Be this as it may, twenty years pa.s.sed away without any one appearing to question the fact of Baldwin's death. At the expiration of that period, when the sovereignty of Flanders and Hainault had devolved upon the Emperor-Count's eldest daughter Jean, a claimant appeared to a.s.sert his ident.i.ty with the lost monarch. He maintained that after his capture at Adrianople he had been kindly treated by his Bulgarian captors, who, after a lapse of years, so far relaxed their watchfulness that he was enabled to effect his escape from custody; taken prisoner, however, by another barbarous tribe, unacquainted with his rank, he had been treated by them as a slave, and finally taken into Syria and sold.

There for two years he had been compelled to toil as a common labourer.

Enabled, by accident, to make himself known to some German merchants, who were permitted to trade in the vicinity, they had ransomed him for a small amount; and as by the death of his brother the throne of Constantinople had reverted to another, and probably hostile, branch of the family, he had deemed the recovery of his hereditary dominions an easier task than that of his Eastern empire.

The Countess Jean was at this time hara.s.sed by different feuds, domestic and foreign, and a portion of her more martially disposed subjects, wearied of female rule, received the impostor very favourably. His pretensions, however, were rejected _in toto_ by the Countess, who refused to see him. Advised to have him interrogated in order to prove his imposture, she consented, and her chief counsellors had a long and wearisome interview with the pseudo monarch, who a.s.sumed a great gravity of mien and comported himself with much dignity; he paid all due observance to the questions asked him, and replied to everything with considerable plausibility. He spoke at great length, and bitterly reproached the counsellors present for not at once acknowledging him as their rightful sovereign. He was permitted uninterruptedly to address the a.s.sembly, and his words would appear to have made some impression upon the council, the president of which broke up the meeting, alleging that it would not be lawful for them to decide upon matters of such importance without learning the good will and pleasure of the Countess.

His tale now gained eager credence with the Flemings, and his claims were seconded by many n.o.blemen, although, according to native historians, Jean had received conclusive proofs of her father's death from the hands of two envoys whom she had sent into Greece purposely to obtain information. Mezeray, the French chronicler, declares that the impostor was not only recognized by a large portion of the Flemish aristocracy, with whose genealogies, ancestors' deeds, and family names he displayed a perfect knowledge, but was also put in possession of the whole of Flanders by an enthusiastic people. To impress the populace he appeared in a scarlet garb, and carrying a white baton in his hand; and his imposture was all the more successful because of his really bearing no little resemblance to the veritable Baldwin.

Finding himself so well supported, he attempted to obtain possession of the Countess Jean, but she fled into France, and besought the protection of her cousin, Louis the Eighth, king of that country.

Louis came to Compiegne, whither also, under promise of a safe conduct, came the pseudo Baldwin to meet him. The pretender was accompanied in a manner suited to his a.s.sumed rank, and upon being introduced to the king saluted him proudly. According to some annalists, Louis, after a long discourse, in which he asked the claimant to produce some doc.u.ment, or other authentic proof of his ident.i.ty, was prompted by his counsellor, the Bishop of Beauvais, to put three test questions, which were: "Firstly, In what place he had rendered homage to Philip Augustus, King of France, for his Countship of Flanders? Secondly, By whom, and in what place, had he been invested with knighthood?

Thirdly, In what place, and on what day, was he married to his wife Marguerite, daughter of the Count of Champagne?"

Taken by surprise, the impostor requested three days in order to prepare replies to these questions; and, as it was pointed out, as the lapse of twenty years might have impaired his memory, this demand was not, after all, so unreasonable. King Louis, however, found his answers so contradictory, and so generally unsatisfactory, that he commanded him to leave France within three days, not being enabled, in consequence of the safe conduct granted to him, to have him punished for his deception.

The pseudo Baldwin, being thus deprived of all hopes of the French king's aid or countenance, hastened to Valenciennes, where fresh disappointments awaited him. His allies, who from various reasons had espoused his cause, now began rapidly to desert him, and in far less time than it had taken him to attain his transient grandeur, he beheld himself divested of his borrowed plumes, and forced to fly in disguise.

