History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0205/02057.txt

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$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part II}
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$Author{Hallam, Henry}
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Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book V: History Of Germany To The Diet Of Worms In 1495
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part II

     It is not easy to account for all the circumstances that gave to seven
spiritual and temporal princes this distinguished pre-eminence.  The three
archbishops, Mentz, Treves, and Cologne, were always indeed at the head of the
German church.  But the secular electors should naturally have been the dukes
of four nations: Saxony, Franconia, Suabia, and Bavaria. We find, however,
only the first of these in the undisputed exercise of a vote.  It seems
probable that, when the electoral princes came to be distinguished from the
rest, their privilege was considered as peculiarly connected with the
discharge of one of the great offices in the imperial court.  These were
attached, as early as the diet of Mentz in 1184, to the four electors, who
ever afterwards possessed them: the Duke of Saxony having then officiated as
archmarshal, the Count Palatine of the Rhine as arch-steward, the King of
Bohemia as arch-cupbearer, and the Margrave of Brandenburg as arch-chamberlain
of the empire. ^g But it still continues a problem why the three latter
offices, with the electoral capacity as their incident, should not rather have
been granted to the Dukes of Franconia, Suabia, and Bavaria.  I have seen no
adequate explanation of this circumstance; which may perhaps lead us to
presume that the right of pre-election was not quite so soon confined to the
precise number of seven princes.  The final extinction of two great original
duchies, Franconia and Suabia, in the thirteenth century, left the electoral
rights of the Count Palatine and the Margrave of Brandenburg beyond dispute.
But the dukes of Bavaria continued to claim a vote in opposition to the kings
of Bohemia.  At the election of Rodolph in 1272 the two brothers of the house
of Wittelsbach voted separately, as Count Palatine and Duke of Lower Bavaria.
Ottocar was excluded upon this occasion; and it was not till 1290 that the
suffrage of Bohemia was fully recognized.  The Palatine and Bavarian branches,
however, continued to enjoy their family vote conjointly, by a determination
of Rodolph; upon which Louis of Bavaria slightly innovated, by rendering the
suffrage alternate.  But the Golden Bull of Charles IV. put an end to all
doubts on the rights of electoral houses, and absolutely excluded Bavaria from
voting.  The limitation to seven electors, first perhaps fixed by accident,
came to be invested with a sort of mysterious importance, and certainly was
considered, until times comparatively recent, as a fundamental law of the
empire. ^h

[Footnote g: Ibid., t. iv. p. 78.]

[Footnote h: Schmidt, pp. 78, 568; Putter, p. 274; Pfeffel, pp. 435, 565;
Struvius, p. 511.]

     2. It might appear natural to expect that an oligarchy of seven persons,
who had thus excluded their equals from all share in the election of a
sovereign, would assume still greater authority, and trespass further upon the
less powerful vassals of the empire.  But while the electors were establishing
their peculiar privilege, the class immediately inferior raised itself by
important acquisitions of power.  The German dukes, even after they became
hereditary, did not succeed in compelling the chief nobility within their
limits to hold their lands in fief so completely as the peers of France had
done.  The nobles of Suabia refused to follow their duke into the field
against the Emperor Conrad II. ^i Of this aristocracy the superior class were
denominated princes; an appellation which, after the eleventh century,
distinguished them from the untitled nobility, most of whom were their
vassals.  They were constituent parts of all diets; and though gradually
deprived of their original participation in electing an emperor, possessed, in
all other respects, the same rights as the dukes or electors.  Some of them
were fully equal to the electors in birth as well as extent of dominions; such
as the princely houses of Austria, Hesse, Brunswick, and Misnia.  By the
division of Henry the Lion's vast territories, ^j and by the absolute
extinction of the Suabian family in the following century, a great many
princes acquired additional weight.  Of the ancient duchies, only Saxony and
Bavaria remained; the former of which especially was so dismembered, that it
was vain to attempt any renewal of the ducal jurisdiction.  That of the
emperor, formerly exercised by the counts palatine, went almost equally into
disuse during the contest between Philip and Otho IV.  The princes accordingly
had acted with sovereign independence within their own fiefs before the reign
of Frederic II.; but the legal recognition of their immunities was reserved
for two edicts of that emperor; one, in 1220, relating to ecclesiastical, and
the other, in 1232, to secular princes.  By these he engaged neither to levy
the customary imperial dues, nor to permit the jurisdiction of the palatine
judges, within the limits of a state of the empire; ^k concessions that
amounted to little less than an abdication of his own sovereignty.  From this
epoch the territorial independence of the states may be dated.

