Women of the Teutonic Nations Part 13

No better business woman ever lived than royal Marguerite. Her first act as regent was the abrogation of several of her father's unwise, self-cheating treaties. She encouraged trade, secured financial stability in her realm, always kept on good terms with the Fuggers, the money kings of the world, and increased the revenue from all sources. A marriage was planned between her nephew, Charles, and Mary Tudor, the youngest daughter of Henry VII.

When Henry VIII., in the war between France and England, led an army to the battle of Guinegatte, Marguerite invited him to visit her at Lille.

Did Marguerite know when she sent her letter of invitation that with Henry was one whom she had met at the English court and had never forgotten? The following letter, written her from Henry's camp by her confidential messenger, would indicate that she did know. "The Grand Equerry, the second king," mentioned in the letter was Charles Brandon, then Viscount Lisle and later enn.o.bled by Henry for Marguerite's sake, gossip said Lord Suffolk. The messenger, Philippe de Brigilles, writes:

"MADAME:

"The Grand Equerry, my Lord Lisle, has been to me to beg of me that I would convey to you his most humble respects and the hearty desire which he had to do you service. I think you know sufficiently well that he is the second king and it is only proper that you should write him a gracious letter, for he it is who does and undoes all. This knoweth G.o.d, who give you, Madame, what ever you most desire. From the camp before Therouanne, this Wednesday last.

"Your most humble and most obedient slave,

"PHILIPPE DE BRIGILLES."

Marguerite was now thirty-three. A portrait of her at Hampton Court shows that she was a fine-looking, if not, strictly speaking, a beautiful woman. The face is oval, the hair, showing from underneath the rather picturesque widow's headdress of the sixteenth century, is brown, the eyes are dark and expressive, the nose Grecian, the lips somewhat full. The hands, resting upon a balcony, are beautiful, with long, tapering fingers.

Brandon is described as "a large man, tall and elegantly proportioned, with dark brown eyes and hair: he was handsome in his countenance, courtly in his manners, and extremely prepossessing in his address."

For the next few months, the soul of Marguerite of Austria was struggling in deep waters. The facts, as clearly as they can be made out through the misty perspective of centuries, seem to be these: Marguerite loved Charles Brandon, then Viscount Lisle and afterward the Duke of Suffolk. He asked her hand in marriage, wooing her pa.s.sionately. The young and powerful king, Henry VIII., favored Suffolk's suit, even to the point of making several personal appeals to Marguerite, whose pride and her fear of causing a political catastrophe made her hesitate to accept Suffolk. Gossiping rumors concerning the love affair were spread broadcast, and Maximilian, hearing them, became enraged. Marguerite drew back. Henry VIII. pretended to the emperor that he knew nothing about the matter except by hearsay. Brandon accepted the situation and later consoled himself by marrying the youngest sister of the king, the bride first selected for Charles, Mary Tudor.

To give reality and color to the above bare outline of a story that once throbbed with life, a few descriptions and quotations may be permitted.

Henry VIII., with his suite, including Brandon, visited Marguerite at Lille. She in return "accompanied by her young nephew Charles and divers other n.o.bles," visited Henry in his camp at Tournay. Henry met them outside the gates and "brought them in with greate triumphe." The chronicler adds: "The noys went that the Lord Lysle made request of marriage to the Ladye Margurite, d.u.c.h.ess of Savoy, and daughter to the Emperor Maximilian. But whether he proffered marriage or not, she favored him highly."

An evening banquet following, a day of tournaments is thus described:

"This night the King made a sumptuous banket of a. c. dishes to the Prince of Castell and the Lady Margarete, and to all other Lords and ladies and after the banket the ladies daunsed; and then came in the king and a XI in a maske, all richly appareled with bonnettes of gold, and when they had pa.s.sed the time at their pleasure, the garments of the maske were cast off amongst the ladies, take who could take."

That handsome Charles Brandon and stately Marguerite of Austria "took"

each other is proved by the following extracts, made from two letters signed "M" among the Cottonian ma.n.u.scripts now in the British Museum.

