"You Philip, your lodging is mine; my lodging is yours,--I should say! Cannot we ride together?"--"Philip is not permitted to go,"said Imperial Officiality; "Philip is to continue here, and we fear go to prison."--"Prison?" cried they all: "OHNE EINIGENGEFANGNISS (without ANY imprisonment)!"--"As we read the words, it is 'OHNE EWIGEN GEFANGNISS (without ETERNAL imprisonment),'"answer the others. And so, according to popular tradition, which has little or no credibility, though printed in many Books, their false Secretary had actually modified it.
"No intention of imprisoning his DURCHLAUCHT of Hessen FOREVER;not forever!" answered they. And Kurfurst Joachim, in astonished indignation, after some remonstrating and arguing, louder and louder, which profited nothing, blazed out into a very whirlwind of rage; drew his sword, it is whispered with a shudder,--drew his sword, or was for drawing it, upon the Duke of Alba; and would have done, God knows what, had not friends flung themselves between, and got the Duke away, or him away. {Pauli, iii. 103.]
Other accounts bear, that it was upon the Bishop of Arras he drew his sword; which is a somewhat different matter. Perhaps he drew it on both; or on men and things in general;--for his indignation knew no bounds. The heavy solid man; yet with a human heart in him after all, and a Hohenzollern abhorrence of chicanery, capable of rising to the transcendent pitch! His wars against the Turks, and his other Hectorships, I will forget; but this, of a face so extensive kindled all into divine fire for poor Philip's sake, shall be memorable to me.
Philip got out by and by, though with difficulty; the Kaiser proving very stiff in the matter; and only yielding to obstinate pressures, and the force of time and events. Philip got away;and then how Johann Friedrich of Sachsen, after being led about for five years, in the Kaiser's train, a condemned man, liable to be executed any day, did likewise at last get away, with his head safe and Electorate gone: these are known Historical events, which we glanced at already, on another score.
For, by and by, the Kaiser found tougher solicitation than this of Joachim's. The Kaiser, by his high carriage in this and other such matters, had at length kindled a new War round him; and he then soon found himself reduced to extremities again; chased to the Tyrol Mountains, and obliged to comply with many things. New War, of quite other emphasis and management than the Schmalkaldic one;managed by Elector Moritz and our poor friend Albert Alcibiades as principals. A Kaiser chased into the mountains, capable of being seized by a little spurring;--"Capture him?" said Albert. "I have no cage big enough for such a bird!" answered Moritz; and the Kaiser was let run. How he ran then towards Treaty of Passau (1552), towards Siege of Metz and other sad conclusions, "Abdication" the finale of them: these also are known phases in the Reformation History, as hinted at above.
Here at Halle, in the year 1547, the great Kaiser, with Protestantism manacled at his feet, and many things going prosperous, was at his culminating point. He published his INTERIM (1548, What you troublesome Protestants are to do, in the mean time, while the Council of Trent is sitting, and till it and I decide for you); and in short, drove and reined-in the Reich with a high hand and a sharp whip, for the time being. Troublesome Protestants mostly rejected the Interim; Moritz and Alcibiades, with France in the rear of them, took to arms in that way; took to ransoming fat Bishoprics ("Verbum Diaboli Manet," we know where!);--took to chasing Kaisers into the mountains;--and times came soon round again. In all these latter broils Kurfurst Joachim II., deeply interested, as we may fancy, strove to keep quiet; and to prevail, by weight of influence and wise counsel, rather than by fighting with his Kaiser.
One sad little anecdote I recollect of Joachim: an Accident, which happened in those Passau-Interim days, a year or two after that drawing of the sword on Alba. Kurfurst Joachim unfortunately once fell through a staircase, in that time; being, as I guess, a heavy man. It was in the Castle of Grimnitz, one of his many Castles, a spacious enough old Hunting-seat, the repairs of which had not been well attended to. The good Herr, weighty of foot, was leading down his Electress to dinner one day in this Schloss of Grimnitz;broad stair climbs round a grand Hall, hung with stag-trophies, groups of weapons, and the like hall-furniture. An unlucky timber yielded; yawning chasm in the staircase; Joachim and his good Princess sank by gravitation; Joachim to the floor with little hurt; his poor Princess (horrible to think of), being next the wall, came upon the stag-horns and boar-spears down below! [Pauli, iii. 112.] The poor Lady's hurt was indescribable: she walked lame all the rest of her clays; and Joachim, I hope (hope, but not with confidence), [Ib. iii. 194.] loved her all the better for it.
This unfortunate old Schloss of Grimnitz, some thirty miles northward of Berlin, was--by the Eighth Kurfurst, Joachim Friedrich, Grandson of this one, with great renown to himself and to it--converted into an Endowed High School: the famed
Joachimsthal Gymnasium, still famed, though now under some change of circumstances, and removed to Berlin itself.
[Nicolai, p. 725.]
Joachim's first Wife, from whom descend the following Kurfursts, was a daughter of that Duke George of Saxony, Luther's celebrated friend, "If it rained Duke-Georges nine days running."JOACHIM GETS CO-INFEFTMENT IN PREUSSEN.
This second Wife, she of the accident at Grimnitz, was Hedwig, King Sigismund of Poland's daughter; which connection, it is thought, helped Joachim well in getting what they call the MITBELEHNUNG of Preussen (for it was he that achieved this point) from King Sigismund.
