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For, in the year following, when he desired, conformably with his prerogative, to appoint burgomasters in Milan, the citizens fell upon E,ainald, his chancellor, Otho, the Count Palatine, and the other envoys with such fury that it was with the greatest difiiculty their lives were saved. Frederick once more placed Milan under the ban of the «mpii'e, and swore in his wrath never again to place the crown on his head until he had reduced the insolent city to a heap of ruins. Hostilities recommenced with all the fury of the wars of that period. The Milanese sought safety in attempting the assassination of the powerful Emperor who menaced them; at least, we are told by contemporary writers that several attempts to murder Frederick Barbarossa were made when he lay with his army before Milan. These dastardly attacks upon the Emperor's life having failed one after another, the siege was carried on more vigor- ously than ever; but the strong city maintained a stub- born defence for nearly three years, during which much blood was shed on both sides. At length, exhausted by famine and loss of its defenders, the starving Milanese surrendered at discretion. After undergoing a series of humiliations in the camp of the conqueror, Frederick spared their lives, but compelled them to place all their insignia of honour, with more than a hundred banners and standards at the foot of the throne. He then sum- moned a council at Pavia to determine the fate of Milan, and, in a numerous assemblage of German and Italian bishops, nobles and envoys from other cities, it was de- creed that Milan should be razed to its foundations. In its prosperity, Milan had so continually tormented the 919-1273.] FREDERICK I. 125 neiglibouring cities of Conio, Lodi, Pavia, Yercelli, N"o- vara, etc., that dejiutations from tliose places came to ask as a favour that they might themselves demolish the walls of the proud city; and, in their hatred, they set to work with such vigour, that in six days they heaped up wider ruins than hired labourers would have done in many months. Among other relics taken during the sack of the place, the skulls of the Magi, or Wise Men of the East, which had been deposited at Milan during the first crusade, were transferred by Rainald, archbishop of Cologne, to his own cathedral, where they are still vene- rated under the names of Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, the three Kiiiu-s of C'oloaiie. COLOGNE CATHEDRAL. But the most dangei'ous of Frederick's enemies was the bold and politic Alexander III., who, after two years of exile passed in FrancCj had succeeded in gaining qyqv 126 HISTOKY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD IV. Rome to his side, and liad re-entered the Eoly City. Frederick, who had been excommunicated by Alexander, hastened by forced marches to Rome, and compelled the inhabitants to receive Pascal III. ; whereupon the anti- pope, finding that the Romans were murmuring at his obstinacy, fled secretly from the city disguised as a pilgrim and took refuge in Beneventum. Then Frederick, with his consort, was crowned by Pascal on the 1st Aug. 1167, in the metropolis of Chiistianity. ■ It was soon, however, the Emperor's turn to flee from a more deadly enemy than the anti-pope. The German army was assailed by a terrible joestilence, the attacks of which were so sudden that men seemingly in perfect health being seized by giddiness whilst walking through the streets, fell dead, or expired in a few hours. Amongst those who perished were eight bishops, one of whom was the skilful chancellor, Rainald of Cologne, four dukes, including the Emperor's own cousin, Frederick of Rothen- burg, and Guelph the younger; besides some thousand nobles, knights, and seigniors. The Emperor fled to Pavia, and in the following spring secretly quitted Italy, in disguise, with a very small suite, like a fugitive. Frederick at length reached Germany; and it was not until 1174 that he entered Italy for the fourth time. Meanwhile, he had not been idle whilst at home. Duiing those seven years he had strengthened the imperial power, purged the interior from intestine disorder, especially quelling the furious quarrel in Noi'thern Germany be- tween Henry the Lion and his adversaries; and at the same time increased his dominions by various signal acquisitions destined for his five children who were yet in their youth. Thus the house of Hohenstaufen exten- ded its roots and branches on all sides like a vigorous and flourishing tree. Frederick next turned his attention towards Italy, ever rebellious. It had become, however, more diflicult to hurry thither the German princes on account of the unhealthiness of the climate; the Emperor therefore had need of all his eloquence and indefatigable activity to 919-1273,] BANISHMENT OF HENRY. 127 raise an army. But, in tlie autumn of 1174, lie crossed tlie Alps for the fifth time, and laid siege to Alessandria, After remaining for seven months under its walls, his troops exposed during the winter to great sickness and misery from the camp being pitched in a marshy spot, the Emperor at last found himself compelled to raise the siege and change his position so promptly as to necessitate burning his tents. On the 20th May 1176, Frederick encountered the Lombards at Lignano, in which battle his adversaries having the advantage of numbers and position, he suffered a complete defeat, was thrown from his horse, and only with difficulty escaped, favoured by the darkness of night, with a few followers. For two days he was reported to have been slain, and the empress even wore mourning. Shortly afterwards the affairs of Italy were happily settled by a treaty of peace, concluded at Pa via with the Lombards. As it was found imprac- ticable to arrange very speedily the articles of this peace with the Lombards, a suspension of arms for six years was agreed to, and the Emperor returned to Germany, causing himself to be crowned King of Burgundy on his way thither at Aries. Banishment of Henry the Lion. — Whilst the House of Hohenstaufen had in Frederick I. a valiant and active supporter, that of Guelph fou.nd also in Henry the Lion a hero who gave to ib added lustre. For, whilst the Emperor was occupied with his great wars in Italy, the former had extended widely his conquests in Silesia and Pomerania. Henry had been the loved companion of Frederick's youth, and the latter naturally reckoned upon his loyal support in his enterjjrises. Just after the defeat at Lignano, the Emperor and Henry met at Chiavenna, where Frederick was collecting all his forces for a decisive action against the victorious Lombards. Henry, who had lately returned from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, refused to join the Emperor in his forthcoming campaign, an offence which was punished by the forfeiture of all his possessions, save Brunswick and Limeburg, and banish- ment from the empire for three years. Henry the Lion 128 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD IV. retired to tlie court of his father-in-law, Henry II. (Plan- tagenet), where his wife Matilda gave birth to a son, William, who became head of that branch of the House of Hanover which now reigns in England. Hoping to establish in the south as in the north of Italy, an influence which should overawe the Pope ami the Lombards, the Emperor married his eldest son to Constance, heiress presumptive of the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. " Italy," he said, " was like an eel, which a man had need to grasp firmly by the tail, the head, and the middle, and which might nevertheless give him the slip." The Pojae saw the danger, and in his exasperation at the marriage, excommunicated those bishops who had ofiiciated at the ceremony. Another broil between the sjjiritual and temporal powers seemed imminent, when suddenly the news arrived that Jerusalem was again in the hands of the infidels, through the defeat of the Chris- tians by Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, in a battle near Tiberias. Frederick joins the Third Crusade— His Death (1190). — After Frederick Barbarossa's stormy yet heroic career, it appeared as though Divine Pi-ovidence had reserved for his old age a brilliant termination in the holy enterprise of a crusade. The disastrous intelligence from Palestiiie is said to have killed Urban III., but his successor, Gregory YIII., sent urgent letters to all the princes of Europe, entreating them to march instantly to the deliver- ance of the Holy Sepulchre. In answer to this appeal, the Templars and Knights of St. John were the first to embark, and were followed by the Italians, Normans, Danes, and Prisons. The summons was promptly obeyed throughout Europe, Kichard Coeur de Lion, King of England, PhOip- Augustus, King of Prance, and above all by Frederick Barbarossa : every Christian potentate was astir. The heroic Emperor, although in his seventieth year, began his march with youthful ardour at the head of a well- equipped army of 150,000 men, having received the cross from the hands of the Cardinal d'Albano (May 1189). His route lay through Hungary to Constantinople, where he embarked his army for the shores of Palestine in ships 919-1273.] HENRY VI. 129 lent him by the Emperor Isaac. On landing, the Greeks attempted to exercise the same perfidy against him as they had against Conrad III., but he punished them and laid their towns in ashes. The Sultan Arslan of Iconium, in Asia Minor, who j^roffered his friendship, but after- wards treacherously withdrew it, was defeated with the loss of his capital. In all these battles and hazardous conjunctures, the veteran wai-rior distinguished himself by his heroic vigour, and thus led his army skilfully to the frontiers of Syiia; but there his great career came to an end. As they advanced towards Armenia, the heat became insu2Dportable. On the 10th June 1190, on the army setting forth from Seleucia, it was necessary to cross an inconsiderable river called the Calycadnus, over which was a narrow bridge which rendered the passage of the army slow and tedious. The impatient Emperor, anxious to join his son, who was at the head of the vanguard, plunged his horse into the stream, in order the more quickly to reach the opposite bank; but the current swept him away; and, when help reached him, his lifeless body was recovered at a point far distant from that at which he entered the river. The grief and consternation of the princes and the army at the loss of their loved Emperor and leader may be imagined, but cannot be described. All hope seemed to have aban- doned them, and by far the greater portion of the troops returned to Germany. Frederick Barbarossa was at least spai-ed the bitter anguish of witnessing the melan- choly issue of so great an enterprise. Almost the entire remnant of the force which had remained under the command of the late Emperor's second son, the Duke of Swabia, died of the plagvie whilst fighting bravely before Antioch, the duke amongst the number, in the twentieth year of his age. The mortal remains of his heroic father found a tomb in Antioch, in that Syrian city where the followers of our Lord were first called Christians. Henry VI. (1190-1197).— Frederick Barbarossa was succeeded by his eldest son Henry, to whom he had com- mitted the care of the empire during his absence. Heniy, I 130 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD IV. far from resembling his father in strength and nobility of character and grandeur of thought, was, on the contrary, narrow minded, and often cruel to those who opposed his will. His master-passion was avarice, which he sig- nally manifested on an occasion which has reflected an indelible stigma on his memory. After the capture of Acre by Richard Cceur de Lion, King of England, a quan-el arose between him and Leopold, Duke of Austria. On the Crusaders entering the city, the Germans had separate quarters allotted to them, and there Leopold, the only German prince who remained in Palestine after Barbarossa's death, hung out his baimer on the highest tower in Acre. Irritated at such unjustifiable assump- tion of superiority over his allies, the fiery Gceihr de Lion tore down the banner and trampled it in the dust. For this afiront, the Duke Leopold and Henry later took an ignoble vengeance. Richard, on his return from the Holy Land, being shipwrecked in the Adriatic, proceeded homewards through Germany disguised as a pilgrim. He was, however, recognised near Vienna, made prisoner delivered up to Leopold, who had returned before him, and confined in the castle of Trielfels on the Rhine. At length, brought before the Diet at Hangenau on a chargt of having wronged the Germans by^an unfair distribution of booty, he was forced to pay a ransom of a million crowns — an enormous sum in those days — and do homage to the Emperor before he could obtain his release. In thus arraigning Richard, Henry, it is true, acted in con- formity with the right then assumed by the empire of citing all the kings of Christendom before its tribunal, but the treatment of the English monarch was esj)ecially condemned by the German princes, and looked upon by all Europe as a lasting disgrace to the Emperor. The unchivalrous Leopold who had I'esorted to this despicable revenge, was shortly afterwards killed by a fall from his horse. The chief object of all Henry's efforts was to secure Naples and Sicily, the inheritance of his wife Constance, to his crown; but the avarice and cruelty which he mani- 919-1273.] PHILIP OF IIOIIENSTAUFEN. 131 fested iu tlie pursuit of tliis iulieritance, alienated more and more from him his new subjects, and increased their hatx'ed of the Germans, for not only did he cany away from that kingdom 160 mules laden with gold, silver, and jewels of the old Norman kings, but he put out the eyes of certain nobles who had revolted against him. Further, to strike terror into others and insult their eftbrf'-i to withhold from him the coveted croAvn, he caused them to be seated in a chair of red-hot iron, and a crown simi- larly heated placed upon their heads. The rest of their accomplices, terrified, submitted; but that submission was not heartfelt, and Henry's descendants paid dearly for his inhuman cruelties. Summoned into Sicily to suppress an insurrection, this detestable tyrant suddenly died there, in 1197, at the age of thirty-three, when he was on the eve of devoting him- self wholly to a great enterprise — the conquest of the Greek empire, in order thereby to pave the way for the certain success of the Crusaders. In this reign Styria was added to Austila, and Vienna surrounded by a wall, the expense of fortifying the city being paid out of the King of England's ransom. Philip of Hohenstaiifen (1197-1208)— Otho IV. (1197- 1215). — The tender age of Henry's heir, an unbaptized boy between two and three years old, was the cause of a formidable strife between Wo factions, severally sup- porters of the Hohenstaufen and the Guelphs, who both pronounced against the young Frederick's accession. The first-named chose for Emperor, Philip, the infant's uncle, to whom they swore fealty at Mulhausen, whilst the Guelphic party chose Otho, son of Henry the Lion, who was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, after that city having for seven weeks resisted his entrance within its walls. Thus two sovereigns at once divided between them the authority of the mighty Pvoman empire. This unfortunate rupture of the empire's unity, left Germany for more than ten years a prey to the greatest disorder, rapine, and murder. Both the reigning princes were endowed with good qunlitieSj but neither was abl© 132 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD IV. to benefit his country, whilst in order to win over the Pope, each to his own side, they ceded many of their rights to Innocent III., an energetic and ambitions pontiff, under whom the papal supremacy attained its highest degree. Otho, to secure the support of Innocent, threw himself at his feet, and swore to acknowledge him as his liege lord, and restore to the church all the rights and possessions of which it had been deprived by former emperors. He even recognised in the Pope the full power of bestowing the empii-e; and, in a letter which he addressed to him, he called himself King of the Romans by the grace of God and of the Pope. By reason of these concessions, and because he was a Guelph, Innocent pro- tected him to the utmost; and when Philip had been assassinated in the castle of Altenbourg, near Bamberg, 'n 1208, by Otho of Wittelsbach, nephew of him to v\rhom Frederick I. had given the duchy of Bavaria, out of revenge at being refused the hand of Philip's daughter, Otho IV. was generally acknowledged as sole monarch of Germany, and was crowned at Rome. But this friend- ship between Pope and Emperor did not last long. Otho soon saw that he had gone too far with his concessions, and that he ought not to have sacrificed to his own private interests the imperial rights. Scarcely was the ceremony of his coronation concluded, and he had married a daughter of his late rival in the hope of conciliating the Ghibelline party, when the Roman populace rose and drove him out of the city without Innocent making the slightest effort to restrain their violence. Exasperated at such an insult, the Emperor declared that he no longer considered himself bound by the conditions which he had made with the Pope, Notwithstanding all the remon- strances of Innocent, Otho persisted in his disobedience, the result of which was that the Pope, furiously angry, set up against him the youthful Frederick, son of Heniy, who in the interim had been brought up in Sicily, and over which he had ruled since the death of his mother, Constance. Frederick soon saw himself at the head of a great party, and was crowned at Aix in 1215i 019-1273. J Frederick ii. l33 Otho Defeated at Bovines (1214); is Deposed and Dies (1218). — Otlio IV., who liad had the imprudence to ally himself with John Lachland, King of England, in the coalition against Philip-Augustus, having lost his best troops in the disastrous battle of Bovines, in Flanders, and with that defeat the remaining confidence of his countrymen, retired, on being formally deposed by Pope Innocent, to his duchy in the North of Germany. There he died in 1218, and twenty weeks after his de- cease, according to his will, the imperial insignia, includ- ing the holy cross, the holy lance, the crown, and one of the teeth of St. John the Baptist, all of which he had refused to surrender when deposed, were delivered to the reigning Emperor. Frederick II. (1215-1250).— The education of Frederick had been carefully suj^erintended by Pope Innocent III., who became guardian of the orphan prince after the decease of his mother Constance. The grandson of Erederick Barbarossa was a worthy descendant of that valiant Emperor, alike by his temperament, at once elastic, resolute and intrepid, as by the amenity of his manners, and an imposing majesty of demeanoui", the impression of which remained long after his decease. Versed in the arts and sciences so fat- as the scanty knowledge of those days went, he cultivated also poetry. Bred up amidst the strife and contention of that turbu- lent age, he became prematurely acquainted with the characters of men, his piercing eye penetrating their follies, and lashing them not unfreqviently with the sharp satire of his verse. Remarkable for the possession of such qualities at such a time, yet tliis young sovereign achieved nothing great. His energies were expended in an ever-recurring struggle, greater and more terrible than ever, between the Pope and the empire. More Italian than German, he had especially at heart his inheritance of the two Sicilies. Germany thus neglected, his vassals there steadily ac- quired greater power, whilst in France, the reversion of several fiefs to that crown prepared for the royal puis- 134 illSTOilY OF GERMANY. [pERlOD IV. sance of that realm tlie victory which it ultimately obtained over them. There were three main causes which tended to excite the Papal See against Frederick; first, because the popes could not endure that the imperial crown and that of Apulia should belong to the same individual, as he could thus menace the states of the church on both sides; next, because he would not recognise without resti'iction the great rights that Otho had conceded; and, lastly, that which excited their wrath the most was that, in the heat of the quarrel, he had launched keen sarcasms against them, and sought in every way to render them ridiculous and contemptible. Frederick 11. Excommunicated by Gregory IX. (1227). — There was a special circumstance, however, which gave 4se to the quarrel. Frederick, on being crowned at Aix, liad promised to undertake a crusade to the Holy Land, and this appeal was rendered more persuasive by the fact of his having married Joanna, daughter of the King of Jerusalem. After that ceremony, he visited E,ome for the purjiose of receiving the imperial crown from the Pope, and had rencAved that promise; and, before his de- parture, prevailed on the electors to choose his young son Henry as his successor. From Pome, Frederick visited Apulia, which he had left at the age of eighteen. Thex'e he would gladly have remained for some time; but the violent tempered Gregory IX. continually urged him to keep his promise. Yielding to his importunities, the Emperor, in the year 1227, set sail with a considerable force, but, a frightful pestilence having broken out amongst his troops, he returned into port after being at sea only a few clays, and the expedition was given up. Enx'aged at its failure, Gregory, refusing to admit of any excuse, excommunicated Frederick, alleging that the sickness was only feigned. To refute these accusations and redeem his honour, and burning with rage at the unjust sentence of excommunication passed upon him, the Emperor set out the following year for Palestine. This step on the part of Frederick, instead of appeasing 919-1273. J FREDERICK II. 135 the Pope, only served to increase the dissension between them, the hatter asserting that an expedition undertaken in the service of God, and conducted by an excommuni- cate, could not possibly sixcceed. Moreover, in order that Frederick should achieve nothing great in the Holy Land, Gregory sent communications secretly to the eccle- siastics, and the Knights of the Temple and St. John to refuse him their support, or to hold any relations with him; and even sent his own troops into the hereditary territories of Frederick in Italy, who overran a part of Apulia. Treating the knightly orders Avith contempt, however, and relying on his faithful Germans, Frederick obtained such a prompt success, that the Sultan Al Kamel thi'eAV open to him the gates of Jerusalem, and that leader of the infidels, with his own hands, placed the croAvn on the head of the Christian Emperor. The patriarch of Jerusalem and other ecclesiastics, obedient to the Pope's commands, instead of thanking God for the recovery of the Holy City, refused to celebrate any religious service in the Emperor's presence. Frederick, however, having secured all his rights to the crown* of Jerusalem, and ]3aid his devotions at the Holy Sepulchre, hastened back to Italy, where his presence alone soon restored to him all he had lost; and the Pope found himself compelled to make peace with him in 1230, and remove the excom- munication. The Emperor's son Henry revolts against him. — A short interval of tranquillity permitted Frederick to ex- change the rude arbitrament of war for a life of refined and luxurious enjoyment in Apulia, the land of his pre- dilection. Another trial, however, awaited him. His son Henry, whom he had left in Germany to govern the empire, led away by ambition and evil counsels, revolted against him. After an absence of fifteen years, Fredeiick returned into Germany, the north-east of which, during that interval, had been considerably extended by the * This title, King of Jerusalem, passed from Frederick to the Kings of Naples and Sicily. 136 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PEUIOD IV. conquests of the Kniglits of the Cross and Sword, who subdued Esthonia, and those of the Teutonic Order, who conquered and civilised the Prussians, a barbarian race, who ate horseflesh, and whose chief pastime was drink- ing to intoxication. These wild marauders having long harassed their neighbours the Poles, the latter, unable to withstand so powerful an enemy, at length summoned to their aid Hermann of Salza, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who sent a hundred knights to their assistance. In this manner Prussia was eventually sub- dued, and became the possession of the Teutonic knights. Whilst the frontiers of the empire were thus extended by conquest, its interior was agita.ted unceasingly by the broils and treasons of the nobles, and their cruel oppres- sion of those who were too weak to resist them. Such, were among the troubles which had prevailed during Frederick's absence. The misleaders of his son told him that the limited power with which he was in- trusted was the cause of these evils. They reminded him that his father had promised the Pope never to permit the governments of Germany and Apulia to be in the hands of one person, and persuaded him that his younger brother Conrad was the favourite of his father. Thus badly advised, Henry, in 1234, entered into an alliance with Frederick, the warlike duke of Austria, and as- sembling the German nobles at Boppart on the Rhine, proposed that they should throw off their allegiance to the Emperor. Not meeting with much encouragement from the majoi-ity, he next addressed himself to Italy, where he hoped to find ready allies in Gregory IX. and the Lombards. The ever-rebellious Milanese were will- ing to aid him, but the Pope indignantly rejected his unnatural proposal, declared all oaths of allegiance taken to him to be null and void, and commanded all his ad- herents to abandon him on pain of excommunication. Frederick soon afterwards appeared in Germany with a numerous force, took his son prisoner, and after foimally deposing him at Mayence, sent him into Calabria, where he died in prison some seven yeai'S afterwards (1242). 919-1273.] FREDERICK II. 137 Frederick II. Marries an English Princess (1235).— On his return to Germany, Frederick contracted a third marriage with Isabella, the beautiful sister of Henry III., King of England (1235). At the ceremony, which was celebrated with great pomp at Worms, there were among the guests 4 kings, 11 bishoi^s, 75 princes and 12,000 knights. The Emperor then held a Diet at Mayence, at which Henry, as has been said, was deposed, and his brother Conrad elected Frederick's successor. Frederick defeats the Milanese (1237).— In the year following, the revolt of the Lombard cities necessitated Frederick's return to Italy. They had renewed their ancient alliance, and refused the obedience they owed to their Emperor. Seconded by his brave and skilful general, Ezelin di Romano, with a mercenary force of 10,000 Saracens, Frederick entered upon the campaign in North Italy, where the imperial army was strengthened by troops of Ghibellines. He conquered several cities of the con- federation, and defeated so completely the Milanese (27th Nov. 1237) at Corte-nuova, that they would have willingly su.bmitted had he been disposed to consent to tolerable conditions. They offered to recognise him as their sove- reign, to deliver up to him all their gold and sil\-er, and furnish 10,000 men for the crusades, on condition of his pardoning their former misdeeds. But Frederick, irri- tated at their obstinate resistance, and unmindful of what happened to his grandfather, required ixnconditional sur- render. These people who remembered the struggles of their forefathers, preferred, as they told him, rather to die with arms in their hands than perish by famine, imprisonment, or the hand of tlie executioner. Thus hos- tilities were renewed, and the stubborn Milanese held out bravely in one city after another against their suzerain. Frederick II. Excommunicated a second time by Gregory IX (1235). — Henceforth, misfortune continually assailed the Emperor, and, as we are told by a contem- porary writer, *'he alienated many by his inexorable severity." Gregory IX., his archest enemy, rose up once more against him, entered the confederation of the cities, 138 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD IV. and placed him again under the ban of the Church. The reason alleged by Gregory for this last step was that Sardinia, of which the Pope claimed sovereignty as part of St. Peter's patrimony, had been seized by Frederick, wlio, against the Pope's remonstrances, made his son king of the island. To discuss these and other matters, Gregory having summoned an cecumenical council, the Emperor, in order to defeat his ecclesiastical adversaries, gave secret orders to his son to seize the vessels in which they had embarked. The result was that twenty-two ships on their voyage to Pome, filled with cardinals, bishops, and prelates, were captured, and this bold manoeuvre completely frustrated the holding of the council. Gi-egory, who was nearly a hundred years old, took this mortification so much to heart that he died a few months afterwards. Inroad of the Mongols. — About this time, Germany was overrun by the Mongols, a barbarous race who appear to have followed the tracks taken by the Huns in former reigns. Like their precursors, these savages were of low stature, mis-shapen, and of hideous mien, prominent cheek-bones, flat noses, thick blubber lips, and small deep-sunken eyes. They fed upon cats, rats, and the most repulsive refuse. Mounted on small, lean, but swift horses, these marauders had pursued a long- career of havoc and plunder, devastating many countries, and leaving a trail of terror and ferocity behind them. In the year 1206 they had invaded all Asia xmder a chief who assumed the name of Zingis Khan (Lord of Lords). This chief, after having conquered China, died in 1227. His sons overran Russia and Prussia, and penetrated as far as Silesia, where they pillaged and burnt its capital, Breslau. In 1241, they proved vic- torious in a great battle over the Silesians, near Liegnitz, v/here Henry the Pious, Duke of Lower Silesia, with an army of not more than 30,000 men, encountered an innu- mei-able multitiide of Mongols, according to some writers estimated at 450,000 strong. The Duke, like a chival- rous knight, disputed for two days the victory with the 019-1273.] prederick: it. 139 barbarian hordes; but, overwliebued by numbers, and having fought a lost battle to the bitter end, at last fell with the greater part of his force — the savage enemy carrying off, as a trophy, nine sacks filled with ears cut from the heads of the slain. These fierce invaders then marched southwards, perjietrating the most atrocious cruelties in Moravia and Hungary, until at length they met with a signal defeat from the imperial forces on the banks of the Daniibe. The result of this Mongol invasion to Silesia and Hungary was, that lai'ge numbers of German peasants migrated to those depopulated countries, and thus there has been since then a population more German than Sclavonian, Frederick II. Deposed and Banned by Innocent IV. (1243). — The sentence of excommunication launched by Gregory IX. against Frederick was solemnly renewed, in 1 243, at Lyons, by his successor, Innocent IV., with all the ceremonies of "bell, book, and candle." Whilst the mem- bers of the Council chanted the "Te Deum Laudamits," the prelates, assisting, extinguished the torches they had held during the formalities, praying that in like manner the Emperor's glory and happiness might be extinguished on earth. So bitter an enemy of Frederick did Innocent show himself that, not satisfied with having resorted to the violent measure above stated, that Pontifli' went so far as even to pronounce the deposition of the Emperor from all his states and all his dignities. At this juncture a formidable influence militated in favour of the Papacy — the power of public opinion. Innocent IV. had heaped grave accusations against the Emperor: amongst others, that of contemning the Christian religion and the Holy Catholic Church, and of leaning towards the infidelity of the Saracens; this latter charge being seemingly confii-med by the fact of Frederick having employed Saracens in the war against the Lombard cities. To this must be added the vein of biting sarcasm which he had indulged at the expense of the Papacy without sufficient regard for its sacred 140 HISTORY OF GERMANY, [PERIOD IV. functions. Neither, tinliappily, was his life pure and spotless, being habitually sullied by sensual excesses. He lost by degrees therefore the high estimation which he had formerly enjoyed, and the consciousness of this embittered his latter years and hastened his death. When the bulls of excommunication were scattered throughout Germany, several ecclesiastical princes made use of them to excite public opinion still further against Frederick; and, in 1246, caused the Landgrave of Thuringia, Henry Raspon, to be chosen Emperor in his place, at "Wutzburg. But this antagonist obtained no consideration, and died in the following year; and young William of Holland, who succeeded him, found but little support during the Emperor's lifetime. The greatest disorder now reigned both in Germany and Italy. "When the Emj^eror Frederick was placed under the ban of the Church," says an ancient historian, "the robbers rejoiced and congratulated one another on the booty which offered itself to their grasp. The plough- shares were beaten into swords and scythes into lances. No one walked about without carrying with him his flint and steel, in order to be ready to spread flames and ashes at any moment around him." In Italy the war went on without any decisive result, especially among the Lombard cities. The imperial arms were sometimes successful, but Frederick's genius became almost daily more and more enfeebled, and occasionally fortune altogether forsook him. Thus his son Enzio, whom he had made King of Sicily, the handsomest and most chivalrous of all his family, was taken prisoner by the Bolognese in an unlucky encounter near Fossalta. The exasperated citizens refused to accept any ransom, and condemned the prince to an imi^rison- inent which lasted twenty-two years; but he survived all Frederick's other sons and grandsons, who severally perished by poison, the sword, or the headsman. His chancellor and long-tried friend, Peter Desvignes, to whom he had trusted the most important affairs of his empire, having attempted his life by poison, Ava;s arrested, had his eyes put out, and destroyed himself by dashing his 919-1273.] FREDERICK 11, 141 head against the walls of his cell. The Emiieror did not long survive this series of disastrous events. He died in ] 250, in the arms of Manfred, the son of his last wife Bianca, at the Castle of Eirenzuola, on the Ruhr, at the age of fifty-six, having worn seven crowns — the imperial, the German, the iron crown of Lombardy, and those of Burgundy, Sicily, Saixlinia, and Jerusalem. If, after tracing rapidly the main events of Frederick's stormy life, we glance at his intellectual qualities, and all he did for the arts and sciences in his hereditary dominions (Naples), we discover with regret that, at his death, everything disappeared like a phantom. Gifted with talents and acquii-ements possessed by few men of his time, he understood Greek, Latin, Italian, French, German, and Arabic. Among the sciences, his predi- lection was for natural history, which led him to form a menagerie of wild beasts, and he wrote a treatise on birds which is still extant. His instructor in the sciences was the celebrated Michael Scott, the translator of Aristotle's treatise on natural history, who figures as a necromancer in Sir Walter Scott's "Lay of the Last MinstreL" Frederick II. founded the university of Naples in 1224, and liberally patronised that of Salerno; and, thanks to his zeal, the first collection of objects of art were made in those cities, which, however, unfortunately disappeared during the troubles of the ensviing epoch. Like Charlemagne, it is recorded of Frederick II. that the eastern potentates were eager to testify their friend- ship by presenting him with curiosities and the most precious productions of art. His taste was exquisite, and his brilliant court in the beautiful land of Apulia, though tainted with sensuality, became the centre of all that was cultivated, learned, and luxurious. Intellectual contests, in which the victors were crowned, often took j^lace, and in them Fi'ederick shone as a poet, being the first who wrote verses in the vernacular dialect of Italy. His death threw that country into disorder and involved Germany in still worse calamities. In Germany there were again two Emperors, throne against throne. Whilst 142 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD lY. the faction Inimical to tlie Holienstanfen recognised and sustained "William of Holland, the other had at their head Frederick's son Conrad, already elected King of the Romans in the lifetime of his father. William of Holland (1247-1256), and Conrad IV. (1250-1254). — Conrad, by his father's will, inherited with the imperial crown the sovereignty of Germany; but, engrossed with the recovery of his Italian dominions, he crossed the Alps in 1251, leaving his wife behind, w1k> in the following year gave birth to the unfortunate Conrad the younger, called by the Italians Conradino. Placed under the ban of the Church, like his father, immediately the news of his accession reached Rome, the Pope pronounced his title null, and sent out emis- saries to preach a crusade against him as an unbeliever and a heathen. Conrad, however, conquered Naples, but made the inhabitants his irreconcilable enemies by affixing a bridle to the statue of a horse which stood in the public square as the emblem of that city. On his return to Germany, he was confronted by his rival, William of Holland, in person at Oppenheim, and defeated. Shortly afterwards, Conrad fell sick and died, not without suspicion of having been poisoned. He was the last sovereign of the House of Hohenstaufen. Frederick had, indeed, left a second son, Henry, by his marriage with Isabella, a third, Manfred, by Bianca his third wife, and two grandsons of the unfortunate eldest, Henry; but they all died in the flower of their age, and nearly at the same time; so that at the death of Conrad IV. there only remained of the Hohenstaufen family the ill-fated Conradino and his brother Manfred. Death of William of Holland (1256).