Part 11 (1/2)
The pope, pressed with all the importunity which Ferdinand could urge, reluctantly consented to the administration of the cup to the laity, but resolutely refused to tolerate the marriage of the clergy. Ferdinand was excessively annoyed by the stubbornness of the court of Rome in its refusal to submit to the most reasonable reform, thus rendering it impossible for him to allay the religious dissensions which were still spreading and increasing in acrimony. His disappointment was so great that it is said to have thrown him into the fever of which he died on the 25th of July, 1564.
For several ages the archdukes of Austria had been endeavoring to unite the Austrian States with Hungary and Bohemia under one monarchy. The union had been temporarily effected once or twice, but Ferdinand accomplished the permanent union, and may thus be considered as the founder of the Austrian monarchy essentially as it now exists. As Archduke of Austria, he inherited the Austrian duchies. By his marriage with Anne, daughter of Ladislaus, King of Hungary and Bohemia, he secured those crowns, which he made hereditary in his family. He left three sons. The eldest, Maximilian, inherited the archduchy of Austria and the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary, of course inheriting, with Hungary, prospective war with the Turks. The second son, Ferdinand, had, as his legacy, the government and the revenues of the Tyrol. The third son, Charles, received Styria. There were nine daughters left, three of whom took the vail and the rest formed ill.u.s.trious marriages.
Ferdinand appears to have been a sincere Catholic, though he saw the great corruptions of the Church and earnestly desired reform. As he advanced in years he became more tolerant and gentle, and had his wise counsels been pursued Europe would have escaped inexpressible woes.
Still he clung to the Church, unwisely seeking unity of faith and discipline, which can hardly be attained in this world, rather than toleration with allowed diversity.
Maximilian II. was thirty-seven years of age on his accession to the throne. Although he was educated in the court of Spain, which was the most bigoted and intolerant in Europe, yet he developed a character remarkable for mildness, affability and tolerance. He was indebted for these attractive traits to his tutor, a man of enlarged and cultivated mind, and who had, like most men of his character at that time, a strong leaning towards Protestantism. These principles took so firm a hold of his youthful mind that they could never be eradicated. As he advanced in life he became more and more interested in the Protestant faith. He received a clergyman of the reformed religion as his chaplain and private secretary, and partook of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, from his hands, in both kinds. Even while remaining in the Spanish court he entered into a correspondence with several of the most influential advocates of the Protestant faith. Returning to Austria from Spain, he attended public wors.h.i.+p in the chapels of the Protestants, and communed with them in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. When some of his friends warned him that by pursuing such a course he could never hope to obtain the imperial crown of Germany, he replied:
”I will sacrifice all worldly interests for the sake of my salvation.”
His father, the Emperor Ferdinand, was so much displeased with his son's advocacy of the Protestant faith, that after many angry remonstrances he threatened to disinherit him if he did not renounce all connection with the reformers. But Maximilian, true to his conscience, would not allow the apprehension of the loss of a crown to induce him to swerve from his faith. Fully expecting to be thus cast off and banished from the kingdom, he wrote to the Protestant elector Palatine:
”I have so deeply offended my father by maintaining a Lutheran preacher in my service, that I am apprehensive of being expelled as a fugitive, and hope to find an asylum in your court.”
The Catholics of course looked with apprehension to the accession of Maximilian to the throne, while the Protestants antic.i.p.ated the event with great hope. There were, however, many considerations of vast moment influencing Maximilian not to separate himself, in form, from the Catholic church. Philip, his cousin, King of Spain, was childless, and should he die without issue, Ferdinand would inherit that magnificent throne, which he could not hope to ascend, as an avowed Protestant, without a long and b.l.o.o.d.y war. It had been the most earnest dying injunction of his father that he should not abjure the Catholic faith.
His wife was a very zealous Catholic, as was also each one of his brothers. There were very many who remained in the Catholic church whose sympathies were with the reformers--who hoped to promote reformation in the Church without leaving it. Influenced by such considerations, Maximilian made a public confession of the Catholic faith, received his father's confessor, and maintained, in his court, the usages of the papal church. He was, however, the kind friend of the Protestants, ever seeking to s.h.i.+eld them from persecution, claiming for them a liberal toleration, and seeking, in all ways, to promote fraternal religious feeling throughout his domains.
