Young folks' history of Germany

Preface

r I ^HERE is here an endeavor to sketch the main outlines of the history of the German Empire, though the number of states, each with a separate history, makes it difficult to trace the line clearly. The names are, for the most part, given in their German form, rather than by their English equivalents.

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.

Eldekfield, Ottebboubn.

Contents

Chapter.

1. — The Ancient Germans . 2.— Valhall . ...

3. — The Germans and Romans. 4. — The Nibelonig Heroes . 5.— The Franks. 496—765 . 6.— Karl the Great. 768—814

Chapter I. The Ancient Germans

* I ^HE history of the German Empire rightly -*- begins with Karl the Great, but to understand it properly it will be better to go further back, when the Romans were beginning to know something about the wild tribes who lived to the north of Italy, and to the coast of the Gaulish or Keltic lands.

Almost all the nations in Europe seem to have come out of the north-west of Asia, one tribe after another, the fiercest driving the others farther and farther to the westward before them. Tribes of Kelts or Gauls had come first, but, though they were brave and fierce, they were not so sturdy as the great people that came after them, and were thus driven up into the lands bordering on the Atlantic Ocean; while the tribes that came behind

them spread all over that middle part of Europe which lies between the Alps and the Baltic sea. These tribes all called themselves Deutsche which meant the people ; indeed, most of them do so still, though we English only call those Dutch who live in Holland. Sometimes they were called Ger, War, or Spear-men, just as the Romans were called Quirites; and this name, Spear-men or Germans, has come to be the usual name that is given to them together, instead of Deutsch as they call themselves, and from which the fine word Teutonic has been formed.

The country was full of marshes and forests, with ranges of hills in which large rivers rose and straggled, widening down to their swampy mouths. Bears and wolves, elks and buffaloes, ran wild, and were hunted by the men of the German tribes. These men lived in villages of rude huts, surrounded by lands to which all had a right in common, and where they grew their corn and fed their cattle. Their wives were much more respected than those of other nations ; they were usually strong, brave women, able to advise their husbands and to aid them in the fight ; and the authority of fathers and mothers over their families was great. The men were either freemen or nobles, and they had slaves, generally prisoners or the people of conquered

The Ancient Germans.

countries. The villages were formed into what were called hundreds, over which, at a meeting of the freemen from all of them, a chief was elected from among the nobles ; and many of the tribes had kings, who always belonged to one family, descended, it was thought, from their great god Woden.

AN'CIENT GERMAN VILLAGE.

The German tribes all believed in the great god Woden, his brother Frey, and his son Thor, who reigned in a gorgeous palace, and with their children were called the Asa gods. Woden was all-wise, and two ravens whispered in his ear all that passed on the earth. The sun and moon were his eyes. The moon is so dull because he gave the sight of that eye for one draught of the well of wisdom at the foot of the great ash tree of life. He was a fearful god, who had stone altars on desolate heaths, where sacrifices of men and women were offered to him, and the fourth day of the week was sacred to him.

Fre}^ was gentler, and friendship, faith, and freedom were all sacred to him. There is a little confusion as to whether Friday is called after him or Frigga, Odin's wife, to whom all fair things belonged, and who had priestesses among the German maidens. Thor, or, as some tribes called him, Thunder, was the bravest and most awful of the gods, and was armed with a hammer called Miolner, or the Miller or Crusher. Thunder was thought to be caused by his swinging it through the air, and the mark in honor of him was "[", meant to be a likeness of his hammer. It was signed over boys when they were washed with water immediately after they were born ; and in some tribes they were laid in their father's shields, and had their first food from the point of his sword.

These three were always the most honored of the Asa gods, though some tribes preferred one and

The Ancient Germans. 19

some the other; but Woden was always held to be the great father of all, and there were almost as many stories about the Asir as there were about the Greek gods, though we cannot be sure that all were known to all the tribes, and they were brought to their chief fulness in the branch of the race that dwelt in the far North, and who became Christians much later. Some beliefs, however, all had in common, and we may understand hints about the old faith of the other tribes by the more complete northern stories.

