Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/758

750 drawn of him. There was something fantastical in his favorite pursuits,—astrology, alchemy, antiquities, alphabet-making, and the like,—which the men of an iron age viewed with a contempt that probably had much to do with giving him that character which he has in history, contemporary opinion of a ruler generally being accepted, and enduring. "A species of anagram," says the English historian of his family, "consisting of the five vowels, he adopted as indicative of the future greatness of the house of Austria, imprinted it on all his books, carved it on all his buildings, and engraved it on all his plate. This riddle occupied the grave heads of his learned contemporaries, and gave rise to many ridiculous conjectures, till the important secret was disclosed after his death by an interpretation written in his own hand, in which the vowels form the initials of a sentence in Latin and German, signifying, 'The house of Austria is to govern the whole world. Notwithstanding the archidiaconal sneer, Frederick III.'s anagram came quite as near the truth as any uninspired prophecy that can be mentioned. In little more than sixty years after the Emperor's death, the house of Austria ruled over Germany, the Netherlands, Naples, Sicily, the Milanese, Hungary, Bohemia, the Spains, England and Ireland (in virtue of Philip II.'s marriage with Mary I., queen-regnant of England), the greater part of America, from the extreme north to the extreme south, portions of Northern Africa, the Philippines, and some minor possessions; and it really ruled, though indirectly, most of that part of Italy, outside of the territory of Venice, that had nominally an independent existence. Before Holland's independence was fully established, but after the connection with England had ceased, Portugal passed under the dominion of the Spanish branch of the house of Austria, with all her immense American, African, and Asiatic colonial possessions. For years, Philip II. was more powerful in France than any one of her sovereigns could pretend to be. Frederick's prediction, therefore, came to pass almost literally, and was less an exaggeration than St. Luke's assertion that a decree went forth from Cæsar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. As Augustus was lord of nearly all the world that a man like St. Luke could consider civilized and worth governing, so might an Austrian writer of the sixteenth century declare that the Hapsburgs ruled over wellnigh all the world that could be looked upon as belonging to the Christian commonwealth, including not a little that had been stolen from the heathen by Christians.

It was by marriage that the Hapsburgs became so great in so short a time. Frederick III. married Eleanor, a Portuguese princess, whose mother was of the royal house of Castille. Portugal is not even of second rank now, and the Braganças are not in the first rank of royal families. But in the fifteenth century Portugal stood relatively and positively very high, and the house of Avis was above the house of Austria, though a king of Portugal was necessarily inferior to the head of the Holy Roman Empire. This marriage did not advance the fortunes of the Austrian family, though it connected them with three other great families,—the reigning houses of Portugal, Castille, and England, the Princess Eleanor having Plantagenet blood. But the son of Frederick and Eleanor, afterward the Emperor Maximilian I., married Mary of Burgundy in 1477,