The prudence of Maximilian wonderfully allayed the bitterness of religious strife in Germany, while other portions of Europe were desolated with the fiercest warfare between the Catholics and Protestants. In France, in particular, the conflict raged with merciless fury. It was on August 24th, 1572, but a few years after Maximilian ascended the throne, when the Catholics of France perpetrated the Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew, perhaps the most atrocious crime recorded in history. The Catholics and Protestants in France were nearly equally divided in numbers, wealth and rank. The papal party, finding it impossible to crush their foes by force of arms, resolved to exterminate them by a simultaneous ma.s.sacre. They feigned toleration and reconciliation. The court of Paris invited all the leading Protestants of the kingdom to the metropolis to celebrate the nuptials of Henry, the young King of Navarre, with Margaret, sister of Charles IX., the reigning monarch. Secret orders were dispatched all over the kingdom, for the conspirators, secretly armed, at a given signal, by midnight, to rise upon the Protestants, men, women and children, and utterly exterminate them. ”Let not one remain alive,” said the King of France, ”to tell the story.”
The deed was nearly accomplished. The king himself, from a window of the Louvre, fired upon his Protestant subjects, as they fled in dismay through the streets. In a few hours eighty thousand of the Protestants were mangled corpses. Protestantism in France has never recovered from this blow. Maximilian openly expressed his execration of this deed, though the pope ordered Te Deums to be chanted at Rome in exultation over the crime. Not long after this horrible slaughter, Charles IX. died in mental torment. Henry of Valois, brother of the deceased king, succeeded to the throne. He was at that time King of Poland. Returning to France, through Vienna, he had an interview with Maximilian, who addressed him in those memorable words which have often been quoted to the honor of the Austrian sovereign:
”There is no crime greater in princes,” said Maximilian, ”than to tyrannize over the consciences of their subjects. By shedding the blood of heretics, far from honoring the common Father of all, they incur the divine vengeance; and while they aspire, by such means, to crowns in heaven, they justly expose themselves to the loss of their earthly kingdoms.”
Under the peaceful and humane reign of Ferdinand, Germany was kept in a general state of tranquillity, while storms of war and woe were sweeping over almost all other parts of Europe. During all his reign, Maximilian II. was unwearied in his endeavors to promote harmony between the two great religious parties, by trying, on the one hand, to induce the pope to make reasonable concessions, and, on the other hand, to induce the Protestants to moderate their demands. His first great endeavor was to induce the pope to consent to the marriage of the clergy. In this he failed entirely. He then tried to form a basis of mutual agreement, upon which the two parties could unite. His father had attempted this plan, and found it utterly impracticable. Maximilian attempted it, with just as little success. It has been attempted a thousand times since, and has always failed. Good men are ever rising who mourn the divisions in the Christian Church, and strive to form some plan of union, where all true Christians can meet and fraternize, and forget their minor differences.
Alas! for poor human nature, there is but little prospect that this plan can ever be accomplished. There will be always those who can not discriminate between essential and non-essential differences of opinion.
Maximilian at last fell back simply upon the doctrine of a liberal toleration, and in maintaining this he was eminently successful.
At one time the Turks were crowding him very hard in Hungary. A special effort was requisite to raise troops to repel them. Maximilian summoned a diet, and appealed to the a.s.sembled n.o.bles for supplies of men and money. In Austria proper, Protestantism was now in the decided ascendency. The n.o.bles took advantage of the emperor's wants to reply--
”We are ready to march to the a.s.sistance of our sovereign, to repel the Turks from Hungary, if the Jesuits are first expelled from our territories.”
The answer of the king was characteristic of his policy and of his career. ”I have convened you,” he said, ”to give me contributions, not remonstrances. I wish you to help me expel the Turks, not the Jesuits.”