The epistles are evidently translations from French originals. They are addressed to "Sir Richard Wingfield, Amba.s.sadour," and are labelled on the outside, in Sir Richard Wingfield's handwriting: _Secrete Matters of the Duke of Suffolk_. The letters were delivered to Wingfield by Marotin, a confidential servant, whom it is known Marguerite dismissed for having "evile kept" her secrets. As Marotin was at once taken into Maximilian's service it is probable that he was the emperor's informant concerning the Suffolk love affair. For nearly a year afterward, intercourse between the emperor and his daughter was confined to the coldest formalities.

In the case of a few words, liberties have here been taken with Sir Richard Wingfield's spelling in order to make the letter intelligible to modern readers:

"The Archd.u.c.h.ess Marguerite to Sir Richard Wingfield.

"My Ladye began this wryting before the koming of Marrotin, who came to Lavoyne on Sundaye last."

"MY LORDE AMBa.s.sADOURE:

"Sythe that I see that I may not have tydynges from the Emperor so soon, it seemeth me that I shulde do welle no longer to tarry to depeche this gentleman. And for that my lettres addressyed to the King and the Duke of that I dare not aventure me to wryte on to them so at lengthe of thys bisyness I fear me to be evile kept, I me determine to wrythe to you at lengthe that you may the better advertise them of myne intent."

She then explains that her intent is to put a stop to the whole matter.

Fear of endangering the prospects of her idolized nephew, Charles, should she make a mesalliance, was probably Marguerite's main reason for disobeying the dictates of her heart. Marguerite was a politician, clear-headed, keen, cool, calculating; but she was also a very human woman. She wished Sir Richard to think well of her she desired the king to know that she did not blame him in the matter. Above all, she wished Suffolk to understand that while she rejected him she still remained true to him. She told Wingfield how "at severall occaysions" the king pleaded for his friend and favorite courtier:

"He sayde that I was yet too young for to abide thus, and that the ladyes of hys contree dyd remarye at fifty and three score yeeres." But Marguerite was firm. She says: "Whereupon I answered hym that I hadde never hadde wylle so to do and that I was too muche unhappy in hosbondes, but he wolde nott beleve me."

Throughout the letters, Suffolk (Brandon) is referred to by Marguerite as the "Personnage." Again the king told her that his friend was most unhappy, fearing she would marry someone else.

"Wyche I promised to hym," says Marguerite, "I schulde not do." But the "Personnage," who appears to have been present at this interview, was not satisfied. Marguerite says: "He mayde me promyse in his hands that how soever I shulde be pressed by my father, or otherwyse, I should not make alyance of maryage with Prynce off the worlde."

The king was sometimes discreetly absent when the two met.

"At the head of a koppboorde," a few days later, Suffolk made Marguerite renew her promise to him. Marguerite refers also to certain "gracyewse letters" that pa.s.sed between herself and her English suitor. The report had got abroad in the court that Suffolk had in his possession a diamond ring known to belong to the archd.u.c.h.ess. She confesses the truth of the rumor:

"One night at Tournaye, being at the bankett, after the bankett, he put hymself upon hys knees before me, and hym playing, he drew from my finger the rynge, and put it on hys finger, and sythe shewed it me. And I took to Lawe, and to hym sayde that he was a theefe, and that I thowte not the King hadde wyth hym ledde theeves out of hys contree." Somehow, one feels glad of that half-hour "after the bankett" in Marguerite's hard life.

Brandon behaved well in the matter when he found that Marguerite had fully made up her mind to end their friends.h.i.+p. His daughter by his first wife and an adopted daughter were both under Marguerite's care at her court, and Suffolk offered to remove them if the archd.u.c.h.ess wished him to do so. Another young English girl also was under Marguerite's charge, Anne Bullen, better known to history as Anne Boleyn. Suffolk, about this time, adopted for his s.h.i.+eld the singular motto: "Who can hold that will away?"

