A Mad Monarch

ONE of the most important and salutary lessons of modern science is that which teaches us to study history in the light of psycho-pathology, and to look upon the many sovereigns who, especially in ancient and mediæval times, have been a curse to their subjects and a disgrace to humanity as morbid forces working uncontrolled in the body politic, malignant in their manifestations as cancers in the physical body, and with scarcely a greater degree of moral quality in their actions.

Of all the dreadful Roman emperors of the first century, Domitian is deservedly the most notorious for deeds of freakish cruelty and mad extravagance. He wasted in the erection of magnificent edifices and in games the treasure which his father, the prudent and economical Vespasian, had accumulated ; and no sooner did financial stress put a check upon the execution of his wild projects than he became violent, and began to wreak his rage on imaginary persecutors. He lent a ready ear to venal courtiers and vile informers, and sacrificed to his morbid fears and suspicions the best men of his time.

That this ruler, whom historians have uniformly portrayed as a monster of depravity, was really a victim of paranoia appears scarcely to admit of question. Modern alienists would entertain no doubt whatever in such cases, and modern parliaments would not suffer such persons to remain in power and do detriment. to the state. So far, at least, even in Germany, where constitutional government is as yet in its infancy, the people, through their representatives, can effectually restrain

Had Ludwig II. been an absolute monarch. with obsequious ministers and servile satellites to do his bidding, the record of his barbarous acts would rival that of Caligula or Nero. His commands to scourge the members of his cabinet and other men of political position, and to put out their eyes, could not have then been met with a simple smile of compassion, but might have been as fatal to Von Lutz and Von Crailsheim as the suspicions of Domitian were to Helvidius Priscus and Herennius Senecio. That the advisers of the crown have shown themselves very weak, and deserve reproof and correction for enduring so long the follies and whimseys of a crazy monarch, seems to be generally admitted; but the only punishment that can be properly administered to offending ministers in free countries is to he beaten at the polls, the legally authorized whipping-post for recreant politicians.

Nero was a gentle youth, of rare endowments and rather poetic temperament, and passionately fond of music. These qualities appealed strongly to the imagination and excited the admiration and enthusiasm of the Roman people, who thought they recognized in him an heir to the imperial purple who would do honor to his teacher and counselor, the philosopher Seneca. He ascended the throne at seventeen, and died a suicide at thirty-one, after having gratified, during the last ten years of his reign, almost every conceivable form of lust and lavishment. His expenditures for gorgeous theatrical spectacles and architectural extravagances, of which his famous golden house (aurea domus) was a specimen, exhausted the resources of Italy. It would be difficult to find in human annals a more striking example of the demoralizing and deranging effects of absolute and irresponsible power upon a more than usually brilliant but highly imaginative and immature intellect.

Making due allowance for difference in time and place, and for eighteen centuries of progress in civilization and the science of government, it was under somewhat analogous circumstances that Ludwig II. came to the Bavarian throne. In the first place, there was a double taint of insanity in his blood, derived collaterally both from the Hohenzollern and the Wittelsbach stock. A sister of his father, was a mild lunatic, and his mother was first cousin to the crazy Frederick William IV. of Prussia. Then his early education was bad for him. His father was a sort of pedagogical doctrinaire, who applied with extreme and injudicious rigor certain theories of education, which are always of doubtful correctness, and were certainly wrong and decidedly hurtful in this case. In order to make him earnest and manly, he was deprived of his playthings at an age when children take most delight in them and receive the greatest benefit from them. For a long time after the confiscation of his toys, there was nothing left for him to love and fondle but a little: mud-turtle, a rather reticent and un reciprocating pet, of retiring habits, and not especially adapted to awaken and develop the affections. Even this sluggish and unsympathetic playmate was finally set aside us “ too dissipating ” for the youthful mind. This harsh and wholly absurd discipline, which was intended to produce strength of character and selfreliance, rendered the child surly and selfish and unnaturally prone to solitude. No wonder, too, that he hated the memory of his father ; it would he hardly possible for him to entertain any other feelings towards such a parent.