— The Emjoeror William did not long survive Conrad, and had been held in su.ch contempt that on one occasion he was pelted with stones by the people of Utrecht, and his wife assailed and plundered on the highway by a single citizen. In 1256, having marched against the Frieslanders, he perished in attempting to cross on horseback a frozen morass near Medenblick, the ice having broken under him. After 919-1273.] CONRADINO. 143 his death Germany became the seat of the most frightful disorders. The Interregnum (1256-1273).— The fortunes of the empire had now fallen so low that, with the exception of Ottocar, King of Bohemia, no German prince being- willing to accept the crown, the electoral body conceived the ignoble idea of electing some foreigner for Emperor who should bid highest for the title. The electors dis- agreed, however, in their choice, one party having chosen Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., King of England, who purchased the votes of the Archbishop of Mayence and his adherents for, in those days, a large sum of money, of which the Archbishop received 12,000 mai'ks, and every other elector 8000. The other party, at the head of which was the Archbishop of Treves, negotiated with Alfonso of Castile, surnamed The, Wise, who offered 20,000 marks to each of the electors. Richard of Corn- wall, according to the contemporary chronicles, cari-ied the pui'chase money with him into Germany in thirty- two waggons, each drawn by eight horses, and laden with a hogshead of gold. With this treasure he conquered the hearts of the avaricious electors and was solemnly crowned at Aix. He soon afterwards, however, returned to Eng- land accompanied by many distinguished Germans, who, iinding themselves unpopular at the English court, made but a short stay therein. Richard thrice visited Germany, but each of his visits was of brief duration. As for Alphonso, he never entered that country. The Pope had continually promised to adjiidicate upon the claims of these two candidates, but his decision being deferred from year to year, disorder and violence in the meanwhile increased daily throughout the land; the petty princes, counts and knights, as well as the towns, were continually at war with one another, until the whole of Germany in this her darkest hour became a scene of bloodshed, pillage, and anarchy. Conradino, the last of the Hohenstaufen. — The fate of the last scion of the Hohenstaufen family was a sad one. Conradino of Swabia, son of Conrad IV., after his father's 144 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD IV. death, had been brought up in Bavaria, and later in Swabia, where he still possessed some small territories, whilst his uncle Manfred, at first in quality of regent, and later with the title of King, administered his hereditary states of Naples and Sicily. Clement IV., however, the iri-econ- cilable enemy of the Hohenstaufen, declared the throne of Apulia vacant; and wishing to get it out of the hands of the Ghibellines, or Emperor's party, offered it to Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX. of France. Of a very different character from the pious St. Louis, he was, "though brave and clever, ambitious, covetous, cruel, and unforgiving. This crown had fallen into the hands of the imperial family by the marriage of the heiress of the last Norman King of Sicily with the father of the Em- peror Frederick II. When Frederick died, the crown of the Sicilies — that is, the island of Sicily and the kingdom of Naples — was occupied as above stated, by Manfred his natural son. Charles of Anjou could not resist the temp- tation of being a King, and, in 1265, having collected an army, he encountered Manfred at Beneventum. Manfred, who had had the misfortune to lose by a sudden storm the fleet by which he might have prevented the landing of the French, was defeated and slain, and Charles took possession of his dominions. Charles began his reign with many acts of cruelty, among the rest by casting Man- fred's children into prison, where they ended their days. In 1267, the adherents of the Ghibellines in Apulia, disgusted with the cruelty and tyranny of Charles of Anjou, having invited young Conradino to resume the crown of which he had been unjustly deprived, several of the German princes joined him in an endeavour to drive the French out of Italy. Having crossed the Alps with 10,000 men, Conradino made Verona his head-quarters, and during three months all the Ghibellines in Italy flocked to his standard. In a seiies of battles the French were invariably defeated, and Conradino at length, in despite of the Pope, entered Rome in triumph, and was escorted to the Capitol by a bevy of young maidens who scattered flowers along his path. But now the tide of 919-1273.] CONRADINO. 145 success turned against him. Near Tagliacozzo, in Apulia, his adversary confronted him at the head of a powerful force, and Conradino's army, after routing the Frencli, dispersed in search of booty, and falling into an ambus- cade, was cut to pieces by the enemy's rear-guard. Con- radino, after long fighting valiantly, escaped with his staunch adherent Frederick of Baden, through the speed of their horses; but having embarked on board a ship bound for Pisa, they were betrayed by Frangipani of Astura, and delivered ujd to Charles. A commission sat to determine their fate, and sentence of death being pronounced upon both as rebels, it was communicated to Conradino and Frederick whilst they Avere playing chess in their prison. When brought from his dungeon to ascend a scaffold erected in a market-place at Naples, the youth, eloquence, and exceptional beauty of the right- ful prince caused a deep sullen mui*mur to run through the crowd. Even the French were moved to tears; and when Robert of Bari advanced to read the sentence, he was instantly felled to the ground by Count Robert of Flanders, the usurper's son-in-law, and carried senseless away; but no attempt was made to rescue the condemned, Conradino now addressed the spectatoi'S, who listened in breathless sileaace to his last words. "I summon," he said, "my judges before the tribunal of the Most High. My innocent blood, shed on this scaffold, will cry to Heaven for vengeance : nor do I hold my Swabians and Bavarians, or my German people, so base and degenerate but that they will wash out in French blood this insult to their land." Having thus spoken he threw down his glove, which, a German knight took up and conveyed to Conradino's relative, Pedro III. of Arragon. Then, having removed his upper garment, the unfortunate prince embraced his friends, and murmuring some words about his mother, laid his head on the block. As the blood spouted up under the axe of the executioner, his fellow- sufferer, Frederick, uttered a dismal shriek and swooned, but was lifted up and executed with several others. Conradino, before ascending the scaffold, had ceded his 146 HISTORY OF GErvMANY. [PERIOD IV. rights to Constance, the daugliter of Manfred, and it was through her that the murder of Conradino was at length fearfully avenged by the horrible conspiracy called the Sicilian Vespers. Easter Eve, 1282, was the day appointed for the massacre of the French; and the ringing of the vesper-bell was to be the signal to the assassins. At that hour, as the- French, in ignorant security, were sitting at supper, the infuriate Sicilians rushed upon them, and in the short space of two hours there was not a Frenchman left alive in Palermo, where the massacre began, with the excej^tion of one man alone, Guillaume de Povirceleto, a gentleman of Provence, whose life was sjiared on account of his extraordinaiy probity. Every other town in Sicily, in which any French were to be found, followed the example thus set by Palermo, and it is estimated that 8000 persons fell in this massacre. Though the conspiracy against Charles and his party had been long on foot, it is probable that the massacre itself was a sudden outbreak, and Sismondi represents it as such. When Charles of Anjou, who was at this time absent from Sicily, was informed of what had passed, he, furious with rage, hastened to Messina with all the forces ho could collect and laid siege to it; but the Sicilians who well knew his remorseless character, defended themselves with the courage of desperation, and Charles found him- self obliged to retire to Calabria and there wait for rein- forcements. Pedro, hoAvever, in spite of Charles's efforts, retained possession of the island; and, in 1285, amidst all the horrors of a guilty conscience, the murderer of the last Hohenstaufen ended his miserable life. FIFTH PERIOD. FROM BODOLPH I. OP HAPSBURa TO CHARLES V.-— (1273-1520). {Emperors of different Houses]. Rodolph of Hapsburg (1273-1291).— Tlie longer that anarchy prevailed in Germaiiy, the greater it became; and when Richard of Cornwall died in England, in 1272, as Alphonso of Castile gave himself very little trouble about the empire, the German princes assembled in Diet at Frankfort, in 1273, and having set his claims aside, proceeded to choose an Emperor, concerning whose fit- ness they should be unanimous. A strong and sagacious ruler was needed to re-establish the imperial dignity, and, on the other hand, one not too powerful, in order that the other princes should have nothing to fear for their own sway: one in short who would rule only in the manner which the Pope and the nobles might prescribe. This was no easy task. However, after considerable de- lay, an individual was found, who more than any other seemed to possess the necessary qualifications. In Count Rodolph of Hapsburg, it was the good fortune of Ger- many to find a man destined to restore peace to that distracted country. Distinguished as a* brave and success- ful warrior, yet possessing little weight by his slender possessions, he had nevertheless won the esteem alike of rich and poor by his noble qualities. Durmg the bar- barous period of the interregnum, he had resided on his patrimonial estates, and, so far as his arm could extend, he had protected tlie oppressed against the injustice and cruelty of brigandage. He was long the protector and 148 HISTOKY OP GERMANY. [period V. governor of Zuricli, Strasbourg, and the towns situated at the foot of Mount St. Gothard; during which rule he had signally displayed sagacity, equity, and magnanimity. His exterior was commanding, yet his demeanour frank and simple, his countenance pale and serious; and the Archbishop of Cologne, in a letter to the Pope, described him as " a sound Christian, a true friend of the Church, a lover of righteousness, mighty in his own strength, and allied with the mighty." MOUNT ST. GOTHARD. Rodolph, who did not dream of such elevation await- ing him, was at the moment at war with Basle, with the object of re-establishing therein the party of the nobles driven out by the citizens. It was in the dead of night that the burgrave of Nuremberg, Frederick de Hohen- zollern, Eodolph's father-in-law, came into his camp with that unexpected message. At first, Rodolph could not credit it; but when later the imperial marshal also arrived, he sent the burgrave into the city to offer peace to the citizens, because he was then, he said, the strongest. The besieged received the tidings very joyfully, and were 1273-1520.] RODOLPH OF HAPSBtJKG. 149 tlie first to otier up prayers for the jirosperity of his reign. Gregory X. went in pei'son to meet him at Lausanne, and there, kneeling at the Pope's feet, Ilodolj)h swore vincon- ditional obedience to the See of Rome. In after life he sought to justify this act of self-abasement. " I saw," ho said, "the traces of many footstejos. going into the lion's den, but none returning thence; therefore did I hold it for the truest wisdom to serve the lion of the church rather than to fight with him." From Lausanne, he re- paired to Frankfort to meet the assembled nobles, and thence to Aix-la-Chapelle, where he was solemnly crowned (21st Oct. 1273), in the presence of 20,000 knights, and a vast concourse of people. After the ceremony, when the princes of the empire were about to render homage to the new Emperor, according to custom, for their states, no sceptre was forthcoming, the regalia having been lost during the troubles which followed the death of Fi-ederick II. An embarrassing pause ensued, which was promptly broken by Rodolph taking the crucifix from the high altar, and administering on it the oath which had been usually sworn on the imperial sceptre : "The symbol of our redemption," he said, "might well sujjply its place." Rodoliih of Hapsburg began his reign by striking with all the severity of the law at the root of the evil by which Germany was oppressed, by purging his realm from in- tei-nal disorders. During the interregnum, the country had been the prey of the ii"on-handed marauder, and the license which prevailed was so great as to baffle descrip- tion : the entire land was infested by bands of robbers i no man's life or property being secure. But after he had succeeded in suppressing the robber chiefs and minor per- turbators, he was not long in perceiving that to give Ger- many lasting peace, and restore to the imperial dignity its psoper consideration, it was necessary for him to com- pel the great princes also to fulfil their duties and render him due homage. One of the conditions imposed on Rodolph at his election was, that he should humble the pride of Ottocar of Bohemia. Bodolph had been marshal 150 HISTOEY OP GERMANS. [PERIOD V. of the palace to tliat King, and when, therefore, the Em- peror summoned him to do homage at the Diet of Nurem- berg, in 1274, Ottocar disdainfully replied: "What does that man want of me, have I not j^aid him his wages?" Ottocar was a powerful prince, and possessed, besides Bohemia, the hereditary states of Austria, which he had contrived to appropriate to himself after the extinction of the ducal house of Babenberg, partly by kinship and partly by force of arms and gold, and he thought that ]io one could compel him to obedience. Moreover, the Austrian states preferred bitter complaints to the Em- peror of his oppression and injustice. Accordingly, Otto- car having refused to obey a third summons to Augsberg, in 1275, he was placed under the ban of the empire as a rebel; and such was the rage of this perfidious prince, that when the imperial heralds appeared at Prague to announce the sentence, he ordered them to be hanged over the chief entrance-gate of that city. But his punish- ment was not long delayed. Rodolph entered Austria early in the following" year, and reduced all that country under his power as far as Vienna, which he besieged. Ottocar, conscious of a bad cause, yielded without strik- ing a blow; surrendering Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola to the empii-e, but retaining Bohemia and Mor- avia to be held as fiefs, for which he was to do homage. In order fur-ther to consolidate the peace, a marriage was arranged between the heir presumptive of Bohemia, Win- ceslas, and one of the six daughters of Bodolph, and a second betweeia the Emperor's son and a princess of Bohemia. Ottocar soon afterwards repaired with great pomp to Rodolph's camp on the island of Lobau,, in the Danube, to do homage. This ceremony was attended by a bitter mortification for that haughty prince, who had hoped to eclipse by the splendour of his royal array the unostenta- tious simplicity so characteristic of the Emperor. "The King of Bohemia has often laughed at my old grey doub- let," said Kodolph; " to-day it is the tui-n of the old grey doublet to laugh at him." Thus, when Ottocar, resplen- l2t3-1520.] BoboLPH i. iSi clent in puii;)le and gold, was in the act of kneeling before the Emperor, the sides of the tent were suddenly drawn lip, so that he was seen by the whole army. Enraged at this humiliation, and the continual reproaches of his queen, Ottocar again unsheathed the sword against his suzerain, who encountered him (26th Aug. 1278) near Marchefeld, on the Morava. The battle was sanguinary and its issue long doubtful, and Rodolph, whose horse was knied under him, had a narrow escape from losing Lis life. At length, the rebels were put to flight, and Ottocai', fighting desperately, was slain by a Styrian knight, whose father he had cruelly put to death many years before, Rodolph. I, founds the Imperial Dynasty of Austria. — In a Diet at Augsbitrg (1282), in presence and with the consent of a crowd of pi-inces and nobles, E-odolj^h took solemn possession of Austria to the adA^antage of his own family, in fief, the conquest of which had cost the empire much blood and treasure; Eodolph of Haps- burg thus becoming the founder of the reigning dynasty of Austria. ^ . ' After settling other family aifairs, and having humbled the enemies of the empire, the Emperor, although now of an advanced age, set out on a progress through every part of Germany, listening to complaints and redressing grievances. During an expedition through Thuringia, he caused sixty-six castles of the robber nobles to be demolished, and twenty-nine of their owners to be hanged in chains at Erfurt. Thus occupied at home, he had not time to think seriously of visiting Italy, in order to be crowned there. Moi'eover, he was so far from sharing the opinions of his predecessors touching that country, that, in a treaty with Gregoiy X., he ceded all the rights of the empire over the territories of the church. He could congratulate himself on having thus got rid of that destructive allurement which had led former Emjierors to vmdertake expeditions into Italy. Rodolph, towards the close of his reign, urged the Diet of Frankfort to recognise bis son as Emperor; but 152 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD V. the gi'eat princes, jealous and already tired of Rodolj)li's government wliicli they found too rigorous, because lie hindered them from pursuing their particular interests, rejected that pi'oposal; so much the more fii'mly that they thought that if the son should succeed his father, the empire would cease to be elective. Thereupon E,o- dolph retired, weaiy, sick, and discontented to Basle. For a year afterwards his physicians prolonged his life only by artificial means. He died at Germershein on the 30th Sept. 1291, universally lamented, aged seventy-four. His memory was so venerated in Germany that long after his death the phrase was in common use : — " That is not the loyalty of Rodolph." In the afiairs of Italy he took so little interest that he would not visit it, even to receive the imi^erial crown ; he compared it to the lion's den, whitened with bones of the Emperors, his predecessors. His reign exhibited a re- markable novelty — internal tranquillity. He not only preserved peace with his neighbours, but with a firm hand he suppressed private war in every quarter, razed the bandit fortresses to the ground, and hung the inmates by scores. His j)robity became a proverb. " His very name," says a contemporary chronicler, "spread terroi among the turbulent barons, joy among the people; as light springs from darkness, so peace arose from desolation." Well may the house of Austria glory in its founder ! He was accessible to the humblest of his jDeople. See- ing one day that his guards were preventing the approach of some poor men, he cried out, " Let them appi'oach, I was not made Emperor to be excluded from my fellow creatures !" But his highest eulogy is to be found in his conduct as a sovereign. Adolph of Nassau (1292-1298). — The claim of Ko- dolph's son to the crown was set aside through the craft of Gerald, Ai'chbishop of Mayence. That corrupt and wicked prelate, by bribing the chief electors with large sums of money, secured the nomination of his cousin Adolph, Count of Nassau. He was prompted to this unscrupulous manceuvre by the expectation of finding in 1273-1520.] ADOLPH OF NASSAU. 153 Adolijli a willing agent for tlie accomplisliment of Lis own ambitious schemes. This Count of Nassau, though brave even to ferocity, had neither sufficient jDrudence, power, nor consideration, to entitle him to such a dignity. As he had inherited no more than half the country of Nassau, he enlarged his territories by the purchase of Meissen and Thuringia from Albert the Degenerate with a large sum of money he received from Edward I. of England as a subsidy towards the expenses of aiding the English king in a war against Philip of France. The quarrel of the two kings having been suspended, Adolph did not hesitate to use the money as above stated. Albert the Degenerate, the bad Margrave of Thuringia, had repudiated his wife, the virtuous Margaret, daughter of Frederick II., to espouse Cunegonde of Isenburg. When the persecuted mother was forced to separate from her children, she, in the excess of her grief, bit severely in the cheek the eldest, Frederick, as a lasting reminder of his pai-ent's wrongs. The tmhappy Margaret died shortly afterwards at Frankfort, and her sons fled from the roof of their unnatural father, but were soon retaken and thrown into prison, where they would have perished, had not a faithful servant brought them bread, and ulti- mately supplied them with the means of escape. This execrable margrave further sold the hereditary posses- sions of the children of his first marriage, and gave the proceeds to Albert, the son of Cunegonde. But, when the wronged sons of Margaret were old enough to bear arms, they fought vigorously for their inheritance against Adolph and their father, universally assisted by the people, who had grown weary of the tyranny of their depraved and detested sovereign. Happily, the exertions of the two brothers were at length rewarded by a partial recovery of their territories. The unworthy conduct of Adolph had not only excited the hatred of the German people, but the Archbishop Gerald, disappointed at not finding him the ready tool he had expected, broke with him; and, at that tricky prelate's instigation,_ aided by bribery, a new Diet was 16 i klSTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD V. assembled at Mayence, whicli accused tlie Emperoi* of despoiling the Church, of receiving the pay of a prince inferior to himself (Edward I. of England), and of having dismembered the empire instead of aggrandised it; and, finally, of not having maintained it in peace. Upon these charges the Electors declared the throne vacant, and Albert Duke of Austria was chosen to fill it. This was the first instance of the deposition of an Emperor by the electoi'al princes alone, without any instigation of the Pope. The two adversaries marched against each other, and fought a decisive battle near Worms in 1298. Adolph was defeated, and slain in the thick of the fight, some annalists say by the hand of Albert himself. Albert of Austria (1298-1308).— This new Emperor had neither the mildness nor the afiability of his father; on the contrary, he was as unprepossessing in disposition as he was ill-favoured of face, the loss of an eye giving a sinister expression to the singularly rep»ulsive ugliness of the other features. A life of intiigue, danger, and crime, had lent a look of gloom and severity to his countenance, which even the biilliance of his coronation atl Nurem- berg could not dispel. Cold and obdurate, his severity towards the Archbishoj) Gerald of Mayence was perhaps deserved, that wily prelate having threatened him that, with one blast of his horn, he could call up as many emperors as he pleased. He had, in fact, chosen another. Albert reduced him quickly to submission, and forced him to ask pardon. But, in many other instances, his actions were not guided by justice. They had the result, at least, of gaining for him an extension of territory; and he was already contemplating the acquisition of Thuringia, Bohemia, and Holland, when an event occux-red which put an end to his ambitious jirojects. In 1308, the three Swiss cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, having revolted against the Dukes of Austria, Albert swore to wreak sanguinary vengeance upon the rebellious mountaineers. In an expedition he undertook to the Swiss frontiers with the purpose of 1273-1520.] ALBERT OF AUSTRIA, 155 raising forces for tlie suppression of the revolt, and after- Avards making war upon Bohemia, he took Avith him his nephew, John of Bohemia, the son of his deceased brother Bodolph, from whom he had withheld his patri- monial inheritance of Hapsburg, although only his guardian. In vain had the young man often implored his uncle to restore those possessions of which the younger branch of the family had been unjustly deprived; but his prayers were always met with a refusal. At length, associating himself with some discontented nobles who nourished a secret hatred against Albert, four of them resolved to assassinate him. On the first day of May 1 308, the Emperor was riding slowly with a few attendants through the fields at the foot of the hills crowned by the castle of Hapsburg, nob far from which his camp was pitched. The ferry by which the retinue had to cross the Reuss being already in sight, the conspirators pressed onwards to enter the small boat that was to convey the Emperor, in order to separate him from his escort. Having reached the river, John and his fellow conspirators, rushing forwards, suc- ceeded in entering the boat with the Emperor and one solitary attendant. On landing they remounted and rode at a smart pace until they gained a sort of coppice, the thick growth of which hid them from the sight of the rest of the retinue, who were waiting on the other bank for the return of the boat. Suddenly John seized his uncle's bridle-rein, and shouted loudly and energetically, " Let us now see whether the possessions of my father wUl be restored to nie." The Emperor, though startled, preserved his presence of mind, and tried to calm his nephew by fair promises; but the matter had gone too far. " How long will ye suffer this carrion to sit on horseback 1 " passionately exclaimed Budolph of Balm, as he stabbed the Emi:>eror with his dagger, whilst at the same moment Walter d'Eschenbach clove his skull with the blow of a sword. Albert fell to the ground senseless, bathed in his blood, A poor woman who witnessed the deed hastened to render the wounded monarch assistance IjG history of GEliMANY. [PERIOD V. by trying to staunch tlie blood; but the blows dealt by the assassins were mortal, and in a few moments lie died in her arms. John fled into Italy, and, stung by remorse at a sense of his guilt, he threw himself at the Pope's feet, who sentenced him, at the request of the Emperor, Henry YII. (of Luxemburg), to confinement for life in an Augus- tine convent at Pisa, One of the assassins, Wart, was arrested and broken on the wheel at the spot where the murder was committed. His crushed and mangled limbs were transferred to another wheel, and set \ip on a pole by the wayside, where he was left to die a lingering death. His wife, Adelaide de Sargans, who was taken with him, shared his dungeon with a babe at her breast. The child died from want of food, the mother's milk failing. Ade- laide, on the day of her husband's execution, having obtained her release from pi'ison, witnessed his torture and strove to alleviate his sufierings by her affectionate care, remaining day and night beneath the wheel to moisten his parched lips with a sponge dipped in water. "When all was over she entered a convent at Basle, where the faithful relict of Wart soon afterwards died of grief. The remains of the late Emperor Avere laid, with all marks of respect and honour, by the side of his predeces- sor, Adolph, in the cathedral of Spires. Frederick "with the bitten cheek," also expired (a.d. 1319), worn oiit with toil and laden with years, after having succeeded in recovering his family rights. He was succeeded in Meissen by his son, Erederick the Stern. The Swiss War of Independence— William Tell. — Switzerland originally formed a part of the kingdom of Aries or Burgundy, and was united later on to the rest of the dominions of Podolph. It contained a numerous and powerful nobility, and several rich ecclesiastical lords. Its towns of Zurich, Basle, Berne, and Friburg rose into importance. Among the nobles the Counts of Hapsburg gradually became the most powerful ; they were advocates to several convents, some of which had estates in the forest- cantons of Schwvtz and Underwald. 