Wenceslas

“ Then he began to tell them, with light and flying fingers, what that simple tune had suggested to Michael, how he imagined himself looking on at an old-fashioned dance, and while the dancers moved to the graceful measure of a minuet, or daintily in a gavotte, the tune of “Good King Wenceslas” still rang in his head, or, how in the joy of the sunlight of a spring morning it still haunted him. It lay behind a cascade of foaming waters that, leaping, roared into a ravine ”

“ Claude Vignon, like many another, had become a political personage—a word describing an ambitious man at the first stage of his career. The political personage of 1840 represents, in some degree, the Abbe of the eighteenth century. No drawing-room circle is complete without one.
"My dear, this is my cousin, Count Steinbock," said Lisbeth, introducing Wenceslas, whom Valerie seemed to have overlooked. ”

“ On the day of the baptism it is recorded that the Emperor displayed to the people from the gallery over the door of the church the Imperial insignia and relics which he had brought from Prague to the new Frauenkirche.
This Wenzel, or Wenceslas, of whom we have{43} spoken, succeeded his father when he was but seventeen. Half-idiot, half-maniac, addicted to drunkenness and hunting, he was not the man to restore order in an Empire which had already fallen into a state of chaos. He was one of the worst Kaisers and the least victorious on record. ”

“ Thus the French king entered into the country of Luxembourg and came to an abbey, whereas Wenceslas sometime duke of Brabant was buried. There the king tarried two days: then he departed and took the way through Bastogne, and lodged within a league whereas the duchess of Brabant lay. She sent word of her being there to the duke of Burgoyne, and he brought her into the field to speak with the king, who received her right honourably, and there communed together. Then the duchess returned to Bastogne, and thither she was conveyed with sir John of Vienne and sir Guy of Tremouille ”

“ About the same time he was promised the succession to the margraviate of Brandenburg, which he actually obtained for his son Wenceslas in 1373. He also gained a considerable portion of Silesian territory, partly by inheritance through his third wife, Anna, daughter of Henry II., duke of Schweidnitz. ”

“ Between these two antagonistic postulates dialectic subtlety was powerless to frame a project of reconciliation, and argument only hardened each side in its belief. One or the other must triumph utterly, and force alone could decide the controversy. Wearied at last with his unavailing efforts, Wenceslas finally cut the matter short by banishing the leaders of the conservatives, Stephen Palecz, Stanislas of Znaim, Peter of Znaim, and John Elias. Stanislas retired to Moravia, where, after incredible industry in controversial writing, he died on the road to the Council of Constance ”

“ Whilst he abode in Germany to pacify the barons, and to provide himself with money and with followers before crossing the mountains, Wenceslas, king of Bohemia, died, and left no male heir, but only two daughters, the one already wife of the duke of Carinthia, and the other, by the counsel of his barons, Henry gave to wife to-394- John, his son, whom he crowned king of Bohemia, and left him in his place in Germany. ”

“ His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, the Sieur Clement Wenceslas, Prince of Metternich Winnebourg Ochsenhausen, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Grand Cross of the Royal Order of St. Stephen of Hungary, Knight of the Order of St. Andrew, of St. Alexander Newsky, and of St. Anne of the First Class, Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour, Knight of the Order of the Elephant, of the Supreme Order of the Annunciation, of the Black Eagle and of the Red Eagle, of the Seraphim, of St. ”

“ Vitus; perhaps they parted with a bit to King Henry the Fowler, who then handed it on to Wenceslaus. The Slavonic islanders of Rügen relapsed into paganism but [Pg 163] kept green the memory of St. Vitus, whom they worshipped as a god.
Whereas St. Wenceslaus secured only an arm of St. Vitus, King Charles acquired the rest of his body. St. Wenceslaus was, I fear, caught napping on several occasions. He is not dead, according to popular tradition, but sleeps inside a mountain, and sleeps soundly too, for he seems to have missed the resurrection of his people. ”

