Deed of Privilege to make such a Testament. Divide it among the Four Daughters or their representatives, and let us all have shares!"
Nor were these four claimants by any means all. The Saxon Princes next claimed; two sets of Saxon Princes. First the minor set, Gotha-Weimar and the rest, the Ernestine Line so called; representatives of Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous, who lost the Electorate for religion's sake at Muhlberg in the past century, and from MAJOR became MINOR in Saxon Genealogy. "Magnanimous Johann Friedrich," said they, "had to wife an Aunt of the now deceased Duke of Cleve; Wife Sibylla (sister of the Flanders Mare), of famous memory, our lineal Ancestress. In favor of whom HER Father, the then reigning Duke of Cleve, made a marriage-contract of precisely similar import to this your Prussian one: he, and barred all his descendants, if contracts are to be valid." This is the claim of the Ernestine Line of Saxon Princes; not like to go for much, in their present disintegrated condition.
But the Albertine Line, the present Elector of Saxony, also claims: "Here is a Deed," said he, "executed by Kaiser Friedrich III. in the year 1483, [Pauli, ubi supra; Hubner, t. 286.] generations before your Kaiser Karl; Deed solemnly granting to Albert, junior of Sachsen, and to his heirs, the reversion of those same Duchies, should the Male Line happen to fail, as it was then likely to do. How could Kaiser Max revoke his Father's deed, or Kaiser Karl his Great-grandfather's? Little Albert, the Albert of the PRINZENRAUB, he who grew big, and fought lion-like for his Kaiser in the Netherlands and Western Countries; he and his have clearly the heirship of Cleve by right; and we, now grown Electors, and Seniors of Saxony, demand it of a grateful House of Hapsburg—and will study to make ourselves convenient in return."—
"Nay, if that is your rule, that old Laws and Deeds are to come in bar of new, we," cry a multitude of persons—French Dukes of Nevers, and all manner of remote, exotic figures among them—"we are the real heirs! Ravensburg, Mark, Berg, Ravenstein, this patch and the other of that large Duchy of yours, were they not from primeval time expressly limited to heirs-male? Heirs-male; and we now are the nearest heirs-male of said patches and portions; and will prove it!"—In short, there never was such a Lawsuit—so fat an affair for the attorney species, if that had been the way of managing it—as this of Cleve was likely to prove.
THE KAISER'S THOUGHTS ABOUT IT, AND THE WORLD'S.
What greatly complicated the affair, too, was the interest the Kaiser took in it. The Kaiser could not well brook a powerful Protestant in that country; still less could his Cousin the Spaniard. Spaniards, worn to the ground, coercing that world-famous Dutch Revolt, and astonished to find that they could not coerce it at all, had resolved at this time to take breath before trying farther. Spaniards and Dutch, after Fifty years of such fighting as we know, have made a Twelve-years' Truce (1609): but the battled Spaniard, panting, pale in his futile rage and sweat, has not given up the matter; he is only taking breath, and will try it again. Now Cleve is his road into Holland, in such adventure; no success possible if Cleve be not in good hands. Brandenburg is Protestant, powerful; Brandenburg will not do for a neighbor there.
Nor will Pfalz-Neuburg. A Protestant of Protestants, this Palatine Neuburg too—junior branch, possible heir in time coming, of KUR-PFALZ (Elector Palatine) himself, in the Rhine Countries; of Kur-Pfalz, who is acknowledged Chief Protestant: official "President" of the "Evangelical Union" they have lately made among them in these menacing times;—Pfalz-Neuburg too, this young Wolfgang Wilhelm, if he do not break off kind, might be very awkward to the Kaiser in Cleve-Julich. Nay Saxony itself; for they are all Protestants:—unless perhaps Saxony might become pliant, and try to make itself useful to a munificent Imperial House?
