14

ECCLESIASTICAL MUMMERIES.

[CHAP. XXVII. which he was characterized; and in order to draw the public mind back to the ancient creed, those religious spectacles and processions were instituted which still subsist in Bavaria. At the dedication of the Jesuits' College a grand dramatic and musical entertainment was exhibited, representing the combat of the Archangel Michael. Nothing could exceed the magnificence of the scenery and costumes; a choir of 900 voices chanted the progress of the action; and the multitude shuddered with affright when they beheld the rebel angels hurled into the deep and undulating abyss of hell.1 Duke William also instituted the procession which still takes place at Munich on Corpus Christi Day, but with diminished splendour and less characteristic appliances. The original procession consisted of all the saints and heroes of the Old and the New Testament. Adam and Eve led the train, in that state of nakedness, if not innocence, proper to them before the fall; St. Augustine appeared with a large beard; and there were sixteen Maries, of whom the last and most beautiful was borne on a cloud and significantly supported her foot upon moonshine. Amid a strange and miscellaneous crowd of Apostles and Pharisees, shepherds and hangmen, Pharaohs and giants, angels, devils, and heathen gods, the pious profaneness of the Jesuits did not scruple to introduce the Almighty himself and his Son Jesus Christ. To represent God the Father, it was directed that a tall, straight man should be chosen, strong and well-formed, with a long and thick grey beard and a fine red complexion. He was to assume a stately and majestic walk and demeanour and a composed and steady aspect, so as to appear neither sour nor ridiculous. By such devices were the multitude lured back to a false religion.

On the other hand, an attempt to extend Protestantism in Germany proved a failure; and its origin merited no better fate. Gebhard Truchsess of Waldburg, who at the age of thirty had become Archbishop and Elector of Cologne, while walking in a procession during the congress in that city, beheld at a window the Countess Agnes of Mansfeld, a daughter of that noble house at Eisleben which had befriended Luther. Agnes was of extraordinary beauty, but her family had fallen into poverty: Truchsess, a practised seducer, sought her acquaintance, and prevailed on her to live with him as his mistress. The brothers of Agnes, having learnt their sister's shame, accompanied by some armed

1 Zschokke, Baierische Gesch. B. iii. S. 150 (ed. 1816).
2 Ibid. S. 159.

CHAP. XXVII.]

THE ELECTOR OF COLOGNE DEPOSED.

15

followers, surprised the Elector in his palace at Bonn, and compelled him, by threats of death if he refused, to promise that he would marry Agnes. The first thought of Truchsess after this occurrence was to resign his archbishopric; but from this he was diverted by Counts Nuenar and Solms, and others of the nobility, as well as by the exhortations of Agnes. In the autumn of 1582 he openly professed his adherence to the Confession of Augsburg, and in the following February, in spite of an admonition from the Pope, he was married to Agnes by a Protestant minister. Gregory XIII. now fulminated against him a bull of excommunication, depriving him of all his offices and dignities; and the Chapter of Cologne, who had viewed with displeasure the secession of their Archbishop from the orthodox Church, although he had promised not to interfere with the exercise of their religion or to restrict them in the choice of his successor, proceeded to elect in place of Truchsess Prince Ernest of Bavaria, Bishop of Freising, who had formerly competed with him for the see. The troops of Ernest, assisted by some Spaniards lent to him by the Prince of Parma after the conquest of Zutphen, drove Truchsess from Cologne. Of the Protestant Princes of Germany whose help he had sought, John Casimir of the Palatinate alone lent him some feeble aid. The deposed Elector retired into Westphalia and sent his wife to England to implore the interference of Queen Elizabeth. Agnes, however, incurred the jealousy and anger of the Queen by her supposed familiarity with Leicester, and was dismissed from Court. Truchsess then sought the protection of the Prince of Orange, and finally retired to Strasburg, where he lived sixteen years as dean, till his death in 1601, without renouncing his title of Elector. For nearly two centuries after this event, the Chapter of Cologne continued to elect its Archbishops from the Bavarian family.

Germany, almost isolated at this period from the rest of Europe, was the scene of few political events of any importance. The Diets of the Empire were chiefly occupied with matters of internal police. That held at Frankfort in 1577 published some regulations which exhibit in a curious light the manners of the higher classes of the Germans. The oaths and blasphemies of the nobles are denounced; the Electors and Princes of the Empire, ecclesiastical as well as secular, are alone authorized to keep buffoons, and at the same time forbidden to get drunk themselves or to intoxicate others. These regulations are accompanied with 'Menzel, B. iii. cap. ii.

16 SIGISMUND III. ELECTED KING OF POLAND. [CHAP. XXVII. many more, respecting dress, the table, the rate of interest, monopolies, &c.

The death of Stephen Bathory in December, 1586, having again rendered vacant the throne of Poland, Rodolph's brother, the Archduke Maximilian, proposed himself as a candidate. But the choice of the majority of the Electors fell upon the son of John, King of Sweden, by Catharine, a sister of the last Jagellon; and that young Prince ascended the throne with the title of Sigismund III. Maximilian, however, prepared to contest it with him, and entering Poland with a small body of troops, penetrated to Cracow, at that time the capital, to which he laid siege. But Zamoisky, Grand Chancellor of the Crown, illustrious by his learning and researches, as well as by his military exploits, who had embraced the party of Sigismund, compelled Maximilian to raise the siege; and in the following year (January 24th, 1588) defeated him in a battle near Bitschin in Silesia. Maximilian was soon afterwards captured in that town, and was detained more than a twelvemonth prisoner in a castle near Lublin, till at length the Emperor Rodolph was obliged to obtain his liberation by paying a large ransom, and ceding to the Poles the Hungarian county of Zips, which had been formerly pledged to them by the Emperor Sigismund.