1273-1320.] SWISS AVAR OF INDEPENDENCE, 157 The people of these caiitons reposed confidence in Ro- dolph, the first Emperor of the House of Hipsbur" • but they distiusted his son the cokl \m\ liLutless Albcjt, ■who justified then sus| i i ii i ] ( t f 1 ^^ itli the c\TnEDP\L sni ES righto vvhiuh, as advocate of the conveiits, he pOosei:>sed over a part of the forest-cantons, he, wishing to annex them to the duke-dom of Austria, sent imperial bailifis to administer iustice in the whole of these cantons. The 158 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PEUIOD V. people "wei'e indignant at this attempt to reduce them to servitude. Three men, Staufiacber of Schwytz, Furst of Uri, Melclitlial of Unterwald, each with ten companions, met by night in a secret valley, and swore to assert the liberty of their country. It was, therefore, the encroach- ments of ducal, not imperial tyranny, that drove these brave mountaineers to vindicate their independence with the sword. The encroachments which the confederates of Gruttli pledged themselves to withstand was the attempt to degrade their land from being a free fief of the empii-e into becoming a part of the hereditary posses- sions of the House of Austria. William Tell, a brave and honest peasant, was the popular hero of this band of liberators, who, driven at length into open rebellion by a series of insults offered to them by Gessler, the Austrian bailiff of Uri, made a suc- cessful stand against the tyrannical Duke Albert. Seve- ral circumstances of his life, even his existence, have been doubted; but it seems clearly jDroved that he really shared in the struggles and deliverance of his country. Born at Burghen, in the canton of Uri, he married the daughter of Walter Furst of Altinghausen, who had taken the oath'^(7th Sept. 1307) at the Gruttli with Arnold de Melchthal and Wei^ner de Stauffacher. Gessler had caused to be fixed upon a pole in the market-place of Altorf a hat (the ducal hat according to John de MuUer), commanding the Swiss to bow their heads whilst passing it. Tell indignantly refused to obey that humiliating order. The tyrant, furious at the audacity of the recu- sant, compelled him, under pain of death, to shoot an arrow, at a distance of one hundred and twenty paces, through an apple placed upon the head of the youngest of his b03^s (18th Nov. 1307). Tell shot so true that he pierced the apple without harming his son. Gessler then perceiving a second arrow hidden beneath his belt, asked him what it was for. Tell would have excused himself by saying that it was the common custom of archers; but Gessler, seeing him confused, pressed him to disclose the real reason, promising that, whatever he might say, hig 1273-1520,] WILLIAM TELL, 159 life should be safe. " Well, then," replied William Tell, " I will speak the truth. If I had slain my sou, the second arx'ow should have pierced thy heart." " I pro- mised thee thy life," replied Gessler; ''but since thou art thus evil disposed towards me, I will send thee to a place where thou shalt never see sun or moon more." Gessler then caused him to be loaded with chains, and thrown into a boat; and, fearing lest he should be rescued by his companions, he determined to conduct him himself to the strong fortress of Kussnacht, They embarked x;pon the lake of the Four Cantons; and scarcely were they in front of the Gruttli than the jocher, an impetuous wind fron the south which often blows in these reoions, raised TELL'S CHAPEL, a violent storm, which rendered the small skiff unman- ageable. Tell was known to be a skilful boatman, and he averred that he could steer the skiff to a point where they could land safely. Gessler, terrified, consented to his chains being taken off, and trusted him with the helm. Tell directed the boat shorewards towards a rocky platform which still bears the name of TelPs Leap, situ- ated on the Schwytz shore. There, snatching his boAv, he sprang ashore from the skiff, thrusting it back with his foot, thereby leaving his enemy exposed to the fury of the waves. Gessler^ however, escaped also, and con- 160 HISTORY OF GERMANY, [PERIOD Y. tinued liis way by laud towards Kussnaclit. Toll waited for him by the roadside, until be bad entered a bollow, woody pass, and, watching bis opportunity, took a steady aim at tbe tyrant, and sent an arrow tbrough bis beart. After tbis exjjloit, Tell's life becomes obscure. We learn only tbat be fougbt in tbe battle of Morgarten (1315), and tbat be died at Bingen, receiver of tbe cburcb of tbat city in 1354. His death was another devoted act, for he perished in an attempt to save a child who bad fallen into a torrent. The gOA^ernor of Uri decreed that, on the anniversary of his death, a sermon should be delivered at the spot wbei-e stood tbe house of Tell, " our beloved citizen, and restorer of our liberties, in eternal memory of Heaven's benefits, and the happy deeds of the hero." Thirty years later a chapel was built upon the site on which that bouse bad stood. Henry VII. of Luxemburg (1308-1313). — On the tragical death of Albert, the crown of Germany was claimed by Philip the Handsome (le Bel) of France for bis' brother Charles; the electors, however, dreaded bis power, and refused to elect him. The eyes of many princes were turned to Frederick, Duke of Austria; but the father had never been popular; and the cruelty with which some of the members of tbe family, especially Agnes bis daughter, widow of Andrew III. King of Hun- gary, revenged tbe murder of that monarch, increased tbe feeling of dissatisfaction. Through the intrigues of Peter, archbishop of Mentz, the election fell on Henry, Count of Luxemburg, brother of Baldwin, archbishop of Treves. Henry was proclaimed Emperor at Reuse (1308), near Braubach, on the left bank of the Rhine, and there crowned, Tbe two other ci'owns, the iron one in Lom- bardy, and the imperial croAvn, were still in Italy. Henry was one of the noblest monarchs who ever sat on the throne of Germany. Deeply conscious of the duties imposed upon him by bis station, he followed in the steps of Charlemagne and Barbarossa, and worthily ui^beld tbe dignity and honour of the empire, ever remaining a stranger to the petty policy of bis late predecessors, who 1273-1520.] LOUIS V. 161 sacrificed the state foi' the sake of increasing the wealth and influence of their own houses. The reign of Henry VII. was destined to be short. His predecessors, during half a centuiy, had wisely refrained from interfering in the affairs of Italy; and had thereby avoided the unhappy fate of many whose bones, as Rodolph truly observed, whitened that den of wild beasts. But dazzled by his unexpected elevation, and that of his son, who acquired the crown of Bohemia by his marriage with Elizabeth, grand-daughter of Ottocar, he resolved, in a fatal hour, to restore the supremacy of the empire over Lombardy and Tuscany. His transactions in Italy must be sought in the histories of that country. Here we need only observe, that, though for a moment Lombardy sub- mitted, and he received the imperial crown at Rome from the hands of three cardinals, to whom Clement V. (still at Avignon) delegated the necessary powers, he suddenly died at Buonconventi, near Sienna, poisoned during supper by a monk (August 24, 1313). With his expiring breath he said to his murderer : " You have given m.e death in the cup of life, but fly, ere my followers seize you ! '' The death of Henry replunged Germany into horrors to which, since the extinction of the Swabian line of emperors, it had been a stranger. Louis V. of Bavaria and Frederick of Austria (1314- 1347). — On the death of the noble-hearted Emperor, the empire again fell a prey to the adverse factions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. The rancour of the Papal French party had been again excited by Henry's expedi- tion to Rome, and the Hapsburgs once more appeared on the scene as its supporters and tools. Frederick the Hand- some was, consequently, zealously recommended by the Pope as the successor to the crown, for which a com- petitor also appeared in the person of John of Bohemia, the son of the late Emperor; but his youth proved the chief obstacle, and, after some consideration, he ceded his rights in favour of Louis of Bavaria, Although Louis was a member of the Aiistro-Hapsburg family, his mother being a daughter of Rodolph I., he bad always been the L 1G2 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD V. enemy of tlie Austrian princes, and in the same degree the ally of the Luxemburg factions. The two candidates being respectively crowned Kings of the Komans — Louis at Aix-la-Chapelle, by the Archbishop of Mentz, Erederick at Bonn, by the Metropolitan of Cologne, a civil war was inevitable : neither had virtue enough to sacrifice his own rights to the good of the state. As both had great mili- tary talents, equal enterprise and resolution, the contest could not fail to be severe and protracted. Fortunately for Louis, the Austrian forces were defeated by the hardy natives of Helvetia, who from hatred to the memory of Albert and his rapacious officers, had declared for the Bavarian and Bohemian faction. Yet, after all, the con- test would have ended in favour of the Austrians, but for the rashness of Frederick, who, in September 1322, without waiting for the arrival of his brother Leopold, assailed Louis not far from Milhldorf in Lower Bavaria. "With his usual magnanimity, Frederick, considering that the pre-eminence of danger was his proper duty, arrayed himself in splendid armour, on which was emblazoned the cognizance of his house; and on his head he wore a helmet surmounted by a crown, thus exhibiting himself on the one hand as the rallying point of his followers, on the other as a mark to the enemy. Louis who was more prudent though not less brave, jDlaced himself in the centre; but distrusting his own talents as a general, he left the command to Schweppermanii, one of the most experienced captains of the age. The battle was main- tained with equal valour from the rising to the setting sun; and was evidently in favour of the Austrians, when an unexpected charge in flank by a body of cavalry under the Margrave of Nuremberg decided the fortune of the day. Frederick was surrounded and taken prisoner. The flower of the Austrian nobility, among others three- and-twenty of the family of Trautmannsdorf, strewed the field. After the battle, Louis gratefully acknowledged the services of his commander-in-chief Schweppermann, to whose skill he entirely owed his success. A basketful of eggs being all that could be found for the imperial 1273-1520.] .LOUIS V. 163 table, the Emperor distributed them among his officel-s, saying: " To each of you one egg, to our gallant Schwep- permann two!" The latter was of dimimitive stature, old and lame, but skilled in the tactics of the time. The Emperor's words on this occasion may be still read on this officer's tombstone at Castel, near Amberg. Frederick was imprisoned in the castle of Trausnitz, near Landshut. But the contest was not yet decided ; the valiant Leopold was still at the head of a superior force; and Pope John XXII.,* the natural enemy of the Ghibellines, incensed at some succours which Louis sent to that party in Lombardy, excommunicated the King of the Romans, and declared him deposed from his dignity. By Leopold he was signally defeated; and he had the mortification to see the inconstant King of Bohemia join the party of Austria. In this emergency, his only chance of safety Avas a reconciliation with his enemies; and Frederick was released on condition of his renouncing all claim to the empii-e. But though Frederick sincerely resolved to fulfil his share of the compact, Leopold and the other princes of the family refused; and their refusal w^as approved by the Pope. With the magnanimity of his character, Frederick, unable to execute the engagements he had made, voluntarily surrendered himself to his enemy. But Louis, who would not be outdone in gene- rosity, received him, not as a prisoner, but a friend. " They ate," says a contemporary writer, " at the same table, slept on the same couch;" and when the King left Bavaria, the administration of that duchy was confided to Frederick. Two such men could not long remain even politically hostile; arid by another treaty (September 2, 1325), it was agreed that they should exercise conjointly the government of the empire. When this arrangement was condemned both by the Pope and the electors, Louis * This Pontiff surpassed most of his predecessors in pride and tyranny. He kept his seat on the Papal chair, having humbled his competitor, Nicholas V. , and left at his death an immense treasure, accumulated by the sale of benefices, while his rival, the Emperor, died in indigence. 164 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD V. proposed to take Italy as Ms seat of government, and leave Germany to Frederick. But the death of the war- like Leopold — the great support of the Austrian cause — and the continued opposition of the States to any com- l^romise, enabled Louis to retain the sceptre of the king- dom; and in 1330, the decease also of Frederick strength- ened his party. Louis V. reigns alone. — But his reign was destined to be one of troubles. The year following the victory of Muhldoi'f, Louis had been cited to appear to plead before the Pope at Avignon; and, on his refusal to appear, the whole empire was placed under an interdict. Louis retaliated by passing into Italy, and assuming the iron crown at Milan; after which he pronounced the ban of the empire against the King of Naples; and, deposing the Pope, placed on the Papal throne a Minorite monk, Nicholas Y,, by whom he was crowned at Rome. As, by the death of Fredeiick, Louis had become sole Emperor, he, after his return to Germany, summoned a Diet at Reuse on the Rhine, where the electors made the follow- ing declaration : — " That the German Emperor was the highest power on earth, and dependent for his election on none but the princes of Germany." This decree was at once signified to the Pope by a special letter. But now Louis impinidently compromised himself in the eyes of his subjects by an act of treachery towards a foreign ally. Edward III. of England being engaged in a sanguinary war with France, Louis at first embraced his cause, but soon with strange fickleness deserted that alliance, and attached himself to the Fi'ench, the enemies of his country and of freedom, and sent his own son Louis with an army to act against England. The adversaries of Louis, particularly Clement VI., carried their animosity so far as to elect, in 1346, in an. assembly which included certain princes, as Emperor of Germany, the son of King John of Bohemia, Charles, Margrave of Moravia, a prince who had been brought up in the court of France.. He enjoyed no consideration so long as Louis lived; but that unfortunate Emperor w£V8 1273-1520.] CHARLES IV. 165 killed ill tlie year following, during a bear hunt, by a blow intended for the animal whilst at bay. Louis was the last Emperor excommunicated by the Popes. Charles IV. (1346-1378).— Twelve months before the decease of Louis, Charles of Bohemia, assisted by Clem- ent VI., was elected King of the Romans. But in re- turn he had signed a shameful capitulation with the Tope — one by which the state, no less than the church of Germany, was placed at the feet of that haughty and corrupt Pontiff. For this and other reasons many of the princes were now unwilling to confirm the election. Four of them had offered the imperial crown to the conqueror of Crecy, which the English Parliament, fearing lest an Emperor of Germany might forget his duty as King of England, would not permit him to accept. An anti- Ctesar, however, was found in Gunther, Count of Schwart- zenburg, a prince of great military reputation, and the unshaken friend of the deceased sovereign. This opposi- tion was inevitable in a country where the two rival families of Luxemburg and Austria were pursuing each other with deadly animosity. Charles IV., however, craftily entered into negotiation with Edward of England, to Avhom he proved the necessity of an alliance between them against France, drew the Hapsburg army on his side by giving his daughter, Catherine, in marriage to Rodolph the son of Albert the Lame; and, with equal skill, dissolved the Wittelsbach confederacy by wedding Anna, the daughter of the Pfalzgrave Bupert, by ceding Brandenburg to Louis the Elder, and declaring Walde- mar, whom he had himself invested with that electorate, an impostor; Louis the Elder, with equal perfidy, sacri- ficing Gunther, who was shortly afterwards poisoned by one of Charles's emissaries, a.d. 1347. Charles IV., the tool of Papal and French policy, now found himself con- strained, owing to his dependence ujDon his father, to serve the French monarch against England, although, as will be hereafter seen, he was too prudent a politician and too sensible of his dignity to allow himself to be long enchained to the petty interest of the French king. iG6 niSTOUY OP GERMANY. [pERIOD V. Edward of England, on landing in Flanders, was, notwith- standing tlie death of Artevelde, who, falsely suspected of a design of selling Flanders to England, had been assassinated by his countrymen, received with open arms by the citizens, and joined by Henry the Iron, of Hol- stein. The French suffered a total defeat at Crecy (A.ug. 26, 1346). The Emperor's behaviour on this occasion was far from heroic, for he was among the first to flee, whilst his brave father, King John of Bohemia, who had been blind for many years,* bound between two knights, l^lunged headlong into tlie thickest of the fight, ra. the vain hope of turning the battle. "With him fell Rodolph of Lotharingia, Louis of Nevers, and all the Germans who had so uselessly ventiired their honoiir and their lives in a stranger's cause, in that of their hereditary foe. When the death of the German princes was told to the English king, he exclaimed: " ye Germans! how could ye die for a French king ! " The sword of the blind Bohemian king bore the inscription " Icli dien ! " I serve, tliat is, " God, the ladies, and right," which was on this occasion assumed by the Prince of "Wales as his motto. In 1355, Charles published the imperial constitution, termed the Golden Bull (so called from the knob of gold bidla cmrea in which its seal is inclosed), which definitely fixed the number and prerogatives of the electors, and became the fundamental law of the empire. The number of electors was fixed, in conformity with ancient custom, at seven, who were to represent the seven candlesticks of the Apocalypse, and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. Thus Charles settled on them — himself as King of Bo- hemia being one — all the hereditary ofiices of the state, and imj^rudently placed in their hands the whole power of the empire. Of Charles's foreign policy little need be said. He observed ti-eaties with France or England just so long as suited his interests. Into Italy he twice descended; once to receive the imperial crown, the second time under * John had lost one of his eyes during his Polish expedition, the other through the ignorance of his medical attendants. 1273-1520.] THE BLACK DEATH. l67 pretext of restoring tlie supremacy of the empire. In both expeditions he sold its rights to the highest bidder, and returned to Germany, followed by the curses or the contempt, not merely of Italy, but of Europe. Cowardly in his nature, he carefully avoided the field of battle; avaricious beyond example, he made everything venal; faithless in his engagements, he sacrificed his most devoted adherents every moment he could do so with advantage; incapable of justice, or humanity, or any good principle, he hesitated at no means by which his ends could be attained. In his opinion the only use of the empii-e was the power to pillage it; of the imperial crown, to exchange its dignity for something more sub- stantial. Though wholly destitute of comprehensive views he must have had talent of some kind, or he could never have brought Brandenburg, Silesia, Lusatia, and a portion of the Upper Palatinate into his family; and that, too, without shedding one drop of blood. Nor must it be forgotten that he extended the commerce, encouraged the industry, and promoted the prosperity of Bohemia — of the empire he was utterly regardless — and that he founded the University of Prague, the first that ever existed in Germany. But if his memory be dear to his own kingdom, it is odious to any right-minded German. Charles died in 1378, on liis return from France, whither he had gone for the purpose of establishing peace between that country and Germany. The Black Death (1349). — Early in this reign the most destructive plague recorded in modern history raged in every part of Germany. Beginning in the northern parts of Asia, it penetrated to the most distant regions of Europe, destroying one-third of the inhabitants of every country through which it passed. The narrative of this terrible pestilence, commonly called " the Black Death," of its phj^sical effects, and its moral influence among a more refined and polished people, which Boccacio has prefixed to his Dccamerone, is not surpassed even by the accounts of a similar visitation left us by the greatest writers of antiquity. But in Germany, to the evils ii\- 168 HISTOHY OF GERMANY, [PERIOB V. separable from sucli a calamity, were added all the horrors arising from the power of superstition acting upon a brutal and ignorant populace. The Jews, always the first object of popular antipathy, were accused by some fanatics termed Flagellants, who had acquired extra- ordinary influence by the severity of their mortifications, of having caused the prodigious mortality by infusing poison into the wells and foimtains. This absurd rumour was secretely propagated and encouraged by the nobles, who were deeply indebted to this unhappy race, and who hoped to escape all payment by the destruction of their creditors. The people needed but a hint from their leaders to begin hostilities against a race whom they hated for their religion, and envied for their wealth. Their rage broke out with incredible fury; at Mentz and other cities the most excruciating torments were inflicted upon the Jewsj at Strasburg 2000 were burned alive on one pile. It was long before the massacre was stopped by the civil magistrate, and few escaped from the rage of the frantic multitude, animated to their destruction by the appetite of plunder, the desire of revenge, and the belief that the slaughter of infidels was the most accept- able sacrifice they could ofier to the Almighty. The in- terior police of Germany was at that time extremely defective; many of the nobles were combined in regular associations far plunder; nor could any efiectual check be given to these disorders under the reign of a prince whose timid caution and narrow judgment sacrificed every other consideration to his present interests, and all of whose measures wore the stamp of concession, and of indifference to the dignity of his station. Wenceslaus (1378-1400).— In the last will of Charles the eldest son had Bohemia and Silesia; Sigismund, the second, had the March of Brandenburg; John, the youngest, had Schweidnitz, Goeilitz, and Lusatia. In virtue of the preceding election Wenceslaus also succeeded to the Germanic throne. The reign of this prince is the most remarkable in the annals of the empire. Called at too early an age to participate in the imperial government, 1S73-1520.] WEis^CESLAtJS, 169 Wenceslaus treated affairs of state with ridicule, or entirely neglected tliem, in order to give himself np to idleness or drunkenness. At one moment he jested, at another burst into the most brutal fits of rage. The Ger- mans, with whom he never interfered beyond occasionally holding a useless Diet at Nuremberg, deemed him a fool; whilst the Bohemians, who, on account of his residence at Prague, were continually exj^osed to his savage caprices, regarded him as a furious tyrant. Sunk in the lowest sensuality, " semper edendo ac hihendo" says a chronicler, he seems to have dissipated the few mental powers which nature had given him. To gluttony, drunkenness, and other vices he soon added murder. Sending for the ghostly confessor of his wife, he insisted on knowing what were the peccadilloes she had disclosed; and when promises, threats, even imprisonment, were employed in vain to shake the reticence of the priest, he caused him to be thrown from the bridge of Prague into the river. A solitary murder, even though the victim was a priest, would have led to no consequences either in Bohemia, which' had been used to such tragedies, or at the Papal court, since the Christian world was now distracted by the schism; but the number of victims is said to have been great. He is even reported to have constantly kejit near him a butcher to execute his sentences, at which he was always jjresent with delight. Though this account may be safely rejected, it proves the degree of estimation in which he was held; and we may certainly admit that a butcher was one of his boon companions, who were always chosen from the dregs of society. The possessions with which tlie Bohemian nobility had formerly been invested by the crown exciting his cupidity, he invited the whole of the aristocracy to meet him at Willamow, where he received t^' -'^\ under a black tent, that opened on either side into a"' hite and a red one. The nobles were allowed to enter one by one, and were commanded to declare what lands they possessed as gifts from the crown. Those who voluntarily ceded their lands were conducted to the white tent and feasted: those who re- 170 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD V. fused were instcantly beheaded in the red tent. When a numbei' of those nobles had thus been put to death, the rest, perceiving what was going forward, obeyed (a.d. 1389). There must have been extraordinary provoca- tions on his part, or a people so patient of despotism as the Bohemians would never have risen against him. That, after the wanton murder of two citizens and two nobles, the inhabitants of Prague arose, seized, and consigned him to one of the public dungeons of the city, where, during four months, they kept him on bread and water, . without allowing him any change of dress, or any indul- gence not granted to other malefactors is, perhaps, the most extraordinary fact in all history. It is certain, however, that they would not have proceeded to such an extremity had they not been snre of the approbation of his brother Sigismund, who had succeeded to the throne of Hungary. Sigismimd, having married the eldest daughter of Louis the Great, King of Hungary, succeeded by the death of his father-in-law to the thi-one of that kingdom. As the dissension between the free states and the confederate nobles still continued with unabated violence, Wenceslaus, with a view of defining more accurately the limits of each jurisdiction, adopted the scheme of dividing the empire into four circles. The first embraced Upper and Lower Saxony, the second the district stretching along the Rhine from Basle to Holland, the third Austria, Swabia, and Bavaria, the fourth Thuringia and Franconia. By this separation, which was afterwards completed by Maxi- milian, Wenceslaus hoped to destroy the union between the cities which he divided into different circles. The cities at first refused all allegiance to the imperial edict, and when they at last acceded to it by the Convention of Heidelberg, it was on the express stipulation that they should maintain their former leagiij inviolable. Patriotism of Winkelried at Sempach. — In the midst of these transactions, the Cantons of Switzerland had vindicated their freedom in another field of blood and gloiy. Leopold, Duke of Austria, and 600 nobles 1273-1520.1 WEXCESLAU3 DEPOSED, 171 perished in the battle of Scuipach. It was on that occasion that Winkehied enobled the annals of his country by an action which may be phiced by the side of those which have rendered the heroes of Greece and Rome immortal. Finding that the serried phalanx of Austrian lances presented an impenetrable barrier to the Swiss, he commended his soul to God, and his children to his coiintry, and then grasping as many lances as he could seize in his arms, he buried them in his bosom, opening to his countrymen the path of victory, and leaving to his native land the possession of her independence. The animosity between the princes and the free towns of Germany became every day more violent; the latter after the most terrible reverses had been obliged to sue for peace. Wenceslaus deposed (1400). — The Emperor, at a Diet held at Nuremberg, endeavoured to mediate between the contending factions, and succeeded in restoring some appearance of tranquillity. The severity with which Wenceslaiis had repressed the pillage and disorders of the Bohemian nobles had excited their discontent; and as he was prone to excess in low debauchery, and was-, often guilty of unseemely and extravagant actions when heated by wine, there were not wanting plausible grounds on which to justify their disaffection. Under such cir- cumstances we cannot feel surprise that the Germanic nation should wish his deposition and effect it. The result was hastened by the hostility of Boniface IX., whom, no less than his rival Benedict XIII., Wenceslaus had offended by suggesting that a new election might be made and an end put to the schism which distracted the Chitrch.* He was declared to have forfeited the imperial throne, and his subjects were released from their oaths of allegiance. lu the choice of a successor, two of the electors, * The marriage of Anna, Wenceslaus' sister, with Eichard II., King of England, rendered the Bohemians acquainted with the writings of Wickliffe, who, since 1360, had boldly ventured to attack the abuses of the Church of England. 172 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD V. Wenceslaus himself as king of Boliemia, and his brother Sigismuncl as margrave of Brandenburg, could not pos- sibly concur; since the one would never sanction his own degradation, nor was the other willing to see the exclu- sion of his house. A third, the Duke of Saxony, refused to take any part in these pi'oceedings; not from respect to "Wenceslaus, but because he perceived that the choice of the other electors was already determined in favoiir of a candidate obnoxious to him. And to secure Ms neu- trality, if not concurrence, he was taken prisoner by an armed band in the interest of the rest, Rupert, Count Palatine (1410-1437).— The suffrages of the electors fell on one of their nu.mber, Rupert, Coiint Palatine, a prince who had neither the talents nor the . influence necessary for the support of the dignity. His administration, whether in Italy or Germany, was un- fortunate. One of the causes alleged for the deposition of "Wenceslaus was, that he had virtually dissevered Lombardy from the empire by creating the celebrated Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti Duke of Milan. To settle the affairs of that perpetually distracted country, Rupert passed the Alps, and summoned the Duke to resign both the title and the domain; bvit, instead of an obedient vassal, he found an open enemy, who signally defeated him. By favouring the league of the Guelphs, he excited the hostility of the Ghibellines, which, in this case, was the more bitter, as the Emperors were the natural allies of the latter party. In return, he might indeed expect to secure the adherence of the Guelphs, with Pope Boni- face at their head; but the assistance he received was so feeble, and the hostility he excited so formidable, that he ingloiiously retraced his steps. His conduct in regard to the schism was no less impolitic. Instead of abetting the council of Pisa, which dej^osed both popes — the only measure that could give peace to the Church — he zealously espoused the interests of Gregory XII., and thereby, gave offence not only to the council, but to such of his subjects as approved the decision of the council. Nor in Germany itself was his conduct more approved. 1273-1520.] SIGISMUND, KING OF HUNGARY. 173 Attempting to restore the exercise of liis undoubted prerogative, he was opposed by a league of princes, who assumed, as a pretext, the necessity of watching over the rights of the order against the encroachments of the crown. The Emperor, in fact, reigned merely by suf- ferance: he had been elected by seven princes; by a majority of the seven he might have been deposed. That doom Rupert very narrowly escaped. His unex- pected death preserved Germany from another spectacle of successful rebellion. Sigismund, King of Hungary (UlO-1437). — The death of Rupert seemed to favour the partizans of Wenceslaus ; but the partizans of his house preferred the choice of his brother Sigismund, King of Hungary. At Frankfort, Sigismund was illegally elected by two only of the seven ; while five, who assembled later, gave their suffrages in favour of the Margrave of Moravia, cousin-german of "Wenceslaus and Sigismund. Thus Germany had three kings of the Romans, two of whom were resolved to defend their rights Avith the sword. But the horrors of civil war were averted by the death of the Margrave, whose partisans, combining with those of Sigismund, proceeded to a new election; and Sigismund was unani- mously recognised King of the Romans, Wenceslaus him- self renouncing his own rights in favour of his brother. Sigismund had given at his election an example of his arrogant character. ''There is no prince in the empire," said he, "with whose merits I am so fully acquainted as with my own. I am surpassed by none — either in power or in the prudence with which I have ruled, whether in prosperity or adversity. Therefore do I, as Elector of Brandenburg, give my vote to Sigismund, King of Hun- gary, and will that he be elected King of Germany." Sigismund's character was a combination of the charac- teristics of his immediate predecessors. Like Charles TV., he was crafty and politic, but resembled Wenceslaus in his love of sensual gratifications. Handsome, eloquent, and lively, he had no steadiness of person, seeming to act Ott the impulse of the moment, and with a view to present 174 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD V. expediency, rather than on any settled jVlan. The first object of his attention was the schism in the Church, there being a Pope in Italy, another in France, and a third in Spain, and each of them launched anathemas against his adversaries and the conntiies subjected to him. Sigismund, in furtherance of his favourite design, acted at first with sound policy and discretion; he sum- moned a General Council to meet at Constance, and in order to give its members the character of representatives of all Europe, he proclaimed that not merely the clergy, but distinguished laymen from different countries should assist at its deliberations; the Emperor himself waiving the right of supremacy which the Romano-Germanic empire had hitherto assumed over other kingdoms, although its pretensions were little more than a name. But all these fair plans were ruined by his ov/n Avant of self-control. During the sitting of the Council, Sigismund gave him- self up entirely to low debaiichery; and the only effect of his condescension was to make himself the laughing- stock of the Church, and give foreign nations encourage- ment to encroach still farther on the privileges of the empire. The Council of Constance (1st Nov. 1414). — The place fixed upon for this important assembly of the spiritual and temporal powers of Catholic Europe, in compliance with the wishes of the Emperor, but not in accordance with the interests of the Pope, John XXIII., was Con- stance in Switzerland; and the day appointed for the meeting was the 1st of November, 1414. The assem- blage of ecclesiastics, and also of laymen, on this occasion, was immense. The Council was divided into four national sections, of Italy, France, Germany, and England, and the votes were taken according to this division, instead of being registered according to the ojiinions of individual members of the body. Both the Emperor and John were present. The professed objects of this famous Council were, the extinction of the schism, and the reformation of the Church, or the correction of those manifold abuses Avhich existed in the management of ecclesiastical rev- 1273-1520.] COUNCIL OP CONSTANCE. 