Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/569

. 7, 1863.] Church of St. Maria-ad-Gradus, at Cologne, bequeathing the goods she possessed at Cochem to the Convent Brauweiler, founded by her father. The town she gave to the Count Palatine Henry, surnamed the Madman, a son of her uncle Hezilo. This Henry, in a fit of frenzy, murdered his wife Matilda, A.D. 1161, in the Castle of Cochem, which was afterwards believed to be haunted by her ghost. His son, Henry II., was the founder of the Abbey of Laach, and the last male heir. The terrible circumstances of his mother’s death may have conduced with his own childlessness to turn his mind to a pious work. He was succeeded by his stepson Siegfried—probably that Siegfried of whose wife, Genoveva, a miraculous legend is related. This Count Palatine, suspecting his beautiful wife of infidelity from a false accusation, drove her from his home to perish in the woods; but afterwards, discovering his error, went out to seek her and bring her home. In the meantime, in order to diminish the guilt attaching to her husband in case she should perish, she had thrown her ring into a stream. When her husband was dining in the woods, a fine trout was brought him, which he ordered to be cooked immediately. On opening it, the ring which he had given to his wife was found in its inside. He at once recognised the interposition of Heaven in full vindication of his wife’s innocence, and lived ever afterwards with her in undisturbed happiness; and when she died, she was accounted a saint. When their son William died childless, in 1140, the Emperor Conrad III. took possession of Cochem as a lapsed imperial fief.

In the fourteenth century it came into the possession of the archiepiscopal see of Treves. It was mortgaged in the year 1328 to the Countess Loretta of Spontheim, on condition of her releasing Archbishop Baldwin, whom she had kidnapped by throwing a chain across the Moselle at Trarbach and arresting his barge. Cochem, like most other places, had to suffer in the Thirty Years’ War, and in 1673 was bombarded by the French; but it had to suffer worse treatment when they had established a permanent camp at Mont Royal by Traben. At the end of October, 1688, De Saxis, the commandant of Mont Royal bombarded the town from the site of the great linden-tree, which is still a conspicuous landmark on the mountain above, and took the castle, which was only defended by a few archiepiscopal soldiers, as well as the Castle of Winneberg, which, from its