[Footnote i: Pfeffel, p. 209.]

[Footnote j: See the arrangements made in consequence of Henry's forfeiture,
which gave quite a new face to Germany, in Pfeffel, p. 234; also p. 437.]

[Footnote k: Pfeffel, p. 384: Putter, p. 233.]

     A class of titled nobility, inferior to the princes, were the counts of
the empire, who seem to have been separated from the former in the twelfth
century, and to have lost at the same time their right of voting in the diets.
^l In some parts of Germany, chiefly in Franconia and upon the Rhine, there
always existed a very numerous body of lower nobility; untitled at least till
modern times, but subject to no superior except the emperor.  These are
supposed to have become immediate, after the destruction of the house of
Suabia, within whose duchies they had been comprehended. ^m

[Footnote l: In the instruments relating to the election of Otho IV. the
princes sign their names, Ego N. elegi et subscripsi.  But the counts only as
follows: Ego N. consensi et subscripsi.  Pfeffel, p. 360.]

[Footnote m: Pfeffel, p. 455; Putter, p. 254; Struvius, p. 511.]

     A short interval elapsed after the death of Richard of Cornwall before
the electors could be induced, by the deplorable state of confusion into which
Germany had fallen, to fill the imperial throne.  Their choice was however the
best that could have been made.  It fell upon Rodolph Count of Hapsburg, a
prince of very ancient family, and of considerable possessions as well in
Switzerland as upon each bank of the Upper Rhine, but not sufficiently
powerful to alarm the electoral oligarchy.  [A.D. 1272.] Rodolph was brave,
active, and just; but his characteristic quality appears to have been good
sense, and judgment of the circumstances in which he was placed.  Of this he
gave a signal proof in relinquishing the favorite project of so many preceding
emperors, and leaving Italy altogether to itself.  At home he manifested a
vigilant spirit in administering justice, and is said to have destroyed
seventy strongholds of noble robbers in Thuringia and other parts, bringing
many of the criminals to capital punishment. ^n But he wisely avoided giving
offence to the more powerful princes; and during his reign there were hardly
any rebellions in Germany.

[Footnote n: Struvius, p. 530.  Coxe's Hist. of House of Austria, p. 57. This
valuable work contains a full and interesting account of Rodolph's reign.]

     It was a very reasonable object of every emperor to aggrandize his family
by investing his near kindred with vacant fiefs; but no one was so fortunate
in his opportunities as Rodolph.  At his accession, Austria, Styria, and
Carniola were in the hands of Ottocar King of Bohemia.  These extensive and
fertile countries had been formed into a march or margraviate, after the
victories of Otho the Great over the Hungarians. Frederic Barbarossa erected
them into a duchy, with many distinguished privileges, especially that of
female succession, hitherto unknown in the feudal principalities of Germany.
^o Upon the extinction of the house of Bamberg, which had enjoyed this duchy,
it was granted by Frederic II. to a cousin of his own name; after whose death
a disputed succession gave rise to several changes, and ultimately enabled
Ottocar to gain possession of the country.  [A.D. 1283.] Against this King of
Bohemia Rodolph waged two successful wars, and recovered the Austrian
provinces, which, as vacant fiefs, he conferred, with the consent of the diet,
upon his son Albert. ^p

