Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/92

84 beat down the gate, overpower the guard, and free Richard, who when he has once a sword in his hand easily effects the rest for himself.

After the death of Henry VI., in the war between Philip of Swabia and Otho IV., the castle remained in the hands of the Hohenstaufens. When Philip was murdered, in 1208, it came to Otho with the insignia of the empire. When this emperor was obliged, in turn, to yield to Frederic II., it returned to its old possessors. Frederic’s son Henry, who tried to depose his father and reign instead, sought here a refuge against his father’s anger, but when the emperor returned from Italy, the castle opened its gates to him, and the son had to expiate his ingratitude by a long imprisonment in it. In the year 1246, Frederic’s younger son, Conrad IV., received the castle from the hand of the seneschal, Philip of Falkenstein, on whose death William of Holland gained possession of it by stratagem. Trifels appears always as an imperial residence in these times, as testified by a letter of Pope Urban IV. to Richard of Cornwall, wherein Trifels is specified. All the following emperors, down to the time of Ludwig the Bavarian, planted here the standard of empire. Rudolph of Hapsburg transferred the insignia of empire to his castle Kyburg, in Switzerland, yet under Adolph of Nassau, they are found again in Trifels. Ludwig the Bavarian mortgaged the castle, in 1330, to the Palatine family, and it came thus to the Dukes of Zweibrücken.

From this date its splendour began to decline. In the peasant war it was much damaged, and the date (1529) at the entrance of the principal tower, seems to point to a subsequent restoration. In 1602 the great tower was struck by lightning, and a great part of the castle burnt. In the Thirty Years’ war the castle was used as a refuge by the surrounding country-people, and each party seems to have held it in turn. In 1635, its remaining occupiers were destroyed or driven out by an infectious epidemic. From that time its complete ruin dates.

The chief parts which remain are the main tower, built of vast blocks of stone, and about eighty feet high; the dungeon, a fearful vault, partially lighted from above by four openings; and the well-tower, built over a well now filled with rubbish. On Anebos, the second height, very slight trace of the old fortification is to be seen. On Scharfenburg, the third height, there is still a tower, about one hundred and fifty feet high. The very ditch here is not dug, but hewn out of the solid rock. This castle was separated from Trifels under the Emperor Frederic II., but shared the subsequent fates of the sister-fortress. The whole country round Trifels has a weird and ghostly look, and the grotesque masses of sandstone which crown the tops and crests of the hills, and in the sun are scarcely distinguishable from castles, but in the evening appear often like sharply-featured spectral heads, give the impression of a very “eerie” place.