Read Ebook: The Imperial Crown by Raabe Wilhelm Wooff Michael Translator

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Ebook has 192 lines and 22803 words, and 4 pages

And it grew and unfolded while my brave friend was absent abroad in the pursuit of feats of arms and knightly adventures. And what we had all thought of in the final analysis as a children's game became serious with a gravity that stretched far beyond our poor life on earth. What my friend had spoken of laughingly as fidelity and perseverance, Mechthild had stored up in her heart and had waited for my friend patiently and quietly. It came as a wonder to us all, for none of us knew anything about it until the night of the feast of Saints Simon and Jude in 1420 when the sweet mystery was revealed in the light of fires and the noise of weaponry.

In the night of Saints Simon and Jude 1420 Christoph of Leining, the dependent of Duke Ludwig the Bearded of Ingolstadt, captured the walled town of Nuremberg with cunning and force after having beforehand concluded a secret pact with the council of which few were aware, although a thousand voices shouted the news of it to the rest of the world afterwards.

Christoph of Leining conveyed his respects to the council to the effect that the town need not stir. He, Sir Christopher, was coming to inflict defeat on the local counts and the best that could come out of such a feud could only be a positive thing for the inhabitants of Nuremberg.

Not only did the council not stir, but it did something else, over which the citizens of Nuremberg kicked up before Emperor and Empire no little fuss. Namely, as the hordes of their enemies lay hidden in ambush under their walls, the council prepared for citizens of both sexes a dance at the town hall and a most merry and most extraordinary dance night it was too. At that time the elders, the town fathers did not take for truth the gossip of the elderly and none of the young suspected to what ends the strings behind their backs were being put to. We had not wondered in the slightest at the sudden urge for entertainment that had come over the town's leaders, upper classes and the whole strict Collegium Septemvirorum but had caught hold of pleasure by the wing without question as young people do. We had gone out to team up with the fairest maidens in the town and I had led off with Mechthild, the fairest of them all. The men of the citadel, tempted by the noise of kettledrums and music away from their fortress, we scarcely paid attention to, although we were only too happy otherwise with their swords, clubs and spears. The soldiers of the local counts looked like our greybeards and how they, while the dancers turned, strained to listen to events in the fortress we had no inkling of.

Only once after that did I see Mechthild more beautiful than that night of the feast of Saints Simon and Jude in the year 1420. That was on another day when the setting sun shone on the portal of the Church of the Holy Ghost before the shrine that bore the Imperial Crown and nightfall followed at once upon that glorious brilliance.

On that eve of Saints Simon and Jude she appeared in the joyous splendour of her youth and as she elegantly slipped smiling through the winding movements of the round dance in the glare of lights and torches, there was not a single eye that did not follow the most beauteous child in Nuremberg with joy and pride. I think that even those old men standing there and waiting in such deadly earnest spared a glance and a word for that fair maiden.

But the hour has come that Christoph Leininger has already discussed with the council and he has been as good as his word. Suddenly, with the general merriment at its height, there has been a great shock, a flaring up, a trembling has descended on the feast. A more undisciplined noise has added itself to the brass and wind sections of the band. People have cried out in the streets. Before anyone realised, the red glow from the vanquished citadel came through the windows and over the pale with fear faces of the guests of Nuremberg's honourable council.

Those in the know, the veterans, sprang up from their seats and cried "Victory!" and "Freedom!" The swords of young men flashed above the wreathed heads of young women and all the town's bells sounded the alarm and the call to arms waking both children and the sick. Men ran out into the streets with their weapons to help the council and Christoph Leininger to win this dangerous game.

The feast and the dance in the town hall then came to an end it has to be admitted, but another wilder feast and dance began. Those burgers who, in their mocking and disdainful way, had stooped to spoiling and offending the people's joy, were thrown to the floor in the middle of the council chamber and disarmed. They might well have cried out "Treachery!" but the town would rightfully rejoice when the townsfolk learned just what, on this night, that roll of the dice had been for.

