Part 41

The cities of the hard-pressed duke fell, one after the other, and the guilty prince was driven from his inheritance. Von Hutten remained with the army, busily plying his pen; his sword on the table before him, his dagger on his hip, and himself encased in armor to the throat. Erasmus laughingly wrote to him to leave Mars and stick to the Muses. He scarcely needed this advice, for his letters from the camp show that fond as he was of the field, he loved far better the quiet joys of the household hearth. Amid the brazen clangor of trumpets, the neighing of steeds, the rolling of the drum, and the boom of battle, he writes to Piscator (Fischer), his longing for home, and his desire for a wife to smile on, and care for him; one who would soothe his griefs and share his labors--“One,” he says, “with whom I might sportively laugh and feel glad in our existence--who would sweeten the bitter of life and alleviate the pressure of care. Let me have a wife, my dear Friederich, and thou knowest how I would love her ... young, fair, shy, gentle, affectionate, and well-educated. She may have some fortune, but not excess of it; and as for position, this is my idea thereon: that _she_ will be noble enough whom Ulrich von Hutten chooses for his mate.” As a wooer, it will be seen that the scholar-knight had as little of the faint heart as the audacious “Findlay” of Burns, and I might almost say of Freiligrath, so spiritedly has the latter poet translated into German the pleasant lines of the Ayrshire ploughman.

Well had it been for Ulrich had he found, in 1519, the wife of his complacent visions. The gentle hand would have saved him from many a cruel hour.

On his return to Mayence he had well-nigh obeyed the universal call addressed to him, to join openly with Luther against Rome. He was withheld by his regard for his liberal patron, the archbishop. He remained, partly looking on and partly aiding, on the outskirts of the field where the fray was raging. He published a superb edition of Livy, and to show that the reforming spirit still burned brightly in the bosom of the scholar, he also published his celebrated “Vadiscus, sive Trias Romana.” This triple-edged weapon still inflicts anguish on Rome. Never had arrow of such power stricken the harlot before. Its point is still in her side; and her adversaries knew well how to use it, by painfully turning it in the wound.

The knight now hung up his sword in his chamber at Stackelberg, and devoted himself to his pen. In the convent library at Fulda he discovered an ancient German work against the supremacy of the Pope over the princes and people of Germany. Of this he made excellent use. His own productions against Rome followed one another with great rapidity. Down to the middle of 1520 he was incessantly charging the Vatican, at the point of a grey goosequill. He had at heart the freeing of Germany from the ecclesiastical domination of Italy, just as the men of Northern Italy have it at heart to rescue her from the cruel domination of Austria.

To accomplish his ends, Von Hutten left no means untried. Knight and scholar, noble and villain, the very Emperor Charles V. himself, Ulrich sought to enlist in the great confederacy, by which he hoped to strike a mortal blow at the temporal power of the “Universal Bishop.” His books converted even some of the diocesans of the Romish Church; but Rome thundered excommunication on the books and their author, and directed a heavy weight of censure against his protector, Albert of Mayence.

The archbishop admonished Von Hutten, and interdicted his works. This step decided Ulrich’s course. He at once addressed his first letter to Luther. It began with the cry of “Freedom for ever!” and it offered heart, head, soul, body, brains, and purse, in furtherance of the great cause. He tendered to Luther, in the name of Sickingen, a secure place of residence; and he established his first unassailable battery against Rome, by erecting a printing-press in his own room in the castle of Stackelberg, whence he directed many a raking fire against all his assailants. “Jacta est alea!” was his cry; “Let the enemies of light look to it!”

From Fulda he started to the court of the Emperor Charles V. at Brussels. But his enemies stood between him and the foot of the throne, and he was not allowed to approach it. His life, too, was being constantly threatened. He withdrew before these threats, once more into Germany, taking compensation by the way, for his disappointment, by a characteristic bit of spirit. He happened to fall in with Hogstraten, the heretic-finder, and the arch-enemy of Reuchlin. Ulrich belabored him with a sheathed sword till every bone in the body of Hogstraten was sore. In return, the knight was outlawed, and Leo X. haughtily commanded that hands should be laid upon him wherever he might be found, and that he should be delivered, gagged, and bound, to the Roman tribunals.

Franz von Sickingen immediately received him within the safe shelter of his strong fortress of Ebernberg, where already a score of renowned theological refugees had found an asylum. The colloquies of the illustrious fugitives made the old walls ring again. Von Hutten reduced these colloquies to writing, and I may name, as one of their conclusions, that the service of the mass in German was determined on, as the first step toward an established reformation.

The attempt of the Pope to have Ulrich seized and sacrificed, was eagerly applied by the latter to the benefit of the cause he loved. To the emperor, to the elector, to the nobles, knights, and states of Germany, he addressed papers full of patriotism, eloquence, and wisdom, against the aggression on German liberty. Throughout Germany this scholar-knight called into life the spirit of civil and religious freedom, and Luther, looking upon what Ulrich was doing, exclaimed: “Surely the last day is at hand!”