175 enues. Ilere it was deteniiined, after some debate, that a Geneml Couucil could compel the Poj^e to abdicate, and the method of cession was moreover declared to be the only means of securing the peace of the Church. Accordingly, on the 2nd of March 1415, John publicly pronounced his abdication, on condition of a similar pro- ceeding on the part of Benedict and Gi'egor}^ Suspi- cions, however, having been manifested by the Council with regard to the sincerity of the Pontiif in these trans- actions, the latter planned his escape from Constance, and fled first to Schaffhausen, afterwards to Brissac, and at length to Fribourg, where he expected to receive the protection of the Duke of Austria, but was treacherously delivered into the power of the Emperor and the Council. A series of enormous crimes being now laid to his charge, John was solemnly deposed from the Pontificate (May 29, 1415), and condemned to rigorous imprisonment, which he suffered, first at Heidelberg and afterwards at Manheim, for the period of three years. In the course of the same year Gregory sent to the Council a voluntary and solemn resignation of his dignity. Benedict, how- ever, remained inflexible, declaring that he was the true, and now the only Pope. Sigismund went in person to Perpignan with a view to obtain his resignation; but Benedict obstinately resisted all solicitations, and ulti- mately withdrew, for the security of his person, to the small fortress of Paniscola. The Council, fully convinced of his contumacy, proceeded to the sentence of deposition ; and although Benedict contitiued to anathematise his adversaries daily in his obscure place of refuge, he had ceased to be a means of dividing the obedience of the Church. The claims of the late competitors having been thus entirely destroyed, the Cardinals proceeded to the election of a new Pope, and agreed in the choice of Otto de Colomia, a Roman, who ascended the Papal Chair under the name of Martin V. And thus the jDrimary object of the Council, the healing of the Great Schism, which had long been productive of such numerous dis- orders, was successfully accomplished. Gregory XII. died 176 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD V. soon after his cession. John XXIII., restored to liberty about tliree years after bis deposition, was solicited by some of bis friends to resume the Papal dignity, but instead of complying with their advice, he voluntarily threw himself at the feet of Martin, who received his submission. And thus the Great Western Schism was completely at an end. John Huss and Jerome of Prague (1416). — The spiritual business of the Council of Constance was no less important than its temporal. John Huss, a disciple of Wickliff, and professor in the new university of Prague, founded by Charles IV., was tried for heresy, in opposing the hierarchy, and satirising the immoralities of the popes and bishops. He did not deny the charge; and refusing to confess his errors, was burnt alive, though he had a safe conduct from the Emperor to appear at the Council. But the principle on which the Council acted was not concealed : it was indeed openly avowed, that, in certain cases, faith was not to be kept with heretics. A similar fate was the portion of his friend and disciple, Jerome of Prague, who displayed at his execution the eloquence of an apostle, and the constancy of a martyr. Sigismund felt the consequences of these horrible proceedings; for the Bohemians, jtistly exaspei-ated at the ti'eacherous execution of their cou.ntrymen, opposed his succession to their crown, vacant by the death of his deceased brother Wenceslaus, and it cost him a war of sixteen years to attain it. Whatever was the imperial power at this time, it derived but small consequence from its actual revenues. The wealth of the Germanic states was exclusively pos- sessed by their separate sovereigns, and the Emperor had little more than what he drew from Bohemia and Hun- gary. The sovereignty of Italy was an empty title. The interest of the Emperor in that country furnished only a source of faction to its princes, and embroiled the states in perpetual quarrels. War of the Hussites — Death of Wenceslaus (1418). — The execution of Huss, with all its circumstances of cruelty and falsehood, had been regarded by the BohQ- 1273-1520.] ACCESSION OF SIGISMUND, 177 niians as a national insult, which called aloud for signal and adequate retribution. "When the ashes of the martyr were thrown into the Rhine, the rulers of the Church believed that his name had perished with his body. But the people thought far otherwise. James Hussinitz, a nobleman residing in the village where Huss was born, determined to avenge his death, and to maintain his doc- trines. Wenceslaus, finding himself wholly unable to resist the storm of popular indignation, withdrew from Prague, which soon fell entirely into the hands of the malcontents. Under the command of the leaders of the new doctrines, they proceeded to yet more violent extre- mities. To revenge some slight offence which had been offered to them in one of their religioiis processions, they burst into the council chamber at Prague, and seizing thirteen of the principal magistrates, flung them from the windows upon the pikes of their associates. The intelli- gence of this outrage roused Wenceslaus to so violent a paroxysm of fury, that it occasioned an apopletic fit which put an end to his existence. Sigismund succeeds to the Crown of Bohemia (1419). — The accession of Sigismund, who, notwithstanding a letter addressed to the Bohemians in vindication of his conduct, was universally considered as the cause of Huss's execution, and a promulgation of a decree of the Council of Constance containing a most imqualified denunciation of their sect, wroiight the passions of the Hussites to a yet higher state of exasperation. They refused to recog- nise Sigismund as King, whereupon the Hussite civil war broke out. They were divided into two parties, the more moderate Calixtines and the more rigid Taborites. Ziska, the leader of the latter party, a man of extraordinary powers, assembled them on Mount Tabor, captured Prague, pillaged and burnt the monasteries, and in several engage- ments defeated Sigismund. After the death of Ziska (1424), his place was filled by a monk named Procopius, who defeated the mercenaries sent under the name of Crusaders by the Emperor and the Papal legates in the battles of Mies (1427) and Tachau (1431), and whosft 178 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD V. troops ravaged Austria, Franconia, Saxony, Catholic Bohemia, Lusatia, and Silesia. A council held at Basle in 1433 made concessions which were accepted by the Calixtines. The Taborites, rejecting the compromise, were vanquished in the battle of Prague (1434), and by the treaty of Iglau (1436), the compromise of Basle was accepted by Bohemia, and Sigismund recognised as King. The Emperor having committed to the Council of Basle the task of carrying on negotiations, had withdrawn to Rome on pretext of being crowned by the new Pope, Eugenius lY. The council led by the spiritual and tem- poral lords, who were fully aware of the imi)ortance of the cause at stake, shared the Emperor's opinion, and were, consequently, far more inclined to make concession than was the Pope, who refused to yield to any terms, preferring to throw the onus of the peace on others. The council therefore acted without reference to the Pontiff, 1273-1520.] COUNCIL OP CONSTANCE. 170 w'lio in the meantime amused himself with solemnising a farcical coronation of the Emperor at Rome. Sigismund i-emained, during the sitting of the Council, in Italy, engaged in love affairs, although already sixty -three years of age. After openly procrastinating the ceremony, the Pope at length gave fall vent to his displeasure (1433), by causing the crown to be placed awry on Sigismund's head by another ecclesiastic, and then pushing it straight with his foot as the Emperor knelt before him. Close of the Council of Constance (11:37). — After long and tedious conferences the Council conceded to the Bohemian laity the use of the cup in the communion, and Sigismund on his side agreed that the Hussite priests should be tolerated, even at court; that no more monas- teries should be built; that the university of Pi-ague •should be reinstated in all its former privileges; and a general amnesty granted for all past disturbances. Thtis peace was concluded in 1437. Bohemia, however, remained still in a feverish state until about a century after, when the reform of Luther revived old feelings and antipathies, of which the Thirty Years' "War that, another century later, desolated all Germany, may be said to have been the ■•;9raote consequence. There are a few Hussites now in Bohemia; the rest have merged into Calvinists, Lutherans, Moravians, and other sects. The German nobility, freed from their fanatical oppo- nents, turned their attention homewards, and resolved to curb the violence of the Emperor, and to secure the main- tenance of peace by a system of moderation. Sigismund was now old, and his son-in-law, Albert of Hapsburg, pur- sued an uncompromising policy. They therefore consj)ired with Rokizana, Archbishop of Prague, and the Empress Barbara, to proclaim Wladislaw of Poland successor to the throne. Sigismund, on learning their intentions, per- ceived the false step he had taken, again made coiicessions, and, suddenly entering Moravia, seized the person of the faithless Empress, the Messalina of her age. He shortly afterwards expired at Znaim, sitting in state " as lord of the world," as he vain-gloriously boasted (1437), in, the 180 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD V. twenty-eightli year of liis reign, and the seventieth of his life. Albert 11. of Austria— Frederick III. (1438-1493).— Albert of Austria, son-in-law of the late Emperor, was, after a short interval, elevated by the unanimous suffrages of the electors to the vacant throne of the empire; Frederick of Brandenburg, his only opponent was easily persuaded to resign his pretensions in favour of so illus- trious a comj^etitor. Fifth in descent, and fourth in ■succession from that Albert who fell a victim to domestic treachery in the early pai't of the fourteenth century, the newly-created head of the Germanic Confederation com- bined every quality best calculated to win the affection and command the obedience of the turbulent vassals with whose government he had been entrusted. So little, however, did he aspire to the magnificent title which it Avas now proposed to confer upon him, and so reluctant was he to entangle himself in the maze of German politics, that on assuming the government of Hungary, he had pledge,d himself, in the event of his election, to reject the nominal supremacy of the empire, and to devote his care entirely to the administration of those vast districts which had already fallen under his control. Frederick of the Empty Pocket, and the Revolt of the Swiss. — From the period of the battle of Muhldorf in 1322, when Frederick the Fair of Austria was over- thrown, until the election of Albert II., the House of Hapsburg remained excluded from the imperial throne, and were chiefly occupied with the affairs of their Austrian dominions. At the beginning of the fifteenth century we find these possessions, which were now considerably enlarged, shared by three members of the family, of whom one, called from his poverty, Frederick of the Empty Pocket, held the Tyrol and the ancient territories of the house in Switzerland and in Suabia. Fi-ederick having, in 1415, assisted the escajDe of John XXIII. from Con- stance, was excommunicated by the Council then sitting in that town, and was also placed under the imperial ban by the Emperor Sigismund. Frederick's possessions were 1273-1520.] DIVISIONS IN THE EMPIRE. 181 now at the mercy of those who could seize them, and in a few days 400 towns declared against him. In this general revolt, the Swiss, with the exception of the miners of Uri, were especially active : they seized the territoi'ies so liberally bestowed upon them by the Council; and it was now that Hapsburg, the cradle and hereditary castle of the family, was laid in ruins, as it has continued ever since. Albert II. would doubtless have done much for the welfare of Germany, had not death unhappily surprised him after a brief reign of scarcely two years, on his return from an expedition against the Turks in Hungary. From his time, the imperial crown was transmitted in the House of Austria almost as if it had been an hereditary possession ; and we shall see the descendants of Pvodolf attaining to a poAver and pre-eminence which threatened to overshadow the liberties of Europe. Frederick III. (1440-149.3). — After the death of Albert, the Germans elected for their Emperor Frederick III. , the elder son of Ernest, surnamed the Iron, brother to Frederick with the Empty Pocket, and who possessed Styria, Caiinthia, Istria, and other provinces. Frederick III. was a well-intentioned prince, although too j)acific and too indolent to reign over the empire at a time when the affaii's both of church and state required a vigorous and steady hand. Little was known of him, save that he had once made a pilgTimage to the Holy SeiDulchre, and wandered among the mountains of Palestine. Being, however, the eldest representative of the mighty House of Hapsburg, it was deemed expedient to elect him Emperor. A short time was sufficient to show how injudicious the choice had been. Frederick III. ruled Germany, if such an expression can be ajjplied to his weak and miserable reign, till 1493; and his long sway added not a single remarkable or glorious action to the annals of Germany, Frederick was crowned King of the Romans at Aix-la- Chapelle in 1442. Divisions in the Empire. — In 1446, the people of Zurich renounced the impei-ial alliance, and joined the confederacy of three forest cantons, which had made itself 182 KlStORf OF GEllirAN"5f. [pERIOD V. res]3ectecl by all its neighbours. In Hungary, the young Laclislaus, son of the late Emperor, bad been crowned by tbe German party; but a threatened invasion of the Tui'ks, rendering it necessary to have a man of action at the head of the government, the people chose Ladislaus of Poland, who Avas conquered and slain by the Turks at Yarna, soon after his election. In Bohemia, the German Ladislaus was universally recognised as King, but the powers of government were exercised by the heads of two factions, Meinhard and Ptaczek. After the death of the latter, George of Podiebrad, a brave warrior, became leader of the more popular party, surpi-ised Prague, threw his rival into prison, and was made sole regent. In Austiia, one Sitzinger, a Bavarian, exercised unlimited influence over the states : thus in each of the hereditary dominions of the Emperor and his young ward, Ladis- laus, the people were ruled with an absolute authoiity by a power almost independent of the indolent Frederick and his cousin. The last Coronation performed at Rome. — In 1451, Frederick repaii-ed to Pome t» receive the imperial crowL from the hands of the Pope. Nicholas V., who then filled the Papal chaii', received him with great magnificence; but it was observed that the Emperor, till after his coronation, yielded precedence to the Cardinals. Accord- ing to the strict order of this ceremony, it was necessary that Fi-ederick should first receive the iron crown of Lombardy, which it was the privilege of the Archbishop of Milan to bestow; but Frederick having, for some reason, declined to enter that city, the Pope, with his own hands, crowned him King of Lombardy, though with a reservation of the rights of the Archbishop. On the same day (March 15), Nicholas married Frederick to Eleanor, the beautiful daughter of the King of Portugal, Avho had met him at Sienna, and three days afterwards received the imperial ci'own. This coronation is memor- able as the last performed at Pome, and the last but one in which the services of the Pope were ever required.* * Charles V. was crowned by the Pope at BoIo,':;na. 1273-1520.] FREDERICK ACKNOWLEDGES PODIEBRAD. 183 After the ceremony, Frederick set ofi" for Naples witli liis consoi't, to visit King Alphonso, nncle of his Empress, where the marriage Avas celebrated with great pomp, the fountains of the city being made to run with wine, and tables Avere spread for the entertainment of 30,000 guests. Destruction of the Byzantine Empire by Mahomet II. (1453). — At the time of this vain ceremonial, measures were concerted for a crusade against the Turks; but the si^irit which precipitated Europe upon Asia was no more, and the descendants of those who had rescued the Holy Sepulchre from the power of the infidels were con- tent to remain passive spectators of the entire destruction of the Byzantine empire. The inactivity and negligence of Frederick, who kneAV neither how to yield nor how to withstand, involved him daily in fresh difficulties, and exposed him to innumerable mortifications. In consequence of the calamities which his apathy had occasioned, and of the insults for which it behoved him to seek redress, the electors had already begun to deliberate on the expediency of deposing him. To complete his embarrassment, Ladislaus, the son of Albert, died, leaving his hereditary dominions exposed to the dreadful evils arising from intestine strife and civil disorganization. Some historians have rejn'esentcd this prince as an accomplished and virtuous ruler, but the execution of Corvinus, brother of the patriotic warrior, John Han- niades, leaves a .blot on his character which years of beneficent government could hardly wipe away. Matthias Corvinns, the son of Hunniades, was noAV raised by a grateful people to the throne which his father had pre- served; and although the defection of a few nobles enabled Frederick to gain possession of the Hungarian crown and jewels, the former continued till his death to enjoy the substantial privileges, and to exercise the real functions of a legitimate sovereign. Frederick acknowledges Podiebrad, King of Bohemia (1459). — Bohemia, inflamed by a similar spirit of dis- alfection, disregarding the claim of Frederick and his 164 tflSTOtlY OF GERMANY. [pEtilOD V. descendants, elected their brave leader, George of Podie- brad for its ruler, whom the Emperor was compelled to acknowledge. A third war with his brother Albert, who, after wresting fi-om his feeble grasp a part of Austria, aspired to the conquest of the whole, was equally disastrous to his reputation. He was besieged in the fortress of Vienna; and, but for the politic advice of Podiebrad, would have been captured, and made to sign worse terms than the cession of his hereditary states. By Podiebrad's influence a reconciliation was effected; Albert Avas allowed to retain, during eight years, the government of Lower Austria, xinder the condition of an annual tribute of 4000 ducats. But the humiliations which he was doomed to support from his brother ended in 1463, by the death of Albei't, who, had his life been protracted, would entirely have conquered the whole of the Austrian states. Imhecility of Frederick III. — If these contentions were thus hushed for a moment, the imbecility of the Emperor was apparent to every one. New wars broke ovit imder his very eyes; wars which he had neither the ability nor the inclination to repress. That there should be a loud outcry against him, and that the project of dethroning him to make way for Podiebrad should be resumed, need not surprise us. When the EmjDress was informed of certain of his concessions, she exclaimed, turning to her son Maximilian, "If, my son, I could trace in you any symptoms of your father's pusillanimity, I should Iwnent the fortune that destines you a throne." Prederick, however, had some address; and he had the wisdom to maintain a friendly intercourse with every succeeding Pope. Now he stirred up a war between Podiebrad and Matthias of Hungary ; now he prevailed on the Pope to preach a crusade against the Bohemian King, as the acknowledged head of the Hussites. But Germany would not move even to resist the progress of the Turks under Mahomet II., much less to dethrone an elector who had won the respect of the empire. If Frederick himself wished the destruction of his vassals, 1273-1520.] BETROTHAL OP MAXIMILIAN. 185 lie bad certainly no great antipathy to the infidels. They furnished employment to one whom he hated, the King of Hungary; and though detached bodies of these bar- barians penetrated twelve times into his hereditary dominions, though they massacred thousands, and led thousands ca})tive from Carinthia and Styria, he did not oppose them in the field. In the language of a contem- porary chronicler, " He was moi'e anxious to shield his cabbages from the frost, than his people from the bar- barians." That he should be regarded with contempt was the righteous meed he deserved. Death of Podiebrad, King of Bohemia (1471).— The death of Podiebrad freed Frederick from one dangerous rival; but it did not open his Avay to the Bohemian throne. In confox'mity with the wishes of the deceased monarch, the States elected Ladislaus, son of Casimii', King of Poland ; and though Predei-ick stormed, he was compelled to recognise the new potentate. Betrothal of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. — • But if Frederick was thus unfortunate in his under- takings, one of his efforts for the aggrandisement of his house was more successful, though, in its consequences, it proved most disastrous to his posterity, to France, and to Europe. During the life of Charles the Rash, Duke of Burgundy, Frederick negotiated a marriage between his son Maximilian and Mary, daughter and heiress of that prince. With his accustomed fatality, indeed, he turned one whom he had chosen for the father-in-law of his son into an implacable enemy, and had brought the troops of Burgundy into the Rhenish provinces; but, after the death of Charles, he renewed the negotiations with the princess herself. Policy, the intei-est of the Netherlands, and even of Europe, required that she should be married to the Dauphin of France, for whom her hand was sought by the crafty Louis XI.; but the Dauphin was yet a child, and Mary was a woman, already favourably disposed towards Maximilian. Contrary, therefore, to the advice of her ministers, she received, with evident pleasure, the ambassadors of the Emperor; 186 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [pERIOB Y. slie was even married by proxy; and, on this occasion, the nobleman who represented Maximilian lay down by her side, but armed at all points, with a swoixl between him and the princess, and in presence of numerous witnesses. The issue of this marriage was Philip, who became the husband of Juanna, the heiress of Castile, and father of the Emperor Charles V. Hence the rivalry between France and Spain, between France and the Empire, which raged with fuiy down to the 18th century. Nor was this the only evil; for the Flemish were always a- disaffected people — always fond of revolution; and to maintain them in obedience required more trouble, and occasioned more expense than the provinces were actually worth. Death of Frederick III. (1493).— The termination of Frederick's protracted and inglorious reign of fifty-three years was now approaching; he expired in 1493, and may be compared in many respects to our English Heniy III., to whom his character certainly bears a strong resemblance. Pusillanimous, feeble, and vacillating, his infirmity of ]:)urpose and superstitious regard for the authority of the Pope, in an age when the respect for papal authority was every day declining, exposed him to the charge of weakness and inconsistency; an exile from his hereditary dominions, unable to control his turbulent vassals, apparently dependent for his daily inaintenance on the town of the empire in which he fixed his residence, imder his rule the imperial authority seems to have ebbed to the very lowest point of degradation and contempt. But, on the other hand, he was faithful to his word, skilful in his negotiations, well acquainted with human character, temperate in his habits, and unsullied in his morals; and gTeat as was his indolence, his enemies cannot deny that some good was effected during his reign. By securing the crown in his own family, and by the vast sums of money which he contrived to accumulate, he placed the means of aggrandisement in the hands of his posterity; and although the improvidence of Maxi- milian rendered them for some time unavailing, j^et were 1273-1520.] HOSTILITY OP FRANCE. 187 they grasped witli firmness, and wielded witli terrific ener2;y by his successors. Maximilian I. (1493-1519).— On the death of his father, Maximilian had been seven years King of the Romans; and his accession to the impei'ial crown en- countered no opposition. The time was departed when a, king, elected during the life-time of a reigning emperor, could be set aside by a factious elector. In reality, a much greater change was effected in the disposition of the German mind. All men felt that the order of succes- sion should be placed on a less precarious footing; that, though the constitution still demanded the exercise of the elective right, there must be an approximation to hereditary principles in the sovereignty; that, if any family were thus to be favoured, none could produce so good a claim as the House of Austria. Omitting all considerations of gratitude; of the splendour which Bodolph, its restorer, had conferred on the empire; of the services performed by that house in behalf of the common body, — policy shov/ed that the croAvn should remain where it was, because it had been already worn by two members of that family, and the hereditary principle, so much desired by all patriots, was in action; but chiefly because no other house was so able or so likely to preserve the honour, the independence, we might add, the existence of the empire. No other had such extent of territory; no other was so powerful: not Austria only, and the extensive provinces to the south, were dependent on it, but it had claims on Bohemia and Hungary. Hostility of France to the Empire — Marriage of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. — On the death of Frederick, Grcrmany felt its situation changed. France, instead of comprising, as formerly, a number of petty states, scarcely dependent on their feudal head, was now one compact monarchy. She had expelled the English from all but the insignificant territory in the vicinity of Calais; and she had successfully incoi'poratad Provence, Dauphiny, Burgundy, and Brittany with the other pro- vinces. Though France and the empire were always 188 HISTORY OF GERMANY. fPERIOD V. hostile by circumstances ; tliougli each had claims to the fine regions extending from the Moselle to the Meditei'- ranean, the one through weakness, the other through indifference, had abstained from war. The marriage of Maximilian with the heiress of Biu^gundy brought the two into direct collision. Louis XI., who had seized the other possessions of Charles the Bold, Mary's father, aspii-ed to the Netherlands also. That bea,utiful heiress, anxious alike to escape the merciless grasp of that royal monster and the rule of the wild democracy of Ghent, at first endeavoui-ed to conciliate the Dutch by the promvil- gation of a great charter, but fruitlessly. In the hope of gaining a greater accession of power by a foreign marriage, she skilfully worked upon the dread with which the French were viewed by her subjects, to influence them in favour of Maximilian, the handsomest youth of his day, whom she is said to have seen at an earlier period at Treves, or, as some say, of whose picture she had become enamoured. Mary, as we have already said, was married by proxy to the Archduke INIaximilian, in the lifetime of Frederick III. Maxi- milian who inherited the physical strength of his grand- mother, Cimburga of Poland, and the mental qualities of his Portuguese mother, surjiassed all other knights in chivalric feats, was modest, gentle, and amiable. Mary confessed to the assembled states of the Netherlands, that she had already interchanged letters and rings with him, and the marriage was resolved upon. Maximilian hastened to Ghent, and, mounted on a brown steed, clothed in silvei'-gilt armour-, his long fair locks crowned Avith a bi-idegroom's wreath, resplendent with pearls and precious stones, rode into the city, where he was met by Mary. The youthful pair, on beholding one another, knelt in the public street and sank into each other-'s arms. " Welcome art thou to me, thou noble German," said the young duchess, " whom I have so long desired, and now behold with delight." Amongst those princely mai-riages which history sig- nalises on account of the greatness of their consequences, 1273-1520.] MARRIAGE OP ANNE OF BRITTANY, 189 figures in the first rank that of Maximilian of Austria and ivlary of Burgundy. Their son, Philip tJte Fair, married the heiress of Castile and Aragon; thus the Spanish, Burgundian, and Austrian possessions were found united in one single hand; whence arose the monstrous power of Charles Y., the struggle of Fium Europe against tlie House of Austria. Death of Mary of Burgundy. — This event greatly enraged the French monarch, avIio at length succeeded in persuading the Swiss to enter into alliance with him, and to cede to him the county of Burgundy; but Maxi- milian speedily deprived him of the territory he had seized in the Netherlands. Mary did not long survive her marriage with ]\Iaximilian. Besides her firstborn, Philip, Mary had given birth to a daughter, Margaret, and was again pregnant, when she was, whilst hunt- ing, thrown from her horse, and dangei'ously hurt by the stump of a tree, against which she was squeezed by her fallen horse. From a false feeling of delicacy, she con- cealed her state until surgical aid was unavailing, and expired in the bloom of life (1482). The death of the beauteous duchess was a signal for general revolt, and Maximilian, perceiving his inability to make head both against France and his rebellious subjects, concluded the peace of Arras with the former, and promised his daughter, Margaret, to the Dauphin, with Artois, Boulogne, and the county of Burgundy in dowry (1482). Mai-garet was sent to Paris. Burgundy and the Arelat were united to Fi-ance. Anne of Brittany Married by proxy to Maximilian. — Maximilian next endeavoured to obtain the hand of Anne of Brittany, on whom, by the death of her father, the government of that isolated and xincivilised district had recently devolved. His design was in part realised; her marriage with Maximilian was celebrated by proxy, and the duchess assumed the title of Queen of the Romans ; but this magnificent appellation was all she gained by her marriage. Charles YIII. of France, to whom the daughter of Maximilian had been betrothed since the Peace of 190 HISTOKY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD V. Arras, having iii vain attempted to conquer Biittany by force, now began to change his scheme with regard to the subjection of that province. He determined to reannex this important fief to the crown by marriage, and, by the vioh^tion of a double contract, to prevent the consummation of a union which appeared destructive to the grandeur and security of his dominions. Maximilian, destitute of trooj^s and money, and embarrassed by the continual revolt of the Flemings, could send no succour to his distressed consort, even had he been able to anti- cipate the dissolution of engagements apparently so advan- tageous, and contracted with so much solemnit3^ Charles, however, advanced with a })owerful army and invested Eennes, at that time the residence of the duchess, who, assailed on all sides, and desei'ted by her adherents, was at last compelled to oiien the gates of the city, and to accept the French King as her husband. Consequences of the Rupture of the Marriage. — This imexpected success roused Maximilian to a par- oxysm of indignation, and his anger was embittered by the reflection that his own supine apathy, in neglecting to render the tie indissoluble by the consummation of his marriage, had exposed him to this sensible mortification. Not only had he lost a considerable territory, which he looked upon as his own, and an amiable princess, whom he considered as his wife, but those injuries were yet further enhanced by the repudiation of his daughter, Margaret, who, after she had enjoyed for some time the title of Queen of France, was sent back to him in the face of Europe by her affianced husband. Incensed by these gross outrages, he vented his rage in the most violent expressions, and he menaced Charles with the vengeance which the united arms of Austria, England, and Aragon were ready to inflict; but his threats were not supported by any military power or financial resources. He petitioned, indeed, the Diet for sujiport; but though the qualities for which his name is idolised to this hour in Germany, rendered him the darling of his country, he found it impossible to obtain any solid assistance from the J273-1520.] GERMANY; FRANCE, AND ITALY. 