There was a great notion of battle going through everything. The Asa gods were summer gods, and their enemies were the forces of cold and darkness, the giants who lived in Jotenheim, the land of giants. All that was good was mixed up with light and summer in the old Deutsch notions; all that was bad with darkness and cold. Baldur, the son of "Woden, was beautiful, good, and glorious ; but Loki, the chief enemy, longed to kill him. His mother, Frigga, went round and made every creature and plant swear never to hurt Baldur, but she missed one plant, the mistletoe. So when all his brothers were amusing themselves by throwing things at Baldur, knowing they could not hurt him, Loki slyly put in the hand of his blind brother

Hodur a branch of mistletoe which struck him dead. But Frigga so wept and prayed that it was decreed that Baldur might live again provided everything would weep for him; and every thing accordingly did weep, except one old hag who sat under a tree, and would shed no tears for Baldur, so he might not live, only he was given back to his mother for half the year, and then faded and vanished again for the other half. But Loki had his punishment, for he was chained under a crag with a serpent for ever dropping venom on his brow, though his wife was always catching it in a bowl, and it could only fall on him when she was gone to empty the bowl at the stream.

It is plain that Baldur meant the leaves and trees of summer, and that the weeping of everything was the melting of the ice ; but there was mixed into the notion something much higher and greater respecting the struggle between good and evil.

Chapter II. Valhall

THE hall of Woden was called Valhall, * and thither were thought to go the souls of the brave. There were believed to be maidens called Valkyr, or the choosers of the slain — Hilda, Guda, Truda, Mista, and others — who floated on swan's wings over the camps of armies before a battle and chose out who should be killed. Nor was such a death accounted a disaster, for to die bravely was the only way to the Hall of Woden, where the valiant enjoyed, on the other side of the rainbow bridge, the delights they cared for most in life — hunting the boar all day, and feasting on him all night ; drinking mead from the skulls of their conquered enemies. Shooting stars were held to be the track of weapons carried to supply the fresh

* Val meant a brave death in battle. 21 comers into Valhall. Only by dying gallantly could entrance be won there ; and men would do anything rather than not die thus, rush on swords, leap from crags, drown themselves, and the like, for they believed that all who did not gain an entrance to the Hall of the Slain became the prisoners of Loki's pale daughter Hel, and had to live on in her cold, gloomy, sunless lands, sharing her bondage.

For once Loki and his children, and the other evil beings of the mist land, had made a fierce attack on Woden, and had all been beaten and bound. Fenris, the son of Loki, was a terrible wolf, who was made prisoner and was to be bound by a chain ; but he would only stand still on condition that Tyr or Tiw, the son of Woden, should put his right hand into his mouth in token of good faith. The moment that Fenris found that he was chained, he closed his jaws and bit off the hand of Tiw, whose image therefore only had one hand, and who is the god after whom Tuesday is named.

Valhall was not, however, to last for ever. There was to come a terrible time called the Twilight of the Gods, when Loki and Fenris would burst their chains and attack the Asa gods ; Woden would be slain by Fenris ; Thor would perish in the flood of

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Valhall. 25

poison cast forth by the terrible serpent Midgarcl ; and there would be a great outburst of fire, which would burn up Valhall and all within, as well as the powers of evil. Onty two of the gods, Vidur and Wali, were to survive, and these would make again a new heaven and earth, in which the spirits of gods and men would lead a new and more glorious life.

How much of all this grew up later and was caught from Christianity we cannot tell ; but there is reason to think that much of it was belieAred, and that heartily, making the German nations brave and true, and helping them to despise death. There were temples to the gods, where the three figures of Woden, Frey, and Thor were always together in rude carving, and sometimes with rough jewels for eyes. Woden also had sacred oaks, and the great stone altars on heaths, raised probably by an earlier race, were sacred to him. Sometimes human sacrifices were offered there, but more often sacred horses, for horses were the most sacred of their animals : they were kept in honor of the gods, auguries were drawn from their neighings, and at the great yearly feasts they were offered in sacrifice, and their flesh Avas eaten.

