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In return for these important services, he observed, that the empress-queen had refused him the assistance stipulated in treaties against an invasion planned by France, whose hatred he had drawn upon himself by his friendship to that princess; and his imperial majesty even denied him the dictatorial letters which he solicited; that the court of Vienna had signed a treaty with the crown of France, in which it was stipulated that the French troops should pass the Weser, and invade the electorate of Hanover, where they were joined by the troops of the empress-queen, who ravaged his Britannic majesty's dominions with greater cruelty than even the French had practised; and the same duke of Cumberland, who had been wounded at Dettingen in the defence of her imperial majesty, was obliged to fight at Hastenbeck against the troops of that very princess, in defence of his father's dominions; that she sent commissaries to Hanover, who shared with the crown of France the contributions extorted from that electorate; rejected all proposals of peace, and dismissed from her court the minister of Brunswick-Lunenbourg; that his imperial majesty, who had sworn to protect the empire, and oppose the entrance of foreign troops destined to oppress any of the states of Germany, afterwards required the king of England to withdraw his troops from the countries which they occupied, that the French army might again have free passage into his German dominions; that the emperor had recalled these troops, released them from their allegiance to their sovereign, enjoined them to abandon their posts, their colours, and the service in which they were embarked, on pain of being punished in body, honour, and estate: and that the king of England himself was threatened with the ban of the empire.
That defeated commander had, in the mean time, collected on the Weser the shattered remnant of his army, reinforced himself from the garrisons of Lower Saxony, and effected a junction in Hesse with Altringer and Fugger, who commanded under him. Again at the head of a considerable force, Tilly burned with impatience to wipe out the stain of his first defeat by a splendid victory.
The action of the king showed only his Hanoverian jealousy of the House of Brandenburg. It was certain that France, as soon as war broke out in the West, would attack his Electorate; and George sought help not at Berlin but at St. Petersburg. He concluded a treaty with Russia, which promised him the help of a Russian army on the Weser in return for a subsidy.
At the commencement of the struggle, a priest of Anglo-Saxon origin, whom St. Willibrod, bishop of Utrecht, had but lately consecrated, St. Liebwin in fact, undertook to go and preach the Christian religion in the very heart of Saxony, on the banks of the Weser, amidst the general assembly of the Saxons.
Pope Gregory IX wrote a great mass of nonsense to the bishop and other chiefs urging stringent methods against the Stedingers, Frieslanders, inhabiting the country between Weser and Zeider Zee. This Devil presides at their sabbath when they all kiss him and dance around him.
Witness the conquest of the Roman Empire by German tribes; the political genius, commercial success, and final colonial expansion of the English, a Teutonic people; and the peculiar strength of the German races resident within their old homes on the Rhine, the Danube, the Weser, and the Elbe, whenever they were not fatally disunited by domestic quarrel or unwise foreign ideals.
In the end the position would become an impossible one, and it would be easy after the war was over to indemnify Brandenburg with money and with private property in the heart of France for example, and obtain the cession of those most coveted provinces between the Meuse and the Weser to the King.
In 782 two of Charlemagne's lieutenants were beaten on the banks of the Weser, and killed in the battle, together with four counts and twenty leaders, the noblest in the army; indeed the Franks were nearly all exterminated. "At news of this disaster," says Eginhard, "Charlemagne, without losing a moment, re-assembled an army and set out for Saxony.
Piccolomini chose the fertile banks of the Weser for his winter quarters; but being outflanked by Banner, he was obliged to give way to the Swedes, and to impose on the Franconian sees the burden of maintaining his army.
Yet even at that time, and in the midst of the freest intercourse with German, Spanish, and other officers in Flanders and Brabant, young knights and light-hearted priests on the Rhine, the Main, the Danube, the Weser, and the Elbe, whose purses the pretty, vivacious girl, with the shining raven hair and bright blue eyes, the mistress of her art, seemed to their owners worthy to empty, she had by no means forgotten Lienhard.
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