On the other hand, Kaiser Friedrich had his Tourneys, his gleams of bright joyances now and then; one great gathering of all the chivalries at Mainz, which lasted for three weeks long, the grandest Tourney ever seen in this world. Gelnhausen, in the Wetterau (ruin still worth seeing, on its Island in the Kinzig river), is understood to have been one of his Houses;Kaiserslautern (Kaiser's LIMPID, from its clear spring-water) in the Pfalz (what we call PALATINATE), another. He went on the Crusade in his seventieth year; [1189, A.D.; Saladin having, to the universal sorrow, taken Jerusalem.] thinking to himself, "Let us end with one clear act of piety:"--he cut his way through the dangerous Greek attorneyisms, through the hungry mountain passes, furious Turk fanaticisms, like a gray old hero: "Woe is me, my son has perished, then?" said he once, tears wetting the beard now white enough; "My son is slain!--But Christ still lives;let us on, my men!" And gained great victories, and even found his son; but never returned home;--died, some unknown sudden death, "in the river Cydnus," say the most. [Kohler (p. 188), and the Authorities cited by him. Bunau's <italic> Deutsche Kaiser-und Reichs-Historie <end italic> (Leipzig, 1728-1743), i., is the express Book of Barbarossa: an elaborate, instructive Volume.]
Nay German Tradition thinks he is not yet dead; but only sleeping, till the bad world reach its worst, when he will reappear. He sits within the Hill near Salzburg yonder,--says German Tradition, its fancy kindled by the strange noises in that Hill (limestone Hill)from hidden waters, and by the grand rocky look of the place:--A peasant once, stumbling into the interior, saw the Kaiser in his stone cavern; Kaiser sat at a marble table, leaning on his elbow;winking, only half asleep; beard had grown through the table, and streamed out on the floor; he looked at the peasant one moment;asked him something about the time it was; then dropped his eyelids again: Not yet time, but will be soon! [Riesebeck's <italic> Travels <end italic> (English Translation, London, 1787), i. 140, Busching, <italic> Volks-Sagen, <end italic> &c. (Leipzig, 1820), i. 333, &c. &x.] He is winking as if to awake. To awake, and set his shield aloft by the Roncalic Fields again, with:
Ho, every one that is suffering wrong;--or that has strayed guideless, devil-ward, and done wrong, which is far fataler!
CONRAD HAS BECOME BURGGRAF OF NURNBERG (A.D. 1170).
This was the Kaiser to whom Conrad addressed himself; and he did it with success; which may be taken as a kind of testimonial to the worth of the young man. Details we have absolutely none:
but there is no doubt that Conrad recommended himself to Kaiser Redbeard, nor any that the Kaiser was a judge of men. Very earnest to discern men's worth and capabilities; having unspeakable need of worth, instead of unworth, in those under him! We may conclude he had found capabilities in Conrad; found that the young fellow did effective services as the occasion rose, and knew how to work, in a swift, resolute, judicious and exact manner. Promotion was not likely on other terms; still less, high promotion.
One thing farther is known, significant for his successes: Conrad found favor with "the Heiress of the Vohburg Family," desirable young heiress, and got her to wife. The Vohburg Family, now much forgotten everywhere, and never heard of in England before, had long been of supreme importance, of immense possessions, and opulent in territories, and we need not add, in honors and offices, in those Franconian Nurnberg regions; and was now gone to this one girl. I know not that she had much inheritance after all;the vast Vohburg properties lapsing all to the Kaiser, when the male heirs were out. But she had pretensions, tacit claims;in particular, the Vohburgs had long been habitual or in effect hereditary Burggrafs of Nurnberg; and if Conrad had the talent for that office; he now, in preference to others, might have a chance for it. Sure enough, he got it; took root in it, he and his; and, in the course of centuries, branched up from it, high and wide, over the adjoining countries; waxing towards still higher destinies. That is the epitome of Conrad's history; history now become very great, but then no bigger than its neighbors, and very meagrely recorded; of which the reflective reader is to make what he can.
There is nothing clearly known of Conrad more than these three facts: That he was a cadet of Hohenzollern (whose father's name, and some forefathers' names are definitely known in the family archives, but do not concern us); that he married the Heiress of the Vohburgs, whose history is on record in like manner; and that he was appointed Burggraf of Nurnberg, year not precisely known,--but before 1170, as would seem. "In a REICHSTAG (Diet of the Empire) held at Regensburg in or about 1170," he formally complains, he and certain others, all stanch Kaiser's friends (for in fact it was with the Kaiser's knowledge, or at his instigation), of Henry the Lion's high procedures and malpractices; of Henry's League with the Pope, League with the King of Denmark, and so forth; the said Henry having indeed fallen into opposition, to a dangerous degree;--and signs himself BURGGRAF OF NURNBERG, say the old Chronicles. [Rentsch, p. 276(who cites <italic> Aventinus, Trittheim, <end italic> &c.).]
The old Document itself has long since perished, I conclude: but the Chronicles may be accepted as reporters of so conspicuous a thing; which was the beginning of long strife in Germany, and proved the ruin of Henry the Lion, supreme Welf grown over-big,--and cost our English Henry II., whose daughter he had married, a world of trouble and expense, we may remark withal. Conrad therefore is already Burggraf of Nurnberg, and a man of mark, in 1170: and his marriage, still more his first sally from the paternal Castle to seek his fortune, must all be dated earlier.