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The stealing of the princes Ernest and Albert of Saxony
The stealing of the princes Ernest and Albert of Saxony Author:Ernest Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Festival Of The Cherry-trees. was not long before Guta once more saw William the Misnian; and as he was by no means a bad fellow, she might have done... more » worse than even take a journey to Naumburg for the purpose of meeting him. That she did not, however, do ; although it was at Naum- burg that the maiden and the bold esquire met, in the July of the same year, before the impression of that first encounter in the forest of Altenburg had hadtime to wear off. And this is how the meeting came about. The Electress was confined to her couch. The Elector was absent on the Bohemian frontier. The 28th of July—the day of the great Naumburg Cherry Festival—was come. The young princes were to go and see it, and they were to be entertained during their stay by some friends of the young Count Barby, who had a seat in that neighbourhood. Accordingly, they went; being escorted by Christopher von Karas, the Chamberlain of the Castle of Altenburg, and a few men-at-arms; Guta, who was almost as good as a man-at-arms, being of the company, partly because the young princes did not like travelling without her, and partly because her mother (the foster-mother of Ernest) lived in Naumburg. And what, asks more than one reader, was that Cherry Festival of Naumburg, which was held on the 28th of July in every year ? In the year 1432—Altenburg having already felt the rough hand of the Hussites—it came to the turn of the good town of Naumburg to be threatened by the invading army of Prokop. Poor Naumburg ! Not long previously to this the inhabitants had had the Black Death in their midst. That had now passed away, and the usual fetish of black straw on a pole had been drummed out of the town in noisy procession and burnt beyond the gates. Now it was the Hussites, whoencamped in the midst of the ...« less