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
than the other. The naked facts alone retain vital interest, and of these
facts the prominent one was the assertion of the Emperor that the
duchies, constituting a fief masculine, could descend to none of the
pretenders, but were at his disposal as sovereign of Germany.

On the other hand nearly all the important princes of that country sent
their agents into the duchies to look after the interests real or
imaginary which they claimed.

There were but four candidates who in reality could be considered serious
ones.

Mary Eleanor, eldest sister of the Duke, had been married in the lifetime
of their father to Albert Frederic of Brandenburg, Duke of Prussia. To
the children of this marriage was reserved the succession of the whole
property in case of the masculine line becoming extinct. Two years
afterwards the second sister, Anne, was married to Duke Philip Lewis,
Count-Palatine of Neuburg; the children of which marriage stood next in
succession to those of the eldest sister, should that become
extinguished. Four years later the third sister, Magdalen, espoused the
Duke John, Count-Palatine of Deux-Ponts; who, like Neuburg, made
resignation of rights of succession in favour of the descendants of the
Brandenburg marriage. The marriage of the youngest sister, Sibylla, with
the Margrave of Burgau has been already mentioned. It does not appear
that her brother, whose lunatic condition hardly permitted him to assure
her the dowry which had been the price of renunciation in