they had reckoned without their host. The enemy they had to deal with was too vigilant to be surprised asleep; and the first man that reached the battlements was flung over as by an invisible hand into the yawning chasm of crag, far, far below. A second, a third, a fourth-in short, a crowd followed in succession, and met the same fate.

"For God and our right!" exclaimed the heroic Templars, as each new victim was added to the dreadful account.

The assailants were terrified, and would fain have fled.
"Once more," shouted their leader, "follow me."

They rushed impetuously onward: several of the knights fell before them. The outer works of the castle were carried; Four of its brave defenders, all that were left alive, retreated to the inner part of the fortress. It was then the gray of the morning; the fight had lasted all through the darkness of the night. Three of the four soon fell on the drawbridge; their corpses cumbered the path. The fourth, their aged chief, stood in the narrow footway-his gray hair streaming in the chilly breeze his gory glaive dealing death wherever it lighted. A hundred lances were levelled against his breast a hundred swords thirsted to drink his life-blood; but still he was all unharmed of them, and stood aloft in his loneliness, the impersonation of bravery and destruction.

"Surrender! surrender!" shouted the assailants.

"Honour and right!" cried the aged hero.

"Farewell! beloved brothers," said he, addressing the dead and dying knights at his feet, "we'll meet once more. Better die thus than at the stake, as our noble grand master and the best of our dear brethren did, by the treachery of a king and the hatred of a priest. Farewell! We'll soon meet."

The battle raged with unabated fury; the foremost of those who pressed on the bridge fell before his sword like corn under the sickle of the reaper; the rest hung back in fear and affright, like a pack of yelping hounds before a stately stag at bay.

"Sir Knight," spake the leader of the archiepiscopal troops, advancing to the front of the passive throng, "in God's name, surrender. You have done your duty; you have performed prodigies of valour. Such a man must not meet the death

inevitable, if you persevere. Give me up your arms, and depart hence in peace."

It might be compassion, or it might be policy, which dictated this speech; but whatever the motive, it had the same effect.

“Never,” cried the old knight,-" never shall I surrender more than my brothers. With them have I lived, with them shall I die. Honour and right are our watchwords; and for them will I fight to the last."

“Honour and right!" he exclaimed, as he struck down, at two blows, two of the most daring of his assailants; and the same words were a sure presage of death to two more who succeeded.

rear.

"A truce! a truce!" shouted a thousand voices in the

There was an immediate pause; even the hoary champion of the Temple rested a moment from the work of slaughter, to know what it meant.

A herald on a foaming horse came dashing up the precipitous path to the gate of the castle.

"A truce! a truce!" he shouted.

emperor with peace and pardon.”

"I come from the

“Peace and pardon from the emperor," echoed the host, The Templar stood unmoved, his dripping blade raised aloft in the act to smite the first who advanced towards him.

“Cease!” cried the leader of the opposing force.

The herald alighted, and delivered to him his credentials. "Sir Knight," said he, when he had glanced at their contents, "here is peace and pardon. The emperor in his august clemency gives back to thy order the goods they are at present possessed of, to have and to hold till death. Honour and Sheathe thy sword. The emperor give

right are now thine.

thee grace."

"Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the overjoyed troops. "Honour is ours,” replied the old knight solemnly; "but pardon I wot not of. Grace is with God alone; not with That experienced to their cost our noble grand master and our beloved brethren, allured to France from their far-off

man.

homes in fair Cyprus. I fight for honour and right, and for them shall I die! Keep clear!"

He waved his gory glaive, and again two of the foremost fell before him; two more followed, and shared the same fate. The troops now became exasperated; they stormed and raged like wild beasts: but the undaunted old man still stood calm and unyielding, dealing out death on every side.

"Yield ye, or die!" shouted the leader of the assailants, springing forward on him.

"Well met," said the Templar. "For life or for death."

In a second they were locked in each other's deadly grasp. For some moments the dreadful struggle between them was equal. The grand attack was suspended; and all men held in their breath to watch its issue. No word was spoken by either party. The leader of the archiepiscopal troops was young, and strong, and brave; but he had to deal with one who had grown old in strife, and who was master of all its manifold stratagems. They tottered they advanced-they receded: the object of the former was evidently to get the old man under; but the object of the latter could not be so clearly divined. At length the aged knight leaned an instant, as in weariness, or to draw breath, against the broken balustrade of the drawbridge; his stalwart arms still, however, compressing his adversary in their unshrinking gripe.

