected in its shops and dwellings as well as in the dress of its inhabitants the wealth and prosperity of the Abbot, for the shrine of St Boniface brought numerous pilgrims, and the long and orderly rule of the Church for long generations over the domains had enabled the abbey to accumulate a considerable treasure. Nor were evidences lacking that the Abbot was alive to the scriptural advice about the strong man armed keeping his goods in peace. For the Abbot commanded a goodly assemblage of lay brothers, who acted as his fighting force, for reprisals or for defence.
The object of their visit being explained to the chief officer of the abbey, quarters were assigned to the men and horses in the outlying portions, while Nigel and Hildebrand were received with much ceremony into the palace of the Prince-Abbot himself, and treated with every courtesy as the representatives of the Emperor.
The Abbot loved good cheer, and those who sat at meat with him had no cause to complain of famine or of drought, nor was he himself sparing.