He attempted to get into Burgundy, where he had expectations of support, but his disguise was penetrated, his path discovered, and he himself captured by a Burgundian named Erard Castenac, who sold him to the Countess Jean for four hundred silver marks. The Countess at once adopted the prevalent method of obtaining information by putting him to the torture, and under it he is alleged to have confessed that he was Bertrand de Rans, a native of Champagne, and had been led to attempt his imposition whilst living as a hermit in a forest near Valenciennes.

An old Belgian chronicle, recording his confession at full length, alleges that he had frequently heard the citizens bewailing the sad fate of Flanders in having to submit to the rule of a woman, the Countess Jean's husband being in perpetual imprisonment in France, and how they praised their late ruler Baldwin, often exclaiming, "Ah! if our dear prince could only return once more to Flanders, what a change there would be!"

Thus incited, the idea gradually formed in the Champagner's mind to personate the absent monarch, so that one day when some of these citizens were bemoaning their loss in the usual style, he startled them by exclaiming, "How do you know that your prince, after escaping from captivity, did not at once return to his country?" These words seemed to coincide with some suspicions his visitors had formed, probably from hints he had already dropped; and when they retired, although they did not dare say anything to him personally, they took good care to let everybody know what they had seen, heard, and suspected. The intelligence was rapidly disseminated all over Flanders, and was heard in all ranks, both high and low. Mult.i.tudes, including many of the higher cla.s.ses, visited the hermit, and were received with an a.s.sumption of majesty that fully confirmed them in their belief. In the meanwhile Bertrand played his game so skilfully that it really appeared as if he were desirous of not being recognized as the long-lost Baldwin. At last, one day, one of his visitors had the courage or the impudence to say, "It is believed that you are Baldwin disguised in this hermit's garb;" whereupon he, thinking that the favourable opportunity for airing his pretensions had now arrived, responded sharply, "Those who imagine this do not deceive themselves, for besides me there never has been any Baldwin, Emperor of the Greeks, Count of Flanders and Hainault."

Upon hearing this declaration, all present, both high and low, saluted him as their sovereign, and furnished him with such money as they could raise; in a little while he attained to the height of his short-lived prosperity, whence, as has been seen, he as quickly fell.

After this confession had been obtained from the pretender he was condemned to death, but previously to the carrying out of the capital sentence was bound to a horse, and in that ignominious manner publicly exhibited in all the chief cities of the Netherlands. Finally he was hanged at Lille.

His execution did not dissipate the belief in the justness of his claim; the populace, says Mezeray, the French historian, preferring to believe that rather than resign her sovereignty, the Countess had had her father hanged. Matthew Paris, in his brief account of this imposture, declares that he was Baldwin, and that all his misfortunes arose from him having murdered an Eastern maiden, whom he had promised to marry and baptize; punishment overtaking him not because of the murder, but for "the uncanonical omission of baptism before its perpetration."

The Lilleois were fully confirmed in their belief of the hanged man's ident.i.ty with Baldwin from the somewhat singular circ.u.mstance that after the execution the Countess Jean founded a great hospital in their city, and had placed upon everything in and about the building the bizarre design of a gibbet.

THE FALSE FREDERICK THE SECOND OF GERMANY.

A.D. 1284.

Take it for all in all, the case of this claimant is certainly the most wonderful one on record. For thirty-eight years Frederick the Second had nominally ruled Germany, but his foreign wars and Italian States had occupied so much of his time that only seven years of his long reign were really spent in his imperial dominions. He died at Ferentino, in 1250, in the fifty-fifth year of his age; and in a little while the enormously extended empire which he had obtained for his family had pa.s.sed from their hands, and his many sons, and even his grandsons, were despoiled of their crowns, and lost their lives by violence.

Warfare and contention in the various states succeeded Frederick's decease. In Germany a long interregnum of misery ensued, and it was not until 1273, when Rudolph of Hapsburgh was elected to the imperial crown, that the nation could obtain either the administration of justice or respite from hostilities, foreign and intestine. Rudolph's long reign proved very beneficial to the distracted empire, and for several years Germany enjoyed an unwonted amount of prosperity, when, in 1284, the people were startled by the report that Frederick the Second, whom for thirty-four years everybody had believed dead and buried, was still alive, and, although nearly ninety years old, seeking to recover the imperial crown.

