the lead of Maximilian of Bavaria should deem it all-important that there
should be direct issue to that family. Otherwise the inheritance on his
death would probably pass to Protestant princes.

The first wife provided for him was a beautiful princess; Jacobea of
Baden. The Pope blessed the nuptials, and sent the bride a golden rose,
but the union was sterile and unhappy. The Duke, who was in the habit of
careering through his palace in full armour, slashing at and wounding
anyone that came in his way, was at last locked up. The hapless Jacobea,
accused by Sibylla of witchcraft and other crimes possible and
impossible, was thrown into prison. Two years long the devilish malignity
of the sister-in-law was exercised upon her victim, who, as it is
related, was not allowed natural sleep during all that period, being at
every hour awakened by command of Sibylla. At last the Duchess was
strangled in prison. A new wife was at once provided for the lunatic,
Antonia of Lorraine. The two remained childless, and Sibylla at the age
of forty-nine took to herself a husband, the Margrave of Burgau, of the
House of Austria, the humble birth of whose mother, however, did not
allow him the rank of Archduke. Her efforts thus to provide Catholic
heirs to the rich domains of Clove proved as fruitless as her previous
attempts.

And now Duke John William had died, and the representatives of his three
dead sisters, and the living Sibylla were left to fight for the duchies.

It would be both cruel and superfluous to inflict on the reader a
historical statement of the manner in which these six small provinces
were to be united into a single state. It would be an equally sterile
task to retrace the legal arguments by which the various parties prepared
themselves to vindicate their claims, each pretender more triumphantly