CHAPTER IV

_Nuremberg and the Thirty Years War_

Wallenstein--Gustavus Adolphus--Kaspar Hauser.

The Catholic Reaction was now in full swing. With the determination of Catholicism to regain her ancient dominion came the Thirty Years War, the last and cruellest of the religious wars, which deprived Germany of, some say, half her population, and turned a comparatively rich and prosperous country into a barren desert.

The violence of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria towards the town of Donauwörth (1607), "which had been put under Ban of the Empire for some fault on the part of the populace against a flaring Mass-procession which had no business to be there," filled the free-towns and Protestant communities with dark forebodings of approaching disturbance. An Evangelical League, "The Union," was formed by the towns and princes for the purposes of self-defence against any attacks on religious freedom. Nuremberg joined it in 1610. This step was, of course, distasteful to the Emperor, but Nuremberg was left no choice in the matter. For the bishops of Bamberg and Eichstätt had forced the Nuremberg Evangelical subjects, living in their dioceses, to revert to the old religion. The Catholic communities formed a counter-league. Only a signal was wanted to make the opposing parties draw swords; and in 1618 the Bohemian resistance to the suppression of the Evangelical religion gave the signal for that bloody war, in which Nuremberg was to endure her full share of suffering. But, first, for a long time she endeavoured to pursue her old policy of neutrality, keeping peace with both parties and remaining subject to the Emperor. Meantime, as one after another of the Catholic generals passed through, men were quartered on Nuremberg in ceaseless relays, and she was bled of money and provisions. The treasury was depleted; trade disorganised; and the peasantry suffered cruelly.

In 1629 Ferdinand II. thought the time had come to strike a determined blow for Catholicism, and he published an Edict of Restitution, giving back to the Roman Catholics all the ecclesiastical property and institutions which had been handed over to the Evangelists by the Treaty of Passau and the Peace of Augsburg. This brought matters to a crisis. But even yet Nuremberg did not follow the example of Magdeburg and make a firm stand against religious aggressions. Even when Gustavus Adolphus, the Protestant champion, the Lion of the North, had landed on the Pomeranian coast, and made secret proposals of union with her, she turned a deaf ear to him, and received, with princely honours, Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, the Catholic General, when on his way to Memmingen. But at a convention of the Evangelical communities at Leipzig, called together by the Elector of Saxony, she did sign a complaint to the Emperor with regard to religious oppression, and also an agreement of the communities to help each other in case of need, and to prevent the unbearable quartering of troops and other exactions of the Emperor. Then in 1631 came the fall of Magdeburg. The subsequent horrors of that two-days' sack struck terror into the hearts of Protestant Germany. Nuremberg gave in at once to the demands of the Emperor. She denounced the Leipzig Convention, dismissed her soldiers, and paid the money required of her. In spite of these concessions, she had reason to fear that the freedom of the town would be forfeited. Tilly's defeat at Breitenfeld, however, prevented the Emperor from carrying out his expressed intention. Inspired by that victory of the Swedes, the Council plucked up courage to refuse almost all Imperial contributions. If they had consulted the wishes of the citizens, they would have joined Gustavus Adolphus forthwith. They still hankered after neutrality, however, and even when Gustavus Adolphus informed them that he would treat neutrals as enemies, they would only promise to be true to the Evangelical faith. The Swedish King continued to press them, and, still in the hope of being able to keep in favour with the Emperor, they sent a sum of money. But Gustavus Adolphus demanded their full and open support. They were still torn between the fear of offending the Emperor and the desire of securing Gustavus' aid. A sharp and menacing letter arrived. At last it was decided to send envoys to Würtzburg with instructions to draw up a treaty, if there was no help for it. The result was that Nuremberg and Bayreuth drew up a treaty with Gustavus Adolphus (October 1631), in which money was promised, and it was arranged that a special alliance should be concluded in two months' time. They agreed to put their resources at his disposal, and to stand by him to the last, whilst he on his side promised to succour them in all danger, and to relieve them if besieged. In November they renounced their allegiance to the Emperor, and lost not a moment in arming themselves. It was not too soon, for the cloud of war which had long been hanging over Franconia broke at last. Tilly took Rothenburg on October 30th, and on the 8th of November Lichtenau surrendered. Negotiations with him were opened by Nuremberg, to gain time, but, when he found how strongly fortified and garrisoned the town was, he drew off. He returned next year, but attempted nothing, for Gustavus Adolphus was now drawing near, to whom Nuremberg, after much shilly-shallying, was persuaded, by dint of threats, to send 1500 men with arms and ammunition. In March 1632, the King, leaving his army near Fürth, entered the town by the Spittlerthor amidst the heart-felt enthusiasm of the people, who had never approved of the pusillanimous policy of the Council. The Defender of the Protestants received a splendid and affecting welcome. The Patricians rode out to meet him before the gates. They presented him with four cannons and, amongst other works of art, two silver globes supported by figures of Atlas and Hercules respectively, which are still to be seen in the Museum at Stockholm. "Tears of joy streamed down the cheeks of bearded men as they welcomed the deliverer from the north, whose ready jest and beaming smile would have gone straight to the popular heart even if his deserts had been less. The picture of Gustavus was soon in every house, and a learned citizen set to work at once to compose a pedigree by which he proved to his own satisfaction that the Swedish King was descended from the old hereditary Burggrafs of the town."[21] The same day, with further reinforcements from Nuremberg, he went on his way south to deliver Donauwörth.