The affair with the Duke of Suffolk being over, Marguerite plunged into politics, straining every nerve to secure the imperial succession for Charles against the new claimant who had arisen, Francis I. of France.

When her help was no longer needed by the young emperor, Marguerite retired to her favorite spot, Malines. There she held a quiet court, devoting herself to study. When remonstrated with upon the score of health for confining herself too closely to books, she replied: "When the mind has congenial employment, the body will always take care of itself." At the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and also at Cambrai, where the "Ladies' Peace" treaty was arranged by herself and Louise of Savoy, Marguerite again met her old lover, the Duke of Suffolk. If history holds any records of that meeting, they are still hidden in her secret archives.

The Renaissance and the Reformation both touched Marguerite of Austria closely. Toward the Renaissance she was kindly and even gratefully inclined. For Protestantism, however, she had only scorn and hatred. Her natural benevolence kept her from the cruel persecutions which darkened the reign of another Marguerite--Marguerite of Parma--in the Netherlands. But Marguerite of Austria, nevertheless, was openly committed to "the extermination of the Lutherans." That her niece Isabel died in the new and hated faith was a source of great sorrow to her.

Isabel, with her last breath, committed her children to her aunt Marguerite's care; and Marguerite, whose life had been largely spent in rearing other women's children, took these little orphans also to her heart.

When the Reformation came, even the gay, profligate courts of the German princ.i.p.alities were sobered. At first, in certain cases, the sudden seriousness caused by Luther's ringing call took the form of attempted evasion of the consequences of sin. Philip of Hesse, a big, handsome prince into whose material nature a bit of the new leaven had fallen, asked "Pope Luther" to let him marry a second wife while his first was living. He did not propose to put the first away; he would provide for both. In extenuation of this suggested bigamy he pleaded truly enough that Christine, his spouse, was addicted to over-indulgence in strong drink, and, also, was personally repulsive. He wished to marry Katharine von Saal, one of the court ladies. It was a crucial moment for Protestantism. Philip's powerful aid would perhaps save the new faith.

Long ago, Luther had twice given it as his opinion that the Scriptures sanctioned plural marriages. The dispensation was granted. The second marriage took place, Christine agreeing placidly. Katharine von Saal made Philip a good wife, and the three Christine being left in undisturbed enjoyment of her daily dram lived, it seems, harmoniously enough.

A very different story is that of another court. Joachim, Elector of Brandenburg, bitterly opposed the new faith, but his wife became a convert. The latter partook of the sacrament in both kinds, and then fearing vengeance from her angry lord and master fled from his court to a refuge near Lotha. Her husband refused to take her back, but he allowed her children to visit her. Carlyle, in his Frederick the Great, tells the story.

The vexed question, Which has done more to advance the world, the Renaissance or the Reformation? will probably never be satisfactorily settled. At the best, 'tis rather a shallow question, born of provincial intelligence. Without the Renaissance there could have been no Reformation. Without the Reformation, the Renaissance, contenting itself with past culture, would never have become the active force it is in the world to-day. To both, the twentieth century woman owes much.

CHAPTER VIII

AN ERA OF INTELLECTUAL DESOLATION

War! War! War! From that pregnant day in 1521 when Luther, at Worms, cried: "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, G.o.d help me!" Germany, for nearly three centuries, was never, long at a time, free from b.l.o.o.d.y strife. In some districts of the empire men and women were conceived in time of war, born in time of war, lived to the Scripturally allotted age of threescore years and ten in time of war, died, and were buried, leaving war to rage for years to come above their unquiet, desecrated graves.

In these disintegrating centuries, women of all cla.s.ses suffered to the uttermost. The lowest became beasts, like the men who debauched them. By thousands, and tens of thousands, women followed the armies. Every soldier, from the private to the highest officer, was allowed to take with him into the field his wife or mistress frequently both and as many other female relatives as he pleased. Even grandmothers were frequently seen in camp. Schiller's picture of the old marketwoman in Wallenstein's Camp is not overdrawn.

