History of the United Netherlands, 1586a | Page 2

disputed the
electorate.
At the commencement of the year a portion of the bishopric was still in
the control of the deposed Protestant elector Gebhard Truchsess,
assisted of course by the English and the States. The city of Cologne
was held by the Catholic elector, Ernest of Bavaria, bishop of Liege;
but Neusz and Rheinberg were in the hands of the Dutch republic.
The military operations of the year were, accordingly, along the Meuse,
where the main object of Parma was to wrest Grave From the
Netherlands; along the Waal, where, on the other hand, the patriots
wished to recover Nymegen; on the Yssel, where they desired to obtain
the possession of Zutphen; and in the Cologne electorate, where the
Spaniards meant, if possible, to transfer Neusz and Rheinberg from
Truchsess to Elector Ernest. To clear the course of these streams, and
especially to set free that debatable portion of the river-territory which
hemmed him in from neutral Germany, and cut off the supplies from
his starving troops, was the immediate design of Alexander Farnese.
Nothing could be more desolate than the condition of the electorate.
Ever since Gebhard Truchsess had renounced the communion of the
Catholic Church for the love of Agnes Mansfeld, and so gained a wife
and lost his principality, he had been a dependant upon the
impoverished Nassaus, or a supplicant for alms to the thrifty Elizabeth.
The Queen was frequently implored by Leicester, without much effect,
to send the ex-elector a few hundred pounds to keep him from starving,
as "he had not one groat to live upon," and, a little later, he was
employed as a go-between, and almost a spy, by the Earl, in his
quarrels with the patrician party rapidly forming against him in the
States.
At Godesberg--the romantic ruins of which stronghold the traveller still
regards with interest, placed as it is in the midst of that enchanting
region where Drachenfels looks down on the crumbling tower of
Roland and the convent of Nonnenwerth--the unfortunate Gebhard had
sustained a conclusive defeat. A small, melancholy man, accomplished,
religious, learned, "very poor but very wise," comely, but of mean
stature, altogether an unlucky and forlorn individual, he was not, after
all, in very much inferior plight to that in which his rival, the Bavarian
bishop, had found himself. Prince Ernest, archbishop of Liege and

Cologne, a hangeron of his brother, who sought to shake him off, and a
stipendiary of Philip, who was a worse paymaster than Elizabeth, had a
sorry life of it, notwithstanding his nominal possession of the see. He
was forced to go, disguised and in secret, to the Prince of Parma at
Brussels, to ask for assistance, and to mention, with lacrymose
vehemence, that both his brother and himself had determined to
renounce the episcopate, unless the forces of the Spanish King could be
employed to recover the cities on the Rhine. If Neusz and Rheinberg
were not wrested from the rebels; Cologne itself would soon be gone.
Ernest represented most eloquently to Alexander, that if the protestant
archbishop were reinstated in the ancient see, it would be a most
perilous result for the ancient church throughout all northern Europe.
Parma kept the wandering prelate for a few days in his palace in
Brussels, and then dismissed him, disguised and on foot, in the dusk of
the evening, through the park-gate. He encouraged him with hopes of
assistance, he represented to his sovereign the importance of preserving
the Rhenish territory to Bishop Ernest and to Catholicism, but hinted
that the declared intention of the Bavarian to resign the dignity, was
probably a trick, because the archi-episcopate was no such very bad
thing after all.
The archi-episcopate might be no very bad thing, but it was a most
uncomfortable place of residence, at the moment, for prince or peasant.
Overrun by hordes of brigands, and crushed almost out of existence by
that most deadly of all systems of taxations, the 'brandschatzung,' it was
fast becoming a mere den of thieves. The 'brandschatzung' had no name
in English, but it was the well-known impost, levied by roving
commanders, and even by respectable generals of all nations. A hamlet,
cluster of farm-houses, country district, or wealthy city, in order to
escape being burned and ravaged, as the penalty of having fallen into a
conqueror's hands, paid a heavy sum of ready money on the nail at
command of the conqueror. The free companions of the sixteenth
century drove a lucrative business in this particular branch of industry;
and when to this was added the more direct profits derived from actual
plunder, sack, and ransoming, it was natural that a large fortune was
often the result to the thrifty and persevering commander of free lances.
Of all the professors of this comprehensive art, the