Again, King Maximilian thought to inculcate the virtue of economy by putting his children, Ludwig and Otto, on very short allowances financially. The pocket-money of each prince amounted to about twenty-five cents a week. It is said that Otto, having heard that a sound tooth was worth ten florins, tried to increase his funds by requesting a dentist to pull out one of his best bicuspids and sell it. But this attempt to raise the wind only brought a domestic hurricane upon his head. The queen, however, pondered this thing in her heart, and the Taschengeld of the boys was soon afterwards slightly increased. The heir to the Bavarian throne very rarely enjoyed in his youth the pleasure of attending the theatre and the opera, which in Germany the poorest classes of the people are not obliged to deny themselves. Harmless and healthful diversions of this kind seem to have been quite excluded from the royal plan of education.

Had Maximilian lived to the allotted age of threescore years and ten, his severe system of instruction and discipline might have been beneficial, or at least less baneful in its results; unfortunately, he died at fifty-one, and his son was called to the throne at eighteen, just as he was about to enter the University of Würtzburg for the study of politics, in the scientific sense of that much-abused and sadly-degraded term.

It is not the purpose of this paper to give a history of the reign of Ludwig II. ; suffice it to say that he was a young man of fair abilities and noble aspirations, liberal-minded and animated by pure and generous motives. As he stated, on taking the oath of fidelity to the constitution, he aimed honestly to promote “ Bavaria’s welfare and Germany’s greatness.” In the Culturkampf he sided with culture against clericalism, and one of his chief merits as a ruler was the wholesome check which he put upon ultramontane arrogance and aggressions. The firm attitude he maintained on these questions was due in a great measure to the influence of Schiller’s poetry, the legendary heroism of William Tell, and the fiery eloquence of Marquis von Posa. These ideal conceptions, as

and breathes into them the breath of dramatic life, remained, after all, the truest and weightiest privy councilors of the crowned and sceptred idealist. That he should ever have been regarded as a person of great intellectual power or exceedingly brilliant talents must be ascribed to the glamour which blurs the eyes of those who look up with admiration to royalty, especially when embodied in the form of youthful beauty and an uncommonly imposing presence. Even now, after so many dreadful and disgusting facts have come to light, one cannot but marvel at

The excessive adulation paid to Ludwig on his accession to the throne was enough to turn the steadiest head, much more that of a romantic youth, who had led hitherto a lonely life under strict tutelage, and knew nothing of the hollow fawning of courtiers and the shameless flattery of sycophants. The local press indulged in raptures and rhapsodies and sentimental drivel, such as only the German Jenkins is capable of ; and poets fell into ecstatic fits, and vied with each other in bepraising him as " a heavenly vision,” " a godlike form,” “ an avatar of beauty.” Even the octogenarian Ludwig I. bestrode again and for the last time his stiff and spavined Pegasus, — whose wonted pace is shown in the halting hexameters which adorn the arcades of the Hofgarten in Munich, — and indited a sonnet to his grandson’s eyes, comparing them to the rapt eyes of the Pompeian Adonis as he lies wounded in the arms of Venus. The occasion of this effusion was the young king’s betrothal to the Duchess

Sophie Charlotte, in 1867. An upturned movement and slight rolling of the eyes, which, according to the grandfatherly Muse, seemed

was a marked and much-admired peculiarity of Ludwig II., supposed to indicate sublimity of thought and elevation of character. This expression, which gave him the appearance of ” a saint in ecstasy,” was caused partly by a habit of throwing his head back and resting it on the nape of his neck, as he walked; and this tendency to carry his head high, in a literal as well as in a figurative sense, grew upon him from year to year. “ A high look” does not necessarily imply “ a proud heart,” as the Hebrew proverbial philosopher suggests, but more frequently betokens a diseased brain. It is a phenomenon often observable in horses which are thus affected, and therefore known to jockeys and farriers as “ sky-gazers.” It may well be doubted whether, in the case of a common citizen, a characteristic so strongly symptomatic of incipient mental aberration would have been so long regarded as a sign of spiritual loftiness and regal majesty.