There were gods of the waters, Niord, and Egir, who raised the great wave as the tide comes in at the mouth of rivers ; and his cruel daughter Rami, who went about in a sea chariot causing shipwrecks. Witches called upon her when they wanted to raise storms and drown their enemies at sea.

One old German story held that Tiw * was the father of Man, and that man's three sons were Ing, Isk, and Er, the fathers of the chief Deutsch tribes. Isk (or Ash) was the father of the Franks and Allemans ; Ing, of the Swedes, Angles, and Saxons ; and Er, or Erman, of a tribe called by the Romans Herminiones. This same Er or Erman had a temple called Eresburg, with a marble pillar on which stood an armed warrior holding in one hand a banner bearing a rose, in the other a pah- of scales; his crest was a cock ; he had a bear on his breast, and on his shield was a lion in a field of flowers. A college of priests lived around ; and before the army went out to battle, they galloped round and round the figure in full armor, brandishing their spears and praying for victory ; and on their return they offered up in sacrifice, sometimes their prisoners, sometimes cowards avIio had fled from the foe.

The image was called Irmansul — sul meaning a pillar ; and two pillars or posts were the great token * The same word as the Greek Zeus and Latin Deus.

Valhall. 27

of home and settlement to the German nations. The)' were planted at the gate of their villages and towns, where one was called the Ermansaul, the other the Rolandsaul. And when a family were about to change their home, they uprooted the two wooden pillars of their own house and took them away. If they went by sea, they threw their pillars

THE ELVES.

overboard, and fixed themselves wherever these posts were cast up.

Dutch fancy filled the woods, hills, and streams with spirits. There were Elves throughout the woods and plains, shadowy creatures who sported in the night and watched over human beings for good or harm. The Bergmen dwelt in the hills, keeping guard over the metals and jewels hidden there, and forging wonderful swords that always struck home, and were sometimes given to lucky mortals, though they generally served for the fights in Valhall; and the waters had Necks and other spirits dangerous to those who loitered by the water-side. A great many of our best old fairy tales were part of the ancient German mythology, and have come down to our own times as stories told by parents to their children.

There Avere German women who acted as priestesses to Frigga, or Hertha, the Earth, as she was often called. She had a great temple in Rugen, an isle in the Baltic ; her image was brought out thence at certain times, in a chariot drawn by white heifers, to bless the people and be washed in the Baltic waters. Orion's belt was called her distaff, and the gossamer marked her path over the fields when she brought summer with her.

When one of the northern tribes was going to start to the south to find new homes, their wives prayed to Frigga to give them good speed. She bade them stand forth the next morning in the rising

Valhall. 29

sun with their long hair let down over their chins. "Who are these long beards?" asked Woden. " Thou hast given them a name, so thou must give them the victory," said Frigga; and henceforth the tribes were called Longbeards, or Lombards.

Before a battle, the matrons used to cast lots to guess how the fortunes of the day would go, doing below what the Valkyr did above. Sometimes a more than commonly wise woman would arise among them, and she was called the Wala, or Velleda, and looked up to and obeyed by all.

Chapter III. The Germans And Romans

JUST as it was with the Britons and Gauls, the first we know of the Germans was when the Romans began to fight with them. When Julius Csesar was in Gaul, there was a great chief among the tribe called Schwaben — Suevi, as the Romans made it — called Ehrfurst,* or, as in Latin, Ariovistus, who had been invited into Gaul to settle the. quarrels of two tribes of Gauls in the north. This he did by conquering them both ; but they then begged help from Csesar, and Ehrfurst was beaten by the Romans and driven back. Caesar then crossed the Rhine by a bridge of boats and ravaged the country, staying there for eighteen days. He was so struck with the bravery of the

* Honor prince.