Three months later Wallenstein, breaking up from Bohemia, directed his whole force upon Nuremberg, which thus became the chief scene in that drama immortalised by Schiller in his trilogy of plays. For no sooner did Gustavus hear that Wallenstein with the Imperial army was marching against her than, mindful of his pledge and eager not to sacrifice so valued an ally, he summoned all his reinforcements and set out to the relief of Nuremberg. Thus beneath her walls the Protestant King and the inscrutable Catholic general were to be brought face to face at last. The citizens had for some time past been anxiously increasing their fortifications, storing provisions, and enlisting soldiers. Now, between June 21st and July 6th, under the direction of Hans Olph, the Swedish engineer, and with the aid of Gustavus' army, an entirely new ring of earthworks was constructed enclosing the suburbs. Men and women, soldiers, burghers and peasants, laboured night and day at these entrenchments, which were provided with many small bastions and redoubts, and defended by over 300 cannon. Round them was dug a moat eight feet deep and twelve feet wide. Very few traces of these fortifications, which were removed soon after 1806, can be found to-day. In the Swedish camp lay some 20,000 veterans, for whom 14,000 pounds of bread were supplied per diem. Within the city was a population of at least 65,000, of whom 8000 were fighting men, 3000 of these being armed citizens. Such were the resources with which Gustavus hoped to do battle with Wallenstein's gigantic army of 60,000 men and 13,000 horse. His preparations were not yet complete when Wallenstein appeared, July 1, at Schwabach. Had he consulted the wishes of Gustavus or listened to the advice of the Elector of Bavaria, Wallenstein would have attacked the Swedes at once. But, though superior in numbers, he would not pit his newly enrolled troops against the veterans of the Swedish King. He preferred to entrench himself in a strong position on the hills above Fürth, and to starve his enemy out. By the 6th of July he had completed a camp, which, if not so skilfully engineered as that of the Swedes, was, thanks to the natural advantages of the ground, almost impregnable. This vast camp, nearly eight miles round, stretched from the left banks of the Rednitz, from Stein, over the stream of the Biebert, and enclosed the villages of Zierndorf, Altenberg, Unterasbach, and Kreutles. Every house and village and advantage of the ground was turned to account and utilised for defence. The ruin of an old _Burgstall_--the _Alte Veste_--a castle which had been destroyed in 1388 during the great _Städtekrieg_ by the Nurembergers, formed the most important outwork. Here, where the hill is at its highest, was the northernmost point of the camp, and from this fortress on the steep, wooded ridge across four miles of clear plain, through which the little Rednitz winds its course, Wallenstein gazed sternly on the climbing roofs and splendid mansions, the gabled houses and innumerable turrets of the beleaguered city. To-day, a modern tower, some eighty feet high, rears its head above the woods that crown the hill, and the adjoining inn is a favourite place of resort with the inhabitants of Fürth and Nuremberg. But some few traces of the old fortress and of Wallenstein's entrenchments may yet be found, and he who loves "to summon up remembrance of things past" will find food enough for his imagination when he attempts to reconstruct the scene of that terrible encampment.