Ludwig II. showed at an early age a decided love for the fine arts, especially for music, and considerable taste and critical penetration in his appreciation of them. Lohengrin greatly excited his enthusiasm, while he was yet CrownPrince ; partly on account of the legendary-romantic character of the story, and partly because the swan-knight was associated with the Castle of Hohenschwangau, or Schwanstein, as it was formerly called, where he had passed much of his childhood. Through his munificent patronage of Richard Wagner, he is intimately and inseparably connected with a great epoch in the history of modern music. No competent and unprejudiced person will deny the eminently original and creative genius of Wagner as a composer and a dramatic poet; at the same time, no one not blinded by prepossession and partisanship will fail to perceive and admit the inordinate egotism and utter selfishness and essential meanness of the man. He lived in princely style at the expense of his royal Maecenas, whom he also persuaded to build a splendid theatre in Munich for the special representation of his “ musical dramas.”' This project failed, owing to the violent and almost universal opposition it encountered. A fierce wrath, which even beer could not assuage, fired the hearts of the proverbially dull and phlegmatic Munichers, who fought this “ new Wagnerian extravagance ” with tooth and nail ; and now that the proposed theatre has been established at Bayreuth, and attracts throngs of strangers with long purses, they are ready to rend their garments and tear their hair at their own shortsightedness and stupidity. They scoffed at the “ music of the future,” and had not the slightest presentiment of the nearness and brilliancy of that future. It is a common saying in Germany that Bavaria will be the best place to emigrate to at the approaching end of the world, since that event, like everything else, will be sure to come off there fifty years later than in any other country. The Bavarians will be behind the times even as to the point when time shall be no more, and will enter as laggards upon the eternal life.

It is no wonder that, under such circumstances, King Ludwig’s premature and yet remarkably prescient attempt to further the magnificent but costly schemes of his favorite,

“ And plant the great Hereafter in the Now,” should have proved abortive ; no wonder, too, that he felt intensely disgusted at the constant hindering and final thwarting of plans for which his sympathies had been warmly enlisted, and which he regarded as promoting the highest interests of art and the future welfare and growth of his capital as an art-city. At the same time, one can hardly be surprised that the citizens of Munich, proud of possessing already the largest opera-house in Germany, should have regarded this scheme as a work of supererogation and sinful extravagance. Never, however, since Samson overthrew the temple at Gaza did selfcomplacent and contumelious Philistinism bring down swifter punishment upon its blockish head.

The strong tide of popular feeling which set in swelled to high flood, and did not ebb until it bad swept away the project of the theatre and borne Wagner into exile. Could the young monarch have had his will in this matter, there is no doubt that the ultimate result would have added immensely to the material prosperity as well as to the architectural beauty and general attractiveness of Munich. A new quarter of the city would have grown up on the bluffs of the Isar, and the building mania of the king, extravagant as it afterwards became, would not have led him, demon-like, up into mountain wilds and out into desert places, but would have served, at least, to enlarge and adorn the Bavarian metropolis. Naturally enough, this unfortunate episode embittered Wagner, whose influence did not cease with his banishment, but tended to estrange the youthful sovereign from his -people, and to foster in him an exorbitant sense of his royal might and majesty, which in the course of a few years assumed the form of an imperious and incurable Grossenwahn.

Ludwig’s early training was not adapted to teach him the proper value and use of money, but merely to excite in him a feverish desire to have it and to spend it. The stinting method, which was intended to inculcate the virtue of thrift, could hardly fail to make him a reckless spendthrift. “ Frugality,” says Burke, “ is founded on the principle that all riches have limits ; ” and this lesson can be learned only from experience. Ludwig II. does not seem to have had the slightest conception of the existence of such limitations either on the side of poverty or of wealth. A thousand marks or a million marks were expressions which conveyed to his mind merely a vague idea of “ much money ; ” just as a lake and the ocean appeal with equal force to the rude imagination of the savage as “big water.” He once inquired of an attendant what his yearly income was. “ Three thousand marks ” ($750), replied the man, in expectation of an increase of salary, “ How in the world do you manage to spend so large a sum ? ” exclaimed the king, with unfeigned astonishment. And yet he would give a pourboire of a thousand marks for the most trivial service that pleased his fancy, and looked upon twenty million marks for building purposes as a mere bagatelle.

