territories; and, accordingly, he issued strict orders that they should renounce their vows, and resign into his hands their possessions, or abandon altogether the principality. Disobedience to this mandate was threatened with the punishment of fire and sword; and the fate of the unfortunate grand master and the French knights was pointed to as certain to be the fate of those who refused acquiescence. A great number of the knights yielded to a destiny which they deemed inevitable, and either renounced the order, or abandoned the archbishoprick: but the legend tells us, that twelve of the most ancient and noble among them, despising at once the power of the pope, and the malice of the potentates his minions, threw themselves into the strong castle of Lahneck, and there took oath to one another to die rather than yield to their persecutor and oppressor.

Peter von Aichspalt was an angry man when he heard tidings of this act of the Templars, and his brow blackened with rage at the thought of his power being defied by such a handful of men. He despatched two thousand of his bravest soldiers against them, commanded by one of his best and most experienced captains; and he issued the strictest injunctions to take the castle, and capture or destroy the knights who defended it, at any risk and at whatever expense.

The brilliant sun of a bright autumn day was sinking in glory behind the Taunus Mountains, when the troops of the Archbishop of Mainz took up their position in front of the Castle of Lahneck. Their commander having first secured all the passes by which escape was possible, sent a herald to the portal with a summons to the knights within the walls.

"Surrender ye!" said the messenger, "in the name of the Emperor and the Archbishop of Mainz. Make clear the castle in one hour, and I offer you life and limb; delay longer, and you die. God preserve the emperor and the archbishop!"

The herald was at once introduced to the chief of the knights by those who kept watch at the outposts; and to him he repeated his summons of surrender.

"Tell your leader and those who sent you-and let it be repeated by them to the proud archbishop and the false emperor -that we fight for our honour and our right, and that we will preserve them or die. Say, also, that we never will quit this

castle with our lives; but that if we are left in peace, we will remain so. Go, in God's name, and do thine errand!"

Thus spoke the noble old knight, his head bleached with the snows of seventy winters, who had been unanimously elected by this intrepid little band as their master and chief.

"We fight for our honour and our right," spake each knight solemnly and in succession, " and we will preserve them or die !"

The herald departed. Shortly after the onslaught commenced. But though the disproportion of force between the assailed and the assailants was fearfully great in point of mere numbers, the strength of the castle and the high-souled courage of its few brave defenders more than counterbalanced it for a considerable period. Night found the fight still raging under the walls, without the archiepiscopal troops being able to effect an entrance at any point, while their numbers were considerably thinned by the well-directed missives of the besieged, and their spirits greatly depressed by such unexpected as well as such formidable opposition.

"This will never do," said the leader of the besieging host, as in the darkness he withdrew his forces from before the castle. "It must not be said that twice a thousand men are set at naught by twelve. Call me the captains of companies."

A council of war was then held, and it was agreed that an assault and escalade should be made at midnight. All was in readiness accordingly at the appointed hour.

The night, with a mutability common to the season, had set in lowering, and long ere the castle-clock had struck twelve, it rained heavily, and blew a perfect hurricane. This was so far favourable for the assailants; but, to make it still more so, the midnight was pitch-dark.

"March!" whispered the leader to the captains.
"March!" whispered the captains to their men.

In silence they gained the castle-walls; in silence also they attempted to scale the only point where a ladder could be planted. It was deemed that the knights, exhausted by the fatigues of the day, would never think of attack in the dead of the night; and it was, therefore, calculated, that the castle might be taken by coup-de-main, without bloodshed or loss of life. But

they had reckoned without their host. The enemy they had to deal with was too vigilant to be surprised asleep; and the first man that reached the battlements was flung over as by an invisible hand into the yawning chasm of crag, far, far below. A second, a third, a fourth-in short, a crowd followed in succession, and met the same fate.

"For God and our right!" exclaimed the heroic Templars, as each new victim was added to the dreadful account.

The assailants were terrified, and would fain have fled.
"Once more," shouted their leader, "follow me."

