had already received from the emperor a new commission, which was to take him to Hungary, it being again reported that the count John of Zips was to be appointed regent during the king’s minority. Maximilian hastened to prevent this innovation as dangerous to his own claims, and being himself the tutor of the young king, he appointed an extraordinary embassy to Hungary, of which Herberstein was a member. The ambassadors met in Vienna, and without delay hastened to Buda, where just at that time the diet was sitting.[1] The king of Poland being also a guardian of the young king, sent Andreas Tanznitski and the Provost Carnorovski. From the pope likewise a delegate was sent, brother Nicolas, of the noble family of Schönberg, a Dominican, who had possessed the unlimited confidence of Leo the Tenth even when he was a cardinal. At the commencement of the negotiations, this cunning priest showed himself so much in the interest of the emperor, that Herberstein himself says, “I thought he was a godsend.”
- ↑ Hungarian invention of coaches.—Herberstein, in his autobiography, published by Kovachich, 1805, when alluding to his journey to Hungary, speaks of coaches under the name of cotschien or kotzschi wägnen, and adds: “They are so called after a village ten miles distant from Buda (Kotsee, Kotsch, now Kitser); they are drawn by three horses, which run abreast of each other, and at those times when there is little or no ice on the ground. They carry four persons along with the driver, and it is indeed a very agreeable conveyance—so that any one can convey his bed, clothes, eatables and drinkables, and other conveniences, provided the load be not a heavy one.” See also upon this subject, Beckmann’s Hist. of Inventions, where Herberstein’s work on Russia is quoted, but not the above passage, which was not then published.
