BOOKS.
MEMOIR OF BERGENROTH.*
Tuts biography reminds us of the stirring and unsettled lives which scholars not uncommonly led during the two centuries that followed the revival of learning. The profession of letters was then a European commonwealth, and its followers, in the changes of service which so often took them from one end of it to the other, found an element of adventure which strongly contrasts with the settled existence of their successors. Most of the men of letters of to-day know no vicissitudes beyond the failures and successes of school, of the University, and of the little world of literature ; Gustave Bergenroth was successively a Prussian official, a revolu- tionary leader, a Californian adventurer, and a London literateur ; he began the great work of his life at an age when most men have long settled down to theirs, and he was cut off just when he was beginning to reap, in fame at least, the fruit of his labours, in an obscure Spanish town.
Bergenroth was born in 1813, a native of Eastern Prussia, the son of an official whose rank would correspond to that of a stipen- diary magistrate or county-court judge in England. The father was an ardent Liberal in days when Liberalism was, to say the least, no passport to fortune, and the son inherited his sentiments. At,Kiinigsberg, the university to which he proceeded at the age of twenty, he was not less distinguished as a leader of the wild frolics of the Burschen and a duellist than as a politician. Leaving the university in 1833, he passed through various official posts in Prussian law courts, till the commotions of 1848 found him Assessor in Berlin. Mr. Cartwright says :—" Whether he took part in the actual fighting is not clear. Ile certainly mixed with the insurgents, visiting the barricades in the course of the night, and on the following morning be was in the mob at the moment of the famous charge by the Dragoon Guards in front of the palace, when he escaped being cut down by a trooper through the lucky accident of the latter's charger falling at the very moment of his bringing his sabre on Bergenroth's head. Scientific investigations were now quickly thrown aside for the more stirring life of a political agitator. Bergenroth was one of the founders of the Democratic Club, where, as well as at open-air meetings, he often spoke ; and besides this, he wrote in the Radical papers." Finally, he was elected a member of the Chamber by a Pomeranian constituency ; but the triumph of the Reaction was at hand, and he never took his seat. On the whole, it is clear that he was treated by the authorities with unusual leniency. He had before made himself conspicuous for his radical opinions, and had once given his superiors an advantage by absenting himself beyond his term of leave. It was not a severe punishment for all his offences against the dominant system that in 1849, after he had absented himself from his duties for a year, he was transferred from Berlin to the provincial court at Wittstock. To this banishment Ber- genroth was not disposed to submit. After having further ingratiated himself with the authorities by assisting in the escape of Dr. Kinkel, he resolved to seek his fortunes in the New World. He landed at San Francisco in September, 1850, nearly dead of yellow fever. From San Francisco he went to the diggings. Tired of digging he turned to hunting, and finally betook himself to occupations which it would not be easy
• Gastare Bergenroth: a Memorial Sketch. By W. C. Cartwright, MY., Author of "The Constitution of Papal Conelayea" Edinburgh: Edmonatone and Douglas. 1870. to define, which his own account published in Household Words does not explain. " He congregated round him," we are told, " a group of nondescript fellows, outlaws and adventurers of all nations, whom he contrived to fashion into a sort of community," making himself their captain. It would probably be a not unfavourable account of his position at this time of his life to say that he was the chief of a body of volunteer police. In California, however, Bergenroth stayed little more than six months. He returned to Europe, and, for the next six years, supported himself by teaching. In 1857 he came to England, and set himself seriously to the great work of his life, the examination of the original sources of history. A part of the results of the labour of two years in the Record Office appeared in an article on Wat l'yler, published in Sybel's Historical Periodical. But the resources of our English depositaries did not satisfy him, and he turned his eyes to Spain, to Simancas, where the archives of the Spanish monarchy were preserved. It was for his work there, unfinished though it was, abruptly terminated when the harvest was barely begun, that his name will be remembered.