THE VELLEDA WARNING DRUSUS.

Germans that he persuaded their young men to serve in his legions, where they were very useful ; but they also learned to fight in the Roman fashion.

Germany was let alone till the time of the Emperor Augustus, when his step-son Drusus tried to make it a province of Rome, and built fifty fortresses along the Rhine, besides cutting a canal between that river and the Yssel, and sailing along the coasts of the North sea. He three times entered Germany, and in the year B.C. 9, after beating the Marchmen, was just going to cross the Elbe, when one of the Velledas, a woman of great stature, stood before the army and said, " Thou greedy robber! whither wouldst thou go? The end of thy misdeeds and of thy life is at hand." The Romans turned back dismayed ; and thirty days later Drusus was killed by a fall from his horse.

Drusus' brother Tiberius went on with the attempt, and gained some land, while other tribes were allies of Rome, and all seemed likely to be conquered, when Quinctilius Varus, a Roman who came out to take the command, began to deal so rudely and harshly with the Germans that a young chief named Herman, of Arminius, was roused. He had secret meetings at night in the woods with other chiefs, and they swore to be faithful to one

The Germans and Romans. 35

another in the name of their gods. When all was ready, information was given to Varus, that a tribe in the north had revolted. He would not listen to Siegert or Segestes, the honest German who advised him to be cautious and to keep Herman as a hostage, and set out with three legions to put it down; but his German guides led him into the thickest of the great Teutoberg forest, and the further they went the worse this grew. Trunks of trees blocked up the road, darts were hurled from behind trees, and when at last an open space was gained after three days' struggling through the wood, a huge host of foes was drawn up there, and in the dreadful fight that followed almost every Roman was cut off, and Varus threw himself on his own sword.

Herman married the daughter of Siegert, and was chief on the Hartz mountains, aided b}^ his uncle Ingomar ; but after five years, a.d. 14, the Enu peror Tiberius sent the son of Drusus — who waa called already, from his father's successes, Germanicus — against him. Some of the Germans, viewing Siegert as a friend of Rome, beset his village, and were going to burn it, when Germanicus came in time to disperse them and save Siegert. Thus^ nelda, the wife of Herman, was with her father, and was sent off as a prisoner to Rome with her baby ; while Germanicus marched into the Teutoberg wood, found the bones of the army of Varus, and burnt them on a funeral pile, making a speech calling on his men to avenge their death. But Herman's horsemen fell on him and defeated him, and if the Germans had not been so eager to plunder they would have made a great many prisoners. They drove the Romans back across the Rhine, and the next year were ready for them, and had a tremendous battle on the banks of the Weser. In this the Romans prevailed, and Herman himself was badly wounded, and was only saved by the fleetness of his horse. However, he was not daunted, and still kept in the woods and harassed the Romans, once forcing them to take refuge in their ships.

Tiberius grew jealous of the love the army bore to Germanicus, and sent for him to return to Rome. Herman thus had saved his country, but he had come to expect more power than his chiefs thought "his due, and he was slain by his own kinsmen, a.d. 19, when only thirty-seven years old. His wife and child had been shown in Germanicus' triumph, and he never seems to have seen them again. It was during this war that the great Roman historian

The Germans and Romans. 37

Tacitus came to learn the habits and manners of the Germans, and was so struck with their simple truth and bravery that he wrote an account of them, which seems meant as an example for the fallen and corrupt Romans of his time.

There were no more attempts to conquer Germany after this ; but the Germans, in the year 69, helped in the rising of a Gaulish chief named Civilis against the Romans, and a Velleda who lived in a lonely tower in the forests near the Lippe encouraged him. He prevailed for a time> but then fell.

The Germans remained terrible to the Romans for many years, and there were fights all along the line of the empire, which their tribes often broke through; but nothing very remarkable happened till the sixth century, when there was a movement and change of place among them. This seems to have been caused by the Huns, a savage tribe of the great Slavonic or Tartar stock of nations, who came from the East, and drove the Deutsch nation, brave as they were, before them for a time.