Only a few years later Baron Friedrich, who became the first Elector of Brandenburg sold the burnt-out ruin of the citadel of Nuremberg complete with all accessories lock, stock and barrel and all rights included to the Forest of Sebald and Lorenz reserving to himself only the right of asylum and escort and the free movement of his subjects. And thus no-one could show a greater right to the happiness of that night in Nuremberg than Nuremberg itself and the Emperor. But I will say no more of that, only that on that very same night of the feast of Saints Simon and Jude along with Christopher of Leiningen another knight, who had gone missing, climbed over the wall, sword in hand, to do great service to the town as he had promised: my dear friend and brother Michael Groland of Laufenholz, the wild squire Groland, for whom our neighbour's beautiful daughter had been waiting in that little garden since they had played together as children!

Through the hubbub of the town, down the lane that led to the castle, from the citadel in flames, danced, swinging their drawn swords and their clubs, with torches in their hands, the first of the happy conquerors. Wave after wave of the excited populace palpitated through the mayoral function room and we had enough to do stopping old and young women from being crushed. The town elders had got up from their raised seats and were happily stroking their grey and white beards, nodding contentedly to anyone they knew in the crowd. It was a long time, however, before one of them could make himself heard over the overwhelming din. This only happened when, borne on the shoulders of citizens, the first of the Leininger's messengers were carried in, and then I felt how Mechthildis's arm, which was linked to mine, suddenly trembled. The young woman had just recognized her friend in the heaving turmoil over the heads of the crowd, backlit by the red reflection of the burning castle. My heart too rejoiced at the unexpected sight. Then all became silent in the room before the mighty voice of the knight Michael Groland of Laufenholz. Our friend then proclaimed the deed that had just come to pass in fine detail, but the blare of trumpets and hooters blocked it all out again. Friendship and affinity led us to the knight and so it was that on that wild night male friend and female friend were again reunited for the first time in years and wonderful days ensued in the wake of this wonderful reunion.

Groland had rendered good service to the town of Nuremberg and the town acknowledged it gratefully. But if he had slipped into the heart of Mechthild almost as he had into Nuremberg Castle, now he had to lay siege to her heart all over again before she was able to confess that she had given it to him already while still a child. This is the way women are and figures among the wiles that preserve beauty and loveliness on earth in the midst of the anger, quarrels and rages endemic to the times. However bad and bloody it may seem to be around us we were quiet and happy and at ease in our twenty first and twenty second springs.

Thus we lived, truly, during those early days of the Hussite Wars! And it was Mechthild who ushered us out of this unworldliness into the world as it really was then--devastated, bloody, in flames-- and led us to fight for the imperial crown.

We had, as German men are apt to do, suddenly forgotten everything to do with the present moment. We saw and heard nothing else apart from our present happiness. We scarcely took in that already Johannes Ziska of the Chalice, the captain of the Taborites so help them God, had taken the field against us and, tired and frustrated, we paid scant attention to the strange and great events that were occurring within the very walls of our own home town. And truly there were wonderful things afoot in it.

Already in 1421 Cardinal Brando Placentius di Regniostoli, the papal nuncio, had come to Nuremberg to await, with the electoral princes and the princes, the arrival of the Emperor. But Emperor Sigismund, held back by an emergency, had had to establish a temporary court in Wesel and only came to Nuremberg the following year, in 1422, to set up a judgement seat and then, of course, there was an elegant assembly on hand.

What a ringing of bells there was in Nuremberg! And, as the bells rang and resounded in the air, the hidden gate opened that led from the big garden of our neighbour into ours and through the narrow, hedged-off path came the young woman who, as a little girl, had so much more happily slid through the hedge's foliage, and now arose, serious and proud, and raised us up from where we were sitting like the appearance of an angel from heaven.

She stood before us angrily and spoke uninhibitedly. Groland and I became tense and stayed on our feet, but the homeless refugee from Chios, Master Theodoros Antoniades, covered his face with both hands and his tears rolled down it between his fingers.

"Do you not know what has happened to the imperial crown?" the young woman cried. "How can you sit here and while away the time with foreign signs and words in a dead language while the crown, sceptre and sword of your own living people is so hard pressed by an enemy of whom we knew nothing before we ourselves, through our own stupidity, made him great? What good are you doing while Emperor and Empire and all the people are crying out for help to recover the crown that Charlemagne wore on his sanctified head in Aachen? Master Theodoros, tell them that today they need to have their armour on if they want to protect their women, their children, their homes from death, disgrace and pulling down, if they do not want to be exiled, strangers in a foreign land! How long will the golden headband of the Emperor Constantine still shine forth, you men of Byzantium? Did you Greeks not fight for the preservation of his crown as was right and fitting? Woe unto your wives and daughters had they not thrust a sword into your hand while there was still time!"