They rushed impetuously onward: several of the knights fell before them. The outer works of the castle were carried; Four of its brave defenders, all that were left alive, retreated to the inner part of the fortress. It was then the gray of the morning; the fight had lasted all through the darkness of the night. Three of the four soon fell on the drawbridge; their corpses cumbered the path. The fourth, their aged chief, stood in the narrow footway-his gray hair streaming in the chilly breeze - his gory glaive dealing death wherever it lighted. A hundred lances were levelled against his breast a hundred swords thirsted to drink his life-blood; but still he was all unharmed of them, and stood aloft in his loneliness, the impersonation of bravery and destruction.

"Surrender! surrender!" shouted the assailants.

"Honour and right!" cried the aged hero.

"Farewell! beloved brothers," said he, addressing the dead and dying knights at his feet, "we'll meet once more. Better die thus than at the stake, as our noble grand master and the best of our dear brethren did, by the treachery of a king and the hatred of a priest. Farewell! We'll soon meet."

The battle raged with unabated fury; the foremost of those who pressed on the bridge fell before his sword like corn under the sickle of the reaper; the rest hung back in fear and affright, like a pack of yelping hounds before a stately stag at bay.

"Sir Knight," spake the leader of the archiepiscopal troops, advancing to the front of the passive throng, "in God's name, surrender. You have done your duty; you have performed prodigies of valour. Such a man must not meet the death

inevitable, if you persevere. Give me up your arms, and depart hence in peace."

It might be compassion, or it might be policy, which dictated this speech; but whatever the motive, it had the same effect.

"Never," cried the old knight," never shall I surrender more than my brothers. With them have I lived, with them shall I die. Honour and right are our watchwords; and for them will I fight to the last."

"Honour and right!" he exclaimed, as he struck down, at two blows, two of the most daring of his assailants; and the same words were a sure presage of death to two more who succeeded.

rear.

"A truce! a truce!" shouted a thousand voices in the

There was an immediate pause; even the hoary champion of the Temple rested a moment from the work of slaughter, to know what it meant.

A herald on a foaming horse came dashing up the precipitous path to the gate of the castle.

"A truce! a truce!" he shouted.

emperor with peace and pardon."

"I come from the

"Peace and pardon from the emperor," echoed the host. The Templar stood unmoved, his dripping blade raised aloft in the act to smite the first who advanced towards him.

"Cease!" cried the leader of the opposing force.

The herald alighted, and delivered to him his credentials. "Sir Knight," said he, when he had glanced at their contents, "here is peace and pardon. The emperor in his august clemency gives back to thy order the goods they are at present possessed of, to have and to hold till death. Honour and right are now thine. Sheathe thy sword. The emperor give thee grace."

"Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the overjoyed troops. "Honour is ours," replied the old knight solemnly; “but pardon I wot not of. Grace is with God alone; not with That experienced to their cost our noble grand master and our beloved brethren, allured to France from their far-off

man.

homes in fair Cyprus. I fight for honour and right, and for them shall I die! Keep clear!"

He waved his gory glaive, and again two of the foremost fell before him; two more followed, and shared the same fate. The troops now became exasperated; they stormed and raged like wild beasts: but the undaunted old man still stood calm and unyielding, dealing out death on every side.

"Yield ye, or die!" shouted the leader of the assailants, springing forward on him.

"Well met," said the Templar. "For life or for death." In a second they were locked in each other's deadly grasp. For some moments the dreadful struggle between them was equal. The grand attack was suspended; and all men held in their breath to watch its issue. No word was spoken by either party. The leader of the archiepiscopal troops was young, and strong, and brave; but he had to deal with one who had grown old in strife, and who was master of all its manifold stratagems. They tottered they advanced-they receded: the object of the former was evidently to get the old man under; but the object of the latter could not be so clearly divined. At length the aged knight leaned an instant, as in weariness, or to draw breath, against the broken balustrade of the drawbridge; his stalwart arms still, however, compressing his adversary in their unshrinking gripe.

"Yield thee! yield thee!" cried the leader, "yield thee, or die ! "

"Honour and right!" we were the only words the Templar uttered, as throwing himself over the bridge with a sudden jerk, he carried his opponent with him.

They were dashed to pieces on the rugged rocks below.
Thus perished the last of the Templars of Lahneck.

The town of Rhens, on the left bank of the Rhine, is small and mean, and it has never been otherwise in the memory of man; yet in all Germany there is not, perhaps, a single spot where transactions of greater importance to the empire took