Maximilian

“ Maximilian laughed. "I see you have a ready wit," said he. "I now remember to have observed you when I stood at the door of the princess' apartments. Did you suspect who I was, Fool?"
"Not at first," was the reply. "Kings may have a divine right, but they have not a divine look when clothed in common wool. You are a handsome figure of a man, but so is many a forester, and even your daughter did not recognize you until you had hugged her like a bear. But now you look very much as you did when I saw you at Ghent." ”

“ Now that he had allied himself with a Sforza, and had joined the Liga, now that his father was dead, and the Empire was pledged to follow him across the mountains, and now, too, that the Italian complications were threatening Charles, he took fresh hope, and in this hope he summoned a Diet at Worms. Maximilian was a prince of whom, although many portraits have been drawn, yet there is scarcely one that resembles another, so easily and entirely did he suit himself to circumstances. ... His soul is full of motion, of joy in things, and of plans. ”

“ Just as dawn bathed the hills in sunlight, two stately men wandered along the Cathedral Square. One seemed somewhat older, with his full gray beard. His hair, rich and abundant, curled beneath his velvet cap. He walked so majestically that one could see, at the very first glance, that he was no ordinary person, but one upon whose shoulders an invisible weight rested. Handsome, tall and noble, just as one would picture the highest type of man—a king from head to foot.
Here, in the little village of Breisach, as he named it, Emperor Maximilian liked to rest from the cares of his Empire. ”

“ Look at Maximilian, the most delightfully unprincipled hero of the age of transition; always in every feast and every fray, always wanting money and selling himself for promises, and never getting the money and never keeping his engagements ”

“ It is indeed refreshing, in the midst of the long list of selfish and ambitious sovereigns who have disgraced the thrones of Europe, to meet with such a prince as Maximilian, a gentleman, a philosopher, a philanthropist and a Christian. Henry of Valois, on his return from Poland to France, visited Maximilian at Vienna. Henry was considered one of the most polished men of his age. He remarked in his palace at Paris that in all his travels he had never met a more accomplished gentleman than the Emperor Maximilian. ”

“ In his court, he was grateful for even a Napoleonic prince.
“Sergeant, Your Majesty.” It looked as though Ney were hinting to be made something else.
“I see,” said Maximilian. “And so Our Empire of romance is to hold a baton for another of the family of Ney. But to start more modestly, how would a lieutenancy suit, do you think?”
“Your pardon, sire, but I report to His Excellency, Marshal Bazaine.”
Maximilian’s white brow clouded. The French occupation was ever a thorn in his side. He could never quite be Emperor in fact. He could not even promote a likely young man. ”

“ Maximilian stirred restively. One has seen a lion watch the trainer’s whip, as though he wondered that a creature with only a whip should yet, in some way, compel him to do this or that. Before an obscure adventurer the monarch hastened to justify his abdication. But it did not make him easier because the padre listened so obsequiously, with never a quiver before the horror and misery pictured. He only listened, this man of God, noting it all deferentially, item by item, with a smiling gesture that he heard and understood, and was quite ready for the next. ”

“ Under Maximilian, the Diet became an effective council, fist-right was abolished, independent robber-lords put down, civilization began to effect an entrance, the system of circles was arranged, and the empire again became a leading power in Europe, instead of a mere vortex of disorder and misrule. Never would Charles V. have held the position he occupied had he come after an ordinary man, instead of after an able and sagacious reformer like that Maximilian who is popularly regarded as a fantastic caricature of a knight-errant, marred by avarice and weakness of purpose. ”

“ Maximilian never enjoyed vigorous health, and being anxious to secure the tranquillity of his extended realms after his death, he had his eldest son, Rhodolph, in a diet at Presburg, crowned King of Hungary. ”