[Footnote o: The privileges of Austria were granted to the margrave Henry in
1156, by way of indemnity for his restitution of Bavaria to Henry the Lion.
The territory between the Inn and the Ems was separated from the latter
province, and annexed to Austria at this time.  The Dukes of Austria are
declared equal in rank to the palatine archdukes (archiducibus palatinis).
This expression gave a hint to the Duke Rodolph IV. to assume the title of
Archduke of Austria.  Schmidt, t. iii. p. 390.  Frederic II. even created the
Duke of Austria king - a very curious fact though, neither he nor his
successors ever assumed the title.  Struvius, p. 463. The instrument runs as
follows: Ducatus Austriae et Styriae, cum pertinentiis et terminis suis quot
hactenus habuit, ad nomen et honorem regium transferentes, te hactenus
ducatuum praedictorum ducem, de potestatis nostrae plenitudine et
magnificentia speciali promovemus in regem, per libertates et jura praedictum
regnum tuum praesentis epigrammatis autoritate donantes, quae regiam deceant
dignitatem; ut tamen ex honore quem tibi libenter addimus, nihil honoris et
juris nostri diadematis aut imperii subtrahatur.]

[Footnote p: Struvius, p. 525; Schmidt; Coxe.]

     Notwithstanding the merit and popularity of Rodolph, the electors refused
to choose his son king of the Romans in his lifetime; and, after his death,
determined to avoid the appearance of hereditary succession, put Adolphus of
Nassau upon the throne.  There is very little to attract notice in the
domestic history of the empire during the next two centuries.  From Adolphus
to Sigismund every emperor had either to struggle against a competitor
claiming the majority of votes at his election, or against a combination of
the electors to dethrone him.  The imperial authority became more and more
ineffective; yet it was frequently made a subject of reproach against the
emperors that they did not maintain a sovereignty to which no one was disposed
to submit.  [Adolphus A.D. 1292; Albert I., 1298; Henry VII., 1398; Louis IV.,
1314; Charles IV., 1347; Wenceslaus, 1378; Robert, 1400; Sigismund, 1414.]

     It may appear surprising that the Germanic confederacy under the nominal
supremacy of an emperor should have been preserved in circumstances apparently
so calculated to dissolve it.  But, besides the natural effect of prejudice
and a famous name, there were sufficient reasons to induce the electors to
preserve a form of government in which they bore so decided a sway.  Accident
had in a considerable degree restricted the electoral suffrages to seven
princes.  Without the college there were houses more substantially powerful
than any within it.  The Duchy of Saxony had been subdivided by repeated
partitions among children, till the electoral right was vested in a prince who
possessed only the small territory of Wittenberg.  The great families of
Austria, Bavaria, and Luxemburg, though not electoral, were the real heads of
the German body; and though the two former lost much of their influence for a
time through the pernicious custom of partition, the empire seldom looked for
its head to any other house than one of these three.

     While the duchies and counties of Germany retained their original
character of offices or governments, they were of course, even though
considered as hereditary, not subject to partition among children.  When they
acquired the nature of fiefs, it was still consonant to the principles of a
feudal tenure that the eldest son should inherit according to the law of
primogeniture; an inferior provision or appanage, at most, being reserved for
the younger children.  The law of England favored the eldest exclusively; that
of France gave him great advantages.  But in Germany a different rule began to
prevail about the thirteenth century. ^q An equal partition of the
inheritance, without the least regard to priority of birth, was the general
law of its principalities.  Sometimes this was effected by undivided
possession, or tenancy in common, the brothers residing together, and reigning
jointly.  This tended to preserve the integrity of dominion; but as it was
frequently incommodious, a more usual practice was to divide the territory.
From such partitions are derived those numerous independent principalities of
the same house, many of which still subsist in Germany.  In 1589 there were
eight reigning princes of the Palatine family; and fourteen, in 1675, of that
of Saxony. ^r Originally these partitions were in general absolute and without
reversion; but, as their effect in weakening families became evident, a
practice was introduced of making compacts of reciprocal succession, by which
a fief was prevented from escheating to the empire, until all the male
posterity of the first feudatory should be extinct.  Thus, while the German
empire survived, all the princes of Hesse or of Saxony had reciprocal
contingencies of succession, or what our lawyers call cross-remainders, to
each other's dominions.  A different system was gradually adopted.  By the
Golden Bull of Charles IV. the electoral territory, that is, the particular
district to which the electoral suffrage was inseparably attached, became
incapable of partition, and was to descend to the eldest son.  In the
fifteenth century the present house of Brandenburg set the first example of
establishing primogeniture by law; the principalities of Anspach and Bayreuth
were dismembered from it for the benefit of younger branches; but it was
declared that all the other dominions of the family should for the future
belong exclusively to the reigning elector.  This politic measure was adopted
in several other families; but, even in the sixteenth century the prejudice
was not removed, and some German princes denounced curses on their posterity,
if they should introduce the impious custom of primogeniture. ^s
Notwithstanding these subdivisions, and the most remarkable of those which I
have mentioned are of a date rather subsequent to the middle ages, the
antagonist principle of consolidation by various means of acquisition was so
actively at work that several princely houses, especially those of
Hohenzollern or Brandenburg, of Hesse, Wurtemburg, and the Palatinate, derive
their importance from the same era, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in
which the prejudice against primogeniture was the strongest. And thus it will
often be found in private patrimonies; the tendency to consolidation of
property works more rapidly than that to its disintegration by a law of
gavelkind.