For terrible it was both to besiegers and besieged. Gustavus was cut off from his base of supplies in the Upper Danube and Rhine by this great entrenched camp south-west of Nuremberg, and all the roads leading into Franconia were scoured by Wallenstein's light Croatian cavalry. Though provisions had at first been plentiful, the resources of the city were soon strained to the uttermost by the influx of peasants who had fled for refuge from the country. The mills and bakeries were unable to supply bread fast enough to the starving inhabitants, so that mobs fought outside the bakers' shops in their desperate haste for food. Famine laid hold of the city first, then of the Swedish, and finally of the Imperial camp. And in the path of famine followed, as ever, pestilence. Pestilence in July, in a mediæval city, crowded with grim soldiers, grown shrunken and meagre, with starving women and whitefaced children--it would require the pen of a Flaubert or a Zola to describe. Worse than all for Gustavus to bear, when want came to be felt in the army, there came the relaxation of that discipline on which he had prided himself. The citizens complained that his Swedish troops were behaving like Austrian banditti. Sending for the chief Germans in his service, the King rated them soundly in a famous oration. Never was his Majesty seen before in such a rage.

"They are no Swedes who commit these crimes," he said truly enough, "but you Germans yourselves. You princes, counts, lords, and noblemen, are showing great disloyalty and wickedness on your own fatherland, which you are ruining. You colonels and officers, from the highest to the lowest, it is you who steal and rob everyone, without making any exceptions.

"You plunder your own brothers in the faith. Had I known that you had been a people so wanting in natural affection for your country, I would never have saddled a horse for your sakes, much less imperilled my life and my crown and my brave Swedes and Finns. It is your inhumanity towards your mother-country that has tarnished the glory of my victorious subjects. My heart is filled with gall when I see anyone of you behaving thus villainously. For you cause men to say openly, 'The King, our friend, does us more harm than our enemies.' If you were real Christians you would consider what I am doing for you, how I am spending my life in your service. I came but to restore every man to his own, but this most accursed and devilish robbing of yours doth much abate my purpose. I have given up the treasures of my crown for your sake, and have not enriched myself so much as by one pair of boots since my coming to Germany, though I have had forty tons of gold passing through my hands.

"Enter into your hearts, and think how sad you are making me, so that the tears stand in my eyes. You treat me ill with your evil discipline; I do not say with your evil fighting: for in that you have behaved like honourable gentlemen, and for that I am much obliged to you. Take my warning to heart, and we will soon show our enemies that we are honest men and honourable gentlemen."

Again when informed that a soldier had stolen a cow, he turned a deaf ear to him as he pleaded for his life, for

"My son," he said, "it is better that thou shouldst expiate thy offence by the sacrifice of life than that thy crime should draw down the vengeance of the Almighty upon me and thy gallant comrades; for though I consider every soldier in the light of a child, yet I am destined to perform the duties of a judge, no less than those of a parent."

So for two weary months plague, famine and wounds did their fell work inside and out. The hospitals were full to overflowing. The graves could not be dug fast enough to hold the dead. The countless victims of hunger and pestilence lay for days in the trenches, poisoning the air. In the streets were strewn the half-decayed bodies of men and horses, eaten of pigs. But if the Protestants suffered so did the Imperialists. And always Wallenstein sat implacable on the height refusing to join battle, waiting grimly till starvation should have done its work and the sack of Magdeburg could be repeated. For Gustavus must either attack Wallenstein in his impregnable position or march away the city to its fate. The arrival of reinforcements, which increased the King's army to 50,000 men, determined him to make a general assault on the Alte Veste and the northern side of the camp. It will be clear to anyone who examines the ground that this was an almost impossible undertaking, the forlornest of forlorn hopes. What desperate courage could do was done. For ten hours the Swedes stormed undaunted against fearful odds and with fearful losses. Three times they got actual footing in the Burgstall itself; three times they were hurled back. At last Gustavus, who had had a piece of the sole of his right boot shot off, and had always been in the thickest part of the fight, dragging the cannon to points of vantage and aiming them with his own hands, was obliged to relinquish the desperate enterprise. "We have done a stupid thing to-day," was his comment. For the first time in his life, indeed, he was conquered, because he was not conqueror. But Wallenstein's claws were cut: he had suffered little less than Gustavus in the fight round the Alte Veste. Nuremberg was saved for the present, for Wallenstein was in no condition to prosecute a siege. After fifteen days, therefore (September 8), Gustavus, unable to stay for lack of supplies, and failing to entice the enemy into battle on the plain, marched away into Thuringia, and two months later, on the field of Lutzen, he fell in the moment of victory when he had defeated his old enemy. Before that, however, ten days after he had departed, and a week after Wallenstein had broken up his camp, Gustavus came back to Fürth and looked at what had been the enemy's position. It is said that he had breakfast on the round stone table still to be found at the Alte Veste, and known as the _Schweden Tisch_. Once more, in October, he returned, drove the Imperial troops out of the Nuremberg territory, and took his last farewell of the town.