The archives of Simancas cover a. period of something less than three centuries, from 1350 to 1625. They are peculiarly rich from the beginning of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella to the end of this period. The total number of the records it is impossible to estimate. There are, Bergenroth tells us, more than 100,000 Leyajos, or bundles, each bundle containing from ten to more than a hundred documents. To the work of examining this mass of papers Bergenroth set himself as a private student, almost without resources. The Athemuum journal may claim the credit of having assisted him in his work by publishing in the shape of letters some of the first results of his labours. In 1861 the Master of the Rolls was looking for a scholar who would undertake a Calendar of Simancas State Papers relating to English history, and on Mr. Brewer's recommendation he gave the appointment to Bergenroth. It was not, we are sure, the fault of Lord Romilly, that for labours so vast, and involving, as the end too plainly showed, so much personal risk, one of the most ingenious scholars of the day received no more, both for allowances and pay, than £400 per annum. With untiring patience and perseverance he set himself to overcome the indifference and obstructiveness of the Spanish authorities, to find the needful assistance among a people where the qualifica- tions of even the most ordinary knowledge and industry were equally rare, and finally to make himself master of the almost infinite materials which be had to bring into shape. For the details of this labour the reader must go to Mr. Cartwright's " Memoir," or rather to Bergenroth, who has been very properly permitted to speak for himself. Few men have shown more industry, none, it may be safely affirmed, more ingenuity. To catch in the very hasty examination which time allowed the meaning of a document written in a foreign language, in a form of that language more or less archaic, and in the varying bands of three centuries, was no trifling task, but the crowning triumph of Bergenroth's skill was the discovery of the ciphers which had been used in many of the documents. To find with- out failure the key to system after system which bad been con- trived at a time when the art was carried to its perfection is a feat of ingenuity that has never been surpassed. He triumphed over the difficulties of elaborating contrived signs, and the still greater difficulties of hieroglyphics that signified nothing, with which dangerous communications were plentifully interspersed, just as powder now-a-days is mixed for safe storage with some non-explosive substance. Sometimes he actually decyphered what the original recipients of the letter, with the keys by them, had, as shown by their marginal notes, pronounced to be unintelligible.
Early in 1867, Bergenroth returned from visiting England and Germany to his residence in Spain. The next two years were spent in his familiar labours. Towards the close of 1868 he was seized with typhus fever, and after an illness of about two months in all, died at Madrid, whither he had removed in the vain hope of bettering his health, on February 13 in last year. His last letter was addressed to Lord Romilly, and was written from dictation on the 9th of that month. How much knowledge passed away with him it is impossible even to conjecture.
The principal monument of Bergenroth's labour is the Calendar of Simancas State papers referring to the Tudor period, the first part of which was published with an introduction in 1863, and the second in the same way in the summer of 1866. This was his official work; the magnum opus on which his own thoughts were bent was a life of Charles V. He judged the interest of English politics to be subordinate, and the Spanish Court to be the centre of European politics. Putting aside the essays on Wat Tyler's rebellion, a singularly instructive contribution to English history, of which we would gladly speak at length, most of the fragments of Ber- genroth's discoveries which Mr. Cartwright gives us in this volunie refer to this subject. Anything more sinister and terrible it would be difficult to conceive. Not the house of Thyestes in the realms of legend, not that of the Julian Cmsars in history, shows so full of horrors as does the family of Ferdinand and Isabella. One of the most curious revelations, one put, it would seem, by the evidence beyond all doubt, is, one of which we have already spoken (Spectator, September 11, 1869), the true story of the mad Queen Juana. Another remarkable discovery is the report by an eye-witness of the trial and execution of Don Carlos, son of Philip U. We quote the concluding passage, a description of which the ghastly simplicity exceeds all that rhetoric could do :— " They enter a room where a largo arm-chair is placed, surrounded by a great quantity of sawdust. The executioner stands near it with his knife. The Prince is not frightened by that sight. He is seated on the chair. The executioner begs his pardon, and the Prince in a gracious manner gives him his hand to kiss. The executioner ties his legs and arms with antas' of Cologne to the legs and arms of the chair ; ties a bandage of black silk round his eyes, and places himself, with the knife in his hand, behind the Prince. The Prince says to the confessor [the anther of the document], 'Pray for my soul.' The confessor says the Credo, and the Prince responds in a clear and firm voice. When he pronounced the words ' unico fijo '—only Son — the executioner puts his knife to his throat, and a stream of blood rushes down on the sawdust. The Prince struggles little ; the knife, being very sharp, had cut well. The executioner takes the bandage from the eyes, which are closed. The face is pale, like that of a corpse, but has preserved its natural expression. The executioner unties the corpse, wraps it in a black baize cloth, and puts it in a corner of the room. That done, Antonio Perez flies all at once at the executioner, accusing him of having stolen the diamonds of the Prince. The executioner denies, is searched, and Perez finds, in one of the folds of his dress, the diamonds. The execu- tioner grows pale, and declares that that is witchery. Eseovedo is sent to the King, and soon returns with two arquebusiers. The King, he says, has ordered that the executioner is to die on the spot for the heinous crime of having robbed the corpse of a Prince of the blood-royal. The executioner confesses, protests his innocence, is led out by the soldiers into the courtyard, and two detonations of arquobuses are heard."
Since this was written, we have learnt that the authenticity of • this document has been questioned by critics in Germany. It is only right to say that Mr. Cartwright points out that Bergenroth expressed no opinion on this point, but gave the contents of the paper as he found it.
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