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3 Visit to Münster.

"To Münster in Westphalia?" said an acquaintance of ours to whom we mentioned our design of visiting that place as a sequel to an Easter tour in Holland; "what an odd place to go to! I can conceive of no motive sufficient to attract any one there-except, indeed, one, and that is the interest connected with the Princess Galitzin." "Our very reason,' we replied. We had, in fact, a fancy for realising the haunts amid which a somewhat remarkable coterie of thoughtful and pious personages pursued the tenour of their lives about a hundred years ago, just at that period when the ideas of bettering society, and giving freer scope to reason, and promoting sound education, were kindling the souls of the best sovereigns, statesmen, and philosophers-of Frederick and Joseph II., of Turgot, of Peter Leopold, and the "Utopisti" of Italy; according to a curious fact not seldom traceable in human affairs, the conspicuous advance of improvement just before some revolutionary crisis which, whether for outweighing good or evil, precipitates the process from an unexpected quarter.

Among the beneficent rulers who thus, to a certain extent, anticipated the rough teachings of the French Revolution, none deserve remembrance better, for the good they aimed at or effected, than Franz Baron von Fürstenberg, the Prime Minister of Maximilian Friedrich, Prince Bishop of Cologne and Münster. It was on account of Fürstenberg's fame as an educational reformer, that the Princess Galitzin, the spirituelle wife of the Russian Ambassador at the Hague, took up her residence at the Westphalian capital in 1779, and became the centre of a social sphere which touched externally on many varieties of life, and even attracted the sympathetic interest of Göthe, a thinker as different as possible, in his general tendencies and creeds, from the mild mystics of Münster with whom he loved occasionally to associate.

In a former article (November, 1871) we enlarged on the Princess and her personal history, and took incidental notice of him whom she was wont to call "the great man," and for whom she professed almost unbounded reverence. We propose presently to say something more concerning Fürstenberg and his administration-an administration which would doubtless have ensured for itself a more notable place even than it has done in German history, had not the convulsions of Europe changed the conditions of national life so rapidly and completely before its legitimate results could be worked out.

But, coming to Münster with the memories of the Princess Galitzin

and Fürstenberg in our head, we were attracted to the contemplation of other episodes in the historic life of the quaint old city. We thought of the Vehmgericht, the mysterious tribunal of Lynch-law justice throughout "Münsterland" in the early Middle Ages-a subject too abstruse, however, for chance discussion-of the Anabaptists, of the Peace of Westphalia, of Bishop Galen, the Prince Bomba of the seventeenth century; and, as we mentally glanced at the various aspects of the past, we experienced a sort of pleasure in the reflection that the place had not been made too common a present touring-ground through the seductions of Murray and Bradshaw.

For, if we are not mistaken, few travellers of the ordinary class make Münster a part of their expeditionary programme. It does not lie in the highway to anything. You must break your railway journey in order to approach it either from Holland, or from Hanover, or from the Rhine. We made our way to it from Utrecht, changing carriages at Arnheim, and again at a place within the German border. There is no charm of beauty about the surrounding country that people should care to visit it for its own sake. The plains of Westphalia, amid which Münster is situated, are flat and monotonous. There is wood, there is pasture, there is arable land, there is a belt of mountains in the far distance, there are small river-courses, there are numerous windmills, there are Westphalian pigs ; but, as your engine puffs and grinds along the continuous level from Holland, there is nothing externally to arrest the attention till you come within sight of the city itself.

And here, having in our ignorance expected nothing but dulness in the outward aspect of things, our expectations were most agreeably disappointed. Münster presents a very striking memorial of the Middle Age and Renaissance periods of German street-architecture, and has much of the picturesque effect attaching to Nüremberg. In the chief street, or Principal Markt, the white houses are built over arcades, and have curiously graduated and ornamented gables. Their dates, carved outside, bear interesting testimony to the vicissitudes through which the life of Münster has been carried on. Next to a house bearing the year 1612 on its frontage, stands another proclaiming 1650 as its period of erection. Between these two lies the whole interval of the Thirty Years' War, when many houses in Germany were thrown down, but few built up. At first sight their style of presentment seems much the same; but look nearer, and we see in the debased rococo of the later edifice an unworthy imitation of the more solid columns and graceful outlines which mark the earlier. Opposite to these dwellings stands the Rath-haus, with its very picturesque outside dating from the fourteenth century. One of its chambers, the Frieden Saal, takes its name from the Peace of Westphalia, which was there signed and sealed in 1648, and contains numerous portraits and other memorials connected with that event. Another chamber, the Rathhaus Saal, has been fashioned and decorated within recent times, and on its walls are painted the figures of various worthies conspicuous in the annals of Münster. There may be seen the minister Von Fürstenberg,

