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The queen answered, "How cometh it to pass, Sir Siegfried, that thou sawest not the game whereat Gunther hath won?" Said Hagen of Burgundy, "While we were downcast by reason of thee, O Queen, and afterward, when the king of Rhineland had beaten thee at the sports, Siegfried was at the ship, and knoweth naught of what hath passed."
Never before had so pleasant a sight been seen in Rhineland, as that glorious array of king-folk and lords and ladies wending from river to fortress along the rose-strewn roadway. Foremost went the king, and by his side was Siegfried on the radiant Greyfell.
The king of Prussia, unwilling to let Austria pose as the sole defender of the Germanic princes of the Rhineland, had in August 1791 joined the Emperor in the declaration of Pillnitz, threatening France with coercion. He now acted up to this, and joined in the war as the ally of the Emperor. Leopold died in March, and was succeeded by his son, Marie Antoinette's nephew, Francis II.
"Naught shall I have left to take with me to Rhineland," she cried aloud in her vexation. "In Burgundy," answered Hagen, "there is gold enough and to spare. Thou wilt not need the treasures of Isenland." But these words did not content the Queen. She would certainly take at least twenty coffers of gold as well as jewels and silks with her to King Gunther's land.
The French representatives did not demand the direct annexation of the Left Bank, but they proposed an independent or autonomous Rhineland and French, or inter-Allied, occupation of the Rhine for an indefinite period, or at least until the full execution by Germany of the financial clauses of the treaty. Both the British and American delegates opposed the French proposals.
The rugged, mountainous nature of the country naturally made lawlessness the more easy there, and till so late as the beginning of the nineteenth century these gangs of robbers were a constant menace to the traveller in Rhineland.
The festival was to be held at Whitsuntide, and as the time drew near, noble guests were seen daily riding into Worms. Kings came from afar, thirty-two princes also had journeyed thither, and when Whitsun morning dawned, five thousand men and more had come to Rhineland, where free from care dwelt King Gunther.
The thing was difficult; and also was of more importance than we yet altogether see. Not Preussen only, but a still better country, the Duchy of Cleve, Cleve-Julich, Duke Wilhelm's Heritage down in the Rhineland, Heritage turning out now to be of right his eldest Daughter's here, and likely now to drop soon, is involved in the thing.
Do we not still remember that the name of "Munich" symbolizes a vain hope of appeasing dictators? At that time the policy of appeasement was tried, and it failed. Prior to the Second World War Mussolini seized Ethiopia. In the Far East Japanese warlords were grabbing Manchuria by force. Hitler sent his armed forces into the Rhineland in violation of the Versailles Treaty.
Polyxena, the Queen of Sardinia a daughter not of Italy but of the Rhineland is, in her degree, an eighteenth century representative of the woman of the ancient Teutonic tribes, grave, resolute, wise, and possessing the authority of wisdom.
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