These two men, united, lit up a flame which can never be trodden out. One took his Bible and his pen, and with these pricked Rome into a fury, from which she has never recovered. The other, ungirding his sword, and transferring his printing-press to Ebernberg, sent therefrom glowing manifestoes which made a patriot of every reader.

The lyre and learning were both now employed by Von Hutten, in furtherance of his project. His popular poetry was now read or sung at every hearth. Not a village was without a copy, often to be read by stealth, of his “Complaint and Admonition.” His dialogues, especially that called the “Warner,” in which the colloquists are a Roman alarmist and Franz von Sickingen himself, achieved a similar triumph. It was to give heart to the wavering that Von Hutten wrote, and sent abroad from his press at Ebernberg, those remarkable dialogues.

Franz von Sickingen, his great protector, was for a season apprehensive that Ulrich’s outcry against Rome was louder than necessary, and his declared resolution to resent oppression by means of the sword, somewhat profane. Ulrich reasoned with and read to the gallant knight. His own good sense, and the arguments of Luther and Ulrich, at length convinced him that it was folly and sin to maintain outward respect for Rome as long as the latter aspired to be lord in Germany, above the kaiser himself. Franz soon agreed with Hutten that they ought not to heed even the Emperor, if he commanded them to spare the Pope, when such mercy might be productive of injury to the empire. In such cases, not to obey was the best obedience. They would not now look back. “It is better,” so runs it in Von Hutten’s “Warner,” “to consider what God’s will is, than what may enter the heads of individuals, capricious men, more especially in the case wherein the truth of the Gospel is concerned. If it be proved that nothing satisfactory, by way of encouragement, can come to us from the Emperor, they who love the Church and civil liberty must be bold at their own peril, let the issue be what it may.”

The dialogue of the “Warner” was, doubtless, not only read to Sickingen during the progress of its composition, but was unquestionably a transcript of much that was talked about, weighed, and considered between the two friends, as they sat surrounded by a circle of great scholars and soldiers, for whose blood Rome was thirsting. It ends with an assurance of the full adhesion of Franz to the views of Ulrich. “In this matter,” says the “Warner” to the knight of Ebernberg, “I see you have a passionate and zealous instigator, a fellow named Von Hutten, who can brook delay with patience, and who has heaped piles upon piles of stones, ready to fling them at the first adversary who presents himself.” “Ay, in good sooth,” is the ready answer of Franz, “and his service is a joy to me, for he has the true spirit requisite to insure triumph in such a struggle as ours.”

Thus at Ebernburg the battery was played against the defences of Rome, while Luther, from his known abodes, or from his concealment in friendly fortresses, thundered his artillery against the doctrines and superstitions of Rome. The movement had a double aspect. The Germans were determined to be free both as Christians and as citizens. The conducting of such determination to its successful issue could not be intrusted to worthier or more capable hands than those of Luther, aided by the Saxon Frederick the Wise, and Ulrich von Hutten, with such a squire at his side as hearty Franz von Sickingen.

In 1521 the young emperor, Charles V., delivered a speech at Worms, which seemed to have been framed expressly to assure the reformers that the emperor was with them. It abounded in promises that the kaiser would do his utmost to effect necessary reforms within the empire. The reformers were in great spirits, but they soon learned, by the summoning of Luther to Worms, and by the subsequent conduct of the emperor, that they had nothing to expect from him which they could thankfully acknowledge.

Ulrich only wrote the more boldly, and agitated the more unceasingly, in behalf of the cause of which Luther was the great advocate. To the kaiser himself he addressed many a daring epistle, as logical as audacious, in order to induce him to shake off the yoke of Rome, and be master of the Roman world, by other sanction than that of German election and papal consent. Von Hutten was more bold and quite as logical in his witheringly sarcastic epistles addressed to the pope’s legates at Worms. These epistles show that if at the time there was neither a recognised liberty of the press nor of individual expression, the times themselves were so out of joint that men dared do much which their masters dared not resent.

To the entire body of the priesthood assembled at Worms to confront Luther, he addressed similar epistles. They abound in “thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.” In every word there is defiance. Every sentence is a weapon. Every paragraph is an engine of war. The writer scatters his deadly missiles around him, threatening all, wounding many, sometimes indeed breaking his own head by rash management, but careless of all such accidents as long as he can reach, terrify, maul, and put to flight the crowd of enemies who have conspired to suppress both learning and religion in Germany.