Evidently what would best suit the Kaiser and Spaniards, were this, That no strong Power whatever got footing in Cleve, to grow stronger by the possession of such a country:—BETTER than best it would suit, if he, the Kaiser, could himself get it smuggled into his hands, and there hold it fast! Which privately was the course resolved upon at headquarters.—In this way the "Succession Controversy of the Cleve Duchies" is coming to be a very high matter; mixing itself, up with the grand Protestant-Papal Controversy, the general armed-lawsuit of mankind in that generation. Kaiser, Spaniard, Dutch, English, French Henri IV. and all mortals, are getting concerned in the decision of it.
Chapter XIV. — SYMPTOMS OF A GREAT WAR COMING.
Meanwhile Brandenburg and Neuburg both hold grip of Cleve in that manner, with a mutually menacing inquiring expression of countenance; each grasps it (so to speak) convulsively with the one hand, and has with the other hand his sword by the hilt, ready to fly out. But to understand this Brandenburg-Neuburg phenomenon and the then significance of the Cleve-Julich Controversy, we must take the following bits of Chronology along with us. For the German Empire, with Protestant complaints, and Papist usurpations and severities, was at this time all a continent of sour thick smoke, already breaking out into dull-red flashes here and there—symptoms of the universal conflagration of a Thirty-Years War, which followed. SYMPTON FIRST is that of Donauworth, and dates above a year back.
FIRST SYMPTOM; DONAUWORTH, 1608.
Donauworth, a Protestant Imperial Free-town, in the Bavarian regions, had been, for some fault on the part of the populace against a flaring Mass-procession which had no business to be there, put under Ban of the Empire; had been seized accordingly (December, 1607), and much cuffed, and shaken about, by Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, as executor of the said Ban; [Michaeelis, ii. 216; Buddaei LEXICON, i. 853.]—who, what was still worse, would by no means give up the Town when he had done with it; Town being handy to him, and the man being stout and violently Papist. Hence the "Evangelical Union" which we saw—which has not taken Donauworth yet. Nor ever will! Donauworth never was retaken; but is Bavarian at this hour, A Town namable in History ever since. Not to say withal, that it is where Marlborough, did "the Lines of Schellenberg" long after: Schellenberg ("Jingle-Hill," so to render it) looks down across the Danube or Donau River, upon Donauworth—its "Lines," and other histories, now much abolished, and quiet under grass.
But now all Protestantism sounding everywhere, in angry mournful tone, "Donauwarth! Give up Donauworth!"—and an "Evangelical Union," with moneys, with theoretic contingents of force, being on foot for that and the like objects;—we can fancy what a scramble this of Cleve-Julich was like to be; and especially what effect this duelling attitude of Brandenburg and Neuburg had on the Protestant mind. Protestant neighbors, Landgraf Moritz of Hessen-Cassel at their head, intervene in tremulous haste, in the Cleve-Julich affair: "Peace, O friends! Some bargain; peaceable joint-possession; any temporary bargain, till we see! Can two Protestants fall to slashing one another, in such an aspect of the Reich and its Jesuitries?"—And they did agree (Dortmund, 10th May, 1609) the first of their innumerable "agreements," to some temporary joint-possession;—the thrice-thankful Country doing homage to both, "with oath to the one that SHALL be found genuine." And they did endeavor to govern jointly, and to keep the peace on those terms, though it was not easy.
For the Kaiser had already said (or his Aulic Council and Spanish Cousin, poor Kaiser Rodolf caring too little about these things, [Rodolf II. (Kepler's too insolvent "Patron"), 1576–1612; then Matthias, Rodolf's Brother, 1612–1619, rather tolerant to Protestants;—then Ferdinand II. his Uncle's Son, 1619–1637, much the reverse of tolerant, by whom mainly came the Thirty-Years War—were the Kaisers of this Period. Ferdinand III., Son of II: (1637–1657), who finished out the Thirty-Years War, partly by fighting of his own in young days (Battle of Nordlingen his grandest feat), was Father of Kaiser Leopold (1658- 1705)—whose Two Sons were Kaiser Joseph (1705–1711) and Kaiser Karl VI. (1711–1740), Maria Theresa's Father.] had already said), Cleve must absolutely not go into wrong hands. For which