Claimants to Royalty Part 2

After having thus endured the ups and downs of fickle fortune, this claimant, in hopes of ingratiating himself with the Franks, and at the suggestion of his ally Childebert, king of Metz, took upon himself the pseudo name of Clotaire, thus more distinctly marking his claim to the throne of his putative father Clotaire the First. But all the arts of the pretender were unavailable to obtain the a.s.sistance or recognition of Gontran, king of Orleans, who took up arms in defence of the real heir to the throne, the veritable Clotaire the Second, a child of tender years, and who, despite the fact that Gondebaud's forces were commanded by the best generals of the country, by fight or stratagem gradually deprived him of all his treasures, allies, and, finally, of his life. For the pretender's chief adherents finding that Gontran was determined to resist him to the uttermost, and probably seeing little prospect of his ultimately obtaining any permanent power in the country, determined to abandon Gondebaud to his fate; he was, however, so strongly fortified, and so well provided with every necessary of war in his stronghold, that his foes found the only method of dislodging him was by stratagem.

Gontran accordingly got Queen Brunechild, the mother of his adopted heir, Childebert, to write to our hero, under the pretence of her being secretly in his interest, and advise him to remove with all his treasure to Bordeaux, where he would have the command of both land and sea. Duped by this woman, the unfortunate claimant forsook his refuge, and put himself _en route_ for Bordeaux. On the road he fell in with an ambuscade of the enemy's, which succeeded in stripping him of all the treasure he had acc.u.mulated, but did not prevent him arriving at his destination.

Bordeaux sustained a siege of some weeks on the pretender's account, but during the whole of that time traitors in and out of the city were bargaining for his betrayal. At last, his chief men, thinking to ransom their lives with his, persuaded the pseudo Clotaire to go outside the city to confer with the foe as to the terms of peace, and as soon as he was without the walls they closed the gates upon him, leaving him to his fate. He was seized by the besiegers and dragged on to a hillock outside their camp, where he was flung down by one of their commanders; and as the unhappy man was still rolling, the traitor Boson beat out his brains with a battle-axe. Thus perished this luckless pretender to the throne of the Franks, whether a son or not of Clotaire the First, equally unfortunate.

THE FALSE CLOVIS THE THIRD OF FRANCE.

A.D. 676.

When Clotaire the Third came to the French throne he was only five years old; consequently the affairs of the kingdom had to be entrusted to the guidance of a regent. The man selected to fill this post was Ebroin, and the choice appeared in every respect admirable. Ebroin was not only, apparently, fitted by birth and talent to sway the people, but he also possessed the qualification most desirable of all others for the time and clime in which he lived; that is to say, he was a valiant and experienced warrior.

a.s.sociated, however, with him in power, was Batilde, the queen dowager, a woman, according to all the priestly chroniclers, of great beauty and discretion, but doubtless much swayed by bigoted ecclesiastics. For some years the country enjoyed considerable prosperity: Batilde ruled with prudence and justice, and by keeping on good terms with the prelates has obtained no little historic fame; whilst Ebroin, having managed to quarrel with the Church, has left a reputation for all that is bad.

The queen dowager, either by compulsion or inclination, having resigned the cares of government, and taken refuge in the convent of Ch.e.l.les, the chief minister, Ebroin, or _Maire du Palais_, as he was styled, was enabled to give full vent to all those evil qualities which circ.u.mstances had hitherto compelled him to conceal. Taking the entire power into his own hands, he killed and ill-treated, confiscated and exiled, with as much arrogance as a reigning king. In the year 668 the boy Clotaire died, aged about eighteen; and Ebroin, contrary to the wish of the n.o.bles, placed Thierry, the younger brother of the deceased monarch, upon the throne, to the exclusion of the elder brother, Childerick, the next heir. He was induced to act thus in consequence of Thierry's youth, he being but eight, affording him a good opportunity of retaining the governing power in his own hands. In this act, however, he erred; for the nation, or at all events a powerful portion of it, revolted against his authority, overthrew him, and took both him and the prince Thierry prisoners. More merciful than was the wont in those days, the victors put neither of their prisoners to death, but contented themselves with shaving Ebroin's head--then deemed a terrible degradation--and confining him in a monastery, and with placing his youthful protege under priestly surveillance.