In unison with Sickingen, he earnestly entreated Luther to repair to Ebernburg rather than to Worms, as there his knightly friends would protect him from all assailants. The reply of the great reformer is well known. He would go to Worms, he said, though there were as many devils as tiles on the roofs, leagued against him to oppose his journey thither. We can not doubt but that Luther would have been judicially assassinated in that ancient city but for the imposing front assumed by his well-armed and well-organized adherents, who not only crowded into the streets of Worms, but who announced by placards, even in the very bedchamber of the emperor, that a thousand lives should pay for the loss of one hair of the reformer’s head.

Had it depended on Von Hutten, the reformers would not have waited till violence had been inflicted on Luther, ere they took their own revenge for wrongs and oppressions done. But he was overruled, and his hot blood was kept cool by profuse and prosaic argument on the part of the schoolmen of his faction. He chafed, but he obeyed. He had more difficulty in reducing to the same obedience the bands of his adherents who occupied the city and its vicinity. These thought that the safety of Luther could only be secured by rescuing him at once from the hands of his enemies. The scholar-knight thought so too; and he would gladly have charged against such enemies. He made no signal, however, for the onslaught; on the contrary he issued orders forbidding it; and recommended the confederates to sheathe their swords, but yet to have their hands on the hilt. The elector of Saxony was adverse to violence, and Luther left Worms in safety, after defying Rome to her face.

Then came those unquiet times in which Charles V. so warmly welcomed volunteers to his banner. Seduced by his promises, Franz von Sickingen, with a few hundreds of strong-sinewed men, passed over to the Imperial quarters. The old brotherly gathering at Ebernberg was thus broken up; and Ulrich, who had offended both pope and emperor by his denunciations of ecclesiastical and civil tyranny, betook himself to Switzerland, where he hoped to find a secure asylum, and a welcome from Erasmus.

This amphibious personage, however, who had already ceased to laud Luther, affected now a horror against Von Hutten. He wrote of him as a poor, angry, mangy wretch, who could not be content to live in a room without a stove, and who was continually pestering his friends for pecuniary loans. The fiery Ulrich assailed his false friend in wrathful pamphlets. Erasmus loved the species of warfare into which such attacks drew or impelled him. He replied to Ulrich more cleverly than conclusively, in his “Sponge to wipe out the Aspersions of Von Hutten.” But the enmity of Erasmus was as nothing compared with the loss of Von Sickingen himself. In the tumultuary wars of his native land he perished, and Ulrich felt that, despite some errors, the good cause had lost an iron-handed and a clear-sighted champion.

There is little doubt that it was at the instigation of Erasmus that the priestly party in Basle successfully urged the government authorities to drive Ulrich from the asylum he had temporarily found there. He quietly departed on issue of the command, and took his solitary and painful way to Muhlhausen, where a host of reformers warmly welcomed the tottering skeleton into which had shrunk the once well-knit man. Here his vigor cast aloft its last expiring light. Muhlhausen threw off the papal yoke, but the papist party was strong enough there to raise an insurrection; and rather than endanger the safety of the town, the persecuted scholar and soldier once more walked forth to find a shelter. He reached Zurich in safety. He went at once to the hearth of Zuinglius, who looked upon the terrible spectre in whom the eyes alone showed signs of life; and he could hardly believe that the pope cared for the person, or dreaded the intellect, of so ghostlike a champion as this.

Ulrich, excommunicated, outlawed and penniless, was in truth sinking fast. His hand had not strength to enfold the pommel of his sword. From his unconscious fingers dropped the pen.

“Who will defend me against my calumniators?” asked the yet willing but now incapable man.

“I will!” said the skilful physician, Otto Brunfels; and the cooper’s son stoutly protected the good name of Ulrich, after the latter was at peace in the grave.

The last hours of the worn-out struggler for civil and religious liberty, were passed at Ufnau, a small island in the Lake of Zurich. He had been with difficulty conveyed thither, in the faint hope that his health might profit by the change. There he slowly and resignedly died on the last day of August, 1523, and at the early age of thirty-eight.

A few dearly-loved books and some letters constituted all his property. He was interred on the island, but no monument has ever marked the spot where his wornout body was laid down to repose.

Through life, whether engaged with sword or pen, his absorbing desire was that his memory might be held dear by his survivors. He loved activity, abhorred luxury, adored liberty; and, for the sake of civil and religious freedom, he fought and sang with earnest alacrity. Lyre on arm, and sword in hand, he sang and summoned, until hosts gathered round him, and cheered the burthen of all he uttered. “The die is thrown! I’ve risked it for truth and freedom’s sake.” Against pope and kaiser, priest and soldier, he boldly cried, “Slay my frame you may, but my soul is beyond you!” He was the star that harbingered a bright dawn. His prevailing enemies drove him from his country; the grave which they would have denied him, he found in Switzerland, and “after life’s fitful fever,” the scholar-knight sleeps well in the island of the Zurich-Zee.

From the Zurich-Zee we will now retrace our steps, and consider the Sham Knights.

SHAM KNIGHTS.