The Treaty of Westphalia brought the Thirty Years War to an end in 1648, but not before the interruption of commerce and the extraordinary exertions she had made had reduced the resources of Nuremberg to a very low ebb, and saddled her with a load of debt from which she never recovered. When at last peace was announced, the festivals with which she celebrated it reflected the last splendour of the once prosperous city. Karl Gustav, as representative of the crown of Sweden, gave a magnificent dinner--the "_Friedensmal_"--in the Rathaus to celebrate this occasion. The Council ordered a Neptune with nymphs and dolphins, designed by Christoph Ritter, and figures modelled by Georg Schweigger, to be placed in the middle of the market-place. It was, for some reason, placed in the Peünt-hof. It was sold in 1797 to Paul of Russia to raise money.

Another incident which is recorded of these days of rejoicing is as follows: When peace was proclaimed with France, Octavio Piccolomini was staying in the Pellerhaus, and he gave a dance to the peasants. Now a rumour was circulated that all the boys who appeared on hobby-horses before his house on the following Sunday would get a silver coin. They assembled accordingly, and when he heard the reason of this extraordinary parade, he told them to come next Sunday, and then gave them each a four-cornered medal--still to be seen in numismatic collections--with a picture of a hobby-horse, and the date 1650 on it.

Through the peace of Westphalia Nuremberg with the other free towns obtained full political equality with the princes of the Empire. Their representatives, who before only had a voice in the discussions, now enjoyed the full right of voting. But, in spite of this, the political importance of Nuremberg began to disappear. Her sovereignty, her right of peace and war, were recognised. But she became a quiet and obedient attendant of the Reichstag in Regensburg, paying her quota of men and money, and supporting the Hapsburg interests.

Her energy, in fact, had been exhausted. The census of her citizens in 1622 amounted to 40,000; in 1806 to 25,000. With the decrease in her population, her prosperity decreased. The load of debt accumulated during the Thirty Years War weighed her down. Her trade, like that of Augsburg and all the other German towns, went from bad to worse. Dislocated during the war, it could not recover now. Chief among the causes of decay must be counted the circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope. Prior to that, all merchandise from the East was obliged to travel overland into Europe and came for distribution by way of Germany. Nuremberg then naturally became the chief entrepôt. Now she suffered, with Venice, from the discovery of this new channel of commerce. The Venetians had boasted that thanks to them Nuremberg had come from nothing to be the richest town in Germany. The Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the German quarter in Venice since the days of the Crusades, still bears witness to their connection with the German traders, and, in Nuremberg, winged lions on many of the houses still record the same fact.

Other and more avoidable causes contributed to the decrease of Nuremberg trade. She adopted an exaggerated system of protection, and levied exorbitant taxes on goods brought into or through the country.

In the old days every good thing had been said to come out of Nuremberg (Was gut sein sollte, wurde aus Nürnberg verschrieben); now the output of her manufactures was foolishly limited by rules. In some trades, for instance, only the son or the husband of a widow of a master might become a master craftsman. Hence many failed to find employment, and set up in the surrounding country as competitors. The selfish and misguided prejudices of the trades led also to the exclusion of the Protestant weavers who had been exiled from France or Flanders, and who, finding asylum elsewhere, soon became rivals of the shortsighted Nurembergers.

The Council, too, suffered and aided the common degeneration. A narrow, effete, and selfish oligarchy, it became more tyrannical as it became more incompetent. The authors of libels and satires, criticising it, were rewarded with lifelong imprisonment. More and more the patrician families drew together and separated themselves from the common people. They clung closer to their exclusive privileges as they became less worthy of them. Endeavouring to become more like the landed nobility, they began to abandon business, and withdrew from the State the capital and brains which had formerly made it prosperous. They grew, indeed, in their false pride, so ashamed of trade that they said that no Nuremberg patrician had ever had to do with business! So a proud and poor nobility came to take the place of rich and patriotic merchant princes. Some even gave up their rights of citizenship and went to live on their property outside Nuremberg, thus still further weakening the Council and quarrelling with it over rights of taxation.