and his friend the more famous minister Von Stein, who resided at Münster as Provincial President when Westphalia first became Prussian ; Overberg, the Inspector of Schools, and Clement Augustus von DrosteVischering, Vicar-General, and afterwards Archbishop of Cologne, whose name was noted in Prussian church affairs some five-and-thirty years ago. Among the local glories of the Renaissance a place must be assigned to the Stadtkeller, where once the wine stores of the city were deposited, and which is now used for the collections of the Art Union. The Stände-haus, situated in the Cathedral close, has been richly remodelled in modern Gothic, before which process it had served as the residence of Fürstenberg, and other leading men of Münster.

In the eighteenth century a great passion for handsome town residences seems to have beset the minds of the Westphalian nobility. Our early Hanoverian style is imposingly represented in the red brick mansions, with stone facings and high-slated roofs, which are known as the Merveldter Hof, the Erbdrosten Hof, the Beverförder Hof, also in the bishop's residence in the Dom Hof.

But to most persons the ecclesiastical edifices will seem to constitute the chief glory of the ancient Monasterium. The double towered cathedral was originally built at the period of transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic style of architecture. It has two short pyramidal spires, double transepts, low side aisles, a wide, heavy nave with broad spanned arches ; and a curious "Paradise," so called, at the southern porch, adorned with Byzantine pillars and sculptures. Next in interest to the cathedral are the Liebfrauen or Ueberwasser Kirche, the Ludgeri Kirche, and the Lamberti Kirche. The latter occupies a fine position at the head of the Principal Markt, and is in the best Gothic style of the fourteenth century. Its tower, which bends visibly out of the perpendicular, is surmounted by a graceful spire. But as we gaze at it, we pause; what are those small objects, pendant from the spire like nests? We turn to our guide-book inventory, and we learn with something of a start and a shudder-for it brings the facts of a savage past time into weird juxtaposition with the calm investigations of the moment-that those are the identical iron baskets or cages in which, more than three centuries ago, were suspended the bodies of John of Leyden and his lieutenants Knipperdolling and Krechting, who for two years held Münster under Anabaptist rule against the beleaguering forces of the Bishop and the Empire.

For two years from 1533 to 1535-this Münster, now the exercise ground of Prussian barrack officers and bureaucrats, claimed to be the Kingdom of Sion, the New Jerusalem; and Jan Bockelson, the fanatic tailor of Leyden, was its Monarch. It was a wild millenium that he presided over. All goods in common; polygamy in Mormonite excess; conflagration of all books of human learning; wholesale destruction of ecclesiastical images and ornaments; church pinnacles levelled to plant cannon, wherewith, and with well-constructed fortifications, a really efficient defence was in fact carried out. There were wild prophesyings

in the streets of Münster in those days: bacchanalian love-feasts, the "king" and his favourite wife, Divara, dispensing the bread and wine. Women flocked to the polygamous city; and nuns, throwing off their vows, were especially profligate and conspicuous. But at last there came scarcity. Friends from without-from Holland especially, where the Anabaptists were strong-tried to bring relief to the besieged; but Schomaker and his Frieslanders were met and crushed by an Imperial officer; thirty shiploads of sympathisers crossing the Zuyder Zee were overtaken and mostly drowned; an intended band of succour from Amsterdam was quelled by its fellow-citizens on the eve of its intended departure for the oppressed Zion. And so Münster grew more and more hungry. Useless crowds were dismissed from its gates; but John refused to hear of surrender, and cut off the head of one of his wives who ventured to counsel it-the sword is still preserved in the Rath-haus with which he committed the bloody deed. When treachery at last brought in the besieging forces, the reprisals were awful. John and his principal lieutenants were tortured with red-hot pincers, then executed; then hung up in those iron cages which we just now saw hanging from St. Lambert's spire. A strong military rule was introduced; two forts were built to hold rebellious spirits in check; an ecclesiastical reaction set in, and Münster, under its Prince Bishops, became one of the most rigidly Catholic cities in the Empire. But the energies of civic independence were not killed, and twenty years after the fall of the Anabaptists the inhabitants regained their old privileges and liberties from Bishop Franz von Waldeck, and gradually advanced in wealth and strength till the Thirty Years' War brought its desolations.