“ By his second wife, Maria Anne, daughter of the emperor Ferdinand II., he left two sons, Ferdinand Maria, who succeeded him, and Maximilian Philip. In 1839 a statue was erected to his memory at Munich by Louis I., king of Bavaria. Weak in health and feeble in frame, Maximilian had high ambitions both for himself and his duchy, and was tenacious and resourceful in prosecuting his designs. As the ablest prince of his age he sought to prevent Germany from becoming the battleground of Europe, and although a rigid adherent of the Catholic faith, was not always subservient to the priest. ”

“ Maximilian ended the feuds of his nobles, improved the courts, and divided the empire into six (afterward into ten) circles, each ruled by a governor. He also encouraged the Universities of Vienna and Ingoldstadt in learning and arts generally. He was well-educated, skilled in all bodily exercises, chivalrous and genial; so that he has been called the first knight of his age. Maximilian died emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, at Wels in Upper Austria, Jan. ”

“ Maximilian. Who would be most likely to climb to the top of a tower and turn around on one leg? Maximilian. Who would make an impudent ambassador ashamed of himself? Maximilian."
"Hist, sir! Pray hush," said the housekeeper. [Pg 138] "That name must not be mentioned, else it will reach the ears of her little Highness, the Lady Marguerite."
"My little princess is in the other wing of the castle, and in order to hear me she would have to have a sense of hearing sharper than any chamois that ever leaped a chasm. ”

“ When Maximilian found himself outside the gates of the State prison, it was not with the light step of a captive released that he took his way to the palace. Once in his own apartments, which had been hastily got ready for him, he issued strict injunctions that no one should be admitted to his presence. If Herr Mark should come to the palace, he was to be requested to follow the King to Neustadt in the morning. These orders given, the young monarch locked the door on all his attendants and gave himself up to the flood of emotion which was surging within him. ”

“ When the Emperor Maximilian died, a greater man than himself or any of his predecessors on the Imperial throne had already begun a far greater work than was ever accomplished by any political ruler. Out of the ranks of the poor, oppressed German people arose the chosen Leader who became powerful above all princes, who resisted the first monarch of the world, and defeated the Church of Rome after an undisturbed reign of a thousand years. We must therefore leave the succession of the house of Hapsburg until we have traced the life of Martin Luther up to the time of Maximilian's death. ”

“ Maximilian’s own father was an avaricious, undignified old man, not until near his death Archduke of even all Austria, and with anarchy prevailing everywhere under his nominal rule. It was in the time of Maximilian that the Empire became as compact and united a body as could be hoped of anything so unwieldy, that law was at least acknowledged, Faust recht for ever abolished, and the Emperor became once more a real power. ”

“ Maximilian was not likely to acquiesce in being deprived of all that made monarchy a reality. The knights with their passion for lawless freedom, the cities with their narrow outlook and strong local prejudices, might be likewise expected to have no good will towards a system in which the former had no part and the latter but a very small one. But a still greater difficulty lay in the princes, whose sectional ambitions and want of settled national policy wholly unfitted them for carrying out so delicate and difficult a task. ”

“ Collecting a large and splendid army Maximilian marched to defend his territories; but no decisive engagement had taken place when a truce was made in 1568, and the emperor continued to pay tribute to the sultan for Hungary. Meanwhile the relations between Maximilian and Philip of Spain had improved; and the emperor’s increasingly cautious and moderate attitude in religious matters was doubtless due to the fact that the death of Philip’s son, Don Carlos, had opened the way for the succession of Maximilian, or of one of his sons, to the Spanish throne. ”

“ I went away and forgot the ring and lost at least five hours' time in returning for it."
"How did it happen that I knew nothing of your return?" asked the emperor, frowning.
"None knew of it, your Majesty, excepting Le Glorieux, who would not betray me even to you, and one poor soldier who was not sufficiently familiar with my face to recognize me."
"I seem to be blessed with capable sentinels," observed Maximilian sarcastically.
"Your sentinels are not afraid of flesh and blood, your Majesty; they fear only the supernatural." ”

“ Forgetting that discipline is the first law of an army, Maximilian sought to create for himself partizans in our ranks, in the hope that their counteraction might find an echo in France which would be powerful enough to retard the movement of evacuation. ”

