There were, however, especial reasons why this alliance should be distasteful, both to Philip of Spain upon one side, and to the Landgrave Philip of Hesse on the other.  The bride was the daughter of the elector Maurice.  In that one name were concentrated nearly all the disasters, disgrace, and disappointment of the Emperor’s reign.  It was Maurice who had hunted the Emperor through the Tyrolean mountains; it was Maurice who had compelled the peace of Passau; it was Maurice who had overthrown the Catholic Church in Germany, it was Maurice who had frustrated Philip’s election as king of the Romans.  If William of Orange must seek a wife among the pagans, could no other bride be found for him than the daughter of such a man?

Anna’s grandfather, on the other hand, Landgrave Philip, was the celebrated victim to the force and fraud of Charles the Fifth.  He saw in the proposed bridegroom, a youth who had been from childhood, the petted page and confidant of the hated Emperor, to whom he owed his long imprisonment.  He saw in him too, the intimate friend and ally—­for the brooding quarrels of the state council were not yet patent to the world —­of the still more deeply detested Granvelle; the crafty priest whose substitution of “einig” for “ewig” had inveigled him into that terrible captivity.  These considerations alone would have made him unfriendly to the Prince, even had he not been a Catholic.

The Elector Augustus, however, uncle and guardian to the bride, was not only well-disposed but eager for the marriage, and determined to overcome all obstacles, including the opposition of the Landgrave, without whose consent he was long pledged not to bestow the hand of Anna.  For this there were more than one reason.  Augustus, who, in the words of one of the most acute historical critics of our day, was “a Byzantine Emperor of the lowest class, re-appearing in electoral hat and mantle,” was not firm in his rights to the dignity he held.  He had inherited from his brother, but his brother had dispossessed John Frederic.  Maurice, when turning against the Emperor, who had placed him in his cousin’s seat, had not thought it expedient to restore to the rightful owner the rank which he himself owed to the violence of Charles.  Those claims might be revindicated, and Augustus be degraded in his turn, by a possible marriage of the Princess Anna, with some turbulent or intriguing German potentate.  Out of the land she was less likely to give trouble.  The alliance, if not particularly desirable on the score of rank, was, in other worldly respects, a most brilliant one for his niece.  As for the religious point, if he could overcome or circumvent the scruples of the Landgrave, he foresaw little difficulty in conquering his own conscience.