y.[25] It is from the
Styrian line of the Austrian house that all princes of that house who
have reigned for four centuries and upward are descended. Ernest, third
son of that Leopold who was defeated and slain at the battle of Sempach
by the Swiss, became master of the duchies of Styria, Carniola, and
Carinthia. He was a pious prince, and made a pilgrimage to Palestine,
after the superstitious fashion of his time. He was a quarrelsome
prince, and kept himself in a state of perpetual hot water with his
brother. He was an amorous and a chivalrous prince, and, having lost his
first wife, he got him a second after a knightly fashion. Having heard
much of the material and mental charms of the Princess Cymburga, a
Polish lady who had the blood of the Yagellons in her veins, he went to
Cracow in disguise, found that report had not exaggerated her merits,
and, prudently making himself known, proposed for her hand, and got it.
But Cymburga was not only very clever and very beautiful: she was a
muscular Christian in crinoline,--for hoops were known in those days
among the Poles, or might have been known to them,--and if they were, no
doubt Cymburga, like American ladies of to-day, had the sense and taste
to use them. She had such strength of fist that, when she had occasion
to drive a nail into anything, she dispensed with a hammer; and she
economized in nut-crackers, as some independent people do in the item of
pocket-handkerchiefs, by using her fingers. One would think that Ernest
would have hesitated to woo and wed a lady who was so capable of
carrying matters with a high hand; but then he was a very strong man,
and was surnamed "The Iron," so that he could venture where no other man
would have thought of going. This strong-handed as well as strong-minded
couple, who were both paired and matched, must be taken as the real
founders of that house of Austria which has been so conspicuous in the
history of Christendom for almost four centuries, though they and their
descendants built on the broad and solid foundations established by
Rudolph of Hapsburg and his earlier descendants. Some authorities say
that Cymburga brought into the Hapsburg family that thick lip--"the
Austrian lip"--so often mentioned in history; but others call it the
Burgundian lip, though the marriage between Maximilian (Cymburga's
grandson) and Mary of Burgundy (Charles the Bold's daughter) did not
take place till 1477; and the ducal Burgundian family was only