And true it was that an aged man, claiming to be the supposed defunct monarch, had appeared, giving so plausible an account of his lengthy seclusion, and displaying so remarkable a knowledge of Frederick's most private transactions, that mult.i.tudes, including the Landgrave of Thuringia and other important personages, believed his story and afforded him support.

The narration which he gave to account for his long silence, and abstention from the exercise of his imperial functions, was as follows: Declaring himself persistently to be Frederick the Second, Emperor of Germany, King of Naples and Sicily, the old man traced the story of his life back to A.D. 1250, when, as he truly stated, the last of the Swabian emperors, worn out with his ceaseless conflicts with the Papacy, disheartened by his own reverses and the capture by the Bolognese of his illegitimate son Encius, King of Sardinia, retired to his castle of Ferentino, in the Capitanate of Naples. Here, according to historical records, Frederick died of dysentery, but, according to the tale put forward by the aged claimant, no such event took place.

Wearied with the world, troubled by the bane of excommunication, and sickened by the fatality which overtook his progeny one after the other, he, Frederick, determined to forsake the pomp of royalty and seek an undiscoverable retreat. Feigning illness, he sent for one of his former retainers, a man who had long since left his service, and whose brother was Prior of the Carthusian Monastery of Squillace, in Calabria. To this old servitor he communicated his purpose, and besought him to accompany his former master to this frightfully secluded place, which St. Bruno, inst.i.tutor of the Carthusian Monks, had founded. He consented to Frederick's wish. A very faithful valet, by the Emperor's order, now set to work to disinter the body of a man of about fifty years of age, who, conveniently for the purpose, had died the preceding day, and had, in accordance with southern custom, been buried a few hours after his death. Luckily for the success of the scheme, the night was very obscure, so that the man was enabled un.o.bserved to bring his ghastly burden under the Emperor's window, where, by means of a rope, the confederates succeeded in drawing it up into the chamber. The dead body was dressed in the Emperor's attire and placed in the imperial bed, whereupon Frederick and his follower descended by the rope into the garden, and, quite unnoticed by the guards, made good their retreat.

By easy stages the Chartreuse was reached, and the Emperor, after rewarding the Sicilian valet with diamonds of sufficient value to keep him in comfort for the rest of his days, made rich offerings to the Prior, and then, without revealing his real name or condition, was received into the monastery as a simple brother, and as such was employed in the cultivation of the adjacent garden.

In this healthy occupation, ran the pretender's story, he continued until 1268, when his unfortunate young grandson Conradrin was atrociously beheaded by order of Charles of Anjou. He then changed his abode to another Carthusian monastery in Champagne, near the town of Luni, and thence he pa.s.sed into Germany once more, and as all his male descendants were deceased, a.s.serted his right to reclaim the imperial crown.

Many persons believed, or appeared to believe, this strange story. The Landgrave of Thuringia, and others of less note, publicly proffered their allegiance. The people of West Friesland, then at war with Florentius, Count of Holland, sent deputies to him to complain of the perpetual raids which the Dutch made into their lands, and to beg him to protect them as va.s.sals of the empire against the insults and vexations of their enemies. The pseudo Frederick, only too glad of the opportunity of airing his pretensions, wrote to Count Florentius to the effect that unless he at once desisted from this warfare, he would put him under the ban of the empire, and attack him with the imperial forces; moreover, if he had, as he a.s.serted, any right to Friesland, let him come to him, Frederick, at Misina, to produce his evidence and receive the Imperial decision.

The Count of Holland was greatly enraged at this affront, but, as recorded by Vossius in his History of Holland, condescended to reply, to the effect that his correspondent had plenty of a.s.surance to take upon himself the name of the Emperor Frederick the Second, thirty-four years after that monarch's death. There were, however, he reminded the claimant, yet living persons who had beheld Frederick's dead body; whilst, as he pointed out, not only were the Emperor's affairs at the time of his death far from desperate enough to cause him to conceal himself, but also the impossibility for such an ill.u.s.trious personage to have remained for so long a time in obscurity. He then strongly advised the pretender to quietly return to his proper station in society, adding that he could not have any dread of his armaments, seeing that he possessed none, not even being master of Misina, where he resided.