At this point Mechthild broke off her discourse with loud weeping, but my crazy friend, the doughty knight Michael, lay down at her feet and he too with tears in his eyes kissed the hem of her garment. She though lightly touched his head and ran off. The exiled Greek among us picked up his writings with trembling hands and his knees were shaking. Like one pierced with a crossbow bolt he looked at us and said:

And he too withdrew in giddy haste from the bower. In this way Michael Groland and I were won over to the struggle for the imperial crown.

In the middle of turbulent Bohemia, where the Berounka flows, stood the proud castle that the Emperor Charles, the Fourth of that name, whom Bohemians idolized, had built and called after his own name--Karlstein. There, next to the Bohemian crown jewels, lay the much greater treasures of the Holy Roman Empire, Charlemagne's crown, his sceptre, sword and orb along with the Holy Lance which had pierced the side of Our Lord and Saviour and all the rest. And they lay there contrary to right and what had been promised.

Against right and what had been promised, for having broken the promise he had given to the electoral princes that they would always be kept safe in either Nuremberg or Frankfurt, the Luxemburger had sneakily taken them to Castle Karlstein because all good fortune and favour was owed to Bohemia and to the German part of his empire, whose head he was and whose increaser he was ever to be, he granted little or nothing other than the crumbs that fell from Bohemia's table.

From the year 1350 onwards ancient treasures had lain in Castle Karlstein, which in 1422 men of Prague had besieged and overrun with wave upon wave of armed might so as to bring the Holy Roman Empire's crown into their possession and totally humiliate the German people and there was hardly anything else one could say once they had made themselves masters of those holy relics.

The heart of Nuremberg was most enamoured of the coat, sword and sceptre of Charlemagne, for it was the greatest honour for that dear town that it had formerly been singled out as the repository of the crown jewels and to have them back again everyone in Nuremberg, no matter how lacking in sense or obtuse he might be, would have gladly laid down his life to his last drop of blood.

And so it was, after emperor and empire had placed themselves in the hands of Nuremberg's council and citizens, that the following were conscripted-- two hundred footsoldiers, thirty cavalrymen, and Elector Friedrich of the state of Brandenburg undertook to provide thirty snipers for the crusade so that there was a mighty press of all these young heroes within the city walls.

In response to our maiden's fine exhortation we too, Michael Groland and I, went with the others and in the first days of September of the year 1422 we sat there all three of us for the last time together, hopeful and happy, amusing ourselves with bright thoughts about an uncertain future. What Michael and Mechthilde had promised each other could be said with certainty however. Their thoughts were of the brightest and their promise was one of sublime happiness if the imperial crown could be rescued from our terrible foe.

It was not long before we were with the army. Our friends and relations gazed after us from the Laufer Gate and from the walls and we often, as we rode out, turned our heads and looked back at the high wall where the fair maid waved her scarf and next to her stood our Greek master, Theodoros Antoniades, on the parapet with his careworn head supported by his hand, lost in painful thoughts of his own harassed homeland.

And so, for the first time, I came to bear arms for the Empire in the army's vanguard as its bannerman and truly a great honour was vouchsafed to him who was permitted to take for himself a part in this trial and tribulation.

This was the cruellest war I have ever seen and the territory that we were crossing through looked for all the world as if the end times had come to it. All the villages and most of the towns had been reduced to fire-blackened rubble. The fields were strewn with bones and corpses. The Lord went before the Hussite armies to punish the sins of the world as a cloud of smoke by day and a column of fire by night. All colour paled before the hot breath of the Taborites and there was nothing left over behind it apart from waste land and darkness. And in the middle of that wilderness, that howling wilderness, we knew that the high castle was situated that was unlawfully concealing the crown jewels of our people, though they were now being watched by good watchmen. With hot breath and panting chest we ranged abroad to set the watchmen free and rescue the crown.

We came to Saaz to begin with, not that it did us much good, for the German nation was indeed fated not to have much luck in the course of this brutal war. The great sin committed at Konstanz had to be atoned for and it was!