In the financial straits to which his prodigality reduced him, Ludwig made frantic efforts to borrow money from various sovereigns and sundry other persons, such as the emperors of Germany and Brazil, the kings of Belgium and Sweden, the Archduke of Este, and the Count of Paris. The rumor that, in his negotiations with the house of Orleans, he agreed to guarantee the neutrality of Bavaria in case of war between France and Germany, in return for a loan of forty million marks, is false. As his madness increased, he became more and more incapable of moderating his desires and enduring any check upon his will. The restraints of constitutional government grew exceedingly irksome to him, and he commissioned a Munich professor to find some autocratic state which he could get in exchange for Bavaria.

At times he was very violent, and, being a man of great physical strength, often put his attendants in peril of life and limb. About thirty persons were more or less seriously injured by him, and one was killed, not to mention the unfortunate Dr. von Gudden. For slight offenses he condemned his servants to be confined in the donjon of his castle Neuschwanstein, or to be banished to America, where they were to be placed under the supervision of the police. One lackey, whom he accused of looking at him in an unseemly manner, was obliged to wear a black mask in the royal presence for a whole year ; another had a seal set on his forehead, on account of his supposed stupidity, He cherished a particularly strong antipathy to the Crown-Prince of Prussia, and busied himself from time to time with the organization of a band of bravoes, who were to seize Frederick William, but by no means to kill him, as the king wished to keep him in close custody, and see him “ pine away with grief and longing for his family.”

His majesty was also the victim of many comparatively harmless hallucinations. Thus he never failed to pay homage to a certain tree, and to give his benediction to a certain hedge, as he passed them. On returning to Linderhof, after a long absence, he always embraced a column, which stands at the entrance of this lonely, and therefore favorite, country-seat. He was wont to dine with the bust of Louis XIV., treating it as if it were Le Grand Monarque himself, and frequently stood in reverential attitude for hours before a statue of Marie Antoinette, at the feet of which the court fourrier was obliged to kneel, with outstretched, supplicating hands, although probably in anything but a prayerful frame of mind. When the king withdrew, he did so by walking slowly backwards, and then turned away, as though the parting from the image of the person, whom he evidently worshiped as a martyred and sainted queen, were extremely painful. He was a Louis Quatorze fanatic, and endeavored to surround himself with the objects and live in the style of that epoch.

Toward the end of his life, however, he developed a passion for Chinese ceremonial.

There has been no lack of mad monarchs in the world, — not only “mad in craft,” but also “ essentially in madness.” Students of English history will think first of George III., and it is evident that the brutal Frederick William I. of Prussia was not quite perfect in his mind. But the most remarkable parallel to the late King Ludwig’s case is that of the German Emperor Rudolf II., who reigned and raged from 1576 to 1612. He, too, spent immense sums in fitting up palaces, especially on the Hradschin, in Prague, where he could live in comparative seclusion, in gorgeously furnished apartments filled with costly works of art. An inordinate jealousy of his imperial dignity and sovereign rights led him to throw many innocent persons into prison, or put them to death and confiscate their property. In his love of science and appreciation of scientific men he was far in advance of his age : he protected Tycho de Brahe and John Kepler against priestly intolerance and persecution, as the Bavarian king showed marked favor to Dr. Döllinger when under the ban of the papal see. Both sovereigns were betrothed to cousins, but had an insuperable aversion to marriage, and lapsed at length into inveterate misogyny. In fact, there is hardly a characteristic in the one that does not find its counterpart in the other; unfortunately, the German emperor was not restrained in his actions by any parliamentary authority, but presented the fearful spectacle of a madman invested with absolute power. It is also significant of the age in which each lived that Rudolf was thought to be possessed of the devil, and that the church made repeated attempts to exorcise the evil spirit; while the foul fiend which tormented Ludwig was recognized at once as paranoia, a demon more dire than Beelzebub or Baalberith, not to be cast out by the conjuring arts of the priest, but to be controlled and cured, if possible, by the scientific methods of the psychiater.