In 973, Childerick the Second, and his wife and child, were a.s.sa.s.sinated by a gentleman whom he had had brutally beaten for remonstrating with him somewhat freely on the danger of an excessive imposition that he had wished to establish. Taking advantage of the confusion into which the country was thrown by this sudden event, Ebroin made his escape from the monastery in which he had been immured, and, aided by a large number of malcontents, set up the standard of revolt against Thierry the Third, who now, in consequence of his brother's death, became the legitimate king. Ebroin was joined by the Governor of Austrasia, by two deposed bishops, and by many other influential men, all of whom shared with him an intense hatred of Leger, Bishop of Autun, who now held the reins of power. In order to obtain more partisans amongst the people, Ebroin and his comrades brought forward a lad of about twelve or thirteen years of age, and a.s.serted that he was a son of Clotaire the Third, who was believed to have died in 670, in his nineteenth year.

There was just a possibility of this boy having been Clotaire's son, although an illegitimate one, no proof of the deceased monarch's marriage ever having been adduced; and as illegitimacy was not in those days deemed a bar to the crown, the claim of little Clovis the Third, as Ebroin had him styled, may have been as valid as that of his compet.i.tors. Be that as it may, historians have also termed this youthful pretender, or rather tool of the conspirators, the _false_ Clovis. The lad was attired in royal robes, and taught to affect a majesty of deportment towards all those who came to render him homage, whilst all those who refused to acknowledge him as king were maltreated, and their goods seized by his followers. His reign, however, was of short duration. Bishop Leger having been captured, deprived of sight, and thrown into prison, the great n.o.bles and chieftains succ.u.mbed at once, and Ebroin found the whole power of the country in his own hands; he, therefore, deemed it better to make terms with Thierry, who willingly replaced him in his post of _Maire du Palais_, conditionally upon being left in nominal possession of the sovereignty.

Having thus attained his purpose, Ebroin had no longer any need of his puppet, and at once relinquished the imposture; but what afterwards became of the boy king history does not relate. As regards the originator of the scheme, his cruelties and tyranny increased daily, so that when in 683, or three or four years after the re-establishment of his power, he was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a n.o.ble named Bermenfroy, whose property he had seized, and whose life he had menaced, it must have been a real relief to his country. Through Ebroin's death it was that a way was opened for the family of Pepin, the founder of the Carlovingian race, to acquire the dignity of _Maire du Palais_, and subsequently the monarchy of France.

SUATOCOPIUS OF MORAVIA.

A.D. 800.

To many casual readers it may seem a singular circ.u.mstance that nearly every claimant to regal paternity has found authors, more or less numerous, to espouse his cause, and a.s.sert his ident.i.ty with the monarch whose name he laid claim to. On inspection the singularity vanishes. Putting on one side the difficulties of investigation which ancient annalists had to encounter, and as a rule the defective evidence they had to judge by, the undeniable fact is arrived at that not a few of the so-called historians often wilfully misrepresented, falsified, omitted, and even invented _facts_ to suit their own party views.

Many of these forgeries the ac.u.men and research of later ages have exposed; many more will doubtless, in course of time, be discovered, but a still larger number in all probability linger undetected in the pages of history, and will ever remain so. It is unfortunate that the cla.s.s of men to whom we are compelled to resort chiefly for historic and social information prior to the invention of printing, are the very men whose writings it is necessary to hold in greatest doubt; and it is, beyond dispute, well ascertained that history which had to filter through a priest's brains, as a rule descended to posterity deeply tinged, to say the best of it, with the hue its author wished it to have in the eyes of the world.

aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, better known as Pius the Second, amongst his numerous works left a _History of Bohemia_, and the thirteenth chapter of that history details the events which have caused us to insert amongst the claimants to royalty the name of Suatocopius, leaving the reader to decide for himself as to the credibility of the aspirant's claim to the name and t.i.tle of the supposed slain monarch.