191 tardy and irresolute proceedings of that bod}^ He there- fore accepted the mediation of the Swiss, and a peace was concluded at Senlis, by Avhich the French monarch con- sented to make restitution of Artois, Franche Compte, and Charolois, which had been ceded to France as the dowry of his daugliter. Imprisonment of Maximilian by the Flemings. — The jealousy of the Flemings, roused by the invidious prefer- ence which Maximilian exhibited on all occasions for his German followers, broke out in an insurrection at Bruges, where Maximilian was seized and detained in strict con- finement until the empire, under the command of Albert of Saxony, armed for the defence of its future sovereign. So great, however, was the imbecility of Maximilian and the independence of the Flemings, that although his liberation was ultimately effected, the rebels who had seized upon and imprisoned their sovereign were suffered to escape with almost entire impunity: forty citizens of Bruges, who had most grievously insulted the roj^al person, being alone executed. On Maximilian's return to the Netherlands in 1493, Albert of Saxony led his two children to him at Maes- tricht, with these words, " God has granted ine success, therefore I bring you these two children and an obedient land." Maximilian owed him a heavy debt of gratitude, for he had furnished the means for carrying on the war in the Netherlands from his private property, the mines in the Snow mountains. Relations of G-ermany, France, and Italy. — France at this time cast her eyes upon Italy, Nepotism, the family interest of the popes, who bestowed enormous wealth, and even Italian pi-incipalities, on their nephews, relatives, and natural children, was the prevalent spirit of the court of Rome. The Pope's relations plundered the Papal treasury, which he filled with the plunder of the whole of Christendom, by raising the Church taxes, amplifying the ceremonies, and selling 'absolution. Alex- ander VI., who at that period occupied the pontifical throne, surpassed all his predecessors in wickedness. He 192 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD V. tiled of poison (1503), laden witli crimes. The royal House of Aragon again sat on the throne of Naples. In Upper Italy, besides the ancient republics of Venice and Genoa, and the principalities of Milan and Ferrara, Florence had become half a republic, half a principality, under the rule of the House of Medici. France, ever watchful, was not tardy in finding an opportunity for interference. In Milan, the young duke, Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, had been murdered by his uncle Luigi, who seized the ducal throne. Ferdinand of "Naples, Galeazzo's brother-in-law, declaring against the murderer, Luigi claimed the assistance of the French King, Charles YIII., who promised him his protection, and at the same time asserted his own claim to the Neapolitan throne as the descendant of the House of Anjou. In 1494, he unexpectedly entered Italy at the head of an immense army, partly composed of Swiss mercenaries, and took Naples. Milan, alarmed at the overwhelming strength of her importunate ally, now entered into a league with the Pope, the Emperor, Spain, and Naples, for the purpose of driving him out of Italy, and Alexander VI. astonished the world by leaguing with the arch-foe of Christendom, the Turkish Sultan, against the " most Christian " King of Fi-ance. Chai'les yielded to the storm, and voluntarily returned to France (1495). Maximilian had been unable, fi'om want of money, to go in person to Italy, and 3000 men were all he had been able to supply. He had, however, secured himself by a marriage with Bianca Maria, the sister of Galeazzo Sforza, and attempted, on the withdrawal of the French, to put forward his pretensions as EmjDeror. Pisa imploring his aid against Florence (1496), he under- took a campaign at the head of an inconsiderable force, in which he was imsuccessful, the Venetians refusing their promised aid. His marriage with Bianca, a woman of a haughty, cold disposition, unendowed with the mental and personal graces of Mary of Burgundy, was far from happy. Relations of G-ermany and Spain. — A ^tili closet 1273-1520.] THE AULIC COUNCIL, 193 o-lliance was formed with. Spain, where the whole power had, as in France, centered in the monarch. The h\st descendants of the ancient petty kings of tliis country, Ferdinand of Aragon, and IsabeUa of Castile, had married, and, by their united force, had expelled the Moors (1492), a year also famous for the discovery of America, whose mines so greatly enriched Spain, by Columbus, the Genoese. The marriage of Philip, Maximilian's son (already related), with the Infanta Juanna, and that of his daiighter Mar- garet, with the Infant Don Juan, Prince of the Asturias* (1496), brought this splendid monarchy into the House of Hapsburg, the Infant Don Juan expiring shortly after- wards, and the whole of Spain falling to Philip in right of his Avife. Maximilian founds the Aulic Council (1501). — The Diet of Worms aimed at establishing a perpetual public peace in Germany, by adopting vigorous measures for the sujipression of private warfare, and by providing a paramount coiii't of justice — the imperial chamber. But as the establishment of the imperial chamber was dis- agreeable to the Emperor, to rescue from its jurisdiction such causes as he considered lay more peculiarly within the range of his prerogative, and to encroach by degrees on the jurisdiction of this odious tribunal, Maximilian, in 1501, laid the foundation of the celebrated Aulic Council. But the time consumed in these deliberations rendered hoi:)eless any result from the expedition of Maximilian into Itcdy. The storm had passed away, and the imbecile King of France had returned to the de- baucheries of his court in Paris; when at last, with a handful of troops not exceeding 4000 men, the Emperor made an appearance in Italy, at once unnecessary and unacceptable. No danger was apprehended from France, and the force which he brought with him was sufficiently ^ The title of Prince of tlie Asturias was appropriated to tlie lieir apparent of Castile, in professed imitation of that of Prince of Wales, and was bestowed on the Infant Don Henry, after- wards Henry III., on the occasion of his marriage with the daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, in 1388. 194 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD V, large to excite the suspicions of tlie rulers of Milan and Venice. With tlie combined object of averting the ap- prehended peril, and of rendering his name ridiculous, Maximilian was induced, by these two powers, to attempt the reduction of the insolent city of Florence. His own errors, and the incompetency of his forces, the desertion of the Venetian troops, and the succours thrown in by the French, showed him the futility of his designs. He returned in the autumn. Defeat of the Imperial Army by the Swiss. — A de- vastating war ensued in Switzerland upon his return. The Swiss, courted by the princes of Europe, to whom their mercenary infantry were indispensable in the wars of the time, refused to accede to the demands of Maxi- milian, until relieved from the exactions of the Imperial Chamber. Long-suppressed jealousies at last broke out into active hostilities. The war was at first carried on by the troops of the Swabian League, of which the county of Tyrol was a member, but to the advantage of the Swiss, who were victorious in numerous and bloody actions. On the refusal of the German nobles to serve against the peasantry of Switzerland, Maximilian de- spatched the Count of Furstenberg with 16,000 troops. These were defeated shortly after at Dornach, and a treaty was concluded, by which the independence of the Swiss was fully established (1499). The fruitless result of this expedition, which tarnished most injuriously the reputation of Maximilian, and his unsuccessful collision with the Swiss, in the intermediate years, were followed by a submission on his part to the establishment of a council of regency for the administra.- tion of the empire during the abseTice of its ordinary head, and during the intervals of the Diets. At Worms he had opposed this institution, as derogatory to his im- perial rights. In the hope of finding this smaller body more easily manageable than the more numerous one of the Diet, he instructed the members to proceed, accord- ing to certain directions of his OAvn, in the negotiations for peace with France, But failing to persuade them, 1273-1520.] JUANNA OF CASTILE. 195 he was luiable to caiiy tliem on through his son Philip, the regent of Spain, and a treaty concluded through this channel between him and Louis XII., in the close of 1501, relieved him from the pressure of hostilities with that prince. Maximilian ever intended well. He fervently desired to mai'ch against the Tuilcs, to reannex Italy to the empire, to chastise the insolence of France — in a word, to act as became a great German Emperor; b\xt he was a prisoner in the midst of the weapons of Germany, a beggar in the midst of her wealth; the vassals of the empire, sunk in shameless egotism, coldly refused to assist their sovereign, and rendered him the laughing- stock of Europe. The fanciful plans of Maximilian for a crusade against the Turks were soon thrown aside for hostilities, which, arising in his immediate viciiiity, were productive of some honour, and a considerable accession of territory : this was the petty war of succession in Bavaria, termi- nated by the decision of the Diet of Cologne in 1505. Disturbances had also arisen in the Netherlands, where the people favoured Charles of Gueldres to the prejudice of the Hapsburg. Maximilian's son, Philip the Hand- some, at length concluded a truce with his opponent, and went into Spain to take possession of Castile, whose queen, Isabella, had just expired, in the name of her daughter, his wife, Juanna. Ferdinand of Aragon, his father-in-law, however, refused to yield the throne of Castile during his lifetime, and, in his old age, married a young Frenchwoman, in the hope of raising another heir to the throne of Aragon. Juanna of Castile and Philip the Handsome. — Juanna had been imprisoned during Philip's absence, by command of her criiel father, in Medina del Campo. Animated by a strong desire to rejoin her husband, whom she passion- ately loved, she placed herself under the gateway, whence she refused to move, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, and remained there night and day until she was liberated. She was reported to her husband as 196 HISTORY OP GERMANr. [PERIOD V. crazed, but his messenger disproved tLe fact, and he re- joined hei*, but shortly afterwards died, either of a sudden chill, or of poison, which Juanna Avas accused of having administered; but a heavier suspicion falls upon Ferdinand. Juanna refused to quit the body of her husband, which she constantly held in her embrace, and watched over, taking it everywhere with her, so that, as had been once foretold to him, he wandered more about his Spanish kingdom after his death than during his lifetime. She was at length persuaded to permit his interment; but the body had scarcely been removed ere she imagined herself at Medina del Campo, her beloved Philip in the Netherlands, and that she was not allowed to join him, and her attendants were compelled to beg of her to order the vaxxlt to be re-opened in order to convince herself of his death. She did so, but had the cojffin once inore placed at her side. She then consoled herself with a nurse's tale of a dead king, who, after a lapse of fourteen years, was restored to life, and with childish delight awaited the day. On finding her hopes disapi:)ointed she became incurably insane, and was put under restraint. She survived her husband fifty years. Philip left two sons, Charles and Ferdinand. His sister, Margaret, became Kegent of the Netherlands, whence Albert, the brave Duke of Saxony, had been expelled by Philip, and degraded to a mere stadtholder of Western-Friesland. Maximilian cedes Milan to France by the Treaty of Blois (1504).— Charles had been succeeded on the throne of France by Louis XII., who renewed the pro- jects tipon Italy, and maintained his claims upon Milan in right of his grandmother, a Visconti. Venice, ever at strife with that city, gladly favoured his "pretensions; and Pope Alexander VI., in the hope of gaining by his means an Italian throne for his son, the notorious Ctesar Borgia, also sided with him. Louis invaded Italy (1500), and took possession of Milan. Maximilian beheld the successes of the French monarch in Italy, and Ferdinand of Naples dragged in chains to France, with impotent j-age, and convoked one Diet after another without being 1273-1520.1 DEATH OF .^rAXJAtlLlAM. 107 able to raise eitlier money or troops. At length, in the hojie of saving his honour, he invested France with the duchy of his brother-in-law, Sforza, and, by the treaty of Blois (1504), ceded Milan to France for the sum of 200,000 francs. The marriage of Charles, Maximilian's grandson, with Claudia, the daughter of Louis, who it ■was stipulated should bring Milan in dowry to the House of Hapsburg, also formed one of the articles of this treaty; and in the event of any impediment to the marriage being raised by France, Milan Avas to be unconditionally restored to the House of Austria. The marriage of the Archduke Ferdinand with Anna, the youthful daughter of Wladis- law of Hungary and Eohemia, was more fortunate. Ferdinand of Spain, unable to tolerate the Hapsbui'g as his successor on the throne, entered into a league with France, who instantly infringed the treaty of Blois, and Claudia was married to Francis of Anjou, the heir apparent to the thx-one of France. Maximilian, enraged at Louis's perfidy, vainly called upon the imperial estates of Germany to revenge the insult; he was merely enabled to raise a small body of troops, with which he crossed the Alps to take possession of Milan, and of being finally crowned by the Pope. The Venetians, however, refused to grant him a free passage, defeated him at Catora, and compelled him to retrace his steps. At Trient, Lang, Archbishop of Salzburg, placed the crown on his brow in the name of the Pope (1508). The confederation, overwhelmed with reproaches, and moved to shame by the earnest appeal of the Emperor to their honour as Germans, sent ambassadors to Constance, to lay excuses for their conduct before the Emperor; but the reconcilia- tion that ensued was speedily forgotten on the unexpected annunciation of the alliance of the Emperor Avith France. Decline and Death of Maximilian. — The Elector of Saxony and Maximilian were the two senior princes of Gei'many; the latter Avas declining to the close of a life which his own vague and indefinite views of policy, and wasteful habits with regard to money, had contributed to embitter and embroil. Since his treaty with the Swiss 19S lilSTOilY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD V. in 1499, Maximilian had been deeply invoived in all the bloody and disgraceful politics of Italy. He had failed to rescue the duchy of Milan, a fief of the empire, from the grasp of Louis XII.; his connection, Ludovico Sforza, had pined away his latter years in French dungeons, to which the perfidy of his Swiss mercenaries had consigned him; the ill-fated King of Naples taxed him with neglect- ing to supply the aid for which he had received a sum of money, and his succession to the League of Cambray, that enduring monument of the folly and wickedness of the sixteenth century, with his vacillating policy subse- quently, have almost counterbalanced, in the judgment of posterity, the innate good qualities of his character, and the iindoubted improvements introduced by him into the machinery of the empire, and internal administration of his own dominions. His health was now declining, and he survived by only three months the Diet of Augs- burg in October 1518, thus witnessing the first outbreak of that movement which was to form the centi-e of German afiairs for a period of one hundred and thirty yeai'S. He died in peace, and Avith devotion, at Wels, on January 12, 1519. The Reformation (1517).— The date fixed by common consent as that of the commencement of the Reformation is the year 1517, during the course of which the con- spiracy of his cardinals against Leo X., and the termina- tion of the dilatory and irregular sittings of the Council of Lateran took place. The eyes of men had been gradually opened to the frauds and corruptions of the E-omish Church, and the rapacity of the Coui-t of Rome had alienated the minds of princes and people. The awakened love of knowledge led men to aspire after freedom of thought, and to feel heavy the yoke which the Church of Rome, though never less intolerant or ai'bibrary, imposed in all laiatters relating to religious doctrine. Mental emancipation was panted after. A proper occasion and a bold leader were all that were wanting to excite the flames of spiritual rebellion. The occasion was soon presented, and the leader appeared. 1273-1520.1 MARTIN LutheR. 199 V Martin Luther was born at Eisleben on the 10th November 1483. His father, a miner, near that j^lace, sent him, in his fourteenth year, to the High School at Magdeburg, where he was compelled to eke out his scanty means by begging and Lallad-singing, practices then not uncommon. The usual studies of that age were ill adapted to satisfy his searching spirit. In 1505, he entered into the Augustine fraternity, much against the will of his father. A gloomy turn of mind, chequered with frequent fits of moody depression, led him, at the advice of his superior, Stauptz, to seek a remedy in the careful study of the Scriptures. Religious belief, in the sense of a true and undivided faith in the doctrines of Christianity, had no recognised existence at the period we have reached. But this absence of religious belief was combined with a most implicit trust in the dii-ections and authority of the Church. The first book that Guttenberg published in 1451 was the Holy Bible — in the Latin language, to be sure, and after the Vulgate edition, but still containing, to those who could gather it, the manna of the Woi'd. Two years after that, in 1453, the capture of Constan- tinople by the Tiirks had scattered the learning of the Greeks among all the nations of the West. The univer- sities were soon supplied with professors, who displayed the hitherto unexplored treasures of the language of Pericles and Demosthenes. Everywhere a spirit of in- quiry began to reawaken, but limited as yet to subjects of philosophy and antiquity. Erasmus was alai'med at the state of feeling in 1516, and expressed his belief that, if those Grecian studies were pursued, the ancient deities would resume their sway. But the Bible was akeady reaping its appointed harvest. Its voice, lost in the din of speculative philosophies and the dissipations of courts, Avas heard in obscure places, where it had never pene- trated before. In 1505, Luther was twenty-two years of age. He had made himself a scholar by attendance at schools where his poverty almost debarred him from appearing. Afterwards he had gone to Erfurt, and, tired or afraid of the world, anxious for opportunities of self- 200 HISTORY OF GERMANY, [PERIOD V. examination, and dissatisfied witli his spiritual state, ho entered the convent of the Angustines, as ah-eady related, and in two years more, in 1507, he became priest and monk. A journey to Rome, in 1510, on the business of his Order, brought under his view the depravity of the Papal Court, over which at that time the military Julius II. presided, and we may enter into the surprise of Luther at seeing the Father of the Faithful breathing blood and ruin to his rival neighboui's. But the force of early edvication was still unimpaired. The Pope was Poj)e, and the devout German thought of him on his knees. But in the year 1517, a man of the name of Tetzel, a Domini- can of the rudest manners and most brazen audacit}^, appeared in the market-place of Wittenberg, ringing a bell, and hawking indulgences from the Holy See, to be sold to all the faithful. A new Pope was on the throne, the voluptuous Leo X. He had resolved to carry on the buildings of the great Church of St. Peter, and having exhausted his funds in riotous living, he sent round his emissaries to collect fresh treasures by the sale of pardons for human sin. "Pour in your money," cried Tetzel, " and whatever crimes you have committed, or may commit, are forgiven ! Pour in your coin, and the souls of your friends and relations will fly out of purgatory the moment they hear the chink of your dollars at the bottom of the box." Luther was then doctor of divinity, pro- fessor in the University, and pastoral visitor of two provinces of the empire. He felt it was his duty to interfere. He learned for the first time himself how far indulgencies were suj)posed to go. He wrote and preached against them ; he was listened to with admiration : opposi- tion excited him; he had, though not profoundly learned, a strong sense of truth, and a vigorous imagination; his eloquence was popular, his command of his native tongue great; his soul was full of love to his country and man- kind, and his courage in maintaining what he held to be true invincible. On the festival of All Saints in November 1517, Luther read a series of propositions against indulgences in the 1273-1520.] HENRY VIII. OF ENGLAND. 201 g'veat cliurcii, and startled all Germany like a thunder- clap Avith a printed sermon on the same subject. The press began its work, and people no longer fought in darkness. Nationalities were at an end when so wide- embracing a subject was treated by so universal an agent. The monk's voice was heard in all lands, even in the walls of Rome, and crossed the sea, and came in due time to England. " Tush ! tush ! 'tis a quarrel of monks," said Leo X. ; and with an aifectation of candour, he re- marked, " This Luther Avrites well j he is a man of fine genius." Henry VIII. of England — Pope Leo X., and Luther. — Gallant young Henry VIII. thought it a good oppor- tunity to show his talent, and meditated an assault on the heretic — a curious duel between a pale recluse and the gayest prince in Christendom. But the recluse was none the worse when the book was published, and the prince earned, from the gratitude of the Pope, the name of " Defender of the Faith," which is still one of the titles of the English crown. Penniless Maximilian looked on well pleased, and wrote to a Saxon counsellor : " All the popes I have had anything to do with have been rogu.es and cheats. The game with the priests is begin- ning. What your monk is doing is not to be despised ; take care of him." Luther's own prince, the Elector of Saxony, Avas his 6rm friend, and on one side or other all Europe was on the gaze. Leo at last perceived the danger, and summoned the monk to Home. He might as well have yielded in the struggle at once, for from Pome he never could have returned alive. He consented, however, to appear before the Legate at Augsburg, at- tended by a strong body-guard furnished by the Elector, and held his ground against the threats and promises of the Cardinal Cajetan. When Charles V. obtained the empire, he was again summoned and appeared before the Diet at Worms. He was dismissed; and, under the protection of the Elector of Saxony, he still con- tinued to ^''propagate his opinions through the north of Germany. 202 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD V. Commencement of Modern History. — The Middle Ages end -with Maximilian, tlieir last representative, A new epocli is now readied — that of the three great Re- volutions marking the transition from the Middle Ages to Modern Times: — 1. The extinction of feudalism; 2, The commencement of ocean navigation, and discovery of the New World; 3. The causes which led to the Re- formation, of the Church. The effects of these mighty changes upon European civilization will be noticed in detail hereafter in the Chcfpter on Progress. 1273-1520.] TABLE OP CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 203 Nicholas V. 1 CaHxtus III. 1 Pius II. 1 Paul II. 1 Sixtus IV. 1 Innocent VIII. 1 Alexander VI. 1 Pius III. 1 Julius II. 1 Leo X. h3 Frederick III. 1 Maximilian I. - CD w w > CIC;^O^^^^^^x^f^*>■^f^*^ *^ H-OOOOD^OiOlOl o 1 WOilOlOhf^H->I^COOT 1 CO ■;;3 brj hr] ;> hrj f> ^9^9 i-liTi >^^r^ fi g Ci g honso I dinand honso I dinand derick 1 •^ ^ «^^^ o ^^^' ■ .^ f-l • H 2 h-i 1— 1 1— 1 h- 1 1— ' l_, l_, l_l pgfefeS^^ ►;x >f^ 4^ CO CCCi C^K- os^-^co OOWF- ilii irlllr w S S m cf ^'^nii'^ <^B^ § «^^z:< ^PB^<^ t-i ' ^ t> t) p 1 h-i K' (-1 h-i I-' Oi *^ rf^ 1— ' c» o 1 Or >(x rfx rfi. (Ji^ O <>3 CO C» Ci OiOSO 1 Sm w WH- CASTILE. John 11. Henry IV. Isabella Joanna AEAGON Alphonso V. John II. Ferdinand > B N O 1 l_i u-l 1 1—1 1—1 |_1 l_l f_, 1 ^f. ►(X 1 Ol rfx hfx OT rfX 1 -Ttot o-jo. H-OJ 1 O CXi 1 *. rfx tji. to H- in ^>>Ci cS.^o^S llii: ID o CD O H :: ^ 3 ii^ -^ >^ ^ r^ Q !z: s >> tf t^ p poo illi cl-OlH-i SIXTH PERIOD. FROM CHARLES V. TO THE PEACE OP WESTPHALIA. (1519--1648). Charles V. (1519). — As Maximilian left no son, the l^artisans of the House of Avistria cast tlieir eyes on the eldest of his grandsons, Chaiies, King of Spain, But the youthful monarch had many opponents. As King of Naples, which he inherited through Ferdinand of Aragon, he was too dangeroiis a neighbour to the Pajial See for Leo X. to wish, him success; as King of Spain, Lord of the Netherlands, and Archduke of Austria, his power was justly dreaded by the states of the empire and by Europe. He had for his competitor Francis I. of France, who bad distinguished himself by the conquest of the Milanese, and the adjustment of the contending interests of the Italian states. The German electors, afraid of the exorbitant power both of Charles and of Francis, would have rejected both, and conferred the imperial crown on Frederick, Duke of Saxony; but this extraordinary man declined the proffered dignity, and his counsel determined the election in favour of Charles of Austria (1519). Hostilities between Charles V. and Francis I. of France. — Charles V. and Francis I. were now declared enemies, and their mutual claims on each other's dominions were the subject of perpetual hostility. The Emperoi- claimed Artois as part of the Netherlands. Francis ]ire- pared to make good his right to the two Sicilies. Charles had to defend Milan, and support his title to Navarre, which had been wrested from France by his grandfathei', Ferdinand. Hemy YIII. of England was courted by the 1519-1G48.] ARRIVAL OF CHARLES V. 205 rival monarclis, as the weiglit of England was sufficient to turn the scale, where the power of each was neaily balanced, Leo X. would fain have interposed between the rivals, biit they Avere both too great to be under his control. Charles in the views of universal empire which he early conceived, had, thei'efore, apparently only Fi'ancis to impede him; but his own character, and the strength and resources of his kingdom, gave the latter such advan- tages, that only ambition could have blinded the Emperor to the plain fact that France was then, as ever, unconquer- able. But there was just at this jDeriod a moral power arising, more effectual to check the ambition of the Emperor than even the chivalry of France. The great reformation of religion had now commenced. State of Grermany on the Arrival of Charles V. (1520). — A period of sixteen months intervened from the election of Charles nntil his arrival, during which the regency was administered by the Electors Pala- tine and of Saxony. Their influence was eminently favourable to the infant Reformation. At the end of this interval the new Emperor had arrived from Spain, and had been formally crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle (Oct. 23, 1520). Charles found Germany disturbed by Luther's incipient scheme. The Emperor was now twenty-one years old. His sceptre stretched over the half of Europe, and across the great sea to the golden realm of Mexico. When Leo saw the safe accession of Charles V., the faith- ful servant of St. Peter, he pushed matters with a higher hand against the daring innovator. At a Diet held at Wonns in Jan. 1521, Luther was summoned to appear, and Chai'les gave him a safe-conduct for his security. Martin begged a new gown from the not very lavish elector, and went in a sort of chariot to the appointed city, serene and confident, trusting in the goodness of his cause. Such a scene never occuri-ed in any age of the world as was presented when the assembly met. All the peers and potentates of the German Empire, presided over by the most powerful ruler that ever had been known in Europe, were gathered to hear the trial and 205 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD VI. condemnation of a tliin, wan-visaged young man, dressed in a monk's gown and hood, and worn with the fatigues and hazards of his recent life. Luther refused to retract his opinions, and appealed to a general council. So the Chancellor of Treves came to him and said, " Martin, thou art disobedient to his Imperial Majesty, therefore depart hence under the safe- conduct he has given thee," and the monk departed. As he was nearing his destination, and was passing through a wood alone, some horsemen seized his person, dressed him in military garb, and put on him a false beard. They then mounted him on a led horse, and rode rapidly away. His friends were anxious about his fate, for a dreadful sentence had been uttered against him by the Emperor on the day when his safe-conduct expired, forbidding any one to sustain or shelter him, but ordering all persons to arrest and bring him into prison to await the judgment he deserved. People thought he had been waylaid and killed, or at all events sent into a dungeon. Meantime he was living peaceably and comfortably in the Castle of Wartburg, to which he had been conveyed in this mysterious manner by his friend the Elector, safe from the machinations of his enemies, and busily engaged in his immortal translation of the Holy Scriptures. League against Francis I. of France. — While Charles was absent from Spain, the towns of Castile broke out into open insurrection. Francis I. seized the opportunity of recovering from John d' Albert ]Sra,varre, which Ferdi- nand had unjustly seized. A French army conquered it; but venturing to advance into Spain, it was defeated, and Navarre recovered. Francis invaded the Low Countries without advantage. A league was now formed between the Pope, Henry VIII., and Charles, against the King of France. The Milanese, disgusted with the insolence and exactions of the French, resolved to expel them, and put themselves under Francis Sforza, brother to their late duke. The Pope hired Swiss, and formed an army under Prosper Colonna to assist them. The French were defeated; Lautrec, their commander, fled to Yeuicej and 1519-1G4S.] THE CONSTABLE BOURBON. 207 tliey lost everything but Cremona, tlae Castle of Milan, and a few other places. Joy at this success is said to have terminated the life of Leo X. On the death of Leo X., Charles placed his preceptor, Cardinal Adrian on the Papal thi'one, in 1521, though he was a native of Utrecht, and almost a stranger at Rome; and by the promise of elevating Wolsey, the minister of Henry VIII., to that dignity, on the death of Adrian, gained the alliance of the English monarch in his war against France. He also found means of detaching Venice and Genoa from the interests of his competitor. Defection of the Constable Bourbon — Francis I. made Prisoner by Bourbon. — At this critical time, when he had not only almost all Europe against him, but Avas in want of money, Francis imprudently quarrelled with his best genei'al, the Constable of Bourbon; who, in re- venge, deserted to the Emperor, and was by him invested with the chief command of his armies. The imperial and Italian generals under him (for most of the princes of Italy were adverse to the government of France), were far superior in abilities to their opponents. Their troops also were superior, more numerous, and better paid. The French were defeated at Biagrassa, and Charles was carry- ing everything before him in Italy, when Francis entered the Milanese, and retook the capital ; some changes having taken place in his favour, by the defection of the new Pope, Clement VII., from the party of Charles, as well as of John de' Medici, one of the best generals of those days. But, in the subsequent battle of Pavia, though Francis displayed the utmost valour, his troops were entirely defeated, and the French monarch became the Constable of Bourbon's prisoner (1525). It was upon this occasion that he wrote to his mother, " Madame, all is lost but my honour." The Emperor made no advantage of his good fortune, strangely neglecting all the opportunities which it offered. By the treaty of Madrid (March, 1526), Francis regained his liberty in the following year, on yielding to Chai^les the duchy of Burgundy, and the superiority of Flanders 208 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD VI. and Artois. He gave liis two sons as hostages for tlie fulfilment of these conditions; but the States refused to ratify them, and the failure was compromised for a sum of money. Rome Captured and Sacked by the Imperialists — Death of Bourbon. — The war was now renewed. The Pope and mosb of the Italian powers, exasperated by the tyranny of Charles, and the cruelty and excesses of the Spanish troops, took the part of Francis. Hemy YIII. of England also espoused his cause. Bourbon com- manded the imperial forces in the Milanese, and finding his soldiers becoming mutinous for want of pay, he re- solved to march to Rome, and pacify their discontent by giving them the plunder of the Eternal City. At the approach of the imperial army, Clement shut himself up in the Castle of St. Angelo, leaving the citizens to make the best defence they could. The assault was given early in the morning of the 6th May 1527, and as Bourbon was in the act of placing a scaling ladder against the walls, he was killed by a random shot from the town, fired, it is said, by Michael Angelo. His soldiers, by whom he was much beloved, cruelly avenged him. The city was taken and given up to plunder. During nine months, Bome was subjected to tortures and outrages which even the Goths and Vandals had not inflicted upon her. It was the army of Charles V. which pro- faned thus the capital of Christianity, and which kept the Pope a captive in St. Angelo. The Emperor, it is trvie, in order to conceal the part he had taken in this great scandal, caused masses to be said for the delivei'- ance of the Holy Father; but the robbers were only driven from their prey by a pestilence, and the approach of Lautrec, who, after reducing the Milanese, had advanced rapidly to the succour of the Pope. Of the numerous hosts which had marched to the sack of Borne, scarcely 500 survived to leave it, when it was evacuated about ten months after the capture. Francis accused Charles V. of these horrors, by which the latter profited whilst he repudiated them. 1519-1G4S.] THE DIET OF AUGSBURG. 209 Campaigns of Charles V. against the Turks. — After the conclusion of the peace of Canibray (1529), which restored to the two sons of Francis their liberty, and to the King, their father, the duchy of Burgundy, Charles visited Italy, and received the imperial diadem irom Pope Clement VII., disposing of the diflerent states of Lom- bardy to various princes for what money he could get. The Turks having invaded Hungary, the Emperor marched against them in person, assisted by his brother, Ferdinand, and compelled the Sultan Soliman, with an ai'my of 300,000 men, to evacuate the country. He soon after embarked for Afiica, to replace the dethroned Muley Hassan in the sovereignty of Tunis and Algiei-s, which had been iisurped by Hayradin Barbarossa, and he achieved the enterprise with honour. His reputation at this period exceeded that of all the sovereigns of Europe, both for political ability, for real power, and the extent and opvilence of his dominions; but he had a hard task upon his hands, having at one and the same time to guard against the Turks and the French, and the latter both on the north and the south. The Lutheran Party styled Protestants. — In 1529, a diet assembled at Spires, where the princes of the empire decided by a majority of votes that Church affairs should remain as they were until a general council could be held. The Lutheran princes immediately drew up and forwarded to the Emperor a 2^rotesf, from which circum- stance they and all the Lutheran party were thenceforth styled Protestants. The Diet of Augsburg (1530).