Then it was that the Goths came over the Danube, and, dividing into the Eastern and Western Goths, sacked Rome, conquered the province of Africa, and founded two kingdoms in Spain and in

Northern Italy. Their great king Theuderick, who reigned at Verona, was called by the Germans Dietrich of Berne, and is greatly praised and honored in their old songs.

Then Vandals followed the Goths, and took Africa from them ; and the Lombards, or Longbeards, after the death of Theuderick, took the lands in Northern Italy which had been held by the Goths, founded a kingdom, a,nd called it Lombardy. The Burgundians (or Burg Castle men) gained the south-east part of Gaul all round the banks of the Rhone, and founded a kingdom there ; and the Sachsen (ssex or axe men) settled themselves on the banks of the Elbe, whence went out bands of men who conquered the south of Britain. The Franks (free men) were, in the meantime, coming' over the Rhine, and first plundering the north of Gaul, then settling there. All the western half of the Roman Empire was overspread by these Deutsch nations from the shores of the Baltic to the Mediterranean, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Carpathian Mountains; and instead of being conquered by the Romans, the Deutsch nations had conquered them.

It is chiefly with the Franks, Sachsen, Schwaben,

The Germans and Romans. 39

and Germans that this history is concerned ; but before going any further, there is a great mythological story to be told, which all believed in as truth.

Chapter IV. The Nijbeloklg Heroes

r I ''HERE are two versions of this strange ■*- ancient storjr — a northern one made in heathen times, a German one in Christian days. According to this one, the three gods, Woden, Loki, and Hamer, came down to a river in Nibelheim — the land of mist — to fish; and Loki killed an otter and skinned it. Now this otter was really a dwarf named Ottur, whose home was on the river bank, with his father and brothers, Fafner and Reginn, and who used to take the form of the beast when he wanted to catch fish. When his brothers saw what had befallen him, they demanded that Loki should, as the price of his blood, fill the otter's skin with gold ; and this Loki did, but when he gave it, he laid it under a curse, that it should do no good to its owner.

The curse soon began to be fulfilled, for Fafner

The Nibelonig Heroes. 41

killed his father to gain the treasure, and then turned himself into a serpent to keep watch over it, and prevent Reginn from getting it. But Reginn had a pupil who was so strong that he used to catch wild lions and hang them by the tail over the wall of his castle. The northern people called him Sigurd, but the Germans call him Siegfried,* and say that his father was the king of the Netherlands, and that he was a hero in the train of Dietrich of Berne. Reginn persuaded Siegfried to attack the dragon Fafner and kill him, after which he bade the champion bathe in the blood and eat the heart. The bath made his skin so hard that nothing could hurt him, except in one spot between his shoulders, where a leaf had stuck as it was blown down from the trees ; and the heart made him able to understand the voices .of the birds. From their song Siegfried found out that Reginn meant to slay him, and he therefore killed Reginn and himself took the treasure, in which he found a tarn cap, which made him invisible when he put it on. Serpents were called worms in old Deutsch, and the Germans said that their city of Wmms was the place where Siegfried killed the dragon. They called him Siegfried the Horny.

* Conquering Peace.

Now there was a lady of matchless strength named Brunhild;* but she had offended Woden, who touched her with his sleep-thorn, so that she fell into a charmed sleep, surrounded with a hedge of flame. Siegfried heard of her, broke through the circle of fire, and woke the lady, winning her heart and love ; but he had then to leave her in her castle after three days and go back to the common world, carrying her ring and girdle with him. But by a magic drink, as one story says, he was thrown into a sleep in which he lost all remembrance of Brunhild.