Brother Johannes Capistranus, take note: Constantinople has fallen now into the hands of the pagans. The eastern Roman Empire has vanished, but we saved the German imperial crown, we, the citizens of the noble town of Nuremberg, and Friedrich of Hohenzollern, the first electoral prince of Brandenburg, who led us and bore on his shoulders the golden shrine that hid the sceptre and the sword of Charlemagne, helping to take them away from Karlstein, which the foreigner had built as a prison for the greatest treasure of the German nation.

We came to Saaz to begin with, not that it did us much good. There was a Herr von Plauen in the army, who wanted to set fire to this stronghold of the Hussites with doves and sparrows to which he attached burning twigs. But the birds, driven by pain, fluttered back to our own camp and set that on fire so that we had to withdraw from the town and the Taborites claimed yet another great victory. They shouted after us from the walls. Swollen by the influx of the detachment of Count Ludwig of the Palatinate we moved on through the wood, engaged in constant combat, day after day.

Shield to shield, shoulder to shoulder we went on, leaving brave and dear comrades in arms wounded and dead behind us with each step we took. The wounded held their hands out after us and waved goodbye, but none of them stretched out their hand to hold back those who were advancing. The worst of them fought with their last ounce of strength for the imperial crown and the one behind made a superhuman effort to push the one in front into the way forward, grim though it was. We rode and fought as in a fever. We laughed at the arrows that flew at us from the depths of the forest, from behind each bush and rock. Feverish eyes shone, arms and fists had a twofold increase in force and the smaller the army became, the more splendidly the belief rose up in each chest in the final success of our enterprise. We were all willing to die for Charlemagne's crown jewels and therefore, as no-one paid death any attention, we had our way this time and broke through the enemy hordes, through the wicked unfamiliar forest, crossed over streams and mountains and beheld Castle Karlstein as the first crusaders looked upon the battlements of the holy city of Jerusalem!

First there was a cry and then a great silence. The wild wood before us thinned out and from on high the golden crosses of the tower that hid our treasure trove looked down on us. Another cry went up from the declivity at our feet where the Hussite encampment stretched out and we saw and heard them working at fever pitch with heavy rifles, mangonels and grappling ladders. We saw too the guardians of the Holy Roman Empire's treasure on the high walls of the citadel and Elector Friedrich turned, brandishing his sword, and waved.

Then we broke out of the wood down into the valley to where the Hussites were encamped, following the electoral prince, an angry river of fire. There we fell upon the Taborites and flung our torches at their tents and trampled on their bodies through the thick smoke and flames. Already we had fought our way to the steep cliffs bearing the mighty castle on top of them and saw above us, above the smoke and the throng of the castle watch the waving of the imperial flag, heard the cries of joy of the crown's guardians on the battlements and over and above all the noise of battle, solemn and sonorous, the exalted tolling of the bell of the Holy Cross, the tolling of the bell that swings over the shrine erected to contain the Holy Roman Empire's imperial crown jewels.

The battle did not last long. We choked all those who would not yield to us. We beat these men from Prague and drove them back from the walls that they had so ruthlessly attacked. We won the one and only piece of luck that German arms had had in that dreadful war against the continental followers of Wycliffe's doctrines. We rescued for the German people its holy of holies from the utmost degradation at the hands of foreigners and brought it out of Bohemia that it might enjoy better days unmolested in our empire.

The men of Prague fled and we pressed on up the steep path. Those above us stretched out their tired hands to us from the battlements. We saw them kneeling and we saw them dancing in their watchtowers, those brave guardians of Charlemagne's crown. We pressed on up the steep and narrow path, each of us in harness lifted and shoved by those climbing up behind. We climbed up to the bronze gate, which had stood up so long and so well to the attack by the Hussites. Prince Friedrich, who had led us so ably to the imperial crown, let his bloody battleaxe dangle and took his helmet from his head. The bronze gate opened to him and to us. The first of us fell back now to join those behind them in sudden shyness and holy dread. Our army came to a standstill having redeemed Charlemagne's orb and sceptre. We saw the first inner courtyard full of sick and wounded guardians. We saw the healthy with battle fatigue and weakened by hunger. We had arrived with our leader, the electoral prince of Brandenburg, at the right time. May that always be true in all the centuries to come till the world really does come to an end!