The traditions which cling to royal personages and become current among the lower classes are often interesting as illustrating the origin of popular legends and the growth of mythology. The chronicles of the house of Wittelsbach furnish abundant material of this kind. Duke Christopher, who flourished in the fifteenth century, and whose adventures have been so quaintly and charmingly related by Franz Trautmann, is now almost as mythical as Samson, whom he equaled in feats of strength, and surpassed in generous acts of gallantry. Even the big black stone, weighing four hundred pounds, which lies riveted to the pavement in a court of the royal palace at Munich, the iron spikes in the adjacent wall, and the old lines of doggerel, which attest the genuineness of his muscular exploits, hardly suffice to convince us that he was a real historical character, and not a mere solar hero.

At the time of King Maximilian’s sudden death in 1864, an Austrian archduke was present in Munich on a special mission from Vienna, and a report was circulated that this ambassador extraordinary had brought a poisoned brooch as a gift from the Emperor Franz Joseph, and in pinning it on the bosom of the Bavarian king had purposely pricked him in the breast, so that he died in a few hours. Now that the hegemony of Austria has come to an end, and Prussia has succeeded to the leadership in Germany, and become an object of hatred to the particularistic, or self-styled “ patriotic,” or what might he called the “ state’s rights,” element in Bavaria, the king of Prussia has superseded the emperor of Austria, in the legend, as the bestower of the fatal brooch. The fact is that Maximilian died of erysipelas, which began at a point on his breast. The little red spot had troubled him for some time, but he paid no attention to it, and consulted a physician only when it was too late.

Another striking example of mythmaking is the strange story told of King Ludwig’s maiden aunt, the Princess Alexandra. This kind-hearted lady, whose head was a little touched, is said to have labored under the delusion that she had a sofa in her stomach. It is not true, however, that she cherished such an hallucination, but it is easy to trace the origin of the popular belief. Canapé is the common word for sofa, and also the name of a farinaceous food or sort of pudding, of which the princess was very fond. The favorite dish seems to have been more palatable than digestible, for on several occasions she complained that the canape lay heavy in her stomach. It is in verbal ambiguities of this kind, in the use of terms of which one of the meanings is comparatively obscure, that we discover the genesis and germination of myths.

The seclusive habits and romantic eccentricities of the late King Ludwig rendered him. even during his lifetime, the central figure of much curious folklore. Marvelous tales were told of him, many of them, however, mere inventions, like that recently published in English journals of “ a circus in the royal palace at Munich.” The reality is strange enough without calling in the aid of fiction. In his castles, especially at Linderhof, he surrounded himself with scenes of the sagas and of fairyland : and as he dashed through the forests on winter nights, in a sleigh gorgeous with red and gold and blue and silver, and surmounted by two crowns glowing with electric light, no wonder the belated peasant turned aside with superstitious fear, and crossed himself, thinking the prince of mountain sprites was passing by. The mythopoetic vein in the minds of the Bavarian people is constantly nurtured by the very nature of their religion, so that this faculty is by far the most vigorous and fruitful of their intellectual powers. It is easy to foresee what legends will grow up and cluster around the name and person of the monarch, whose tragic death was a fitting close to such an unnatural and phantasmal life.

It is also a curious coincidence that the manner of his death should have been foretold by one Simon Speer, a monk of Benediktheuern, who, towards the end of the sixteenth century, wrote a poem in which he prophesied concerning the house of Wittelsbach. In one passage he speaks of a woman as a pest to the land, a serpent that creeps in and causes the abdication of the king : —

After this description, which calls to mind the episode of Lola Montes, he mentions another monarch, who, after turning everything topsy-turvy, perishes in the waves : —

But not even the old Benedictine’s extraordinary power as a seer enabled him to predict that a crazy king would succeed a crazy king on the Bavarian throne. Never before in the history of states has a confessedly and incurably insane person, like Prince Otto, been proclaimed king. Such a procedure, although strictly in accordance with the constitution of Bavaria, can hardly fail to strike intelligent and unprejudiced minds as the reductio ad absurdum of monarchism.

E. P. Evans.