The Marcomanni, or Moravians, are a.s.serted to have been converted to Christianity about the middle of the ninth century by Methodius and Cyril, two Greek monks. These two men, noted in history for having implanted the Christian faith in Russia, Bulgaria, and the adjacent lands, were brothers, members of an ill.u.s.trious Thessalonican family, and distinguished for their learning and the purity of their lives.

About the year 860 these missionaries are stated to have appeared at the court of Suatocopius, a king whose sway was more or less acknowledged, not only by the Moravians, but also, according to priestly authority, by the Hungarians, Bohemians, Poles, and inhabitants of Black Russia, but who, notwithstanding the extent of his territories and the number of his subjects, was tributary to the Emperor of Germany, as had been his predecessors since the days of Charlemagne.

Converted by the Greek brothers to the Christian religion, Suatocopius is stated for many years to have set a good example to his subjects of all the virtues called royal; but finally, emboldened by the continuous prosperity of a long reign and the representations of his courtiers, he declined paying any more tribute into the imperial exchequer. This refusal at once involved him in warfare with the Emperor Arnulph, and in a battle which ensued the Moravians were defeated, and, so it was universally believed, their monarch slain. The body of Suatocopius could not be discovered, declares our chief authority, but the fact of his death was deemed indisputable, and his son was permitted by his G.o.dfather, the victor, to ascend the vacant throne.

Many years elapsed, and Suatocopius was probably forgotten, when some monks brought his son the astounding information that his father, the king, had only just expired, in the distant and mean hermitage whence they came. The tale which they told, and which their hearer placed entire credence in, according to the history of Pope Pius, was to the effect that for several years they had housed and fed a wanderer who one day had besought their hospitality; during the whole time he had lived with them he had cheerfully and patiently endured all the hards.h.i.+ps of their rough and indigent life, but finding his end approaching, the unknown had summoned them to his side and said:--

"Until the present moment you have not known who I am. Know then that I am the King of Moravia, who, having lost a battle, took refuge amongst you. I die, after having tasted the joys of reigning and of private life. The royal state is certainly not preferable to the repose of solitude. Here I sleep without fear and without disquietude, enjoying the calm and pleasures of life, tasting fruits and the purest water, which is far more agreeable than the most precious beverages the courts of kings afford. I have spent with you happily the remainder of the life G.o.d has granted me, and the time which I pa.s.sed upon the throne now seems to me to have been a continual death.... When I am dead inter my body in this place, but go, I beg you, and inform my son, if he be still alive, what I have told you."

Soon after this confession the supposed king died; his body was duly interred by his fellow monks, and information of his decease sent to the reigning monarch. He, with all diligence, had the body disinterred and brought to Volgrade, the capital of Moravia, and, notwithstanding the years that had elapsed since the disappearance of Suatocopius, and the length of time the corpse had been buried, recognized the body as his father's, and had it deposited, with all due pomp and ceremony, in the royal sepulchre, to moulder, royal or plebeian, amid the ashes of his predecessors.

THE FALSE HENRY THE FIFTH OF GERMANY.

A.D. 1130.

Henry the Fifth of Germany, like so many other monarchs of the middle ages, had wrested the imperial crown from the head of his unfortunate father, Henry the Fourth. This latter emperor, having been dethroned by his unnatural son, took refuge with the Bishop of Liege, in whose city he died of grief.

The fifth Henry was fully recompensed for his undutiful conduct by the continual rebellion of his subjects in different portions of the imperial dominions, by the bitter hostility of his former friend, Archbishop Albert, of Mainz, and by the unceasing persecution of the Papacy. Henry the Fifth died childless in 1125, worn out with strife, and the sceptre pa.s.sed into the hands of Lothaire the Second. Five years after the Emperor's death, a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Cluny, in Burgundy, startled his brother recluses by the a.s.sertion that he was the supposed deceased monarch, Henry the Fifth of Germany. He declared that being desirous of abdicating the crown which he had forced his unhappy parent to resign to him, he had spread the false intelligence of his own decease, and then had set out, in pilgrim garb, for the Holy Land. He narrated a pitiful tale of the indignities heaped upon his imperial head during the years of his pilgrimage; how he had narrowly escaped drowning through a man having brutally pushed him into the sea when he was on the point of embarkation; how he had been compelled by the Knights Templars, at Acre, to a.s.sist as a labourer at the construction of fortifications there; and many other equally edifying stories of his adventures. The monks appear to have believed in his ident.i.ty, and some authors a.s.sert that by the express commands of Pope Innocent the Second, a firm friend of the Emperor Lothaire the Second, he was never permitted to pa.s.s beyond the precincts of the abbey.