“ Vitus, and another statue stands near the castle entrance on the Hradšany, in the latter Wenceslaus is shown looking out over the city, [Pg 73] his hand upraised in blessing, which is right and proper and quite what the city expects of him. The equestrian statue is the most recent portrait of the pious prince, and is really quite convincing. We know, or at least I am about to tell you, that Wenceslaus was a man of peace, he is therefore represented carrying a lance; the modern sense of propriety requires of a non-combatant that he should sit for his portrait armed. ”

“ Death had anticipated them; his pure soul had exhaled in fervent prayer.
"The mob surveyed the work that had been accomplished, and now that the thirst for blood was stilled, shrunk in terror before the bloody horror that had been perpetrated.--The tabernacle remained untouched, the house of God unplundered. Discharging oaths and curses at the knight, their ringleader, the wild troop dispersed in apprehensive fright of the divine and human judge. But King Wenceslaus left the iniquity, in spite of the most urgent representations of the Bohemian nobility, unvisited and unpunished. ”

“ It was in the churchyard of Winchelsea that John Wesley, who was almost always travelling about the country, preached his last open-air sermon, in 1790, under the shelter39 of the great tree on the western side, “to many folk,” we are told, “some few of which were converted so that tears ran a-down their cheeks.”
And thus the greatness of Winchelsea, stranded as it is from the lapping of the channel surges, though the boom of them when angry can be heard, is of the past. ”

“ As soon as Wenzel, in the presence of his cousin, the chamberlain, heard an indistinct rumour that a man with two black horses, saved from the flames at the Tronkenburg, had come into the city, they both set off attended by some servants, whom they had hastily gathered together to the castle-yard, where he was, that in case the horses should turn out to be Kohlhaas’s they might pay the expenses and take them home. But how surprised were they when they saw a multitude, which increased every moment, attracted by the spectacle, and assembled about the cart to which the horses were fastened. ”

“ Abandoning this idea, however, he voted for the election of Sigismund in 1411, but stipulated that he should retain the title of king of the Romans. His concluding years were disturbed by the troubles which arose in Bohemia over the death of John Huss, and which the vacillating king did nothing to check until compelled by Sigismund. In the midst of these disturbances he died at Prague on the 16th of August 1419. His second wife was Sophia, daughter of John, duke of Bavaria-Munich, but he left no children. Wenceslaus was a capable and educated man, but was lacking in perseverance and industry. ”

“ Wenceslaus [elected in 1378] , a supine and voluptuous man, less respected, and more negligent of Germany, if possible, than his father, was regularly deposed by a majority of the electoral college in 1400. ... They chose Robert count palatine instead of Wenceslaus; and though the latter did not cease to have some adherents, Robert has generally been counted among the lawful emperors. Upon his death [1410] the empire returned to the house of Luxemburg; Wenceslaus himself waiving his rights in favour of his brother Sigismund of Hungary. ”

“ But Wenzel found that Gregory XII. continued to recognise his rival Rupert as king of the Romans. So he determined, at the instance of an envoy of France, that he would side with the cardinals at Pisa, at least to the extent that he would remain neutral (November 24, 1408) . For a similar but opposite reason the Germans remained faithful to Gregory and the Rhenish Kaiser, whom they had elected (May 25, 1400) in the place of the drunkard Wenzel. This in itself was sufficient to induce the Bohemian “nation” to follow Hus, when he took up the idea of Wenzel, and brought it before the University. ”

“ Wenzel was the son of a small innkeeper at Grodno, but after his father's decease, which occurred when he was a child, his mother had married a Russian trader, who, when she died, carried the boy to Moscow. There Wenzel bade fair to be brought up a Russian; but when a stepmother came home, which took place while he was still a youth, he had returned to his native country, built himself a hut in the woods of Lithuania, and lived a lonely hunter till the time of my story, when he was still a robust, though gray-haired man. ”

“ It was in these quarrels with his clergy that Wenceslaus first showed that tendency to violent methods, which undermined his own power and inflicted great injury on the cause of Church [165] reformation. In 1385 he was involved in a quarrel with the Dean of Breslau. It appeared that a cask of beer sent to the dean by his brother had been intercepted by the Town Council, on the ground that no foreign beer should be admitted into the town. The dean, therefore, laid an interdict upon Breslau. ”