From war, also, Nuremberg suffered. Besides her own private bickerings with the Markgraf, she felt the wars with France, the war of the Austrian succession, and suffered still more in the Seven Years War.

In 1786 a fresh struggle arose between the Council and the town over a new tax which it was sought to impose without consultation. The citizens made a fruitless complaint to the Imperial Court. Then the Council appealed to the Diet, saying that the town was overtaxed. An inquiry into her finances showed that Nuremberg was heavily in debt and practically bankrupt. There had been a large yearly deficit since 1763. A commission to economise and to govern was appointed from both Councils, and in 1794 an arrangement was confirmed by the Emperor by which the larger Council was to consist of 250 members (70 of whom were to be patricians), chosen by the smaller Council. The citizens, however, were not contented, complaining that they were still not properly represented.

Meanwhile an event had occurred which drove another nail into the coffin of the free Imperial city. In 1791, Charles Alexander, Markgraf of Brandenburg, Ansbach and Bayreuth, died childless, and the government of his principalities passed to Prussia, together with the old claims of the Franconian line of the Brandenburg house. A minister, Graf Karl August von Hardenberg, the famous chancellor, was appointed to rule these lands. In the name of the King of Prussia he asserted his right of supremacy over all the territory up to the gates of the town itself. The oldest claims of the _Burggräflichen_ times were reasserted by the Prussians. Nuremberg was powerless to resist. Even so her troubles were not yet ended. A Prussian army had occupied Fürth on July 4, 1796, and in August a vanguard of the French victorious army, which was swarming over South Germany, entered Nuremberg on the 9th of August. The scenes of the Thirty Years War were repeated. The country was ravaged, and the town called upon for contributions. It was impossible to comply at once with these demands. Eighteen citizens were therefore taken away to France as hostages. When, a few weeks later, the French army withdrew, after the Archduke Karl's victory, a fresh contribution was demanded. In despair the town almost unanimously decided to seek union with their old enemy, the King of Prussia. But he refused this Grecian gift, for the debt of the town was enormous. Then the Council turned to the Emperor and offered to accept an Imperial commission, which introduced some financial reforms. But the year 1800 brought more French troops into Nuremberg, who were a further strain upon her resources.

Even after the Peace of Pressburg the long agony of the Imperial free city was continued, till in 1806 by a decree of Napoleon, in the 17th article of the Rheinbund Act, it was laid down that "the town and territory of Nuremberg be united to Bavaria with full sovereignty and possession." On the 6th of August 1806, Emperor Francis abdicated, and the Holy Roman Empire, "which was a grand object once, but had gone about in a superannuated and plainly crazy state for some centuries back, was at last put out of pain and allowed to cease from the world."

Since then the story of Nuremberg is swallowed up in the history of United Germany. She has shared and still shares in the growing prosperity of the new Empire. The first railway in Germany was opened in 1835 between Nuremberg and Fürth. Her hops, her toys, her cakes, her railway-carriages, her lead-pencils, are they not known the world over? New buildings have sprung up on every side of her: the suburbs are themselves great manufacturing towns. The population has grown to 170,000. These are all things on which she may most sincerely be congratulated; but whatever her prosperity in the present or the future, her golden age, we feel, is in the past. She is Albert Durer's and Hans Sachs' city.

* * * * *

We began by hinting that the atmosphere of Nuremberg is mediæval, that of a city of legend. We will close this account of her history with the brief narration of her last, her nineteenth century myth. For we cannot pass over in silence the curious case of Kaspar Hauser.

At a time when Europe was still dripping from the douche of sentimentality in which it had been bathed by the sorrows of Werther and the romanticism of Byron, Kaspar Hauser appeared suddenly in Nuremberg. His astonishing story achieved a European celebrity. The history of this impostor has recently been placed once more before the public by the Duchess of Cleveland,[22] with the object of clearing her father from imputations which would have been ridiculous if they had not been so impudent. Charity, and the facts of the case, enable us to add with regard to Kaspar himself, that if he was an impostor he was also half a lunatic; for we can trace in the records of his career, among other symptoms of a diseased brain, the mania of persecution, an over acute and perverted sense of smell, a restless love of notoriety, and an ineradicable habit of lying.