The great song of Germany, the Nibelungen lied, begins when Chriemhild,f the fair daughter of the king of Burgundy, had a dream in which she saw her favorite falcon torn to pieces by two eagles. Her mother told her that this meant her future husband, upon which she vowed that she would never marry. Soon after, Siegfried arrived and fell in love with her ; but she feared to accept him because of her dream. However, the fame of Brunhild's beauty had reached the court, and Chriemhild's brother Gunther wanted to wed her. She would, however, marry no one who could not overcome her in racing and leaping; and as she was really

* Valkyr of the Breastplate. t Valkyr of the Hamlet.

The Nibelonig Heroes. 43

one of the Valkyr, Gunther would have had no chance if Siegfried, still forgetful of all concerning Brunhild, had not put on his cap, made himself invisible, took the leap, holding Gunther in his arms, and drew him on in the race so as to give him the victory.

Then Gunther married Brunhild, and Siegfried Chriemhild. The first pair reigned in Burgundy, the second at Wurms, and all went well for ten years, when unhappily there was a great quarrel between the two ladies. The northern song says it was about which had the right to swim furthest out into the Rhine ; the German, that it was which should go first into the Cathedral. Brunhild said that Siegfried was only Gunther's vassal ; on which Chriemhild returned that it was to Siegfried, and not to her husband, that Brunhild had yielded, and in proof showed her the ring and girdle that he had stolen from her.

Brunhild was furiously enraged, and was determined to be revenged. She took council with Haghen, her husband's uncle, a wise and fartraveled man, whom every one thought so prudent that he was the very person whom poor Chriemhild consulted on her side as to the way of saving her husband. He had never loved Siegfried, and when his niece told him there was only one spot where her husband could be wounded, he bade her sew a patch on his garment just where it was, that he might be sure to know where to guard him. There was a great hunting match soon after, and Haghen contrived that all the wine should be left behind, so that all the hunters growing thirsty, lay down to drink at the stream, and thus Siegfried left defenceless the spot marked by his wife. There he was instantly stabbed by Haghen's contrivance. According to the heathen northern story, Brunhild, viewing herself as his true wife, burnt herself on a pile with his corpse in the Nibelung. She had only repented too late.

Chriemhild knew Haghen was the murderer, because the body bled at his touch; but she could not hinder him from taking away the treasure and hiding it in a cave beneath the waters of the Rhine. She laid up a vow of vengeance against him, but she could do nothing till she was wooed and won by Etzel or Atli, king of the Huns, on condition that he would avenge her on all her enemies. For thirteen years she bided her' time, and then she caused her husband to invite Gunther and all the other Burgundians to a great feast at Etzelburg in Hungary. There she stirred up a terrible fight, of

The Nibelonig Heroes. 45

which the Nibelungen lied describes almost every blow. Dietrich of Berne at once rushed in and took King Etzel and Queen Chriemhild to a place of safety, keeping all his own men back while the fight went on — Folker, the mighty fiddler of Burgundy, fiddling wildly till he too joined in the fray, and. then Dietrich's men burst in, and were all killed but old Sir Hildebrand, who, on his side, slew the mighty fiddler, so that of all the Burgundians only Gunther and Haghen were left. Dietrich then armed himself, made them both prisoners, and gave them up to Chriemhild ; but in her deadly vengeance she killed them both; whereupon Hildebrand slew her as an act of justice, and, with Etzel and Dietrich, buried the dead.

I have told you this story in this place because two real personages, Attila the Hun and Theuderick of Verona, come into it, though there is no doubt that the story was much older than their time, and that they were worked into it when it was sung later. It shows what a terrible duty all the Deutsch thought vengeance was. There are stories in the north going on with the history of Siegfried's children, and others in Germany about Dietrich. It seems he had once had to do with Chriemhild in her youth, for she had a garden of roses seven miles round, guarded by twelve champions, and the hero who could conquer them was to receive from her a chaplet of roses and a kiss. Dietrich, Hildebrand, and ten more knights beat her champions, and took the crowns of roses, but would not have the kisses, because they thought Chriemhild a faithless lady !