— While Charles was engaged in the Italian wars, the opinions of the Re- formers had spread rapidly in Germany. While at enmity with the Pope, the Emperor was not very anxious to discourage them; but now apprehending danger from them to the imperial authority, he resolved to take measures for their suppression. The Emperor quitted Bologna, in the close of March 1530, for Augsburg; at which the confession of faith of the Protestants was read and defended by Melancthon and other.s, A decree waa Q 210 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [period VI. issued against them, and coercive measures resolved on. The Protestant princes met at Smalcalde, and entered into a league for mutual defence, and a secret alliance with the kings of France and England. The Turks were now menacing Hungary, and Charles saw that this was no time for violent measures. A treaty was therefore concluded, in which he granted the Protestants liberty of conscience till the meeting of a general council, and they engaged to a'ssist him aji^ainst the Turks. i^Hf*i'!«si AUGSBURO. The Emperor's Brother, Ferdinand, Elected King of the Romans (1531). — The Elector of Saxony drew up a protest against the election of Ferdinand as King of the Romans (to whom Chaiies had already ceded his Austrian possessions), which was presented by his son, John Frederick, to the Emperor at Cologne, whither he had proceeded after the breaking up of the Diet of Augs- burg; but it pi'oduced no effect. It had been at first' contemplated to deprive the Elector of Saxony of his 1519-1C48.] INVASION OF HUNGARY. 211 vote, as a lievetic, under the bull of Leo X.; but tlie otlier electors would not agree to a stroke whicli miglit next fall upon themselves. The five Roman Catholic electors, the Palatine, Brandenburg, Mentz, Treves, and Cologne, had been early gained over by gifts and promises ; and Ferdinand himself, as King of Bohemia, had a vote. He was elected, January 5, 1531, and two days after- wards crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle. In his capitulation he pledged himself to observe the recess of the Diet of Augsburg. From this time forwards, Charles left the government of Germany mostly to his brother, requiring only to be consulted in things of the last importance. The latter, however, soon found that the new title did not give him more power than that possessed by any otlier prince of the empire. Invasion of Hungary by the Turks — The Ana- baptists. — Suliman entered Hungary at the head of 200,000 men. Charles took the command of 80,000 foot and 20,000 horse, besides a vast body of irregulars, near Vienna (1532). The Sultan retired; and Charles returned to Spain, and engaged in a successful expedition against Tunis. While he was absent the sect of the Ana- baptists seized on the city of Miinster, and defended it for some time courageously against the troops of the bishop; but the fanatic Bockold, who had assumed the title of King, and Knipperdoling were taken prisoners and executed ; their corpses being suspended in ii*on cages on one of the highest towers in the city (1535). While Chai'les was in Africa, Frajicis revived his claim on Italy. The King of England, engaged about his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, declined having to do with the affairs of the Continent; and the League of Smalcalde, indignant at the cruelties inflicted on some Protestants in Paris, refused to unite with Francis. The latter resolved, even without allies, to venture on war, under pretence of chastising the Duke of Milan for the murder of his ambassador. He approached Italy; but instead of entering the Milanese, he seized a great part of the dominions of the Duke of Savoy, who appealed 212 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD VI. in .vain to Charles, whose excliequer was now completely empty. Meantime, Sforza died without issue, and the rights, which had only been surrendered to him and his heu's, returned to Francis. Instead, however, of entering at once on the duchy, he wasted his time in negotiation, while Charles took possession of it as a vacant fief of the empire, though still pretending to own the equity of the claims of the French monarch. The Emperor having now procured sufficient supplies of money, resolved on attempting the conquest of France. Having driA^en the French out of Savoy, he invaded the southern provinces at the head of 50,000 men. Two other armies were ordered to enter Picardy and Cham- pagne. The sj^stem adopted by Francis was defensive. From the Alps and Dauphiny to Marseilles and the sea the country was laid waste; strong garrisons placed iii Aries and Marseilles ; one French army strongly encamped near Avignon, another at Valence. After fruitlessly in- vesting Aries and Marseilles, and spending two months in Provence, Charles retreated with tlie loss of one-half of his troops by disease and famine. An attempt by Francis on the Low Countries, was followed by a truce at Nice, under the mediation of Pope Paul III. (1538). Charles's Disastrous Expedition against Algiers (1541). — The Emperor suppressed an insurrection which had broken out in the city of Ghent; but he was forced to make concessions to the Protestants in Germany, to gain their assistance against Suliman, who had seized a part of Hungary. But the favourite object of Charles was the conquest of Algiers; and in the end of autumn he, contrary to the advice of Doria, his admiral, landed in Africa with a large ai'my; but tempests scattered his iieet and destroyed his soldiers, and he was forced to re-embark, with the loss of the greater part of his men. In 1542, the war between the ri^'al monarchs broke out anew. The Emperor was suppoi'ted by the King of England and the Protestant princes, to whom he had made further concessions. Francis was allied with the Kings of Denmark aud Sweden, and lie renewed the treaty 1519-16'1S.] THE COraCIL OF TRENT. 213 he had formerly made with Suliman. During two years France, Sjiain, Italy, and the Low Countries were the scenes of war; but the only battle of consequence was that of Cerisoles, gained by the French, in which 10,000 Imperialists fell. A peace was concluded at CresiH. The chief articles wei'e, that the Emperor should give one of his own or his brother Ferdinand's daughters to the Duke of Orleans, second son of Francis, and Avith her the duchy of Milan, and renounce all claim to Burgundy; Francis doing the same to Naples, Artois, and Flanders; and that they should vmite against the Turks (1544). The Council of Trent. — Charles and the Pope being noAV both intent on putting down the Gei'man Protestants, the Council of Trent was at length opened for the de- spatch of business (December 13, 1545). A general council had always been regarded as affording the last chance of restoring the unity of the Church, and when its authority was rejected by the Protestants, no alterna- tive seemed left but an appeal to arms. That extreraitj^, which might have crushed Protestantism when in . its infancy, had been hitherto avoided. Lixther did not live to behold these scenes of violence. At the very time when his doctrines were under examination at Trent, the champion of Protestantism, whose strong head and fear- less heart had thus engaged in angry and anxious discus- sion, as over their dearest interests both in this world and the next, the highest, the most powerful, and the most learned men in Europe, was quietly expiring in the obscure little town that gave him birth. He had gone to Eisleben to reconcile a quarrel that had arisen between the Coiuits Mansfeld; and, while engaged in this mission of peace, was attacked with inflammation, which termi- nated his life, February 18, 1546, at the age of sixty- three. The Elector of Saxony caused his funeral to be celebrated with great pomp. A few months later, when, after the route of the Protestant army at the battle of jMuhlberg, Charles entered Wittemberg in triumph, where Luther's ashes repose, Aloa advised him to dis- inter and burn the body of the arch-heretic. " Let him 2U HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD VI. rest," was tlie magnanimous rej)ly; "he has appeai-ed before his judge ere now — I wage war with the living, not the dead." WIIJEMBEKG. The Religious War — Struggle for Supremacy be- tween France and the House of Austria. — The pro- gress of the Reformation liad hitherto been peaceful; we now enter upon an epoch when its path was marked by- blood — a catastrophe foreseen and dreaded by Luther, but which he was spared from witnessing. For a period of nearly a century, our attention will be chiefly arrested by religious wars, Avhich, however, are often combined with a great political movement that had already been initiated — the striiggle for supremacy between France and the House of Austria. One of the terms of the peace of Crespi was that both sovereigns engaged themselves to destroy Protestantism in their respective dominions. In France they began to fulfil this engagement by massacring the Protestants in the towns of Cabrieres and Merindol; in Germany Charles 1519-1G48.] THE IREATY OF NASSAU. 21 6 2^roceeded by less sanguinary and more formal means. The Diet of Worms, in 1545, passed several resolutions against the Protestants, in consequence of which they rose in arms in 1546, under Frederick, Elector of Saxony, and Philip, Landgrave of Hesse. Charles defeated them, and took the two princes prisoners. He gave the elec- torate of Saxony to Maurice, a kinsman of Frederick. Maurice acted with consummate skill, so as to deceive Charles himself, during several years, as to his real inten- tions. He ai:>peared to side with the Emperor, fought bravely for him, but at the same time took care that the cause of tlie Protestants should not be rendered totally desperate; he in-ged Charles to liberate the Landgrave of Hesse, who was his father-in-law, and, on Charles's re- peated refusals, he entei'ed into secret correspondence with the other Protestant princes to be ready to rise at a given signaL At last, in 1552, Maurice threw off the mask, by taking the field at the head of the Protestant confederacy, and was very near surprising the Emperor at Innspruck. The Treaty of Passau — Its effect upon Protestantism. — Main-ice was detained, after a successful assault upon the imperial camp at Reuti, by a mutiny in one of his regiments. A day was lost by this disturbance, which enabled Chai-les to make his escape by fleeing to the Alps in a litter, in the midst of a dark rainy night. He now illustrated, in his own fortunes, the truth of the words with which he had taunted John Frederick ;in 1547. The Emperor, so lately more absolute than any since the Swabian line, was compelled to fly night and day, in his weak and ailing condition, across the rugged mountain roads which lead from Innspruck to Yillach. He was menaced with captivity, in retribution for that in which he had so long detained the two unfortunate princes; he was stung with the successful treachery of his favourite; and, in the decline of life, he was condemned to see the hopes of a re-union in the Church rudely dashed to the groimd. The Council of Trent broke up, and did not re- assemble. A conference was held at Passau : the terms proposed in the name of the princes of the empire were 216 History of Germany. [period vr. rejected by the Emperor. Maurice laid siege to Frank- fort, and the haughty spirit of Charles was forced to bend. The treaty of Passau overthrew the fabric he had so long been raising, and placed the Protestant religion of Ger- many on a secui'e basis. Such is the sum of the treaty of Passau, the second decided advance made by the tenets of the Reformation, if the provisional truce of Nuremburg may be considered as the first. Philip of Hesse was liberated from his con- finement at Louvain. He was received at the frontiers of Hesse by his sons and councillors. Sorrows had broken down his health and whitened his hair, although he was still in middle age. It must have been a touching sight to have witnessed his progress through his dominions, amid the acclamations of his subjects, who had experienced, even from his prison-house, the wise rule of their sove- reign; and to have seen him kneeling in the church of Cassel by the tomb of his faithful consort. Death of Maurice of Saxony (1553). — And Maurice soon passed away from the scene. Charles, after the pacification, had commenced a devastating war in Lor- raine; but after in vain attempting to reduce Metz, which was defended by the Duke of Lorraine with the greatest gallantry, he was compelled, in January 1552, to abandon the campaign, which had been one of unijaralleled sufier- ing and horror. Hostilities, however, were prolonged in the Netherlands with every atrocity, until the truce of Vaucelles in 1556. But the bloodthirsty Albert of Brandenburg, unable to live in an atmosphere of com- parative purity, after the siege of Metz had been raised, commenced a series of atrocities in Pranconia, which evoked the allied hostility of Maurice and Ferdinand. They met at Sievershausen, on the Weser, on July 9, 1553. Albert was defeated, but Maurice died of his wounds two days afterwards. Thus perished Maurice of Saxony, a traitor, in the world's opinion, to his kinsman, his country, and his sovereign; yet by his instrumentality did Providence complete the first stage of the holy work of the Pteforma- 1519-1G4S.] CIlAPvLES V. ABDICATES. 217 tion. Allbsrt, the antagonist of Maurice, aftei- a defeat by Henry, Duke of Brunswick, died in 1557. Tiius we have seen the Eeformation in its birth biing- ing together the princes and cities of the empire as fiicnds or foes, and recognised at last by a formal Act. But this is but the history of its childhood; we have yet to con- sider its progress and difficulties from the peace of Augs- burg (called the " Peace of Religion," for it was the foundation of religious freedom in Germany), until its triumph in 1648. And this stage will divide itself into two parts; the first containing the silent seeds of change and quarrel, xmtil the reign of Rodolph II.; the second, the fiery maturity of these evil seeds, fomented by the contest of the rival principles embodied in Spain and her minion Austria, and in France and her subsidiary, Sweden. The Marriage of Philip of Spain and Mary of England. — In 1554, Philip, Charles's son, married Mary Tudor, Queen of England, upon which occasion his father made over to him the crowns of Naples. In 1555, Joanna of Spain died, having been insane for nearly fifty years. Charles V. Abdicates (1555)— His Death (1558).— Charles being now nominally, as well as in reality, sole King of the Spanish monarchy, put in eflect a resolution which he had formed for some years before. A month subsequently to the conclusion of the Religious Peace of Augsburg, Charles V., in an assembly of the estates at Brussels, on the 25th of October 1555, appeared seated between his son, Philip, and his two sisters, the widowed queens of Bohemia and of France, and solemnly resigned to his son his paternal dominions of Burgundy, Brabant, and the Netherlands, releasing his subjects in those countries from their allegiance to himself, and commend- ing to them the service of his successor. After this solemn transfer, the sovereign of so many and fair posses- sions rose, and leaning on the Prince of Orange for sup- port, as he was suflmng severely from the gout, addressed the audience to the following effect : " Ever since the age of seventeen," he said, " he had devoted all his thoughts and exertions to public objects, seldom reserving any 215 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [pERtOD VI. portion of his time for the indulgence of ease or pleasure. Nine times have I visited Germany, Spain, six times, Italy, seven times, Flanders, ten times : twice have I been in England, and also in Africa. I have crossed the North Sea four times, and made eight voyages to the Mediterranean. Wars I have undertaken from compul- sion rather than choice: but no hardship, no exertion which I have undergone has caused pangs eqneii to those CHARLES V. {From the original by Holbein). which I now feel in bidding you farewell; but my failing strength tells me that there is no choice. I am not so fond of reigning as to wish to retain the sceptre with a powerless hand!" He added that "if, in the course of a long administration, he had committed errors — as what young man has not? — from want of experience, and from the common weakness of humanity, I solemnly declare 1519-1648.] FERDINAND I. OP AUSTRIA. 219 tliat I have never, knowingly or i)urposely, injured or connived at the injury of any person. If there be, indeed, any who can bring against me just ground for complaint, I entreat him to pardon my errors and injustice." Then turning to Philip, he gave him some salutary advice, especially to respect the laws and the liberties of his sub- jects; after which, exhausted with fatigue and emotion, he closed this impressive scene. Two weeks after he made over to Philip, with the same solemnity, and before a large assembly of Spanish grandees and German princes, the crowns of Spain and the Indies. In the following year (August 1556), he likewise resigned the imperial crown to his brother, Ferdinand, who had already been elected King of the Romans and his successor; and after visiting his native place, Ghent, he embarked for Spain with a small retinue. On landing at Laredo, in Biscay, he kissed the ground, saying, " Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked I return to thee, thou common mother of mankind." In February 1557, accompanied by one gentleman attendant and twelve domestics, ho retired to the monastery of St. Yuste, of the Hieronymite order, situated near Plasencia, in Estremadura, in a sequestered valley at the foot of the Sierra de Gredos, where he caused apartments to be prepared for him. There he lived for about eighteen months, employed either in his garden, or in contriving works of ingenious mechanism, and occasionally diverting himself with literature. In the last six months of his existence, his body becoming more and more enfeebled by repeated fits of the gout, his mind lost its energy, and he fell into gloomy reveries, and the practice of ascetic austerities. Among other things he had his own funeral obsequies performed in the chapel of the monastery (August 30, 1558). The fatigue and excitement of this ceremony, in which he took part, brought on a fit of fever, which in about three weeks carried him off; he died on the 21st of September 1558, in his fifty-ninth year. Terdinand I. of Austria, younger brother of Charles v., was born in 1503. Elected King of the Romans 220 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD VI. during liis brother's reign, he succeeded him as Emperor in consequence of the abdication of Charles, which was sanctioned by the Diet of the empire in 1558. It was indeed singular that a prince, the circumstances of whose position, in the neighbourhood of his melancholy mother, and of his grandfather exclusively occupied with worldly schemes, seemed to promise but inauspicioiisly for his welfare, should, in his more advanced years, have dis- played so rare a combination of sagacity and activity; that educated and long resident in S^jain, he should he able to adopt the habits and feelings of his future empire. The change in the behaviour of Ferdinand may, in a great measure, be attributed to his keen-sighted ambition. The earlier years of his residence, as the vicegerent of his brother, in Austria, were neither productive of j)opularity to himself, nor passed in harmony with Charles. The inhabitants murmured at his severity and exactions, and Ferdinand himself was anxious to exchange his uncom- fortable position in Austria for the sovereignty of the recent conquest of Milan, which Charles was disinclined to grant. After his elevation to the title of King of the Ilomans, these jealousies and heartburnings gave place to vigorous and cordial co-operation Avith his brother in affairs of state. No differences, no separate views of policy disturbed their harmony; the reserved and stately bearing, the unbending coldness and severity of the elder brother, the cheerfulness, condescension, and leniency of the younger being but the expression of their individual temperaments. Ferdinand had married, in 1521, Anna, daughter of Ladislaus YI., King of Bohemia and Hungary, and sister of Louis, who having succeeded his father in the crown of those realms, was killed in the disastrous battle of Mohacz, by the Turks, in 1526, and left no issue. Fer- dinand, claiming a right to the succession in the name of his wife, the states of Bohemia acknowledged him; but in Hungary a strong party declared for John of Zapoli, Palatine of Transylvania. This was the beginning of a long and desolating war, interrupted by occasional truces, in which Suliman, Sultan of the Turks, interfered on be- 1519-1648.] RELIGIOUS DISSENSIONS. 221 half of John, and after John's death, in 1540, on behalf of his son, Sigismund. In Bohemia the religious disputes between the Callixtines, who were a remnant of the Hussites, and the Roman Catholics, occasioned consider- able uneasiness to .Ferdinand, who found at last that it was his policy to tolerate the former. At the same time, however, he eftected a thorough change in the institutions of that kingdom, by declaring the crown of Bohemia here- ditary in his family, without the sanction of the States. This gave rise to a confederacy which opposed Ferdinand by force of arms, but was overpowered and dissolved. On being proclaimed Emperor of Germany, after having signed certain conditions with the electors, which defined the boundaries of the imperial authority, and gave security to the Protestant religion, Ferdinand notified his election to Pope Paul TV,, expressing a desire to be crowned by his hands. Paul refused, under the plea that the abdica- tion of Charles Y. was effected without the consent of the Papal See, and required a fi'esh election to be made. Ferdinand, indignant at these jDretensions, ordered his ambassador to quit Rome. Paul, however, dying soon after, his successor, Pius IV., showed himself more tract- able in acknowledging Ferdinand as head of the empire. It was then resolved by the electors, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant, that in future no Emperor should receive the crown from the hands of the Pope, and that instead of the customary form in which the Emperor-elect professed his obedience to the head of the Church, a mere complimentary epistle should be substituted. Thus ended the last remains of that terapoi'al dependence of the German Empire on the See of Rome, which had been the subject of so many controversies and wars. Religious Dissensions. — Ferdinand continued through- out his reign to hold the balance even between the Pro- testants and Roman Catholics with regard to their mutual toleration and outward harmony ; he even endeavoured, though unsuccessfully, to effect a union of the two com- munions, by trying to j)ersuade the Protestants to send deputies to, and acknowledge the axithority of the Council 222 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD VI. assembled at Trent. Tins, however, tliey refused to do, unless tlieir theologians were acknowledged as eqnal in dignity to the Roman Catholic bishops, and imless the Council were transferred from Trent to some city of the empire. The Lutheran church had delivered itself from the yoke of Rome, and the Lutheran princes made them- sel ves almost entirely independent of the Emperor. Could they have agreed among themselves, they might have spi-ead the blessings both of civil freedom and sound religious knowledge, as far as the German tongue was spoken. But the Protestants, instead of making common canse against the arrogance of Rome, were disjDuting with each other about the various tenets of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. In Prussia, society was shaken to its founda- tion by the contentions of the rival sects, headed by Osiander and Morlin. The Council of Trent, abandoning all hopes of an accommodation, now applied itself solely to such measures as were likely to be available to retain- ing in the Church those who still belonged to the com- munion. Some abuses, such as the immorality of the clergy and the sale of indulgences, were in a great measure removed. But the supremacy of the Papal See was asserted more vehemently than before, and any de- parture from the tenets now promulgated as the decision of the Church was forbidden on pain of excommunication. Since that time there has never been a reasonable hope of reconciliation between the Church of Rome and the Protestants. Ferdinand, in order to conciliate some at least of the dissenting sects in his own hereditary states, attempted to obtain of the Vope, among other concessions, the use of the cup at the commi;nion table for the laity, and the liberty of marriage for the priests. Pius TV., however, would not listen to the latter proposition, and the negotiations were still pending with regard to the former, when the Emperor died at Vienna, in July 1564. He left three sons: 1, Maximilian, who succeeded him as Emperor, Archduke of Austria, and King of Bohemia and Hungary.; 2, Ferdinand, whom he made Coimt of Tyrol; 3^ Charles, whom he appointed Duke of Styria, 1519-1648.] MAXIMILIAN II. 223 Carintliia, and Carniola. Upon the whole tlie admini- stration of Ferdinand was able and enlightened; he main- tained religious peace in Germany, he effected some useful reforms, and he saw the closing of the Council of Trent. From this time the House of Austria was divided into two great branches, the successors of Charles V., or the Spanish branch, and those of Ferdinand, or the German branch. Maximilian II. — Towards the close of his life, Fer- dinand began to be anxious for the settlement of the succession. This wish had led to the elevation of his son Maximilian to the dignity of King of the Romans (1562) during the first year of the proceedings at Trent. Few pi'inces have been personally characterised in terms of approbation so iinqualified as those applied to Maximilian which do not, after a close and severe scrutiny, appear to have been exaggerated. His j^ersonal appearance bore the stamp of talent and honesty, his address was frank, his manners, in the opinion of many, erred on the side of indiscreet and undistinguishing familiarity, and his accomplishments were varied and considei'able ; for he was well read in history, a practical chemist, and pas- sionately fond of music, a science which he thoroughly understood. His acquaintance with the languages of Europe was extraordinary in eveiy way. For a period of three years he had governed Spain to the satisfaction of his uncle Charles, by whose daughter, Mary, he had sixteen children. But neither did his affection and ad- miration for his noble uncle, nor his residence in Spain, nor the strong attachment of his consort to the religion and habits of that country (to which, after her widow- hood, she retired), exercise any prejudicial influence upon Maximilian's warm and kindly temperament. In his policy as regarded the empire, it was his constant aim to preserve the religious peace, which was never more threatened than during his reign. Because he had so much attachment to the Lutheran doctrines as to receive the communion under both kinds, and detested persecution^ though he remained in the bosom of the 22-1 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD VI. Catholic Church, he had great influence with both parties. Listening with patience to the comphiints of both, and being able to show both that they were wrong — the Roman Catholics in seeking to persecute the Lutherans of their states, the Lutherans in clamoiir- ing for the abolition of the ecclesiastical reservation — he persuaded them, for the common good, to refrain from open hostilitjr. He even protected the Calvinists, who were hated by the Lutherans even more than by the Roman Catholics, so fer as to prevail on his own ■brethren not to join in the persecution. Maximilian's policy towards the Elector Palatine, Frederick IIL — Frederick III., Elector Palatine, had quitted Lutheranism for Calvinism; and so, by the com- pact concluded between the Catholics and the followers of Luther, had forfeited all claim to toleration. Both called for his deposition; but he was a powerful prince; he had all his co-religionists throughout Europe at his disposal; and his valour was celebrated. Knowing that a civil war might even wrap Europe in flames, Maximilian, by detaching the Catholics from the confederacy, left the odium of the persecution to the Lutherans alone; and they, fearful alike of the impiitation and of the con- sequences of weakening the Protestant cause, reluctantly consented to remain at peace. Had his representations, indeed, to the Papal See obtained the attention which they deserved, he would have efiected more in this re- spect than any of his predecessors. By several popes, the use of the cup had been granted to the Bohemians, the Austrians, and such of the Germans as insisted on it. He besought the Pope to proceed a step further — to con- cede the power of marrying to the clergy — and asserted that, by this judicious concession, the Catholic Church would be more benefitted, and the Lutheran more injured, than by all other measures. This, he contended, was a mere matter of discipline which did not in the slightest degree affect the tenets of the church. But Paul V. was inexorable. He had no wish to call another Grand Oouwicil so Boon after that of Trent had recorded ita PROGRESS OF BRITISH CONQUEST. 225 in the area of Britisli territory in India Avas made by tlie annexation of the extensive province of the Punjaub. Its inhabitants, the Sikhs, having a second time challenged the might of Britain, Avere totally overthrown at Goojerat by Sir Hugh Goiigh; and Lord Dalhousie — less scrupulous than his predecessor — boldly annexed the whole province. By this accession of territory, the entire north-eastern corner of the peninsula was brought under British rule. In 1853, the i:)rovince of Berar, whose capital was Nagpore, became British territory. It had, upon the close of the Mahratta war, been annexed to the dominions of the nizam. The affairs of the province, however, were so grossly mismanaged, that, upon the death of Rughojee Bhoslay in 1853, it was added to the Company's posses- sions. Thus the area of British dominions was increased by some 75,000 square miles. The last territorial acquisition of the English in India was that of the province of Oude, which took place in 1856. The annexation, it will be remembered, was a consequence of the bad government of its king. The process, which has been the subject of much severe com- ment, added little short of 30,000 square miles to the British dominions, and virtually brought the entire peninsula beneath our sway; for although two-thirds of Hindustan only is at present under the direct rule of our sovereign, the connection of the remaining portion is of such a nature that the independence of the states com- prising it is but nominal. Of the progress of British SAvay, the history of India is a mere chronicle. The commercial entei'prise of our countrymen dui'ing the Tudor period gave us a first footing in this eastern land. The career of Olive substi- tuted empire for mere sufferance ; and upon the foundation which his genius laid, the vast fabric of British dominion arose. The process Avas very gradual at first; but during the last half century its develojDment has been altogether as rapid. The occurrences of the year 1857 placed the edifice in the greatest jeopardy; for it was Avithin the 226 nisTORY OP india. bounds of probability that Britisli power in India "would cease. This, however, was not to be. The patience and perseverance of our countrymen, and the loyalty of the general body of the population averted the threatened calamity; and this splendid empire — now under the direct rule of Her Gracious Majesty — is reserved to us' for our honour, it is to be hoped, and the welfare of its people. CHAPTER XXXI. THE LEADIiS^G li^DIAN STATES. Break-up cf the Mohammedan Empire — The Emperor's Territory — The Province of Oude — Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa — The Deccan or the Nizam's Dominions — The Carnatic — The Mahratta Country — Its Else and Condition — j\Iysore — Minor States. About tlie middle of tlie eighteenth century, when the administration of Anglo-Indian aflairs was in the hands of Clive, the greater part of the Indian peninsula had ceased to own the sway of the Emperor of Delhi or Great Mogul. The vast empire of Aurungzebe was no longer a homogeneous territory. The integrity of the ancient dominion, which his genius had barely served to maintain, could no longer, under a succession of feeble princes, be upheld; and the soubadahs, nabobs, and rajahs, who, as viceroys — Mohammedan and Hindu — had ruled the various provinces into which the empire v/as divided, began one by one to assert an independence of the im- perial court of Delhi. "Wherever," says Macaulay, "the viceroys of the Mogul retained authority they became sovereigns. They might still acknowledge in words the superiority of the house of- Tamerlane ; as a Count of Flanders, or a Duke of Burgundy might have acknow- ledged the superiority of the most helpless driveller among the later Carlovmgians. They might occasionally send to their titular sovereign a complimentary present, or solicit from him a title of honour. In truth, however, they were no longer lieutenants removable at pleasure, but independent hereditary princes." In this way arose most of the principalities with whose several concerns we have had to deal. Koughly speaking, 228 HISTORY OF INDIA. at tlie period above referred to, the Indian peninsula may ba said to have been tluxs divided: — The Emperor's Territory, represented by Delhi; Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa; the Deccan, Carnatic, Mahratta Country, and Mysore. The Emperor's Territory had, as has been remarked, shrunk into insignificance when we compare its present with its ancient area and influence. Established in 1193 as the seat of Mohammedan government by Kuttub-ud- Deen, the deputy of the Afghan prince Mohammed Gauiy, the city of Delhi continued to be the virtual capital of India, and the seat of government of the various races of sovereigns into whose hands the imperial sway successively fell. The splendour and magnificence of the impeiial city, and its great political importance, long rendered it an object of incessant attack from the Mahi'attas, Afghans, Persians, and other neighbouring and warlike people. In 1760, the city and all it represented became a bone of contention between the Mahrattas and the Afghan general Ahmed Shah Abdally. The decisive action of Paniput broke for a time the might of the Mahrattas, and secured the prize to the Afghan king. The last rejoresentative of the royal line of Aurung zebe was no more, having been put to death by his treacherous vizier Shaub-ud-Deen. His son, a fugitive in Bengal, had indeed proclaimed himself emperor, and assumed the bombastic title of Shah Allum or King of the World; but the imperial dominions, once so extensiA^e, were represented by a few unimportant districts around the city of Delhi. Such of its territory as had escaped the usurpations of its viceroys were in the hands of Ahmed Shah, whose conquests in this part of India had, in a measure, restored to the Afghan crown the ancient dominions of that nation in this country. The province of Oude, long an immediate dependency of the Mogul, was early governed by a deputy of the emperor, who was styled the vizier. At the date of the great battle of Paniput, which decided the fate of thq THE LEADING INftlAY/ STATES. 