[Footnote q: Schmidt, t. iv. p. 66.  Pfeffel, p. 289, maintains that
partitions were not introduced till the latter end of the thirteenth century.
This may be true as a general rule; but I find the house of Baden divided into
two branches, Baden and Hochberg, in 1190, with rights of mutual reversion.]

[Footnote r: Pfeffel, p. 289; Putter, p. 189.]

[Footnote s: Pfeffel, p. 280.]

     Weakened by these subdivisions, the principalities of Germany in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries shrink to a more and more diminutive size
in the scale of nations.  But one family, the most illustrious of the former
age, was less exposed to this enfeebling system.  Henry VII. Count of
Luxemburg, a man of much more personal merit than hereditary importance, was
elevated to the empire in 1308.  Most part of his short reign he passed in
Italy; but he had a fortunate opportunity of obtaining the crown of Bohemia
for his son.  John King of Bohemia did not himself wear the imperial crown;
but three of his descendants possessed it, with less interruption than could
have been expected.  His son Charles IV. succeeded Louis of Bavaria in 1347;
not indeed without opposition, for a double election and a civil war were
matters of course in Germany. Charles IV. has been treated with more derision
by his contemporaries, and consequently by later writers, than almost any
prince in history; yet he was remarkably successful in the only objects that
he seriously pursued. Deficient in personal courage, insensible of
humiliation, bending without shame to the pope, to the Italians, to the
electors, so poor and so little reverenced as to be arrested by a butcher at
Worms for want of paying his demand, Charles IV. affords a proof that a
certain dexterity and cold-blooded perseverance may occasionally supply, in a
sovereign, the want of more respectable qualities.  He has been reproached
with neglecting the empire.  But he never designed to trouble himself about
the empire, except for his private ends.  He did not neglect the kingdom of
Bohemia, to which he almost seemed to render Germany a province.  Bohemia had
been long considered as a fief of the empire, and indeed could pretend to an
electoral vote by no other title.  Charles, however, gave the states by law
the right of choosing a king, on the extinction of the royal family, which
seems derogatory to the imperial prerogative. ^t It was much more material
that, upon acquiring Brandenburg, partly by conquest, and partly by a compact
of succession in 1373, he not only invested his sons with it, which was
conformable to usage, but tried to annex that electorate forever to the
kingdom of Bohemia. ^u He constantly resided at Prague, where he founded a
celebrated university, and embellished the city with buildings. This kingdom,
augmented also during his reign by the acquisition of Silesia, he bequeathed
to his son Wenceslaus, for whom, by pliancy towards the electors and the court
of Rome, he had procured, against all recent example, the imperial succession.
^v

[Footnote t: Struvius, p. 641.]

[Footnote u: Pfeffel, p. 575; Schmidt, t. iv. p. 595.]

[Footnote v: Struvius, p. 637.]