Between Tooting and Wandsworth lies a village of some celebrity for its sham knights or mayors--the village of Garrat. The villagers, some century ago, possessed certain common rights which were threatened with invasion. They accordingly made choice of an advocate, from among themselves, to protect their privileges. They succeeded in their object, and as the selection had been originally made at the period of a general election, the inhabitants resolved to commemorate the circumstance by electing a mayor and knighting him at each period of election for a new parliament. The resolution was warmly approved by all the publicans in the vicinity, and the Garrat elections became popular festivities, if not of the highest order, at least of the jolliest sort.

Not that the ceremony was without its uses. The politicians and wits of the day saw how the election might be turned to profit; and Wilkes, and Foote, and Garrick, are especially named as having written some of the addresses wherein, beneath much fustian, fun, and exaggeration of both fact and humor, the people were led to notice, by an Aristophanic process, the defects in the political system by which the country was then governed. The publicans, however, and the majority of the people cared more for the saturnalia than the schooling; and for some years the sham mayors of Garrat were elected, to the great profit, at least, of the tavern-keepers.

The poorer and the more deformed the candidate, the greater his chance of success. Thus, the earliest mayor of whom there was any record, was Sir John Harper, a fellow of infinite mirth and deformity, whose ordinary occupation was that of an itinerant vender of brick-dust. His success gave dignity to the brick-dust trade, and inspired its members with ambition. They had the glory of boasting that their friend and brother “Sir John” sat, when not sufficiently sober to stand, during two parliaments. A specimen of his ready wit is given in his remark when a dead cat was flung at him, on the hustings during the period of his first election. A companion remarked with some disgust upon the unpleasant odor from the animal. “That’s not to be wondered at,” said Sir John, “you see it is a pole-cat.”

But Sir John was ousted by an uglier, dirtier, more deformed, and merrier fellow than himself. The lucky personage in question was Sir Jeffrey Dunstan. He was a noted individual, hunched like Esop, and with as many tales, though not always with the like “morals.” He was a noted dealer in old wigs, for it was before men had fallen into what was then considered the disreputable fashion of wearing their own hair, under round hats. Sir John was a republican; but he did not despise either his office of mayor or his courtesy title of knight. Had he possessed more discretion and less zeal, he probably would have prospered in proportion. In the best, that is, in the quietest, of times, Sir Jeffrey could with difficulty keep his tongue from wagging. He never appeared in the streets with his wig-bag on his shoulder, without a numerous crowd following, whom he delighted with his sallies, made against men in power, whose weak points were assailable. The French Revolution broke out when Sir Jeffrey was mayor, and this gave a loose to his tongue, which ultimately laid him up by the heels. The knight grew too political, and even seditious, in his street orations, and he was in consequence committed to prison, in 1793, for treasonable practices. This only increased his popularity for a time, but it tamed the spirit of the once chivalrous mayor. When he ceased to be wittily bold, he ceased to be cared for by the constituents whose presence made the electors at Garrat. After being thrice elected he was successfully opposed and defeated, under a charge of dishonesty. The pure electors of Garrat could have borne with a political traitor; but as they politely said, they “could not a-bear a petty larcenist,” and Sir Jeffrey Dunstan was, metaphorically and actually presented “with the sack.”

When Manners Sutton ceased to be Speaker, he claimed, I believe, to be made a peer; on the plea that it was not becoming that he who had once occupied the chair, should ever be reduced to stand upon the floor, of the House of Commons. Sir Jeffrey Dunstan had something of a similar sense of dignity. Having fallen from the height of mayor of Garrat, what was then left for Sir Jeffrey? He got as “drunk as a lord,” was never again seen sober, and, in 1797, the year following that of his disgrace, the ex-mayor died of excess. So nice of honor was Sir Jeffrey Dunstan!

He was succeeded by Sir Harry Dimsdale, the mutilated muffin-seller, whose tenure of office was only brief, however brilliant, and who has the melancholy glory of having been the last of the illustriously dirty line of knighted mayors of Garrat. It was not that there was any difficulty in procuring candidates, but there was no longer the same liberality on the part of the peers and publicans to furnish a purse for them. Originally, the purse was made up by the inhabitants, for the purpose of protecting their collective rights. Subsequently, the publicans contributed in order that the attractions of something like a fair might be added, and therewith great increase of smoking and drinking. At that time the peerage did not disdain to patronize the proceeding, and the day of election was a holyday for thousands. Never before or since have such multitudes assembled at the well-known place of gathering; nor the roads been so blocked up by carts and carriages, honorable members on horses, and dustmen on donkeys. Hundreds of thousands sometimes assembled, and, through the perspiring crowd, the candidates, dressed like chimney-sweepers on May-day, or in the mock fashion of the period, were brought to the hustings in the carriages of peers, drawn by six horses, the owners themselves condescending to become their drivers.