From many a prince this reply would have excited exasperation. But Maximilian had established such a character for impartiality and probity, that the rebuke was received with applause rather than with murmurs, and the Protestants, with affectionate zeal, rallied around his standard. So great was the influence of the king, that toleration, as one of the virtues of the court, became the fas.h.i.+on, and the Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in the manifestation of mutual forbearance and good will. They met on equal terms in the palace of the monarch, shared alike in his confidence and his favors, and cooperated cordially in the festivities of the banqueting room, and in the toils of the camp. We love to dwell upon the first beautiful specimen of toleration which the world has seen in any court. It is the more beautiful, and the more wonderful, as having occurred in a dark age of bigotry, intolerance and persecution. And let us be sufficiently candid to confess, that it was professedly a Roman Catholic monarch, a member of the papal church, to whom the world is indebted for this first recognition of true mental freedom. It can not be denied that Maximilian II. was in advance of the avowed Protestants of his day.
Pope Pius V. was a bigot, inflexible, overbearing; and he determined, with a b.l.o.o.d.y hand, to crush all dissent. From his throne in the Vatican he cast an eagle eye to Germany, and was alarmed and indignant at the innovations which Maximilian was permitting. In all haste he dispatched a legate to remonstrate strongly against such liberality. Maximilian received the legate, Cardinal Commendon, with courtesy, but for a time firmly refused to change his policy in obedience to the exactions of the pope. The pope brought to bear upon him all the influence of the Spanish court. He was threatened with war by all the papal forces, sustained by the then immense power of the Spanish monarchy. For a time Maximilian was in great perplexity, and finally yielded to the pope so far as to promise not to permit any further innovations than those which he had already allowed, and not to extend his principles of toleration into any of his States where they had not as yet been introduced. Thus, while he did not retract any concessions he had made, he promised to stop where he was, and proceed no further.
Maximilian was so deeply impressed with the calamities of war, that he even sent an emba.s.sy to the Turks, offering to continue to pay the tribute which they had exacted of his father, as the price of a continued armistice. But Solyman, having made large preparations for the renewed invasion of Hungary, and sanguine of success, haughtily rejected the offer, and renewed hostilities.
Nearly all of the eastern and southern portions of Hungary were already in the hands of the Turks. Maximilian held a few important towns and strong fortresses on the western frontier. Not feeling strong enough to attempt to repel the Turks from the portion they already held, he strengthened his garrisons, and raising an army of eighty thousand men, of which he a.s.sumed the command, he entered Hungary and marched down the Danube about sixty miles to Raab, to await the foe and act on the defensive. Solyman rendezvoused an immense army at Belgrade, and commenced his march up the Danube.
”Old as I am,” said he to his troops, ”I am determined to chastise the house of Austria, or to perish in the attempt beneath the walls of Vienna.”
It was beautiful spring weather, and the swelling buds and hourly increasing verdure, decorated the fields with loveliness. For several days the Turks marched along the right bank of the Danube, through green fields, and beneath a sunny sky, encountering no foe. War seemed but as the pastime of a festive day, as gay banners floated in the breeze, groups of hors.e.m.e.n, gorgeously caparisoned, pranced along, and the turbaned mult.i.tude, in brilliant uniform, with jokes, and laughter and songs, leisurely ascended the majestic stream. A fleet of boats filled the whole body of the river, impelled by sails when the wind favored, or, when the winds were adverse, driven by the strong arms of the rowers against the gentle tide. Each night the white tents were spread, and a city for a hundred thousand inhabitants rose as by magic, with its gra.s.sy streets, its squares, its busy population, its music, its splendor, blazing in all the regalia of war. As by magic the city rose in the rays of the declining sun. As by magic it disappeared in the early dawn of the morning, and the mighty hosts moved on.
A few days thus pa.s.sed, when Solyman approached the fortified town of Zigeth, near the confluence of the Drave and the Danube. Nicholas, Count of Zrini, was intrusted with the defense of this place, and he fulfilled his trust with heroism and valor which has immortalized both his name and the fortress which he defended. Zrini had a garrison of but three thousand men. An army of nearly a hundred thousand were marching upon him. Zrini collected his troops, and took a solemn oath, in the presence of all, that, true to G.o.d, to his Christian faith, and his country, he never would surrender the town to the Turks, but with his life. He then required each soldier individually to take the same oath to his captain.
All the captains then, in the presence of the a.s.sembled troops, took the same oath to him.