On Easter Monday, May 1828, a lad of seventeen, dressed like a countryman, appeared outside the Neue Thor, and asked, in the low Bavarian dialect, his way to the Neue Thor Strasse.

He had with him two letters in one envelope addressed to "The Captain of the 4th Squadron of the Schmolischer Regiment, Neue Thor Strasse, Nuremberg." They ran as follows, in handwriting exactly similar to Kaspar's:--

"HONORED SIR,--I send you a lad who wishes to serve his King truly; this lad was brought to me on Oct. 7, 1812. I am a poor day labourer, with ten children of my own; I have enough to do to get on at all. His mother asked me to bring up the boy. I asked her no questions, nor have I given notice to the county police that I had taken the boy. I thought I ought to take him as my son. I have brought him up as a good Christian, and since 1812 I have never let him go a step away from the house, so no one knows where he has been brought up, and he himself does not know the name of my house or of the place; you may ask him, but he can't tell you. I have taught him to read and to write; he can write as well as myself. When we ask him what he would like to be, he says a soldier, like his father. If he had parents (which he has not) he would have been a scholar: only show him a thing and he can do it.

"Honoured Sir, you may question him, but he don't know where I live. I brought him away in the middle of the night; he can't find his way back."

Dated, "From the Bavarian Frontier; place not named."

The second letter ran thus:--

"The boy is baptized, his name is Kaspar; his other name you must give him. I ask you to bring him up. His father was a Schmolischer (trooper). When he is seventeen send him to Nuremberg to the 6th Schmolischer Regiment; that is where his father was. I beg you to bring him up till he is seventeen. He was born on April 30, 1812. I am so poor, I can't keep the boy; his father is dead."

In answer to the Captain's questions the lad would only reply: "My foster-father bade me say, 'I don't know, your honour.'" The result was that he was placed in a prison cell in the castle. That was neither a fair nor a judicious proceeding. The garbled story of a wild man, a wronged man, quickly spread through the town. Feigning at first an intense fear and animal stupidity, it seems probable that Kaspar picked up from the visitors who discussed his history in his presence the suggestion of the marvellous tale which he presently told, and which made so tremendous a sensation. It was a tale demonstrably false on the face of it--of a life spent in close and solitary confinement in a cell, without knowledge of his kind or acquaintance with the outside world.

Here is his story as he told it to the Nuremberg magistrates, and as it found acceptance in credulous quarters.

"All his life," he said, "had been spent in a cell 6 or 7 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 5 feet high, and always in a sitting posture; the only change in which was that when awake he sat upright, but leant back on a truss of straw when he slept. There were two small windows, but they were both boarded up, and as it was always twilight he never knew the difference between day and night. Nor did he ever feel hot or cold. He saw no one, and no sound of any kind ever reached his ear. Each morning, when he awoke, he found a pitcher of water and a loaf of rye bread by his side. He was often thirsty, and when he had emptied his pitcher, he used to watch to see whether the water would come again, as he had no idea how it was brought there. Sometimes it tasted strangely and made him feel sleepy. He had toys to play with--two wooden horses and a wooden dog, and he spent his time in rolling them about, and dressing them up with ribbons.

"One day a stool was placed across his knees, with a piece of paper upon it: an arm was stretched out over his shoulder, a pencil put into his hand, which was taken hold of, and guided over the paper. 'I never looked round to see whom the arm belonged to. Why should I? I had no conception of any other creature beside myself.' This proceeding was repeated seven or eight times: the arm was then withdrawn, but the stool and paper left behind. He tried to copy the letters he had been made to trace, and pleased with this new occupation, persevered till he had succeeded. Thus it was that he learned to write his name. About three days afterwards--as far as he could judge--the man came again and brought a little book (a prayer-book which was found on him). This was placed on his knees and his hand laid upon it; then, pointing to one of the wooden horses, the man kept on repeating the word 'Ross' (horse) till he had learned to say it after him. According to his own account, this was the first time in his life he had ever heard a sound of any kind, as the man came and went noiselessly. Then, in the same fashion, he was taught two sentences--'In the big village, where my father is, I shall get a fine horse.' 'I want to be a trooper as my father was'--which he repeated by rote, of course without understanding them. When his lesson was learnt the man went away, and he began playing with his toys, making so much noise that the man returned and gave him a smart blow with a stick, which hurt him very much.