The historian Mezerai remarks that Henry was believed to have eventually retired to Angers, and to have ended his days as a servitor to the hospital there; having, however, previous to his death, acknowledged his rank to his confessor, and been seen and recognized by his wife Maud, daughter of Henry the Second of England, who had taken another consort in the person of Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou.

THE FALSE ALEXIS OF THE ORIENT.

A.D. 1186.

In Gibbon's grand work there is, probably, no episode more graphically and characteristically described than the story of Andronicus Comnenus; and no more hapless a fate than that which the unfortunate young Emperor Alexis received at the hands of the miscreant. The whole narrative comes to us originally from the pen of the historian Nicetas, who, being Secretary of State at the time, was not only a competent recorder, but also a veritable eyewitness of many of the startling incidents he relates. Gibbon merely carries his account of the youthful monarch up to the period of his death, but Nicetas favours his readers with a record of the still more wonderful events which were a.s.sociated with the name of Alexis, long after his real or alleged murder.

Upon the death of the renowned Alexis, Emperor of the Eastern Empire, his nephew, bearing the same name, was called to the throne. The young monarch being only thirteen years of age, was placed under the guardians.h.i.+p of his mother Xene, and of his cousin Andronicus, a man of great audacity and courage, but who, despite his royal birth, had suffered innumerable vicissitudes of fortune. Her coadjutor speedily contrived to get the empress mother banished, forcing her own son to sign the warrant of exile; and then, still fearful of the poor woman's influence in the state, had her strangled. By these criminal proceedings having got all the real power of the empire into his own hands, Andronicus determined to secure himself against the probable future compet.i.tion of his nephew, whom he had already compelled to accept him as a colleague in the government, by having him murdered.

It is surprising how readily the usurper appeared to find men of high position ready to execute his nefarious schemes. Amongst the names of the five wretches who are recorded to have a.s.sa.s.sinated their youthful sovereign, is that of John Camaterus, who subsequently became Patriarch of Bulgaria, and that of a Secretary of State. Three of the murderers are said to have strangled the boy with a bowstring, and to have been subsequently a.s.sisted by two others to fling the body into the sea.

After the a.s.sa.s.sination had been completed, Andronicus wished to view the body of his deceased relative, who was only fifteen at the date of his murder. Upon the corpse being brought into his presence, the inhuman monster is recorded to have spurned it with his foot, and to have used opprobrious language to it, and of its dead parents. The head, it is averred, was then severed from the body, and, after having been mutilated and stamped with the imperial seal, was flung out of doors, whilst the rest of the poor lad's remains were enclosed in a leaden chest, and were, as above remarked, flung into the sea.

This almost incredible tale of horror is but one out of the many terrible crimes imputed to Andronicus, who amongst other deeds is alleged to have obtained forcible possession of Agnes, daughter of Louis the Seventh of France, the wife, or rather the betrothed, of the murdered Alexis. In a little while, and the cup of his enormity was full. Before the third year of his tyranny had expired the discovery of his intention to have Isaac Angelus, a person of great popularity, a.s.sa.s.sinated, drove that n.o.bleman into open rebellion; the populace espoused his cause, placed him on the throne, and having discovered and seized Andronicus, put him to death by means of tortures too horrible to detail.