     The reign of Charles IV. is distinguished in the constitutional history
of the empire by his Golden Bull [A.D. 1355]; an instrument which finally
ascertained the prerogatives of the electoral college.  The Golden Bull
terminated the disputes which had arisen between different members of the same
house as to their right of suffrage, which was declared inherent in certain
definite territories.  The number was absolutely restrained to seven.  The
place of legal imperial elections was fixed at Frankfort; of coronations, at
Aix-la-Chapelle; and the latter ceremony was to be performed by the archbishop
of Cologne.  These regulations, though consonant to ancient usage, had not
always been observed, and their neglect had sometimes excited questions as to
the validity of elections. The dignity of elector was enhanced by the Golden
Bull as highly as an imperial edict could carry it; they were declared equal
to kings, and conspiracy against their persons incurred the penalty of high
treason. ^w Many other privileges are granted to render them more completely
sovereign within their dominions.  It seems extraordinary that Charles should
have voluntarily elevated an oligarchy, from whose pretensions his
predecessors had frequently suffered injury.  But he had more to apprehend
from the two great families of Bavaria and Austria, whom he relatively
depressed by giving such a preponderance to the seven electors, than from any
members of the college.  By his compact with Brandenburg he had a fair
prospect of adding a second vote to his own; and there was more room for
intrigue and management, which Charles always preferred to arms, with a small
number, than with the whole body of princes.

[Footnote w: Pfeffel, p. 565; Putter, p. 271; Schmidt, t. iv. p. 566.  The
Golden Bull not only fixed the Palatine vote, in absolute exclusion of
Bavaria, but settled a controversy of long standing between the two branches
of the house of Saxony, Wittenberg and Lauenburg, in favor of the former.]

     The next reign, nevertheless, evinced the danger of investing the
electors with such preponderating authority.  Wenceslaus, a supine and
voluptuous man, less respected, and more negligent of Germany, if possible,
than his father, was regularly deposed by a majority of the electoral college
in 1400.  This right, if it is to be considered as a right, they had already
used against Adolphus of Nassau in 1298, and against Louis of Bavaria in 1346.
They chose Robert count palatine instead of Wenceslaus; and though the latter
did not cease to have some adherents, Robert has generally been counted among
the lawful emperors. ^x Upon his death the empire returned to the house of
Luxemburg; Wenceslaus himself waiving his rights in favor of his brother
Sigismund of Hungary. ^y

[Footnote x: Many of the cities besides some princes, continued to recognize
Wenceslaus throughout the life of Robert; and the latter was so much
considered as an usurper by foreign states, that his ambassadors were refused
admittance at the council of Pisa.  Struvius, p. 658.]

[Footnote y: This election of Sigismund was not uncontested, Josse, or
Jodocus, margrave of Moravia, having been chosen, as far as appears, by a
legal majority.  However, his death within three months removed the
difficulty; and Josse, who was not crowned at Frankfort, has never been
reckoned among the emperors, though modern critics agree that his title was
legitimate.  Struvius, p. 684; Pfeffel, p. 612.]

     The house of Austria had hitherto given but two emperors to Germany,
Rodolph its founder, and his son Albert, whom a successful rebellion elevated
in the place of Adolphus.  Upon the death of Henry of Luxemburg, in 1313,
Frederic, son of Albert, disputed the election of Louis Duke of Bavaria,
alleging a majority of genuine votes.  This produced a civil war, in which the
Austrian party were entirely worsted.  Though they advanced no pretensions to
the imperial dignity during the rest of the fourteenth century, the princes of
that line added to their possessions Carinthia, Istria, and the Tyrol.  As a
counterbalance to these acquisitions, they lost a great part of their ancient
inheritance by unsuccessful wars with the Swiss.  According to the custom of
partition, so injurious to princely houses, their dominions were divided among
three branches: one reigning in Austria, a second in Styria and the adjacent
provinces, a third in the Tyrol and Alsace.  This had in a considerable degree
eclipsed the glory of the house of Hapsburg.  But it was now its destiny to
revive, and to enter upon a career of prosperity which has never since been
permanently interrupted.  Albert Duke of Austria, who had married Sigismund's
only daughter, the Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, was raised to the imperial
throne upon the death of his father-in-law in 1437.  He died in two years,
leaving his wife pregnant with a son, Ladislaus Posthumus, who afterwards
reigned in the two kingdoms just mentioned; and the choice of the electors
fell upon Frederic Duke of Styria, second cousin of the last emperor, from
whose posterity it never departed, except in a single instance, upon the
extinction of his male line in 1740.

