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Three months after the diet of Muehlhausen, another diet met at Cologne and chose Otto of Brunswick as King of the Romans. Three days afterward the young prince was crowned at Aachen. A ten-years' civil war between Philip II and Otto IV now devastated the Germany that Barbarossa and Henry VI had left so prosperous.
When they arrived at Aix the German Aachen they decided to leave their grips in an inn, across the station Platz, so that they could conveniently dine there and be near at hand for the express. Then they started for the cathedral which, with its eleven centuries, loomed under a lofty octagon from a low hill. In a few minutes the two travelers reached the side portal of the hoary temple.
They say they have established the Emperor's authority by means of Aachen and Mulheim, will soon have driven us out of Julich, and have thus arranged matters entirely to their heart's content.
The thought gave me a useful hint, and I fell into a light sleep, while Charles and Hohenfels pervaded the darkness merely by their perfumes the former with whiffs at a concealed bottle of Farina, the latter with a pastille counterfeiting the incense of the cathedral. In a couple of hours from the Hôtel de Hollande we reached Aachen, as the fond natives call the burgh so dear to Charlemagne.
After the decline of the Carlovingian power the imperial authority was again revived by Otto the Great , who was crowned Emperor of the Romans by the Pope. Henceforth the empire of the West was termed the Holy Roman Empire. "From this time on it was the rule that the German king who was crowned at Aachen had a right to be crowned ... emperor at Rome."
There was already a Liberal Ministry under Count Arnim, Bismarck's old chief at Aachen; the Prussian troops were being sent to support the people of Schleswig-Holstein in their rebellion against the Danes; the Ministers favoured the aspirations of Poland for self-government; in Prussia there was to be a Constituent Assembly and a new Constitution drawn up by it.
It seemed, however, to those who surrounded the Archduke an outrage which could no longer be tolerated, especially as a garrison of 600 Germans, supposed to have formed part of the States' army, had recently been introduced into the town. Aachen, lying mostly on an extended plain, had but very slight fortifications, and it was commanded by a neighbouring range of hills.
But Albert, proud of his achievements in Aachen, refused to pause in his career. Let them make the deposit first, he said. Both belligerents, being now satiated with such military glory as could flow from the capture of defenceless cities belonging to neutrals, agreed to hold conferences at Xanten.
"I ponder well at this crisis," he said to his friend Caron, "the intelligence I received some months back from Ratisbon, out of the cabinet of the Jesuits, that the design of the Catholic or Roman League is to bring this year a great army into the field, in order to make Neuburg, who was even then said to be of the Roman profession and League, master of Julich and the duchies; to execute the Imperial decree against Aachen and Mulheim, preventing any aid from being sent into Germany by these Provinces, or by Great Britain, and placing the Archduke and Marquis Spinola in command of the forces; to put another army on the frontiers of Austria, in order to prevent any succour coming from Hungary, Bohemia, Austria, Moravia, and Silesia into Germany; to keep all these disputed territories in subjection and devotion to the Emperor, and to place the general conduct of all these affairs in the hands of Archduke Leopold and other princes of the House of Austria.
I must deny myself the pleasure of describing the battles and the marches of the Lutzow corps, which extended to Aachen and Oudenarde; but will mention here that Langethal rose to the rank of sergeant, and had to perform the duties of a first lieutenant; and that, towards the end of the campaign, Middendorf was sent with Lieutenant Reil to induce Blucher to receive the corps in his vanguard.
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