After the Thirty Years' War it was the special object of the petty princes of the Empire to stifle civic independence and to establish their local despotism à la Louis Quatorze-a task in which they were willingly seconded by the august potentate whom with one consent they made their model, and who was well aware that if his influence increased German nationality must decrease; and not only German nationality, but the personal authority of the German Emperor, his most formidable rival on the theatre of European politics. And so, from his ox-like dignity, Louis XIV. was well content to behold the imitation frogs on the other side of the river inflating themselves with French ideas and ambitions. The town councils and guilds of the Imperial cities meanwhile clung jealously to the privileges they claimed to inherit, till the forces of the time grew too strong for them. In the history of Bishop von Galen and his strife with Münster, we have these tendencies of the seventeenth century represented. Let us, while the spires and towers of the city cluster finely in yonder sunset glow, contemplate for a few minutes the stormy events of which it was then the scene.

Bernhard von Galen, treasurer of the Cathedral Chapter of Münster, was, on the death of Ferdinand of Bavaria (1650), appointed Prince Bishop of that city, separately from the Electorate of Cologne, which the late ruler had held with it. It was thought that the appointment of a VOL. XXX.-No. 179.

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working member of the Chapter, and his appointment to the see of Münster alone, would benefit the city, inasmuch as its former bishops, holding other dignities and domains, had been absentees, and had been tempted to postpone the interests of Münster to Electoral and other claims. But it soon appeared that the Town Council of Münster and their new. prelate had "views" reaching beyond the exigencies of the moment. Each side wished to establish its authority as against the other on the territory which the unsettled circumstances of the time had left debateable. Von Galen was a man of indomitable energy. He set to work at once to bring order into the state of local affairs, confused as it was by the long devastating war that had only just come to an end in the Peace Chamber of Münster. In pursuing this aim, he paid little heed to the constitutional rights of the burghers and civic officials; and the discontent he thereby aroused was assiduously fostered by Malingkrot, Dean of the Cathedral, and a disappointed candidate for the bishopric. Exasperated by the agitation, and aware of its principal agent, the Bishop resolved to arrest Malingkrot, and issued an "order" to the magistrates not to interfere with its execution. Now, constitutionally speaking, the word "order" was not one for the Bishop of Münster to use-he might only "entreat" the municipal functionaries of his capital; and so Bishop Galen was reminded, not a little to his anger. For the moment, however, he stifled his pride, and got the authorities to consent to a compromise, and to let his soldiers keep watch and ward over Malingkrot. But the factious dean gave his jailors the slip, and the townspeople became excited on his side; and finally the Bishop summoned the mayor and councillors to come to him at Coesfeld, twenty miles off, and give account of the uproar.

Manifestoes were now issued on both sides, and public attention, beyond the borders of Münsterland, began to be fixed on the affair. Meanwhile Von Galen set to work to organise a military force to serve him as ultima ratio. He did more, he concluded a so-called "alliance of the Rhine" with the Electors of Mayence, Cologne, and Trèves, and the Duke Palatine of Neuburg, for common defence against "possible attacks from without, and disturbances within." The magistrates on their side opened negotiations with the Swedes and the Dutch Republic. The Bishop tried to get possession of the city by stratagem; but as yet neither party wished for an open rupture, and the "Treaty of Schönfliet" (Feb. 1655) arranged that there should be amnesty for the past and a renewal of amicable relations between the pastor and his flock; only there should be an armed garrison within the city to "keep the peace" for them or between them; and in this stipulation lay the kernel of bitter antagonism. To whom should the garrison hold primary allegiance? to the Bishop or to the Town Council? In technical language, to which of the rival authorities did the jus presidii appertain? The citizens thought to outwit the Bishop by sending off a deputation to the Emperor and getting his sanction for their claim before the other side could be heard; but Bernhard was not long behind with his case for a counter claim. The Imperial Court, whose policy was comprised

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