     Frederic III.  reigned fifty-three years [A.D. 1440-1493], a longer
period than any of his predecessors; and his personal character was more
insignificant.  With better fortune than could be expected, considering both
these circumstances, he escaped any overt attempt to depose him, though such a
project was sometimes in agitation.  He reigned during an interesting age,
full of remarkable events, and big with others of more leading importance.
The destruction of the Greek empire, and appearance of the victorious crescent
upon the Danube, gave an unhappy distinction to the earlier years of his
reign, and displayed his mean and pusillanimous character in circumstances
which demanded a hero.  At a later season he was drawn into contentions with
France and Burgundy, which ultimately produced a new and more general
combination of European politics. Frederic, always poor, and scarcely able to
protect himself in Austria from the seditions of his subjects, or the inroads
of the King of Hungary, was yet another founder of his family, and left their
fortunes incomparably more prosperous than at his accession. ^z The marriage
of his son Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy began that aggrandizement
of the house of Austria which Frederic seems to have anticipated. ^a The
electors, who had lost a good deal of their former spirit, and were grown
sensible of the necessity of choosing a powerful sovereign, made no opposition
to Maximilian's becoming King of the Romans in his father's lifetime.  The
Austrian provinces were reunited either under Frederic, or in the first years
of Maximilian; so that, at the close of that period which we denominate the
middle ages, the German empire, sustained by the patrimonial dominions of its
chief, became again considerable in the scale of nations, and capable of
preserving a balance between the ambitious monarchies of France and Spain.

[Footnote z: Ranke has drawn the character of Frederic III.  more favorably,
on the whole, than preceding historians, and with a discrimination which
enables us to account better for his success in the objects which he had at
heart.  "From his youth he had been inured to trouble and adversity.  When
compelled to yield, he never gave up a point, and always gained the mastery in
the end.  The maintenance of his prerogatives was the governing principle of
all his actions, the more because they acquired an ideal value from their
connection with the imperial dignity.  It cost him a long and severe struggle
to allow his son to be crowned King of the Romans; he wished to take the
supreme authority undivided with him to the grave: in no case would he grant
Maximilian any independent share in the administration of government; but kept
him, even after he was king, still as 'son of the house'; nor would he ever
give him anything but the countship of Cilli; 'for the rest he would have time
enough.' His frugality bordered on avarice, his slowness on inertness, his
stubbornness; on the most determined selfishness; yet all these faults are
removed from vulgarity by high qualities.  He had at bottom a sober depth of
judgment, a sedate and inflexible honor; the aged prince, even when a fugitive
imploring succor, had a personal bearing which never allowed the majesty of
the empire to sink." Hist. Reformation (Translation), vol. ii. p. 103.

     A character of such obstinate passive resistance was well fitted for his
station in that age; in spite of his poverty and weakness, he was hereditary
sovereign of extensive and fertile territories; he was not loved, feared, or
respected, but he was necessary; he was a German, and therefore not to be
exchanged for a king of Hungary or Bohemia; he was, not as Frederic of
Austria, but as elected emperor, sole hope for a more settled rule, for public
peace, for the maintenance of a confederacy so ill held together by any other
tie.  Hence he succeeded in what seemed so difficult - in procuring the
election of Maximilian as King of the Romans; and interested the German diet
in maintaining the Burgundian inheritance, the western provinces of the
Netherlands, which the latter's marriage brought into the house of Austria.]

[Footnote a: The famous device of Austria, A. E. I. O. U., was first used by
Frederic III., who adopted it on his plate, books, and buildings. These
initials stand for, Austriae Est Imperare Orbi Universo; or, in German, Alles
Erdreich Ist Osterreich Unterthan: a bold assumption for a man who was not
safe in an inch of his dominions.  Struvius, p. 722.  He confirmed the
archducal title of his family, which might seem implied in the original grant
of Frederic I.; and bestowed other high privileges above all princes of the
empire.  These are enumerated in Coxe's House of Austria, vol. i. p. 263.]