boldly, but without counting the numbers of their enemies. They were worsted and put to flight. The Frankforters took many prisoners, whom they disarmed and sent to their rear. Then they divided the booty, which must have chiefly consisted in arms and the plunder of an adjacent village, and instead of proceeding to besiege the castle, which they could not have done with hopes of success unless they had come provided with heavy guns, which were then in their uncouth infancy, they encamped, and made themselves as comfortable as the circumstances admitted, as is still the wont of the burghers of Frankfort in this nineteenth century. They ate and drank to their heart’s content, and, in a state of lazy repletion, after their usual dinner-hour, they set about returning home at their ease, doubtless with the intention of getting heavy ransom for their prisoners, and having a thorough bout of triumph on their return. The Cronbergers, however, whose castle was the arsenal of the robber nobles of Wetterau, were not disposed to acquiesce in their defeat so easily as the Frankforters in their victory. At the first approach of danger they had sent the fiery cross, or something tantamount to it, to all their friends in the castles round about. They would not have had time to send far, but Königstein and Falkenstein were within a mile or two, and Eppstein within six miles. Their allies kept coming up by squads, and as they came up they followed the Frankforters, and at the village of Eschborn, or Askeburne, came up with them. Then took place a long and hotly contested fight. The Frankforters were four times as many as their enemies; but they had a bad position, the sun was in their eyes, and they had been drinking freely. And the wind as well as the sun fought with the enemy, driving clouds of that fine dust, with which this country abounds, into their faces. Still, however, they held their own, when suddenly a mediæval Blücher appeared on the field in the person of the Count Palatine of the Rhine. This did not improve matters, and the prisoners who had been sent to the rear managed to get arms, while their watchers were watching the combat, and to attack their backs. The banner of the town was taken, as well as 600 prisoners, and a hundred dead bodies of the vanquished, besides dying and wounded, lay on the field. Probably the victors suffered to nearly the same extent, as they did not follow up their advantage. “O Frankfort, Frankfort, remember this battle,” says the chronicle of Limburg. The place is still known as “Haderfeld,” or the field of the strife. The prisoners seemed to have included persons of consequence in Frankfort, as 73,000 florins, an immense sum for those times, were paid for their ransom. The loss of the town-banner occasioned the adoption of new arms by the town, a white eagle on a red field. From an inscription in verse, part of which still remains to be seen in the castle of Cronberg painted on a wall, we find that the Frankforters had taken advantage of a diet, held at Eger, in Bohemia, by the Emperor Wenzel, to consult on establishing a general peace in the country (for there had been an extensive rising of burghers against nobles, in consequence of the successes of the Swiss at Sempach and Näfels); and the same inscription accuses them of having burnt villages, and cut down trees in the territory of Cronberg. They could, however, have had but little time for such operations. If the charge about the destruction of trees was true, vengeance came on the Frankforters in the shape of a whirlwind, on the 6th July, 1862, which destroyed many of the finest trees in the town and its neighbourhood, some of which were supposed to have stood for two hundred years.
Cronberg Castle is very ancient, as may be judged by part of its architecture, especially that of the donjon-tower and the parts near it. As times became more peaceful, new buildings were added, with a view, doubtless, to more commodious lodging, the general style of which, and in particular the gables with curled mouldings, suggest the date of the castle of Heidelberg. The Romans may have had an outpost on the spot, which they were not likely to leave unprotected, as Königstein is probably the site of one of their camps, on the very outskirt of their dominion, and within view of the Altkönig mountain, on the top of which are enormous circular fortifications, attributed to the ancient Germans, or even older Celts, who cared less for the cold, and do not appear to have laid much stress on bathing advantages. The Cronberg family belonged in old times to the lesser nobility, but they were powerful through their connection with the neighbouring dynasties of Hanau, Erbach, Nassau, Ysenburg, Sain, Falkenstein, and others. Eberwein of Cronberg was Bishop of Worms, in 1299; Walter, in 1527, Teutonic Grand Master; and John Schweikand, 1604, Elector and Archbishop of Mainz. In the oldest times the family were named Askeburne (Eschborn), and they assumed the name of Cronberg at the end of the twelfth, or beginning of the thirteenth century. About the same time the family divided itself into two branches, named after their respective crests, the branch with the Wings, and the branch with the Crown. The former deceased with John Eberhard, in 1617, the latter with John Niklas, of Cronberg, who was its last male representative, dying without issue, after having been raised to the degree of Count, in 1704. Cronberg now forms part of the territory of Nassau.