Not satisfied with this exhibition of his claims, the pseudo Frederick now wrote to the Emperor Rudolph commanding him to resign the imperial dignity, and unattended, and simply as a tributary prince, to come and do homage to him, his sovereign. This was too much for the patience of Rudolph, who soon determined to dispose of this compet.i.tor for his crown. Historians differ somewhat as to how he obtained possession of the claimant, but according to the most reliable accounts he would appear to have been taken prisoner at Wetzlaer, in Hesse, after that town had sustained a cruel siege on his account; thence he was taken to Nuz, in the Electorate of Cologne, and, after having been subjected to torture, confessed, so it was declared, that his real name was Tilon Colup, and that the many private details of Frederick's life, of which he had displayed such an intimate knowledge, were learnt whilst he was in the Emperor's service as a domestic. Contemporary records aver that he bore great resemblance to Frederick, that he was perfectly acquainted with the most minute particulars of that monarch's life, both public and private, and that he simulated the deceased sovereign so well in conversation that he convinced all with whom he conversed.

Ultimately, he was sentenced to death as a necromancer, and, together with two of his chief adherents, burnt to death in Nuz. The inhabitants of Colmar, a large town in the hereditary dominions of Frederick, who had embraced the claimant's cause with great zeal, were inflicted with a heavy pecuniary fine in lieu of death, to which punishment they were, at first, sentenced.

THE FALSE VOLDEMAR THE SECOND OF BRANDENBURG.

A.D. 1345-54.

The history of this adventurer is rendered more than usually interesting from the fact that several authors have taken up cudgels on his behalf, and vehemently a.s.sert that he was truly the man he a.s.serted himself to be. Not only authors' ink, but, unfortunately, a great quant.i.ty of human blood was wasted in the dispute, and that, too, without the world being any the wiser. The facts, as they are recounted by historians, stand thus:

Voldemar the Second, Marquis of Brandenburg, was the thirteenth Elector of the family of the Counts of Ascagne, a family closely related to many of the royal houses of Europe. After a reign of about three years, Voldemar, following the example of so many of his contemporaries, determined upon making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Having settled all his temporal affairs, and left his brother, John the Fourth, in possession of his electorate, he started upon his pilgrimage, attended only by two men. He set off on his journey without informing his brother, or any of his subjects, what route he intended taking, or, indeed, furnishing information of any kind relative to his intentions.

Voldemar and his brother John were the only surviving members of the elder branch of the House of Ascagne; but, previous to his departure, the royal pilgrim obliged his subjects to swear that, in the event of him and his brother dying childless, they would receive for their sovereign a prince of the House of Anhalt, which was a branch of the Ascagne family. This was A.D. 1320.

Twenty-four days after Voldemar's departure his brother John died suddenly, not without suspicion that he had been poisoned. The absent Elector, apparently unconscious of the sad event, did not return, and, it was quickly noised abroad, had also met with a sudden death.

The Emperor Louis, acting in opposition to all right, save that of might, instead of allowing the duly recognized prince to succeed, took possession of the electorate, and invested his own son Louis with it.

This usurpation would appear to have been effected without exciting much opposition at the time, but, eventually, after numberless declarations and reservations of their rights had been made by different princes of the empire, the whole question was reopened by the appearance of a man claiming to be the long-lost Voldemar. In order to afford a fair idea of this pretender's claims, it will be necessary in the first place to recount the story of his appearance as detailed by the authors favouring the theory of his being an impostor, and then to produce the evidence offered by those of the opposite party on his behalf.

The received opinion is that Rudolph, Duke and Elector of Saxony, being desirous of wresting the Electorate of Brandenburg from Louis of Bavaria, the Emperor's son, under the pretence that he himself was a member of the House of Ascagne, and finding it difficult to get the two electorates (of Saxony and Brandenburg) vested in one person, produced a certain man, whom he doubtless meant to use as a tool. This man he declared to be his dear cousin Voldemar, who had disappeared nearly twenty-five years previously, on a pilgrimage to the chief places of the Holy Land; which he had, it was given forth, visited, but had been taken prisoner and been kept in captivity by the infidels until recently, when he had contrived to effect his escape.