"Yield thee! yield thee!" cried the leader, "yield thee, or die ! "

"Honour and right!" were the only words the Templar uttered, as throwing himself over the bridge with a sudden jerk, he carried his opponent with him.

They were dashed to pieces on the rugged rocks below.
Thus perished the last of the Templars of Lahneck.

RHENS. — THE KÖNIGSTUHL.

The town of Rhens, on the left bank of the Rhine, is small and mean, and it has never been otherwise in the memory of man; yet in all Germany there is not, perhaps, a single spot where transactions of greater importance to the empire took

place, or which is more noted in the history of the middle ages. The celebrity of Rhens, however, does not arise from any thing incidental to itself, or its inhabitants, past or present, but from the circumstance of the Königstuhl, or Royal Throne, having been situated close by it.

The Königstuhl, or Royal Throne, stood on a little hill adjacent to Rhens, and for ages formed an object of wonder and reverence to the German people. Though but a small structure, it covered a portion of four principalities-the archdiocesses and electorates of Mainz, Treves, and Cologne, and the palatinate of the Rhine. It was a plain octagon building, consisting of a frieze supported on eight pillars, with a ninth pillar in the centre. It had a flat roof, on which were placed seven stone seats for the seven electors, and one raised above the rest, in the middle, for the emperor. The ascent to this platform was by fourteen stone steps, on the south side of the edifice. On each seat were emblazoned the arms of the electorate to which it appertained; and on that of the emperor were painted those of the empire.

On this platform some of the weightiest deliberations of the empire were held, and some of the most important decisions arrived at. On the election of Henry the Seventh, of the house of Luxemburg, A.D. 1308, his accession took place at this spot; and in the records of that event, it is alluded to as an ancient and long-established custom pertaining to the place, that the Emperors of Germany were uniformly chosen there. The first historical mention of Rhens and its locality is to be found in a work of that era ;* but that does not at all detract from its antiquity, as its existence and privileges seem to have been recognised for a long period previously.

The reign of Henry the Seventh was not inglorious nor unprofitable for the empire, though it sustains, in history, the

* "In Gestis Balduini Archiepisc. Trevir." The passage in which allusion is made to Rhens runs thus:-"Dominus Baldewinus, aliique sex collectores, villam Rense inter Confluentiam et Boperdiam sitam-ubi ex antiquâ consuetudine ad tractatum de electione habendum consueverunt, convenire concorditer diverterunt," &c. Baldwin, count of Luxemburg, brother to Henry the Seventh and Archbishop and Elector of Treves, governed that principality from A. D. 1307 to 1354.

comparative disadvantage of almost immediately following the long and brilliant administration of Rudolph von Habsburg. The family influence of Henry was not great, inasmuch as his house, though very ancient,* was not widely connected, nor largely possessed of wealth or territory; but he was a man of great personal merit,-courageous, discreet, politic, and shrewd; and he was, moreover, supported in his position by the two most powerful of the imperial electors,-his brother, Baldwin, archbishop of Treves; and Peter von Aichspalt, archbishop of Mainz, previously his own physician, but subsequently created Bishop of Basil, and then elector of that archdiocess by Clement the Fifth, in gratitude for a famous cure wrought on him by his skill, when he lay deadly sick at Avignon.† The first act of Henry was to establish the interrupted peace of the empire; his next, to settle the various claims for power which then split the respective classes of the German community into knots of partisans individually inimical to each other, and adverse in their proceedings to the general welfare of the state. In these things he proved himself a wise prince. Not so, however, in those which followed. Like all his predecessors, with the exception, perhaps, of the great Rudolph, he too was seized with the mania of meddling in Italian matters; and he desired, above all things, to perform the unsubstantial and idle pageant of a coronation in Rome. At this period, Italy was torn to pieces by the intestine feuds of the Guelfs and Ghibellines; and the inhabitants of that beautiful land, to a man, were partisans of the one party or of the other. The arrival of Henry was hailed with joy by both: each hoped to secure his aid against the other; and every device which the subtle policy of the south could put into practice was brought to bear on him for that purpose. But, like a prudent sovereign, he listened to all, and sided with neither: his great object was to bring about a reconciliation between them; and every appearance at the outset of his proceedings bade fair to transmit his name to posterity as the pacificator of Italy.

* The house of Luxemburg purports to derive its descent from the beautiful Melusine, a water-nymph of the middle ages; and it claims to be coeval with the foundation of the Frankish monarchy.

+ Vide Lahneck, p. 66 of this volume.