"'After that I was always quiet.' The last time the man came it was to take him away. His clothes had been changed while he slept; a pair of boots were now brought and put on; he was hoisted up on the man's shoulders, and carried up a steep incline into the open air. It was night-time and quite dark. He was laid down on the ground, and fell asleep at once. When he awoke, he was lifted upon his feet, and placed in front of the man, who, holding him under the arms, pushed forward his legs with his own, and showed him how to walk. But the pain and fatigue were very great, and he cried bitterly. The man said impatiently, 'Leave off crying at once, or you shall not get that horse;' and he thereupon obeyed. Then he was again lifted up and carried; again dropped asleep, and again he woke to find himself lying on the ground. This was repeated over and over again. There were the same painful attempts to walk; the same floods of tears, checked by the same threat; and then the same rest on the ground, with 'something soft' under his cheek. By degrees he began to walk alone, supported by the man's arm, though at first only six steps at a time. The sunshine and fresh air together dazzled and bewildered him, and he scarcely took note where they went. They never travelled on a beaten track, but generally on soft sand; never went up or down hill, or crossed a stream. Sometimes he attempted to look about him; then the man instantly desired him to hold his head down. His clothes were once more changed; but the man, even while dressing him, stood behind him, so that he might not see his face. The two sentences he had learned were again and again impressed on his memory as he went along, the man always adding impressively, 'Mind this well.'

"He also said, 'When you are a trooper like your father, I will come and fetch you again.'

"The journey cannot have been a long one, as he only took food once; he himself computed it had lasted a day and a night.

"Finally the letter was put into his hands with the words: 'Go there--where the letter belongs;' and the man suddenly vanished from his side. He found himself alone in the street of Nuremberg--having never till then perceived that he had entered the town, or, in fact, seen it at all. He was quite dazed and helpless, but someone kindly came and took charge of him and his letter." ...

So great was the interest caused by this story, which easily roused the sympathy of the illogical--people are always readier to sympathise than to inquire--that Kaspar was (July 1828) formally adopted by the town of Nuremberg. An annual sum of 300 florins was voted for his maintenance and education. He became the idol of society. It was openly hinted that he was the legitimate son of the reigning House of Baden, who stood in the way of the next in succession, and would have been long since in his grave had he not been rescued by a faithful retainer, who kept him in close confinement to conceal him from his pursuers. In the course of a year or so, however, the interest in him began to wane. His tutor, who had at first been delighted with him, was beginning to find him out. Kaspar, in fact, was both cunning and untruthful. One day a particularly gross instance of his deceitfulness came to his tutor's knowledge. The same morning Nuremberg was electrified by the news that Kaspar's life had been attempted in broad daylight, and actually under his tutor's roof. A man, he said, with a black handkerchief drawn across his face, had suddenly confronted him, and aimed at him a blow with a heavy woodman's knife, crying, "After all, you will have to die before you leave Nuremberg." The voice was the voice of the man who had brought him to the town. He described him accurately. But no such man could be traced.

The wound was very slight. Almost certainly it was self-inflicted, with the object of stimulating the flagging public interest by a new and romantic incident. That at any rate was its effect. Pamphlets by the dozen appeared, and in 1832 President von Feuerbach published his "History of a Crime against a Human Soul," which moved all hearts by the pathos and eloquence with which it pleaded the cause of the mysteriously persecuted "Child of Europe."

But the Nurembergers were no longer eager to continue their allowance to the boy, so Lord Stanhope, who had always befriended him, now came forward, and made himself responsible for his education and maintenance. The rest of Kaspar's life is somewhat dismal reading. He had to endure the process of being found out by successive people at successive places, for he had all the astuteness but also all the vanity of a lunatic. Once again, it appears, he attempted to reawaken the flagging interest of the public. At Ansbach he tried to repeat his Nuremberg success, and to confirm the existence of the mysterious persecutor who was supposed to haunt him. But this time he failed. Once more he got stabbed, but instead of a slight, he inflicted on himself a deadly wound. Now though he had taken much trouble to make the conditions of the affair as mysterious and misleading as possible, a long judicial investigation resulted in the irresistible conclusion that "no murder was committed." At Ansbach stands the tomb of the poor deluded and deluding "Child of Europe," a monument of folly not all his own.

"Hic jacet CASPARUS HAUSER Ænigma sui temporis Ignota Nativitas Occulta Mors, 1833."