Shortly after signing the last of these marriage-contracts, or perhaps it was in the course of signing them, Duke Wilhelm had a stroke of palsy. He had, before that, gone into Papistry again, poor man. The truth is, he had repeated strokes; and being an abrupt, explosive Herr, he at last quite yielded to palsy; and sank slowly out of the world, in a cloud of semi-insanity, which lasted almost twenty years. [Died 25th January, 1592, age 76.] Duke Wilhelm did leave a Son, Johann Wilhelm, who succeeded him as Duke. But this Son also proved explosive; went half and at length wholly insane. Jesuit Priests, and their intrigues to bring back a Protestant country to the bosom of the Church, wrapped the poor man, all his days, as in a burning Nessus'-Shirt; and he did little but mischief in the world. He married, had no children; he accused his innocent Wife, the Jesuits and he, of infidelity. Got her judged, not properly sentenced; and then strangled her, he and they, in her bed:--"Jacobea of Baden (1597);" a thrice-tragic history. Then he married again; Jesuits being extremely anxious for an Orthodox heir: but again there came no heir; there came only new blazings of the Nessus'-Shirt. In fine, the poor man died (Spring, 1609), and made the world rid of him. Died 25th March, 1609; that is the precise date;--about a month before our new Elector, Johann Sigismund, got his affairs winded up at the Polish Court, and came galloping home in such haste. There was pressing need of him in the Cleve regions. For the painful exactitude of Duke Wilhelm and his Lawyers has profited little; and there are claimants on claimants rising for that valuable Cleve Country. As indeed Johann Sigismund had anticipated, and been warned from all quarters, to expect. For months past, he has had his faculties bent, with lynx-eyed attention, on that scene of things; doubly and trebly impatient to get Preussen soldered up, ever since this other matter came to the bursting-point. What could be done by the utmost vigilance of his Deputies, he had done. It was the 25th of March when the mad Duke died: on the 4th of April, Johann Sigismund's Deputy, attended by a Notary to record the act, "fixed up the Brandenburg Arms on the Government-House of Cleve;" [Pauli, vi. 566.] on the 5th, they did the same at Dusseldorf; on the following days, at Julich and the other Towns. But already on the 5th, they had hardly got done at Dusseldorf, when there appeared--young Wolfgang Wilhelm, Heir-Apparent of that eminent Pfalz-Neuburg, he in person, to put up the Pfalz-Neuburg Arms! Pfalz-Neuburg, who married the Second Daughter, he is actually claiming, then;--the whole, or part? Both are sensible that possession is nine points in law.