“ Maximilian had been elected King of the Romans in 1486, and had succeeded to the Empire on the death of his father, Frederick iii., in 1493. His was a strongly fascinating personality—a man full of enthusiasms, never lacking in ideas, but singularly destitute of the patient practical power to make them workable. He may almost be called a type of that Germany over which he was called to rule. No man was fuller of the longing for German unity as an ideal; no man did more to perpetuate the very real divisions of the land. ”

“ In signing this, Maximilian entered into a fatal engagement, which he knew well he could not keep without soon lapsing into a national bankruptcy. It would have been more dignified in the emperor if he had at once laid down his crown and retired from the scene, leaving to the French government all the enormous responsibility of the situation. But this sovereign did not know how to resist the seductions of royalty. Perhaps he still hoped for the success of the mission of the empress to Paris and Rome. This is his only excuse. ”

“ The Kaiser shook his head vigorously.
“No! I never do. It is a mistake to lower one’s self to the level of these people. They only despise you for it, and hate you more in the end than if you had always held them at arm’s length. Look at poor Alexander II. of Russia; if he had not emancipated the serfs they would never have assassinated him.”
Maximilian was much struck by these observations. He began to perceive that this young monarch, of whose headstrong folly the whole world was talking, hid some real capacity beneath his extravagant demeanour. ”

“ So little was the Empire an individual unit that the policy of her rulers themselves was not imperial. The statesmanship of Maximilian was something smaller than national; it was that of his Archduchy of Austria. The policy of his successor, on the other hand, was determined by something larger than Germany, the consideration of the Spanish and Burgundian states that he also ruled. Maximilian tried in every way to aggrandize his personal power, not that of the German Nation. [Sidenote: Maximilian I, 1493-1519] The Diet of Worms of 1495 tried to remodel the constitution. ”

“ Though Maximilian, upon succeeding to the throne, maintained in his court the usages of the Papal Church, he remained the kind friend of the Protestants, ever seeking to shield them from persecution, claiming for them a liberal toleration, and endeavoring in all ways to promote fraternal religious feeling throughout his domains.
The prudence of Maximilian greatly allayed the bitterness of religions strife in Germany, while other portions of Europe were desolated with the fiercest warfare between the Catholics and the Protestants. In France particularly, the conflict raged with merciless fury. ”

“ Scarcely more fortunate was his son Maximilian, with whom perhaps the pressure of circumstances was the only obstacle, and a longer life perhaps the only want, to his establishing the new religion upon the imperial throne. Necessity had taught the father forbearance towards the Protestants—necessity and justice dictated the same course to the son. The grandson had reason to repent that he neither listened to justice, nor yielded to necessity.
Maximilian left six sons, of whom the eldest, the Archduke Rodolph, inherited his dominions, and ascended the imperial throne. ”

“ There was no one on earth whom Maximilian of Rhaetia feared, but there was one to whom he owed much, and whom it would be grievous to offend. In his father's day, one man, old even then, had built upon the foundations of a disastrous past a great and prosperous nation. This man had been to Maximilian what his father could never have been; and, without the magnetic gift of inspiring affection, had instilled 220 respect and gratitude in the breast of an enthusiastic boy.
"Poor old Von Markstein!" the Emperor said to himself. "He will feel this sorely. ”

“ After having assumed as settled that the recall of our troops was laid down as a principle, it demanded the fixture of an exact date, which would quiet the susceptibilities of his fellow-citizens. Maximilian was, as we see, abruptly sacrificed, and found himself henceforth at the mercy of the United States, which now ruled the French policy on the continent of America. ”

“ The emperor Maximilian had died suddenly (12th January 1519) , and for long Germany was disturbed with intrigues about the succession—the papal policy being specially tortuous. The widely expressed desire for a German emperor secured the unanimous election of Charles, the grandson of Maximilian and the king of Spain. Never were a people more mistaken and disappointed. The veins of Charles were full of German blood, but he was his mother’s son. It was the Spaniard, not the German, who faced Luther at Worms. ”