They called down health and blessings on us as they stretched out to us their drooping arms and embraced the vanguard of our relieving army with heaving chests.

Health and blessings, yes. For us that was a truly blessed and elevated moment. A great silence fell yet again in close proximity to us, so that only the light clink of armour and the jingling of weapons could be heard and out of the valley ascended the never ending victory roar of thousands of German men who had accompanied us on this journey, but could not share the honour of being the first to enter the citadel.

Now we saw with amazement all around us the walls reaching up to heaven behind which the Luxemburger had hidden the treasure he had borrowed as his own property. We saw the three inner courtyards, one upon the other, stretching up to the clouds. We saw the royal residence in all its splendour before us and the clergy that served it, the deacon, the four canons and the castle chaplains. We strode from gate to gate, from one resounding drawbridge to another, as far as the church of St Catherine where we all, pushed up close to one another, knelt with the electoral prince in silent prayer before we dared to approach the even greater inner sanctum, the chapel of the Holy Cross.

Now all courtyards and passageways, all halls and rooms in the castle were filled with German helmets, storm hoods, spears and swords. Where formerly only the foremost men and noblest lords in Bohemia were allowed to set foot, where even the king himself trod lightly, today the least of men who had come out for the crown had more right to be. In the king's private chambers Nurembergers laid their pikes against the brightly painted walls or hung their axes on hooks on richly gilded wainscoting.

There was still a drawbridge that had not been lowered, still a gate barred with nine locks. This was the drawbridge that led to the Church of the Cross. These were the nine locks that guarded the crown of a Holy Roman Emperor. This drawbridge was lowered and these locks were opened for no-one else normally apart from the king and the guardians of the crown. Men in armour with drawn swords kept watch here day and night.

But who today had a greater right to be admitted to this treasure, King Sigismund or us?

At a signal from the electoral prince all our banners were lowered and the raised drawbridge, which was still barring our way, now came down. Then the nine locks on the gate were heard to clatter open and we entered the sacred space in deep silence. From the ceiling and the walls and pillars a red, green and blue fire shone towards us. The place shone everywhere with the adornment of the most precious stones and now only a high, artful golden grille still separated us from the Holy of Holies.

Then I felt a heavy hand upon my shoulder. It was the armoured hand and arm of my friend who had come up behind me.

We had supported each other whenever one of us had stumbled on the way. We had covered each other with our shields and the weapon of one had a hundred times turned away death from the other, but what more can I say of myself and Michael Groland other than that we were in the imperial army's procession to Karlstein? Both of us were merely two drops in the stream and all that we were able to experience on the way the whole army likewise learned with pain or with pleasure, in glory or in ignominy.

Suddenly here on the turret of Charles the Fourth's castle, in the church of the Holy Cross, before the shrine in which the imperial crown jewels were kept, we got our own lives back.

My friend and brother, Michael Groland, bent his mouth to my ear and spoke softly: "Pray for my happiness. Here in this place, after so much effort on our part to attain it, here before the inner sanctum of the German people, pray for me that I might win a crowning glory for myself one day!"

A lightning flash did not come out of the golden niche from the lance of Saint Maurice or from the sword of Charlemagne to strike my wild friend for his strange and daring words. But a deep down shudder, a cold feeling and a fiery flame went through my legs.

At that moment however the castle deacon with his chaplains and canons intoned a Gloria. All those present joined in the singing and the pictures on the walls, the painted images set in precious stones of all the stars of heaven in the lofty vault, the nobles of the Empire swayed in the flaming red light that the evening sun threw through the gaudy windows. Everything swayed around me and never did the noise of the greatest battle ever amaze me as much as this moment did. I said the prayer for my friend and for the love of him before the imperial crown itself.

Tolle! Lege! Listen to the cries of the people from the churchyard of Saint Sebaldus. The whole of the rest of the town is as silent as the grave. All of Nuremberg's sins and vanities have gathered together and fled to one spot. Listen how thousands are addressed about their misery! That monk there in the pulpit is really going deep into their hearts! They might well cry out, they might well beat their breasts as the grim Franciscan calls them to penitence, but what are the words he is shrieking in comparison to the sweet, soft voice that spoke to me? Of what importance is what the monk says in comparison with the warning I received in the days of my youth?

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