Women in the army cooked, washed, mended, and, more or less skilfully, nursed the sick and wounded. They were not taken to the field, however, as ministering angels. The bald truth is that women were kept in the army for the sole purpose of gratifying man's l.u.s.t. With every newly recruited regiment that started for the front went hundreds of respectable young girls torn unwillingly from their humble homes. After every decisive battle, women formed a large part of the spoils of war borne off by the victors. Children, mostly born out of wedlock, swarmed.

Gustavus Adolphus made a vain attempt to keep women out of the army. He established tent schools for the children. Women in the field were under martial law. Frequently, for minor offences they were stripped, flogged, and drummed out of camp. The discipline of the field schools was very severe. Once, it is related, a cannon ball crashed through a school tent, killing half a dozen children. But the survivors, more afraid of their schoolmaster than of death, kept on with their tasks as if nothing had happened.

For woman there could be, there was, but one outcome of this army life, moral degradation. Grimmelshausen, in his _Simplicius Simplicissimus_, one of the greatest satires ever written, gives a horribly revolting picture of women in camp during the Thirty Years' War. There is no doubt that the picture is a true one, for Grimmelshausen, a n.o.bleman and a powerful writer, was an eyewitness of the horrors which he describes in this life story of a vagabond adventurer in the long and terrible war.

Neither wealth nor high birth could screen women from the anxieties, the sorrows, and the miseries of war. Philippine Welser, of Augsburg, was probably the last patrician woman in Germany to receive Renaissance training. The Welser family of burgher-merchant origin, enn.o.bled by royal favor was famous for its upright men and its pious, scholarly women no less than for its enormous wealth. The story of Philippine Welser and her lover--husband,--Prince Ferdinand, son of Emperor Ferdinand I. and favorite nephew of Charles V., contrasts pleasantly with the cruel, coldly selfish treatment of most princely lovers in that war-brutalized age.

According to legend, Philippine Welser first saw "Prince Ferdinand of the Golden Locks" as he rode past her father's house in old Haymarket Square, at the head of a glittering procession. Philippine, a vision of pink and white girlish beauty, stood at a long, open window, looking down on the gorgeous pageant. The prince saluted her. Their eyes met, and straightway, after the old fas.h.i.+on which never quite goes out of date anywhere in the world, either in war or in peace, they fell in love.

At the public ball that evening, in Augsburg's new hall of gold, the prince showed the merchant-banker's fair daughter marked attention, dancing with her often. In the weeks that followed, Prince Ferdinand's intimate friend, Count Ladislaw von Sternberg, was seen almost daily going back and forth between the old Welser house and the archducal palace near the Cathedral.

At last the prince left Augsburg. A few days later Philippine Welser also disappeared down the street which now bears her name. Henceforth her native city knew her no more. She was in Bohemia, with her aunt Katharine, wife of the knight George von Loxan. An imperial castle crowned a neighboring height. Prince Ferdinand suddenly discovered that affairs in his Bohemian inheritance needed his immediate personal attention. He resided at the castle for several weeks, making frequent visits to the Loxan estate. A formal betrothal took place in the presence of a priest, Philippine's aunt, and other witnesses. Through nine years of betrothal and twenty-three of married life, the archduke was true to Philippine. War separated them for years at a time, but their love suffered no diminution. The archduke Ferdinand was a genuine scion of an impetuously loyal race. From Maximilian I., whose heart, by his own command, was placed in the tomb of fair Mary of Burgundy, down to Don John and to unfortunate Rudolph in the nineteenth century, Habsburg princes have ever been ready to cast aside rank, wealth, and power for love.

Sometimes, hiding under the soiled robe of politics, love actually slips into a state marriage, as in the union of Elizabeth Stuart of England with Frederick, Prince of the Palatinate, better known to history as the "Winter King" of Bohemia.

Though not German by birth, Elizabeth, through good and through evil report, so thoroughly identified herself with her husband's interests and people, and became the ancestress of so many famous rulers, among whom are Frederick the Great, Queen Victoria, and Emperor William I., that her story properly deserves a place in any history of German womanhood.