“ So great was the enthusiasm which they caused that, when Wenceslaus forbade any further visits to Tabor under penalty of death and confiscation of goods, large numbers of the peasantry willingly sacrificed all their possessions, and risked the chance of death, to unite themselves with this chosen band. A community so formed naturally developed very remarkable qualities ”

“ There is surely nothing in the world quite like Winchelsea. Lovelier by far than Rye, not only in itself, but because of what it offers you, those views of hill and marsh and sea with Rye itself, like I know not what little masterpiece of Flemish art, in the middle distance eastward, Winchelsea is a place never to be left or at worst never to be forgotten. ”

“ We may well be proud of the part that Winchester, as the capital of Wessex, played in the course of civilization during those dark days; and when, as indeed happened 150 years after, Winchester did see the Danish kingdom realized and herself the capital of it, it was a Christian and civilizing kingdom, and not one of violence and unbridled slaughter, over which she was called to preside. ”

“ When they persistently refused to give any evidence against the Archbishop, Wenceslaus ordered them to be tortured. As they continued to defy him, he had them burnt on the hand; and, at last, fixing upon Nepomuc, either as the most defiant or the most important of his victims, he ordered him to be bound hand and foot, and thrown into the Moldau. ”

“ Betray to a living soul but one single word of what I have said to you, and not only yourself, but your wife and your children will also be lost! My arm is strong enough to catch all of you, and my ear is large enough to hear every thing.”
“I shall be as silent as the grave,” protested Wenzel, eagerly, “I shall only raise my voice in order to speak to the people about our beloved and wise Minister Thugut, and about the miserable, over-bearing French, who dare to hang out publicly the banner of their bloody republic here in our imperial city, in our magnificent Vienna!” ”

“ Rhinoceros Zisca was on the Weissenberg, or a still nearer Hill of Prag since called ZISCA-BERG (Zisca Hill) : and none durst whisper of it to the King. A servant waiting at dinner inadvertently let slip the word:—"Zisca there? Deny it, slave!" cried Wenzel frantic. Slave durst not deny. Wenzel drew his sword to run at him, but fell down dead: that was the last pot broken by Wenzel. ”

“ A couple of slaves scurried out on their missions--evidently their Emir was accustomed to have her orders carried out with promptness--and for long enough Wenlock stood wordless in front of the divan, far more like a criminal than a prospective bridegroom. The lady, with the tube of the water-pipe between her lips, puffed smoke and made no further speech. She had stated her will: the result would follow in due course.
But at last Wenlock, as though wrenching himself into wakefulness out of some horrid dream, turned wildly to Kettle, and in a torrent of words implored for rescue. ”

“ The new king, Wenceslaus, hoped at first, like his father Charles, to check the federal movement by associating all estates of the realm under his own lead in Landfriedenseinigungen, but such a compact made at Heidelberg in 1384, although renewed at Mergentheim three years later, was a mere makeshift. ”

“ Every spot in this delectable corner of England—Pevensey, Hurstmonceux, Hastings itself, Bodiam, Rye—is redolent of the triumph of change; but Winchelsea stands before us a perfect memorial to the futility of man's efforts against Nature, a tangible reminder of the irony of Time.
This ancient town, perched, like Rye, on a solitary hillock projecting into the midst of a vast plain, is, despite its years and its ruins, really a new Winchelsea. ”

“ And so for 200 years our Winchester history remains a blank, till the Saxon invader had in turn made his way hither, by the same natural channel which Celt and Roman before him had followed, and a kingdom of Wessex had grown up, rude and barbarous, but firmly planted, with the Hame-tun (Southampton) as its first capital, till, with the growth of institutions, the natural advantages of Winchester made it in turn the centre of rule of the West Saxon kingdom. ”

“ The hollowness of the peace which followed was very quickly seen. When Jodok came to see the king at Carlstein in the same year, Wenceslaus was so carried away by the recollection of his cousin’s insults, that he had him arrested and imprisoned. Then, suddenly remembering the treaty of peace, he set him free again. ”