The Hungarians were at this time almost independent, though ostensibly Rodolph II. was represented in that country by his brother the Archduke Ernest. When, in 1592, Ernest was called by Philip II. to the government of the Netherlands, and Rodolph could not prevail upon himself to quit his retirement at Prague, the incompetent Matthias was sent into Hungary; as, of the other two brothers of the Emperor, Maximilian was employed in administering Inner Austria and Tyrol, while Albert was in Spain. The proceedings of the Jesuits and reactionary party, both in Hungary and Transylvania, occasioned the greatest discontent. After the election of Stephen Bathory to the Polish Crown, the government of Transylvania had been conducted by his brother Christopher, who, on Stephen's death was succeeded by his youthful son Sigismund Bathory, a person of weak character, and the mere tool of the Jesuits, by whom he had been educated. Soon afterwards, however, the Protestant party gained the ascendancy, and in 1588 the Jesuits were banished by the States of Transylvania, much against the will of Sigismund. On account of the constant border warfare with the Turks, the Emperor, the Pope, and the King of Spain naturally had much influence with Sigis

CHAP. XXVII.] RETROSPECT OF TURKISH HISTORY.

17

mund, as the only allies to whom he could look for assistance against the Osmanlis, whom he regarded with aversion, though he owed to them his throne. But these circumstances had not much effect on the state of parties in Transylvania till the breaking out of a regular war between the Turks and Hungarians in 1593, to which we must now advert; taking previously a retrospect of Turkish history.

The affairs of Turkey have been brought down in a former chapter to the death of Sultan Selim II. in 1574.1 The GrandVizier, Mahomet Sokolli, concealed the death of the Sultan, as he had previously done that of Solyman II., till Selim's son and successor, Amurath III., arrived at Constantinople from his government of Magnesia, to take possession of the throne (December 22nd, 1574). Amurath's first act was to cause five brothers, all mere children, to be strangled. The Janissaries had then to be conciliated by an augmented donative of fifty ducats a man, and costly gifts were distributed among the great officers of state. Amurath III. was now about twenty-eight years of age. His person was small but agreeable, his features good, his complexion pale and yellow from the baneful effects of opium. In his youth a favourable estimate was taken of his character; for though of a studious and somewhat melancholy disposition, he had not shown himself averse from, or incapable of, military achievements. But from these good qualities he rapidly degenerated after his accession, becoming avaricious, addicted to women, fickle, mistrustful, cowardly; and at length he wholly secluded himself in the seraglio.

The religious troubles in France tended to diminish the influence of that country with the Porte. The help of the Turks against the House of Austria was no longer necessary to France, while the Guises and the League were in close alliance with Philip II. On the other hand the Hugonots had secret dealings with the Porte, and Coligni sent several nobles of his party to Constantinople; but it does not appear that these negotiations had any result. It may be remarked, however, that the Protestants were much more acceptable to the Turks than the Papists, as approaching more nearly to their own faith, which rejected with abhorrence any semblance of idolatry; and it was, perhaps,

1 See vol. ii. p. 315.

2

2 Brantôme, t. ix. p. 218.

3 Thus the cadi of Chios remarked to James Palæologus in 1573: "Nos Lutheranos defendere solemus, quoniam melius

3

de Deo sentire videntur et nobiscum parum dissentiunt; multum autem dissentiunt Papistæ, qui figuras et imagines faciunt Deo et illas colunt."-Reusner, Epist. Turc. t. iii. lib. xi. p. 143.

18 NEGOTIATIONS OF HAREBONE AND BURTON. [CHAP. XXVII.

partly from this cause that English influence made at this period so surprising an advance at Constantinople.

Towards the end of 1578 William Harebone, or Harburn, an English merchant, presented himself before Sultan Amurath III. with a letter from Queen Elizabeth, in which she besought the friendship of the Porte, and requested permission for her subjects to trade under their own flag; for although the English had opened a commerce in the Levant before the capture of Cyprus by Selim II., they had hitherto been obliged to sail in those waters under French colours. The Sultan did not vouchsafe an answer to this application; but Harburn, nothing daunted, opened private communications with the Grand Vizier, Mahomet Sokolli; and as the merchandize of England, and especially its metals, was much prized in Turkey, Harburn soon made great progress, in spite of the efforts of Germigny, the French ambassador to the Porte, to counteract him. Germigny, indeed, succeeded at first in getting a treaty cancelled which Harburn had effected in 1580, and which allowed the English to trade under their own flag;1 but in May, 1583, Elizabeth's indefatigable ambassador obtained a rescript from the Sultan, granting English commerce in the Levant the same privileges as the French. A Turkey company had already been incorporated in London by royal charter in 1581. Sir William Monson' assigns the following reasons for England having embarked so late in the Levant trade: the want of ships, the danger from the Moorish pirates on the coast of Barbary, and the monopoly of the trade by the Venetians, whose argosies brought the merchandize of the East to Southampton. The last argosy which visited our shores was unfortunately wrecked near the Wight in 1587, and her valuable cargo lost.

In her negotiations with the Porte Elizabeth used the plea of religion, styling herself in her letter the protectrix of the true faith against idolaters (veræ fidei contra idololatras falso Christi nomen profitentes invicta et potentissima propugnatrix). Indeed the English agents seem to have assumed an attitude of slavish submission towards the Porte which somewhat moved the contempt of the Turks; and the Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha derisively observed to the Emperor's ambassador, "that the English wanted nothing of being true Moslems except to raise the finger on high and cry Esched" (the formulary of faith). This was contrary to Zinkeisen, B. iii. S. 424.

2 Naval Tracts, written in 1635, ap. Anm. Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 169.

Hammer, Osman. Gesch. B. iv. S. 208,