Several different versions of this story exist; some writers a.s.sert that the pseudo Voldemar was a miller of Sandreslaw, and others say a native of Beltztize, named Jacques Reboc; he was, they moreover allege, an habitual liar, and a cunning vagabond, possessing some resemblance, in form and face, to the lost prince; such resemblance, indeed, as the number of years that had elapsed since his disappearance, combined with the fatigues and miseries he had endured, might have left in the veritable Voldemar. He had, they add, dwelt for a number of years in Saxony, where he had been well instructed as to the former life and family connections of the deceased Elector, as well as put in the way of counterfeiting on his person the various marks by which he might deceive the world.

Thus runs the story as told by the advocates for the imposture theory; presently it will be seen what can be said on the other side; whilst now it will be as well to hear what happened upon the appearance of the claimant. The rumour of Voldemar's return from a long and painful captivity in Turkey having quickly spread over Germany, the people were everywhere in a state of intense excitement to see him; and when he reached Brandenburg, the populace at once declared for him, and compelled the Elector Louis to retire. Charles the Fourth, who had succeeded Louis the Fourth as emperor, and was on bad terms with the Elector Louis, the late monarch's son, declared for the claimant, as did also the rulers of Brunswick, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and several others, including Voldemar's relatives, the Duke of Saxony and the Princes of Anhalt.

In 1348, a Congress was held, at which almost all the n.o.bility recognized the claimant as the legitimate Elector; whilst, as for the lower cla.s.ses, they received him back with transports of joy; such was their enthusiasm at getting their old ruler back, indeed, and their delight at being delivered from the dominion of the Bavarians, who had taken possession of their country after it had been for two hundred years governed by the House of Ascagne, that they furnished the supposed Voldemar bountifully with goods and money, and rendered him every a.s.sistance towards driving out Louis. Almost all the towns and cities acknowledged his authority, and promised obedience to his rule.

Louis at once commenced proceedings for the recovery of his lost electorate; aided by Casimir, King of Poland, the King of Denmark, who singularly enough was also named Voldemar, and by some other potentates equally desirous of having a hand in their neighbour's affairs, he soon found himself able to place a good army in the field. A desultory warfare, that endured for some years, now commenced between the rival electors, but finally Voldemar inflicted such a signal defeat upon his opponent's forces that Louis relinquished the contest in disgust, and retired to his domains in the Tyrol, making over his claim upon Brandenburg to his two younger brothers. This transference of the electorate, it should be mentioned, the Emperor Charles afterwards confirmed by letters patent in 1350, notwithstanding the contestation of Voldemar and his partisans.

According to the popular account, the pseudo Voldemar was ultimately overthrown, condemned to death, and burnt as an impostor; whilst the veritable Marquis is stated to have died in 1322, either at a place called Korekei, or at Stendell.

Thus runs the commonly accredited story; but summing up later and equally reliable records, the favourers of the idea that it was really the Elector himself who reappeared put the case thus. The Archbishop of Magdeburg, Primate of Germany, a man totally uninterested either way, and known for his probity, would not, they say, have recognised and have given his testimony on behalf of the claimant unless satisfied as to his ident.i.ty; nor, they further remark, would the Emperor Charles and so many other princes have exposed their lives and caused the effusion of so much human blood for an impostor.

Moreover, one historian shows from contemporary records that by the Electoral College of Germany Voldemar was still believed to be alive in 1338, sixteen years after his alleged death; but as the official letter is only founded on a belief, its citation is worthless. The statement as to his decease in 1322 is, they point out, contradictory, whilst had the Elector Louis known of his predecessor's death, why did he not procure doc.u.mentary evidence of the same? The Emperor Louis was known, moreover, to have entertained great hatred against the House of Ascagne, in consequence of its chiefs, Rudolph of Saxony and Voldemar the First, uncle of the second Voldemar, having declared for his rival for the empire, Frederick of Austria, in 1313.

What, however, chiefly confirms their view of the case in the eyes of the claimant's advocates is, not only did Voldemar's relatives, the Duke of Saxony and the Princes of Anhalt, and that apparently contrary to their interest, acknowledge the wanderer, but they even, when he died at Dessau, in 1354, nine years after his return, laid his bones amongst those of the ancestors of their ill.u.s.trious house. According to the chronicle of Magdeburg, he was buried at Dessau in the Chapel du Saint Esprit, which was the general place of sepulture for the princes of the sovereign house of Anhalt.

THE FALSE RICHARD THE SECOND OF ENGLAND.

A.D. 1404.