Some two years or so elapsed, during which time Isaac Angelus remained in unopposed possession of the imperial throne, when suddenly a most unexpected claimant appeared in the person of a handsome young man of about twenty years of age, who proclaimed himself to be the Emperor Alexis, supposed to have been murdered some years before. Travelling from land to land in order to obtain armed a.s.sistance for the recovery of his alleged rights, he ultimately arrived in Armenia, then under the dominion of the old Sultan Saladin. The Mohammedan sovereign was only too pleased at the prospect of a war with his Christian neighbours; he at once promised the needed a.s.sistance, a.s.serting that it should not be said of him that he allowed so n.o.ble and accomplished a prince (who was, moreover, the son of his old friend, the Emperor Emanuel), to go wandering about the earth, despoiled of his fine empire by a relative's cruelty.

As soon as it was known that Saladin was raising troops with a view of a.s.sisting the claimant to make war upon the empire, Isaac sent an amba.s.sador to beg him not to allow an impostor to deceive him into supporting so bad a cause. The Sultan caused the amba.s.sador to be introduced to the pseudo Alexis, who regarded the envoy with great hauteur, and reproached him fiercely for undertaking the commission of the man who was withholding from his legitimate monarch the rights which Heaven had given him; indeed, to such an extent did his real or simulated rage carry him, that had he not been withheld he would have torn the amba.s.sador's beard.

Whereupon Saladin stopped the interview, dismissing the amba.s.sador with the a.s.surance that he was resolved to support the cause of his guest unto the utmost.

Aided by the Sultan, the pretended Alexis set to work to raise troops, and, in a short time, found himself at the head of eight thousand well-equipped and determined men. He soon became the idol of his little host, which, gradually swelling by the incorporation of several bands of redoubtable warriors, speedily a.s.sumed the proportions of a regal army. Having many able officers and experienced soldiers with him, he was enabled to a.s.sume the offensive with great success, and in a short time took several cities and fortified places by a.s.sault. In Halone his victorious arms met with great resistance, which so enraged him that he put everybody to the sword, and destroyed the towns by fire. His success doubtless procured him many adherents, but there is every reason to believe numbers flocked to his banners in the belief that he was the veritable person he pretended to be; he bore a strong resemblance to the deceased prince, especially in the colour and beauty of his hair, and the hesitation or stutter in his voice.

Prince Alexis, brother of the Emperor Isaac, who commanded the army sent to oppose his progress, hesitated to give him battle, preferring stratagem to open warfare. At last a priest, who was in the service of the pretender, was suborned to relieve the imperialists of their powerful foe. Waiting his opportunity, he one night surprised his master, sleeping soundly after the day's exertions, and with his own sabre severed his head from the body. The traitor carried his ghastly spoil to the Emperor's brother, who was surprised at the remarkable resemblance which it bore to the hair and features of the unfortunate Alexis. Parting, says Nicetas, the fair locks of the severed head with his whip-handle, the imperial prince remarked that it was not without reason that several towns had received the impostor as their lawful sovereign; but, he added, "he is now punished for his crimes."

It is strange, but not unparalleled, that soon after the death of this claimant to the name and t.i.tle of the young Emperor, another impostor appeared in Paphlagonia, and collected a very large number of partisans together; but after a short course of rapine and murder, he was defeated and slain by the imperial general.

THE FALSE BALDWIN OF FLANDERS.

A.D. 1225.

In 1205 the recently elected Emperor of Constantinople, Baldwin, Hereditary Count of Flanders and Hainault, was defeated and taken prisoner by Joannice, King of Bulgaria. The release of the ill.u.s.trious captive was demanded by Pope Innocent the Third, but the barbarian victor contented himself with replying that Baldwin had died in prison.

He did not condescend to furnish any particulars of his decease, but rumour supplied the omission by inventing and retailing all kinds of terrible tales of his murder, the most noteworthy of which the curious reader may find upon referring to the pages of Gibbon. The real circ.u.mstances of his death never came to light, but there does not appear to be the slightest reason for doubting the fact itself; the intelligence was credited by his allies and subjects, and nothing plausible has been advanced to account for Joannice a.s.serting it if untrue. His brother Henry, however, who, upon the news of Baldwin's defeat and capture, had been appointed Regent, would not consent to receive the imperial crown until the lapse of a twelvemonth after the fatal intelligence; and the mystery with which the barbarian victor's prisons was enshrouded would appear to have inspired the Latins with a belief in the prolonged existence of their monarch.