stein is said to have been a Lombard who made his way northward from Italy in the twelfth century, and becoming rich through lending to princes and sovereigns, took pay in land by preference, and finally, securing a title, married a princess, and was thenceforth a prominent lord.
The Liechtenstein family have maintained and increased the reputation for land-getting, and the present Prince, Johann the Second, besides possessing this little country, owns immense estates in Austria, in Prussia, and in Saxony, including altogether more than two thousand square miles.
Some one has remarked on "how prudently most men creep into nameless graves," but the men of the Liechtenstein family have been of a kind to make themselves uniquely known. Ulric von Liechtenstein, the "Don Quixote of Germany," was of a branch of this house: the poet-knight who, with suits of apparel of purest white, with twelve white-clad attendants, with spears and helmets all of white, went through Italy and Germany, breaking lances with hundreds of knights for the glory of Venus, in whose name he fought.
With the branch that secured this principality the love of land rather than that of Venus seems to have held sway, for the present reigning Prince is over sixty, and has never married, and his brother Franz, the heir apparent, is also a bachelor. Under such circumstances, other relatives become of importance, and it is interesting to note that a cousin married Mary Fox, adopted daughter of the famous Lord and Lady Holland, and that another cousin married, in 1903, the Archduchess Margaretha, sister of the future Emperor of Austria.
The population of Liechtenstein, with few exceptions, are peasants, self-respecting, hard-working, and shrewd, and in the past they have been a restless folk, vigilantly looking for every opportunity to exact a new privilege.
To their Prince of three-quarters of a century ago they staidly represented that the expense connected with such illuminations and celebrations as were consequent on their having a ruler was very considerable; and he, hugely amused, agreed to pay them a certain annual concession on this account. Since then the reigning Prince's birthday is a principal fête-day of the year.
A predecessor, similarly impressed by their power of thrifty logicalness, had already relieved the people of the entire expense of the civil administration.
Following the close of the war between Austria and Prussia, in which Liechtenstein allied itself with Austria, there came another gravely presented protest. The citizens were weary of the expense of a standing army; an army which, consisting of eighty men, with a captain and a trumpeter, had bravely marched toward the scene of hostilities, but too late to arrive before the war had come to its swift end.
There could be but one outcome of this new representation. When the men of Liechtenstein proposed, it was not for their prince to dispose otherwise; and since then there has been no army. As a matter of fact, the prince had about decided to disband it in any case, and was glad of so plausible an excuse.
Not only is there no army, but there has been no formal treaty of peace, Liechtenstein having been quite overlooked in the negotiations; and a few old men, oncewhile soldiers, like to say, gleefully, that Liechtenstein and Prussia are therefore still in a state of war!
When Johann the Second came to the rulership he began to build a great new palace near Vienna, and the Liechtenstein folk, fearing that he would follow the example of his immediate predecessor and divide his time among his various estates instead of spending it in his principality, anxiously laid before him the consideration that if he would but spend more of his time at Vaduz there would be marked benefit to the local business of the country.
He was not prepared to promise definitely in regard to this; and, in fact, he has visited Liechtenstein only at irregular intervals, sometimes two or three years apart; but he gave them an intimation of a scheme which he was perfecting which would be of far greater advantage to them than his frequent personal presence. His desire was to make the government a constitutional monarchy, and he soon carried his plans into effect.
There is now a written constitution.