220 imperial city, tlie honour was vested in Sxifdur Jung. Tliis ruler, having quarrelled with his lord, the emperor, concerning the cession of the Punjaub to Ahmed Shah, retired to his province, bade defiance to his superior, and reigned in complete independence. The connection of Oude with the empire was henceforth merely a nominal one, and may, to all intents and purposes, be regarded as a distinct and separate kingdom owning the sway of Sufdur Jung — or rather of his son, Sujah-ud-Dowlah. The province of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa — if we except the district of Rohilcund, an independent and powerful Afghan state that lay to the north-Avest of Oude — completes the district of Northern India. It had originally formed a portion of the imperial dominions, having been, so early as the year 1575, brought under the sway of the court of Delhi by the great Akbar Khan. At the time of which we speak it had become an inde- pendent province under the government of an English nominee, Meer Jaffiei', the successor of the defeated nabob, Suraj-ud-Dowlah. The virtual sovereignty of this pro- vince was, however, destined soon to pass into the hands of the English. .. . .. --^ ■ The Deccan, or the Nizam's Dominions, as it may be termed, was brought within the pale of the empire by the same mastei'-hand that compelled the foregoing province to bend to the sway of the imperial court. Its distance from the capital, however, and the warlike operations of the neighbouruig Mahratta tribes, had rendered it exceed- ing difficult of control. During its connection with the empire, which Avas maintained until the death of Aurung- zebe in 1707, its affairs were managed by a viceroy, known as the soubadah or nizam. At the time of the above occurrence it was under the rule of Nizam-ul-Mulk (Regulator of the State, as his title implies), whose capital was Hyderabad. Nizam-ul-Mulk may be regarded as the first of a line of independent sovereigns, bearing the title of the nizam. The influence of the French under M. ^•jU history of INDIA. Bussy had secured its government, first to Nasir Jting, and now to Salabat Jung, his brother. But the territory which once had extended northward to the banks of the Nerbudda and Mahanuddy, did not now reach beyond the Godavery — its northern districts having hxtely fallen into the hands of the Mahrattas; while the Carnatic, which so recently as the time of Nizam-ul-Mulk had been included within its boundaries, was now under the independent sway of Mahomed Ally. The independence of the Rajah of Kurnal, of the Rajah of Vizagapatam, whose territories lay between the Godavery and Pennair, and other chiefs, sensibly curtailed its area towards the south. It therefore now consisted of the southern por- tion of the old Deccan only. The Carnatic which lay between the Eastern Ghauts and the Bay of Bengal had, as has been said, been de- tached from the dominion of the nizam, and was now under the rule of Mahomet Ally, whose independent government was secured by the English. His dominions, which were bounded northward by the Pennair river, and southward by the piincipality of Tanjore, were curtailed by the presence within their boundary of several indepen- dent Hindu principalities, among which may be men- tioned that of Arcot, in the possession of Chundah Sahib, a nominee of the Prencb . The Mahrattas owned an extensive tract of country in Western India, between the imperial dominions and the nizam's territory, embracing Malwah, Guzerat, Kandeish, Berar, and further southward Aurungabad, Bejapore, Tan- jore, etc., which latter province had been wrested from the emperor and the nizam. Their territory, however, was by no means a homogeneous one, being divided among certain chieftains who held a kind of independent sway within the bounds of- their several dominions. Among these Scindia, Holkar, the Guicowar, and the Peshwa, the nominal head of the confederation, may be mentioned. This extensive territory they had gained for themselves fllE LEADING iNDlAl? STATES. 231 by their bravery and superior military talent. At first a mere mercenary tribe, hiring themselves to belligei'ent princes, they were created a nation by the warrior chief- tain Sivajee. The tenitory of Jhansi, and some estates of lesser importance granted to the Peshwa by the Rajah of Bundelcund, was the humble starting point for that extension of tenitory which, in due time, made them a po\yer of the first order in the Indian peninsula, and secured them a tributary recognition from most of the Indian states. Of this remarkable people Macaulay eloquently says : — '' It was under the reign of Aurungzebe that this wild clan of plunderers first descended their mountains; and soon after his death every corner of his wide empire learned to tremble at the mighty name of the Mahrattas. Many fertile viceroyalties were entirely subdued by them. Their dominions stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea. Mahratta captains reigned at Poonah, at Gwalior, in Guzerat, in Berar, and in Tanjore. Nor did they, though they had become great sovereigns, therefore cease to be freebooters. They still retained the predatory habits of their forefathers. Every region which was not subject to their rule was wasted by their incursions. "Wherever their kettle drums were heard, the peasant threw his bag of rice on his shoulder, hid his small savings in his gii-dle, and fled with his wife and children to the mountains or the jungles, to the milder neigh- bourhood of the hysena and the tiger. Many provinces redeemed their harvests by the payment of an annual ransom. Even the wretched phantom who still bore the imperial title stooped to pay this ignominious black-mail. The camp-fires of one rapacious leader were seen from the walls of the palace of Delhi, Another at the head of his innumerable cavalry descended year after year on the rice-fields of Bengal, Even the European factors trembled for their magazines. Less than a hundred years ago, it was thought necessary to fortify Calcutta against the horsemen of Berar; and the name of the Mahratta ditch still preserves the memory of the danger." At the 23^ HISTORY OF INDIA. time we have ctosen for review, the office of Peshvva was hekl by Ballagee Rao. To the south of the nizam's dominion, and extending beyond the plateau of the Deccan, lay the territory of Mysore, an ancient state whose connection with the im- perial government was never more than a nominal one. The emperor Aurungzebe had invaded the territory and placed it under tribute ; but it never was submissive to the authority of the Delhi court. Maintaining an inde- pendent government, it was ably managed; and but for the repeated assaults and exactions of its restless neighbours the Mahrattas, would have been among the most thriving of the Indian principalities. The Mysorean dominions were greatly extended by Hyder Ally, who, at the period under consideration, notwithstanding that a legitimate sovei'eign occupied its throne, was supreme in this power- tal province. In addition to the above states — which, until the annex- ing and absorbing process of the English was applied to Indian territory-— may be regai'ded as the main divisions of the peninsula, there lay in the north Rohilcund, already mentioned, independent of the court of Delhi, and in- habited by a hardy Afghan race, with a chief named Shahab-ud-Deen at its head; Rajpootana, or a confedera- tion of Eajpoot states, which were nominally tributaxy to, but virtually independent of the emperor, and too powerful for the effective domination of the Mahratta; the country of the Jats, situated to the east of the Rajpoot states, and extending thence to Agra. Their capital was Bhurtpoor, one of the most powei'ful fortresses in India ; and they were at this period governed by a famous chieftain named Sooraj Mul; Bundelcund, to the south-east of the Bhurtpoor territory, with Rewar. Bhopal, upon the eastern boundary of Malwah, and some others. To the south were Tanjore, connected, as has already been remai'ked, with . the Mahrattas, but owning an independent i-ajah of its own — a descendant of a THE LEADING IJfDIAN STATES. 233 bi'ofcher of Sivajee; Cochin, a small and unimportant maritime state to the north of Travancoi'e, with a rajah tinder the tutelage of the Dutch. These, with the states and territories belonging to the vai'ious European nations — the English, French, Portuguese, and Dutch — made up the entire peninsula. The following table of contemporary rulers may be found of service in relieving the student of the weai-isome- ness of research, and enabling him roughly to discover at a glance the hands that directed the governments of tho several states during the period of English conquest. 234 TABLE OP CONTEMPORARY Delhi. 1719 1732 1743 1748 1749 1751 1754 175G 1757 1759 17(30 1761 1762 1764 1765 1771 1772 1773 1775 1783 1786 1790 1793 1705 1790 1797 1793 1801 1803 1805 1807 1813 1821 1828 1829 1836 1842 1844 1848 1850 1802 1864 1809 1873 Mahomed Shah, Ahmed Shah, Siifdur ■) iiug. [lah. Shujah-nd-Dow- Asof-iid-Dowlu Vizier Ally. Suadut AUj'. The Deccan. Snraj-ud-Dowlah. Meer Jaffler (jirsl). Meer Jaffier {second). Niijm-ud-Dowlah. Svf-ud-Dowlab. Azum-ud -Dow'ali. Mozuft'iir Jung. :: :: { iNizam Ally. SikuiKlev Jah. Na!!ii-uo o ss i M ri a's>" 1 i 111 III |2) i^ §.3.2 £.><^ Ph (^ p^(l^ pL, O CO O t-f^OD t^ rh L0»0 o UOiC l-O LO ft fi 1 >5 1 si Wp-^Sh r-C50 TjH G5 O t}< LO or-~C5 iSJ^SSS iO »0 LO 1 ^^^H^> i 1 §^| a Sill coco t-coo in C3 lOt-00 lO >o .O OLO r^ 4 .2 !?q s ^ ^ 5a 1 «.i t COt)<0 ^ M lO CO lO o t^ UO LO LO LO lo£?§ r-H i-H r^ '^'~' ro'^ .a 1 0) c« '2 c5 ^ 53 j5 o 'Sb'so S _2 'So o^^M ■ J^mW^Sw SEVENTH PERIOD. FROM THE PEACE OP WESTPHALIA TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.— (1648-1789). Death of Ferdinand 11. (1637).— The aged Ferdinand did not live to see the close of that terrible war the com- mencement of his reign ushered in for the extermination of Protestantism, the only way to attain which end, as Scioppius, in his " Alarm-drum of the Holy War " freely declared, was "to wade to it through blood." Few sovereigns have left behind them a more odious name. Almost the last act of a life which had been one long display of ferocious cruelty, was to order the drowning of some insurgents in Carinthia, and the infliction of horrible tortures on the peasants of Upper Austria. Practically following out the teaching of the Jesuits, heretics were to be exterminated, not because their doctrines were damnable, but because those who presumed to differ from their sovereign were in his eyes guilty of rebellion. Thus, under the mask of religious zeal, more than ten millions of hiiman beings were sacrificed to this unjust and cruel policy. Before the Emperor himself disappeared from the great struggle, he had the satisfaction of seeing his son Ferdi- nand unanimously acknowledged as his successor by the Diet of Ratisbon, and who, towards the end of the year, succeeded to the imperial throne. The year in which the old Emperor died, a frightful famine was added to the other horrors of war. So ghastly was this visitation that men, to save their lives, disinterred and devoured the bodies of their fellow-creatures, and even hunted down human beings that they might feed on their flesh. MS illSTOKY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD VII. The effect of this unnatural and loathsome diet was a pestilence, which -swej^t away the soldiery as well as the people by thousands. In Pomerania, hundreds destroyed themselves, as unable to endure the pangs of hunger. On the island of Rilgen many poor creatures were found dead with their mouths full of grass, and in some districts attempts were made to knead earth into bread. Through- out Germany the licence of war and the misery consequent on famine and pestilence had so utterly destroyed the morality which was once the j)ride and boast of this land, that the people, a few years before the most simple and kind-hearted in Europe, now vied with the foreign mer- cenaries who infested their country in setting at nought the laws of God as well as man.* To understand clearly the march of events at this critical juncture, it will be necessary to revert briefly to the closing years of the war. Already, during 1636, the cry of anguish from Germany " lying in the dust " had gone up from so m?^ny suffering thousands; but still the war went on ruthlessly for twelve years longer, and the Protestant cause was for a second time deprived of its head by the death of Bernard of Saxe-Weimer (July, 1639). After his death the Generals Banier, Torstenson, and Wrangel succeeded each other in command of the Protestant army, and the impeiial General Gallas was replaced by a renegade Calvinist Melander von Holzapfel. The last event of this long and disastrous war was the taking of Prague by the Swedish general, Konigsmark, And though, on the 24:th of Oct. 1648, articles of peace were signed at Miinster and Osnabriick in Westphalia, nearly six years elapsed before the Diet even met to arrange the dubious or oj)en points of the two-fold treaty. A treaty comprising such concessions, embracing such great and contradictoiy interests, trenching on so many deep-rooted prejudices and established regulations, natur- ally met with almost innumerable obstacles in the exe- cution. =" ' Of this treaty only the principal conditions can be * Schiller, 30 Jahriger Kriecj. 1648-1789.] DEATH OP FERDINAND II. ^iO given. The objects of tlie peace may be divided into two heads: the settlement of the affairs of the empire, and the satisfaction of the two crowns of France and Sweden, With regard to Germany, a general amnesty was granted; and all princes and persons were, with some exceptions as to the immediate subjects of the house of Austria, restored to theii' rights, possessions, and dignities. The question of the Palatinate, one of the chief objects of the war, was settled by a compromise. The Duke of Bavaria was allowed to retain the Upper Palatinate, with the electoral dignity and rights; while the Lower Palatinate, or that of the Rhine, was restored to the eldest son of the unfortunate Frederick V., son-in-law of James I. of England, and an eighth electorate erected in his favour. On the extinction either of the Bavarian or the Palatine line, however, both electorates were again to be merged into one. Thus the policy of France and Sweden was entirely successful. These countries, besides raising up a counter- poise to the power of the Emperor in Germany itself, had succeeded in aggrandising themselves at the expense of the empire. Sweden, indeed, in the course of a few years was to lose her acquisitions; but France had at last permanently, it seemed, seated herself on the Rhine; the House of Austria lost the preponderance it had enjoyed since the time of Charles V., which was now to be trans- ferred to her rival, and, during the ensuing period, we shall have to contemplate France as the leading European power; a post which she mainly owed to the genius and policy of Richelieu. With the Peace of Westphalia begins a new era in the policy and public law of Europe. However little this memorable treaty differed from similar arrangements of the time in procuring a long cessation from war, it had this distinguishing character- istic, that it served in after time for the basis of the future policy of Europe.* No other peace is so con- stantly referred to, even if it be true that no other peace is so often broken. It provisions were not, indeed, all '^ Heeren's Manual, Vol. I., p, 162. 250 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD VII. practicable, and many were from time to time evaded or disregarded; but tbe principles themselves seem to have taken root in the Germanic constitution, and ultimately to have prevailed both over neglect and opposition. France, occupied since the peace with domestic affairs, omitted her usual interference; and Sweden, now under the fantastic rule of the eccentric Christina, supported the Emperor, with a view to conciliate the Komanist princes. After so many conflicts, Germany lay maimed and crippled; and, through the hereditary States of Austria having particularly suffered such severe reverses, that imperial power which Charles V. had raised xip duiing his i-eign, thereby seeming to Germany the preponderance in Europe, was lost by her under Ferdinand II. and Fer- dinand III. in the course of the Thii'ty Years' War. Still the treaty which brought that war to an end, by adjusting the European equilibrium, definitely estab- lished Lutheranism in Germany, and Liitherans and Calvinists saw the necessity of laying aside their disputes to obtain the abrogation of that foolish and wicked law that would compel every subject to follow the religion of his sovereign. Condition of Germany after the Thirty Years' War. — It is not diflicult to understand what were the wounds of a country after a war so desolating, and which had been so long in the hands of men who had ruthlessly spread ruin far and wide by living on the tears and blood of Germany. Two-thirds of the population had suc- cumbed, less by the edge of the sword than as victims of those scourges which war brings in its train — life de- stroyed by slow degrees, inconceivable sufferings from contagious fevers, plagues, famine, terror, and despair. For death upon the field of battle is not the worst of war. The worst scourge is foimd in the horrors and miseries it inflicts iipon those who are not combatants — old men, women, and children, by robbing them of all the enjoyments and hopes of life; by the germ of the new generation exhibiting a sickly developixient without vigour or courage. I 1648-17S9.] Leopold's eeign and character, 251 Ferdinand III. died in 1657, leaving behind him a reputation for good intentions, and for cautious rather than prudent statesmanship. His eldest son, Ferdinand, the elected King of the Romans, died in 1654 of the small-pox, and his second son,- Leopold, had been destined by his father to succeed him. Ferdinand accordingly procured for him the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, with the homage of the Austrian States, but the question of the succession was left to be decided by a Diet; and ultimately he was chosen Emperor in 1659, after a con- tested election between him and Loixis XIV. of France, who had gained four of the electois over to his side. i Influence of France over the Affairs of the Empire. — The interi'egnum. and indeed the century which fol- lowed the death of Ferdinand, showed the alarming preponderance of the influence gained by France in the affairs of the empire, and the consequent criminality of the princes who had first iiavoked the assistance of that power. Her recent victories, her character as joint guarantee of the Treaty of Westphalia, and the con- tiguity of her possessions to the states of the empire, encouraged her ministers to demand the imperial crown for the youthful Louis XIY. Still more extraordinary is the fact that four of the electors were gained by that monarch's gold to espouse his views; still more strange that a single voice could have been raised in behalf of a power which had exhibited an ambition so perfidious and grasping; which had inflicted so fatal a blow on the confederation; which watched the progress of events, in the hope of rendering the country as dependent on France as it had been in the time of Charlemagne. Leopold's Reign and Character (1657-1705). — The long reign of Leopold, which lasted nearly half a century, was an eventful time for Germany and Europe, not through any striking qualities of the Emperor, but in consequence of the many important wars in which he was concerned. Thus, though Leopold had no talents for war, though he was never present at a battle, his 253 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD Vlt arms were victorious. This result, however, must not be ascribed to any merit of his : it arose from the general feeling of Europe against one of the most unprincipled sovereigns that ever cursed a country, and from the alliances offensive and defensive which that feeling inevit- ably produced. Leopold's reign was one of great hixmili- ation to his house and to the empire. Without talents for government, without generosity, feeble, bigoted, and pusillanimous, he was little qualified to augment the glory of the countiy; though, to do him justice, its prosperity was an object which he endeavoured, however ineffectu- ally, to promote. Throughout his long reign, he had the mortification to witness, on the part of Louis XIV., a series of the most unpi'ovoked, wanton, and unprincipled usurpations ever recorded in history. It is unnecessary hei'e to enter into a subject so universal, but it may be observed that, aided by some alliances Avhich his money enabled him to procure in the very heart of the empire, Louis was a terrific scourge to it: that a sense of the common danger roused Holland, the empire, Denmark, England, and even Sweden, to combine against the common enemy of Europe. Again, that the treaties of Nimegu.en in 1679, and of Ryswick in 1697, were but truces, made on the part of France only to give time; that, though splendid successes accompanied for some years the ai'ms of France, victory at length forsook them for those of her enemies; that in the war of the SjKmish Succession, to which Leopold's soil, the Archduke Charles had undoubted claims, though Philip V. was supported on the throne by France and Spain, in the Low Countries the French were humbled, especially at the glorious battle of Blenheim (13th August 1704); and that when Leopold died in 1705, all Europe — Italy and Spain especially — were animated with a new spirit against France. One of Leopold's last acts was to confer, by letters patent, the dignity of Priiace of the Empix-e on the Duke of Marlborough. ' The principal internal events in Germany during the reigu of Leopold were: — 1. The establishment of a ninth 1C48-1789.] JOSEPH I. 253 electorate in favour of Ernest Angnstus, Duke of Bruns- wick-Lunenburg, wlio in 1692 became the first Elector of Hanover.* 2. The assumption of the regal title by Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, in 1701. Leopold acknowledged him, as he stood in need of his assistance, and Holland, England, and Sweden followed the example. 3. The establishment, of a per- manent Diet attended, not by tlie electors in person, but by their rej^resentatives, is one of the most striking peculiarities of Leopold's reign. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Joseph I. Joseph L (1705-1711), the son of Leopold, who had been declared King of Hungary, and, in 1690, had been elected King of the Romans, succeeded to the imperial crown in 1705. His reign was short but fruitful in great events. His foreign wars were brilliantly successful. He carried on the war called that of the jSjKcnish Succession, which had begun tinder his father, against Louis XIV. In the Low Countries, the victories of his general, Eugene, and of the' greater Marlboroiigh, brought France into a state of degradation which she had never experienced since the conquering days of Creci, Poitiers, and Agincourt. Lou.is was so far humbled, that, besides relinqu-ishing all his former conquests, he proposed, as a condition of peace, even to abandon his nephew, Philip V., whom he had placed on the troubled throne of Spain, and to acknow- ledge the Archduke Charles, brother of the Emperor, who was then fighting for the Spanish crown in Catalonia, as King of Spain and the Indies. Unfortunately for the peace of Europe, the allies, infatuated by success, refused the conditions, and the war was continued. In the Netherlands, it was still decisive for the allies. The battles of Bamilies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, the deliverence of Turin by Prince Eugene, the surrender '* The Electoral College was now constituted of the following members :— Saxony, Brandenburg, Hanover — Protestant. ) Temporal Bohemia, Bavaria, the Palatinate — Romanist, ) Electors. Mfiinz, Treves, Qologna—Sinritual Electors, 254 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD VII. of Naples to tlie Austrians, and the permanent footing obtained by the Archduke Charles in Spain, seemed to have nearly decided the question, when Joseph died of the small-pox in April 1711, leaving his brother Charles, afterwards Charles YI., the last male heir of the House of Hapsburg, to conclude the war. Character and Reign of Joseph I.— Joseph was a good prince; he was learned and assiduous in the dis- charge of his duties; humane, charitable, accessible, and though a devoted E,oman Catholic, he was no bigot_, no ' persecutor; in princijile and practice he was alike tolerant. Internally, his reign is remarkable for the suppression of the Bavarian electorate, in punishment of the tenacity with which the late Elector had clung to the alliance of France, and for the transfer of the dignity to the Count Palatine. Hence the eighth electorate, which had been created for the Count Palatine, being suppressed, the electoral college had one member less. Charles VI. of Germany (1711-1740), bom in 1685, was the younger son of the Emperor Leopold I. By the death of Joseph, the Archduke Charles, who was striving for the Spanish crown, was the only candidate for the imperial throne. Charles II. of Spain, the last offspring of the Spanish branch of the House of Austria, being childless, Leopold had claimed the inheritance of tlie crown of Spain for one of his children, as next of blood. He fixed upon his younger son, the Archduke Charles, as the presumptive heir, and King Charles confirmed the choice by his will; but the intrigues of Louis XIV. and his friends at the court of Spain made the King alter his will before his death in favour of Philip of Anjou, whose grandmother was daughter to Philip IV. of Spain and sister to Charles II. This gave rise to the long war of the SjKmish Succession, in which most of the other European powers took part. After the death of Charles II. in November 1700, Philip of Anjou was proclaimed under the named of Philip V., but the Emperor^ England, Holland, and Portugal supported the claims of the Arch- duke Charles, who, forsaking the scene of his battles, 1648-17S9.] CHARLES VI. OF GERMANY. 255 landed at Lisbon in Marcli 170-i with some English and Dutch troojDS, and was assisted by the Portuguese. But the public mind of Eurojie was now clianged. If the war with France had been undertaken chiefly from a dread lest the crown of that country and of Spain might be placed on the brow of a Bourbon, the objection was even stronger agaizist the union of the Spanish and of the Imj^erial crowns, wdth those of Hungary and Bohemia, on the brow of an Austrian. From this moment it was evidently the object of the allies to make what terms they could with Louis XIV. — to acknowledge Philip Y., provided security were given that the two thrones were never filled by the same prince, and provided the bound- aries of the French monarchy on the Belgian and Ger- manic frontier were drawn within narrower limits. The fall of the Whigs in England, and the accession of the Tories to power, strengthened the desire; and it was evident, that if England withdrew from the confederacy, the war would soon be at an end. Hence negotiations were opened j and, after some discussion, a peace was concluded; Philip retaining Spain, but renouncing the throne of France; England keeping Gibraltar; and, after some further manoeuvring, a treaty was signed at Utrecht between all the European powers, except France and the empire, on the 31st March 1714. Charles VI. received as an indemnification all the Spanish jDossessions in Italy, with Sardinia, the Netherlands, and the fortresses of Kehl, Friburg, and Breisach. The following year Austria exchanged Sardinia for Sicily with the Duke of Savoy, who assumed the title of King of Sardinia. Frederick of Prussia obtained Neufchatel, in Switzerland, as heir of its former possessor, Marie de Nemours, a relation of the House of Brandenbui-g. Thus ended the war of the Spanish Succession, in which France lost her superi- ority, and Austria and Germany found the moment favourable for resuming their former places in modem history. HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD VII. i t ^__^__^ 'ti O t— CO lO^t-t-COOOC-1 SSSJ? l-H ,— ^-iS ai a • .a^- i (h CO i Innocent X. Alexander V Clement IX. Clement X. Innocent XI Alexander V Imiocent XI Clement XI. Christina Charles X. Charles XI. Charles XII. Ulrica Eleon^ Frederick O p lO o -^ Cl ^ 1 oo 1-0-. ;0 O i> O ^ I-- n 1 S3 rH r-H ,-H rH nH rH P-H | 1 les I. monwealth les II. JSII. and Mary iam III. gel. j III 111 IQ t-l-H IC fO COOJOO t- to coot- B ^v- ^dri^a t XX « & Mahome Soliman Achmet Mustaph Achmet ^ II H ICO ot-o too yst- -< M ; fe g > "U o ^Mi §l!a f^ %%u PhOPh ^0 f-< <» fOO loo-i Ot-C2 Olr-t- o oo Ferdinand III. Leopold I. Joseph I. Charles YI. Q :^ o John IL Michael John Sobieski Augustus II. 1648-1789.] MARIA THERESA. 257 In 1724, Cliarles issued tlic Pragmatic Sanction, or fundamental law, which regulates the order of succession in the family of Aiistria. By this law, in default of male issue, Charles's eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, was called to the inheritance of the Austrian dominions, and her children and descendants after her. The Pragmatic Sanction was guaranteed by all the German princes, and several of the other 2)owers of Europe, with the exception of the French and Spanish Bourbons, who Avere ahvays jealous of the power of Austria. Death of Charles VI., and War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748).— The death of Augustus II., King of Poland, in 1733, was the signal of a new war on the part of the Bourbons against Austria, ostensibly on account of the Polish succession, which was disimted between Augustus III. and Stanislaus Leczinski. By the Peace of Vienna in November 1735, the Emperor gave up Naples and Sicily to Don Carlos, Infante of Spain, while the succession of Tuscany, after the death of Grian Gastone, the last of the Medici, who was child- less, was secured to Maria Theresa of Austria and her husband, Francis of Lorraine, who in 1739 took posses- sion of that fine country. The Emperor Charles died at Vienna, 20th October 1740, and was succeeded in his hereditary dominions, and afterwards in the empire, by his daughter, Maria Theresa, after a long and memorable war, known by the name of the War of the Austrian Succession. Charles was the last male offspring of the House of Austria-Hapsburg. The present house, though frequently called the House of Hapsburg, is Austria- Lorraine, being the descendants of Maria Theresa and Francis of Lorraine. Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and Empress of Germany, was bornln 1717. By the death of her father, Charles VL, she was, in accordance both with the rights of blood and the faith of treaties, the lawful sovereign of Bohemia, Hungary, Austria, Upper and Lower, and numerous other states, countries, and cities, in Germany, Italy, 258 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD VII. and the Netherlands. Of this vast inheritance she accord- ingly took undisputed possession. But she had soon to experience the faithlessness of princes. Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria — a house which, from its alliance with France, and its own ambition, seemed destined to be the curse of the empire and the House of Austria — claimed Bohemia. Augustus of Saxony, who, like his queen, had agi-eed to the Pragmatic Sanction, and by so doing had procured the support of Austria in his election to the throne of Poland, with great modesty demanded the whole ■ of the Austrian dominions. A similar demand was made by the King of Spain; by the King of France; while the King of Sardinia, unable to cope with monarch s so power- ful, showed his superior moderation, by declaring tliat he would be contented with the duchy of Milan. Maria Theresa, however, Avith a spirit and decision remarkable for her age, lost no time in repairing to Vienna and taking possession of Austria, Bohemia, and her other German states; she then proceeded to Presbui'g, took the oaths to the constitution of Hungaiy, aud was solemnly proclaimed Queen of that kingdom in 1741. Invasion of Silesia by Frederick ■William II., King of Prussia, surnamed the Great. — The appearance of tx young helpless female on the thrones of those vast jDosses- sions, opened to these chivalrous princes a glorious pro- spect for the dismemberment of her states. But while they were carefully apportioning their respective shares of the spoil, a new and more dangerous comjietitor appeared in Frederick, King of Prussia. He offered the young queen his friendship on the condition of her sur- rendering Silesia to him, but she resolutely refused, and Frederick invaded that province. The Elector of Bavaria overran Austria and Bohemia, and pushed his troops to the gates of Vienna. Maria Theresa being obliged to quit her capital, repaired to Presburg. Convoking the Hungarian Diet, she appeared in the midst of that assembly with her infant son, Joseph, in her arms. She told the magnates, prelates, and deputies, that "being assailed by her enemies on every side, forsaken by her 1G4S-17S9.] THE SEVEN YEARS' WAG. 250 friends, and finding even her own relatives hostile to her, she had no hopes except in their loyalty, and that she had come to place xmder their protection the daughter and the son of their kings." This heart-stirring appeal was answered by a burst of chivalrous enthusiasm. The Hungarian nobles drawing their sw^ords, unanimously cried out, " Moriamur pro jRege nostro, Maria Theresa," and the whole military force of Hungary was soon in arms to defend their queen. Her troops, under General Kevenhuller and Prince Charles of Lorraine, her brother- in-law, fought gallantly, and drove the French and Bava- rians oiit of the hereditary states. A rival Emperor Elected (22nd Jan. 1742).— Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, was in the meantime elected Emperor of Germany, by the Diet assembled at Frank fort, by the title of Charles YII. Frederick of Prussia soon made peace with Maria Theresa, who was obliged to surrender Silesia to him. But, though still menaced by these royal bandits, the queen did not despair: sup- ported by HiTngary, which exhibited the most chivalrous devotion to her cause, she commenced a career of warfare highly glorious to the Austrian arms. In 1744, Frederick again declared war against her, and invaded Bohemia j but the Elector of Saxony, who had made his peace with her, sent the Queen reinforcements, which obliged the Prussians to evacuate the country. ._;- Francis I. of Lorraine, Grand* Duke of Tuscany, Elected Emperor (1745).— In 1745, Charles YII. died, and Francis, Maria Theresa's husband, was elected Emperor. In 1747, the war continued to rage in Italy and Flanders, with various success. In 1748, the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle terminated the war called " the Was^, of the Austrian Succession," and Maria Theresa was left in peaceful possession of all her hereditary dominions, except Silesia, which the King of Prussia kept. The Seven Years' War. — In 1756 began the Seven Tears' War between France, Austria, and E,ussia, on one side, and Frederick of Prussia on the other. It ended in 1763, leaving both Austria and Prussia with 2G0 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD VII. the same boundaries as before. In 1765, Maria Theresa lost her husband, for whom she continued to wear mourn- ing till her death, and her son, Joseph, was elected Emperor, She however retained in her hands the administration of her dominions, and devoted all her cares to promote their prosperity, and to the improve- ment of the people imder her sway. The Partition of Poland (1773). — The only important act of Maria Theresa's political life with which she can be reproached is her partici2:)ation in the first partition of Poland. The plan, however, did not originate with her, and she for some time refused to accede to the treaty of pai'tition drawn up by Prussia and llussia in 1772. However, Prince Kaunitz and her own son, Joseph II,, urged her to join the two other powers, and she at last gave her consent. Character cf Maria Theresa. — The improvements which Maria Theresa made in her dominions were many and important. She was a sincere Roman Catholic, biit not - a blind devotee to the court of Rome, and she knew how to discriminate betv/een the temporal and spiritual jurisdictions. Maria Theresa will ever rank high among illustrious women, and among those sovereigns who have been the benefactors of mankind. She died at Vienna on the 29th of November 1780. With her ended the House of Austria-Hapsburg, and at the same time began the present dynasty of Austria-Lorraine. Joseph II., eldest son of Mai'ia Theresa and of Francis of Lorraine, was elected King of the Romans in 1764, and in the following year, on the death of his father, he became Emperor, As long as his mother lived he had little real power, Maria Theresa, as already stated, retaining the administration of her vast territories in her own hands ; but on her decease he became possessed of all the hereditary Austrian dominions. He would soon have been hurled from the throne of the empire by the ambitious monarch of Prussia, had not the Austrian ai-mies maintained him on it. For some years he was not engaged in war; and he had no other employment than to witness the 1648-17S9.] LEOPOLD II. 261 salutary reforms which his mother had introduced . Indeed, during her life, he was no less a cipher than his father Lad been; nor could all his efforts, all his intrigues, Avrest the sovereign authority from her hands. Hence he rather acquiesced in, than eflected, the infamous partition of Poland (1773), between Maria Theresa, the Empress of Russia, and the Prussian monarch. Soon after his acces- sion, Joseph II. displayed considerable ambition, mixed with much restlessness; he was, however, kept in check by France, and by Frederick of Prussia. After the death of Frederick in 1786, Joseph joined Catherine of Russia in a war against Turkey, which his general, Laudon, cariied on with success, taking Belgrade and other fort- resses in 1789. Biit the threatening aspect of affairs in France and Brabant arrested the progress of the Austrian armies, and Joseph himself died in 1790. The character in which Joseph II. is chiefly viewed is that of a reformer — in many instances a wise one, but in others rash and inconsiderate. With all his liberality, he was perfectly desi^otic in carrying his measures into effect, without regard to the feelingSj prejudices, or interests of individuals. Leopold II. — As Joseph left no issue, Leopold, his brother, who, as Grand-duke of Tuscany, had acquired great popularity in that state, succeeded to the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria. Owing, in a great measure, to the rash innovations of his brother, Leopold found discontent everywhere; the Netherlands in open revolt; Hungary preparing to throw off the yoke, Bohemia disaffected; Prussia hostile; England estranged; France herself convulsed, and likely to become an enemy; and Russia, the only power from which he could expect aid, engaged in warfare with the Turks. But Leopold had qualities which were sure to win the hearts of his own subjects. He abolished the more odioiis innovations; he conckided a peace with the Porte; he pacified Hungary by restoring such of the ancient privileges of its aristo- cracy as had been lately disregarded, and at the same time marching troops to restrain the more rebellious nobles. The next step of Leopold was to endeavour to 2(32 iHSTORY OP GERMANY, [pERIOD Vlt. pacify the revolted states of the Netherlands, by oflering to re-establish their ancient constitutions; and when they obstinately refused to listen to his offers, he marched his troops into the Low Countries, and the leaders being divided amongst themselves, Leopold recovered, without much difficulty, those fine provinces. Then came the dis- putes with France; the terror caused by the outbreak of vhe French Revolution; his efforts to save his sister, Marie Antoinette, and Louis XVI., her husband; and his alliance with Priissia for the purpose of checking the progress of French revolutionary proselytism. In the midst of all these cares, Leopold died on the 1st of March 1792, aged forty -four years. He was generally regretted for his afiability, his strict justice, his kindness towards the poor, whom he admitted freely into his presence, and his sound judgment. He was succeeded by his elde.st son, Francis II. 1648-1789.1 TABLE OF CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 263 p ;t) fej ^H t> Hj p hj ^t^OO 1 P(Dtr'®MCt>pn> O i-s B" tr' f^i^Uf^ -■K8-.'-' KS'^ pi h' '"^^ Hi^ 'Ci p Kj 1 h-J h-' t-- V-l (-■ V-i h-i i-> h-i I-" 1 ^ --^1 -J -I -^1 -^1 --T ^j-fx Oi to to Oi*.>S 1 to lO 1— O O ^ Ol Oi Or p ^<^^ 0»^h3 g w S- 03 p f-s l-^• m o ^ S^B^f^'- CO M g ^ (J2 it3 p cj <1H--- y m' O • • < pi S3 £^ -J -a -J -J Ol CO Oi i4-v -^lO COOCi • S.2. ^ ^ H ^ tj H s a^ w .^' 5! r5 &..^ K| 3 -a ^ --1 ^1 -J ^ CO ^1 CJT Ol CO •JT «5 *--Jl tf^O ^(^ 95^9^ ooo jderi risti eder risti III ^ Sg:ig- C3 a^^ 3 K^ 1 >-i >-' -j-j^a 1 -j-a a: >{x oj c: to 1 oc^S 1 0-5 ffe?? i-dOOWOWtTiQ ^ ^^o" f ^iiiiili nj xxi^><'^.y.x •"^ i -^h.^-'^Sh" cc 1 H-i H-" h-J 1— 1 (—1 H-' 1— 1 -j-j-^i 1 ^1 -3 ^ -5 ^1 -T -J -^ Cl ^t^ 1 ^ O CT iJi- CO to to 1 ij^ oa> o o h)^ ^ EIGHTH PERIOD. FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION TO THE PEACE OF PARIS (1789-1815). Francis II. (1792-1806) succeeded his father in 1792. The French Be volution commences a new er;^ in the history of Germany, of Europe, almost of the world. The new Emperor entered into an alliance with Frederick William II,, King of Prussia, against the French Republic. To anticipate them, the latter hastened to declare war against Austria in 1792. The commencement of 1793 saw the atrocious murder of Louis XYI. (January 21), the sanguinary faction of the Jacobins having got the uppermost. The history of the German states at this period is unim- portant, except in connection with the French Hevolution, and the affairs of Poland. The same spirit which pro- duced the revolution in France, had penetrated into Germany, and even into its courts. It had animated and influenced Frederick the Great and the Emperor Joseph II. The vast intellectual movement observable throughout Europe in the last half of the eighteenth century, the upheaving, as it were, and throes of the Euro^Dean mind, had given birth almost to the first Ger- man literature that can be called original and vernacular. The works of most of their distinguished writers began to bi-eathe a spirit of liberty. Salzmann sketched a strik- ing and perhaps exaggerated picture of the political and social evils under which his countrymen laboured. The epic poet, Klopstock, gave vent to his aspirations for freedom in several odes. In many of Stolberg's pieces, love of liberty and hatred of tyrants are ex])ressed with 17S9-1S15.] THE GERMAN CAMPAIGN OF 179G. 265 a boldness whicli must have grated strangely on the ears of some of the German sovereigns. Schiller's early- tragedies were calculated to have more effect. Yet when the French Revolution broke out, it found no partisan in Schiller. He augured unfavourably of the Constituent Assembly, thought them incompetent to establish, or even to conceive, true liberty ; foretold the catastrophe of a military despotism.* Goethe, his contemporary, regarded the explosion in France as an unwelcome interrviption of the tranquil pleasures of polite and cultivated society ; Wieland, in his essays on the French Revolution, took the popular side. A more direct form of propagating liberal principles than by literature was by means of clubs and secret societies. Of these latter, one called the Order oj Illuminati was the most influential. In a few years this society numbered thousands of members, belonging chiefly to the higher classes. Its principles seem not to have threatened any very immediate or alarming danger; never- theless, it was suppressed by Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria. In other German states the Illuminati appear to have been left unmolested. Prone to reflection, the German mind is not readily excited to action. Little desire was manifested in Ger- many to imitate the movement in France. It was only in the Rhenish provinces, where the people came into imme- diate contact with the French, and could be assisted by their armies, that any revolutionary spirit was manifested. The German Campaign of 1796. — Only a brief out- line can be given of the somewhat complicated campaign of the French against the empire in 1796. The plan of it by Carnot was bold and skilful. Two generals, already dis- tinguished, Jourdan and Moreau, having each from 70,000 to 80,000 men, were to penetrate into Germany, the first by the valley of the Mein; the second, by that of the Necker, in order to reach the basin of the Danube, and descend, from thence, upon the hereditary estates, which the army of Bonaparte, 35,000 strong, menaced by way of Italy. «^:-..- * K. A. Meiizel. Dn Dcutschen. B. vi., S. 285. 265 HISTORY OF GERJIANY, [PERIOD VlIL Bonaparte liad found tlie Fi-encli army cantoned upon the southern slopes of tlie Alps and Apennines, where it had struggled with difficulty for four years against the Sardinian and Austrian troops. Instead of wasting its strength among barren rocks, he tried again, by develo])- ing it, the mano3uvre which had caused the loss of the camp of Saorgio iu 1794, and which, followed up by Massena in 1795, had again profited Scherer by the victory of Loano, in which the Austrian general was crushed and compelled to regain the defiles of the Tyrol, while Brescia ■ and Sale were recovered by the French. The opening of the campaign of 1796 by Bonaparte was followed by the most brilliant success. By the promptitude of his manceuvres and suddenness of his attacks, he completely overcame and separated the army of the Sardinians from that of the Austrians, and forced the King of Sardinia to sign a treaty of peace; and this he followed up by turning his ai-ms against the Austiians, and pursuing them to the north of the Po. Thus the whole of Central Italy lay iiow open before the Corsican conqueror, and all the princes of that coxintry trembled at his vengeance. They alternately demanded peace and obtained it, but at the sacrifice of millions of money, nume- i-ous invaluable paintings, together with other treasures of art and precious manuscripts. Meanwhile, great events had likewise transpired in Germany. The forces tliere had scarcely commenced operations, when already the principal blow Avas struck in Italy, and the brave old warrior, YAimrsei", was sum- moned from Germany with 30,000 men to the relief of ISIantua, the last stronghold of tlie Austrians in Italy. The French armies, according to Carnot's plan, drawn u[) by order of the French Directory, were now enabled to penetrate into the heart of the Germanic empire. In August, Jourdan was within only a few days' march of Katisbon, and Morcaii was close to Munich, with the army of the Ehine and Moselle; the latter general declared openly that his object was to give his right hand to Bona- parte's army in Italy, and his left to that of Jourdan. 17S9-1815.1 THE GERMAN CAMPAIGN OP 1706. 2G? This junction of sucli overwlielming masses of troops broiiglit witli it the most alarming opiiearances, and this was one of the most critical and dangerous moments for Austria. Nevertheless, the peril thus threatened was once more diverted by the youthful hero of that imperial house. The Archduke Charles now came forth, and sud- denly marching with his troops against Jourdan, attack- ing him at Neumark (27th August), and at Amberg on the 24th, beat him so completely that the whole army ol the Sambre and Meuse took to flight, and never halted till it gained the Lower Rhine. Jourdan rallied them at Miihlheim, marched thence to Dusseldorf, and shortly afterwards resigned the command. By this disaster, Moreau was forced likewise to make a retreat to the Upper Pthine; and this he effected in such masterly style, that after marching over the most perilous roads through Swabia and the Black Forest, and being continually pur- sued and hemmed in by the enemy, he gained the banks of the Rhine well provided with booty, and bringing with him even a number of prisoners taken on his march. By this admirable retreat, the fame of Moreau as a general was permanently established. The leaders on both sides now agreed upon an armistice being concluded on the Rhine during the Avinter. The Archduke Charles, on whom all eyes were nov/ turned with admiration, received a hasty summons to repair to Italy, in order to reorganise the Austrian army. Wurmser, although successful in several attacks, was only able to throw himself, with a subsidy of 10,000 men, into Mantuaj but Bonaparte had now arrived, and, renewing the siege, forced them, on the 6th of February 1797, to surrender-. The Archduke, with a broken-down and dispirited army, was not in a condition to check the progress made by Bonaparte. The latter, after the fall of Mantua, penetrated more and more nortliAvards, crossed the Al2:)S which separate Italy from Carinthia, and rapidly advanced through Styria upon Vienna. But his coui'se, at this time, had been pursued with too much impetuosity, and 268 HISTORY OF GERMANY". [PERIOD VIII. tlie situation in wliich lie now found himself was extremely critical. In liis front lie had the imperial army, which, at every retrogressive step, became moi-e and more for- midable, as Vienna had already anned itself, and Hungary was rising en masse. On his left flank, the imperial general. Laud on, was marching in advance against him from the Tyrol: and in his rear, in the vicinity of Trieste, another numerous body of troops, together with the whole of the Venetian territory, were under arms. In this state of things, if Austria had been willing to stake the chances ■she might have succeeded in annihilating her adversary with one bloAV. Bonaparte was lost should the Archduke's plan of operations meet with the approbation of the Viennese cabinet, and perfectly aware of the fact, he made proj)osals of peace under pretence of sparing unneces- sary bloodshed. The imperial court, stupefied by the late discomfiture in Italy, acceded to them. Preliminaries of peace were concluded at Leoben, by which the French, besides being liberated from their dangerous position, were recognised as victors. The negotiations were con- tinued at Campo Formio, a nobleman's castle near Udiiie, where the Austrians somewhat regained courage, and Count Cobenzl even ventured to refuse some of the articles proposed. Bonaparte, irritated by oi^position^ dashed a valuable cup, the gift of the Russian Empress, violently to the ground, exclaiming, "You wish for war? Well! you shall have it, and your monarchy shall be shattered like that cup." The armistice, however, was not interrupted, and hostilities were even suspended on the Rhine (October 1797). Thus Bonaparte, in two campaigns, subjugated Italy; gained fourteen battles; wrested their arms from the grasp of all the states in that quarter ; and, finall}^, brought over Austria to sign a peace. The Emperor, by this treaty, ceded the Austrian Nethei'- lands to France, and renounced his Italian possessions, including the capital of Milan, together with several other Italian provinces, which were to form a Cisalpine Republic, under the protectorship of France. In return for this, Austria received Venice, the Venetian Isles, Istria, and 1780-1815.] THE GERMAN CAMPAIGN OP 179G. 2G9 Dalmatia, and engaged to summon, fortliwitli, a congress at Rastadt, in order to treat, more fully, the several conditions of tlie peace concluded between the French republic and the Germanic empire. The triumph of the republic was confirmed, and ancient Europe received a new form. The object for which the sovereigns of France had for centuries vainly striven was won by the monarch- less nation; France gained tLe preponderance in Eui'ope. Italy and the whole of the left bank of the Rhine were abandoned to her arbitrary rule, and this fearful loss, far from acting as a warning to Germany and promoting her union, merely increased her internal dissensions, and offered to the French republic an opportunity for inter- vention, of which it took advantage for purposes of gain and pillage. The principal object of the policy of Bonaparte and of the French Directory, at that period, was, by rousing the ancient feelings of enmity between Austria and Prussia, to eternalise the disunion between those two monarchies. A coalition of powers was now forraed against France, such as had never before been brought into operation: being a union of Russia, England, Austria, and even Turkey. At the moment when the negotiations with the Germanic empire had as yet made but little progress, and consequently the peace of continental Europe was not yet secured, and when England was maintaining a gloriously victorious struggle on the seas, the flower of the French army, headed by Bonaparte and their best and most suc- cessful leaders, suddenly embarked and set sail towards a distant land. Bonaparte, compelled to veil his ambi- tious projects, judged it more politic, after sowing the seed of discord at Campo Formio, to withdraw awhile, in order to await the ripening of the plot, and to return to reap the result. He accordingly went, meantime (May 1798), with a small biit well-picked army to Egypt, for the obstensible piirpose of opening a route overland to India, the sea-passage having been closed against France by the British, but in reality for the purpose of awaiting there a turn in Continental affaix's. 270 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD VTII. During Bonaparte's alasence, tlie weakness of the Direc- tory had allowed all the fruits of the peace of Campo Formio to be lost. On the renewal of the war in 1799, at the instigation of the Neapolitan court, the Austrians were assisted by the Russians, and at the close of the eighteenth century, the tide of affaii"s seemed to be turn- ing greatly against the French, when a new revolution in the fluctuating government of that disturbed people, brought about chiefly by financial difficulties, suddenly changed the face of things. . Affairs to the Assumption of the Chief Power by Bonaparte (1799-1800). — Only a general idea of the campaign of 1799 can be given. On the 6th March, the French fleet was utterly destroyed by Lord Nelson in the Bay of Aboukir. The Directory declared war against the Emperor, who had lately formed a coalition with Russia, England, and Turkey. The French were anxious to obtain possession of the Grison country. At Ostrach and Stockach, Jourdan was defeated by the Archduke Charles. A Russian army, under Suvaroff, entered Italy, and, in union with the Austrians, defeated the French at Cassano, in Lombardy, and drove them to Milan and Genoa. Alessandria was taken, and the French, under Jonbert and Moreau, were routed at Novi. Suvarofi marched into Switzerland, where there had been some severe fighting. Korsakofi* had led another Russian army into that country. Massena, the French commander, attacked and defeated this last officer, and Zurich was taken by storm. But the retreat of Jourdan rendered these dear-bought successes unavailing; and before the end of March the French were driven back in this quarter by Bellegarde. The Aulic Council at Vienna did them, however, some service by forbidding the Archduke to pursue his victorious career. The Russians, accusing the Austrians of treason, withdrew from the coalition. Murder of the French Plenipotentiaries at Rastadt. ■ — The advance ot the Austrians had compromised the safety of French plenipotentiaries at Rastadt, near Baden. Count ]\Ietternich, the imi^erial minister, had announced 17S9-1815.] DEFEAT OP THE FRENCH IN ITALY. 271 his recall (April 7), as well as tlie resohition of tlie Emperor to annul all that ha,cl been done at E,astaclt. The congress was thus dc facto terminated, as the deputation of the empire could not deliberate in the absence of a represen- tative of the Emperor. Nevertheless the French minister remained. A guarantee of the neutrality of Rastadt, which the latter endeavoured to obtain from the com- mander of the Austrian advanced posts at Gernsbach, was refused. On the evening of April 28, the town was occupied by a detachment of Szekler hussars, whose colonel having directed tha French ministers to leave it within twenty-four hours. Bonnier, a man of violent temper, persuaded his colleagues to depart at once, though it was already night. Their carriages had scarcely cleared the town when they were surrounded by a party of Szeklers ; Bonnier and Bobertjot were sabred; Jean Debry, severely wounded, and left for dead, contrived to get back to Rastadt. Nothing was taken from the French ministers but their portfolios. This atrocious violation of the law of nations created universal indignation and abhorrence in Europe. There could be little doubt that the order for the crime must have emanated from the cabinet of Vienna, and the presumption was strengthened by the sudden suppression by that cabinet of the judicial inquiry which had been instituted. The Austrians defeat the French in Italy. — Mean- while, the Austrians in Italy reduced Coni (May 19), and invested Genoa. Naples was reached and taken (June 17); scenes of vengeance and massacre ensued, to put an end to which Buffo granted the revolutionists a favour- able capitulation. The French garrison in the castle of St. Elmo surrendered July 5, and on the 27th King- Ferdinand IV. re-entered his capital. Every lover of his country, every admii-er of her greatest naval hero, must lament that Nelson, who was absent from Naples at the time of the capitulation, should have disavowed it on his return, though signed by one of his own captains; that he should have persuaded King Ferdinand to repudiate it, and to condemn to death a great many of the revolu- 272 HISTORY OP GEUMAi^r. [period VII. tionists, including Prince Moliterno, Marquis Caraccioli, and the Duke of Cassano ; nay, that lie should have con- verted the quarter-deck of his own vessel into a place of execution, A fatal syren had corrupted for awhile the heart of the victor of Aboukir, and, in the intoxication of unlawful love, had caused him to forget the dictates of humanity and his own glory. Bonaparte Reconquers Italy from the Austrians. — On learning the loss of Italy, and the danger and defeats of France, Bonaparte siiddenly quitted Egypt without being recalled, and suddenly reappeared in Paris. The struggle of parties had recommenced with greater violence than ever, and resulted in placing Bonaparte at the head of the republic, with the title of First Consul (29th Dec.) In the following spring the brilliant soldier of Areola and Rivoli crossed the Alps by the Pass of Mont St. Bernard, fell upon the rear of Melas, the Austrian general, and in a single battle (Marengo), i-econquered Italy (14th June 1800). This transcendent success, together with the splendid victory of Moreau, at Hohenlinden, over the Archduke John, forced Austria to sign the peace of Lune- ville (9th February 1801), in which Austria recognised Holland, Switzerland, and the north of Italy as indepen- dent states protected by France, under the names of the Batavian, Helvetic, Ligurian, and Cisalpine Republics, and ceded to the French the entire left bank of the Rhine with four millions of inhabitants. England declares War against France (May 1803). — The treaty of Luneville was rapidly followed by that of Amiens (27th March 1802), by which England con- cluded a peace with France. But this cessation of hostilities lasted little more than a year. England, pre- ferring open war to a hollow peace, resolved to again draw the sword, if necessary, against France, and demanded of .Bonaparte the evacuation of Holland and of Switzer- land, and, on his refusal, declared war against him (May 1803). No sooner was the English minister's (Mr. Pitt) proclamation issued than the French took possession of Hanover, although it formed a portion of the Germanic 1789-1S15.] WIE TKEATY OF PRESBURG. 273 empire, witli wliich they Avere at peace. After tlie con- quest of tlieir country, many tlionsand Hanoverians passed over into England, where they were formed into a brigade called the " King's German Legion," and served with dis- tinction in Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy. Bonaparte chosen Emperor (1804). — In 1802, that energetic general and able administrator, Napoleon Bona- pai'te seemed to have reached the summit of glory, in having for a second time given peace to France externally, But the climax of his wonderful career had not yet been attained. Internal discord and dangerous innovations in the Tribunal resulted in a declaration from the Senate. urging the First Consul to govern the French Ptepublic as hereditary Emperor by the title of Napoleon I., and the people ratified by their suffrages the establishment of a new dynasty, which, sprung from the revolution, should preserve the principles of it (18th May 1804). But the powerful master of France did not know how to master himself or hold within fixed limits his towering ambition. Created Emperor in France, he became King of Italy (18th March 1805). Austerlitz and the Treaty of Presburg (1805).— The contest with England, as already stated, recommenced in 1803. Russia and Austria again coalesced with that power. Napoleon, with his characteristic impetuosity, burst into Germany in the beginning of October 1805. Wurtemberg, Baden, and Bavaria joined their forces tc his, and the Duke of Wurtemberg and the Elector of Bavaria were rewarded by his conferring on them the title of King. Ulm surrendered on the 1 7th of October. On the 21st, the news of a great naval reverse gave jDro- ["ound anxiety to the French Emperor. The same day on which the Austrian general evacuated Ulm, after a bloody engagement. Admiral Yilleneuve was defeated by Nelson in the sanguinary battle of Trafalgar. The French irmy entered Vienna (November 13). On the 2nd of December was fought the great battle of Austerlitz, ivhich ended in the complete defeat of the Russians and A-ustrians, and enabled the French Emperor to dictate 274 ■ HISTORY OP GEKJIAXY. [PERIOD VIII. a peace witli Austria.. Soon after tins battle, which Naj^oleon called ''the battle of the three Emperors," a treaty of peace was signed at Presburg (26tli December 1805), by which Austria gave up the Tyrol to Bavaiia, her Swabian possessions to Wurtemberg and Baden, ancl her Venetian dominions to Bonaparte, as King of Italy, The Emperor of Bussia withdrew his troops into his own territories. The King of Prussia, who had remained neutral in this contest, received Hanover as the reward of his neutrality; or, as is most probable, that electorate was conferred on him for the piirpose of placing his interests in opposition to those of the King of England, who, it could not be doubted, would seize the first oppor- tunity of reclaiming his ancient inheritance. Thus rapidly was this coalition dissolved in a short campaign, which proved universally successful, except on that element in which the jDower of England still reigned without a rival. Encouraged by her naval victory of Trafalgar, England continued the Prussia to descend into the arena. Confederation of the Rhine — Dissolution of the (rermanio Empire. — On the 12th of July 1806, sixteen of the German priiices solem.nly renounced their fealty to the empire, and formed a league called the Confederation of the Bhine, and placed themselves under the protection of Napoleon. On the 1st of August he declared the German Empire at an end; and five days later, Francis II., on laying aside that dishonoured crown of the ancient empire, which, 1006 years j)revioiTsly, Charlemagne had placed on his own brow — assumed the title of Emperor of Austria.*' Thus Avas extinguished, after having lasted * The family from wMch tlie imperial dynasty of Austria sprang in the seventh century was that of the House of Hapsburg. Hapsbui'g was an ancient castle in Switzerland, on a lofty eminence near Schintznach. In 1156, the Margraviate of Hapsburg was made an hereditary dudnj by the Emperor Frederick I., and, in 1453, it was raised to an archduclnj by the Emperor Frederick III. Rodoliih, Count of Hapsburg, having been elected Emi^eror of Germany in 1273, acquired Austria in 1278; and, from 1493 to 1804, his descendants were Emperors of Germany. 1739-1S15.] CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE. 275 SO many ages, the Holy Roman Empire, more properly called the Geronanic Empire. Prussia, whicli had been too much alarmed by the rapid progress of the Erench armies in Germany to dare to break her neutiulity, now entered into a league with Russia, and took arms to descend into the arena. The establishment of the Rhenish Confederation was viewed as at once an attack and an insult upon Prussia, That Confederation completed another great step towards universal domination. Napoleon was now master of Italy and Dalmatiaj he had humbled Austria and overturned the first throne of Christendom; he was the Protector and Dictator of a great part of Germany. The epoch of the Austrian war and humiliation of the Emperor was also marked by the deposition of the Pope. The result of this ill-advised attempt of Prussia to avenge an insidt by a declaration of war was what might have been anticipated. Napoleon replied to the provoca- tion of the Berlin cabinet by a thunderbolt. He gave the allied armies no time to unite their forces, but con- centrating his own great army still in Germany, he fell upon the Prussians. Two terrible blows were struck at Auerstadt and Jena. A portion of the Prussian army was at Auerstadt, under the command of the Duke of Brunswick; and the other, under the orders of the Prince of Plohenlohe, was stationed at Jena, but both without acting in combination with each other ; and they were accordingly attacked and decisively defeated on the same day. Marshal Davoust fought at Auerstadt, and Napoleoji in person at Jena. In a month (8th November), the Priissian monarchy had ceased to exist. Ten days after the battle of Jena, Napoleon marched into Berlin, and from Potsdam lie took the sword of Frederick the Great. Encouraged by his success, he declared in Berliia that he Avould never give up that city until he had conquered a general peace; and it was from that same city he issued the decree (21st November 1806) against the English, by which the British Islands were declared in a state of blockade, British manufactures excluded from all the 276 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD VIII. continental ports, all Biitish property on the continent, and vessels that had only even touched on the shores of Albion, were to be seized. As Napoleon could not reach England with the sword, he thought to crush her by stifling her commerce. But the results, as it turned out, were more injurious to the continent. A similar decree was issued from IMilan. EOYAL PALACE, BERLIN. Battles of Eylau and Friedland. — From Prussia, Napoleon marched soon afterwards against the Russian armies in Poland. There too he was successful, after a long and hai-der contest, defeating them at Eylau (8th February 1807), and at Friedland (14th June). The Emperor Alexander then entered into negotiations, and a peace was concluded at Tilsit, on the Niemen (July 7). By the terms of this peace the King of Prussia was stri2:iped of almost half his dominions. These spoils of Prussia were given to Saxony and Westphalia, two new kingdoms now created by Napoleon. In the electoi'ate of Saxony the Elector was made Kiiig, and Prussian 17S0-1S15.] RISING m PORTUGAL AND SPAIN. 277 Poland was added to his dominions. Jerome Bonaparte Avas made King of Westphalia. Having made these dis- positions, Napoleon returned in triumph to Paris, bearing with him the sword of Frederick the Great, and the car with its bronze horses which had ornamented the Bran- denburg gate of Berlin. Conquests of Napoleon. — Napoleon's empire, which extended from the moiiths of the Elbe to those of tlio Tiber, included L30 departments. This was the moment of his greatest ascendancy. Every poAver of the continent that had dared to resist the arms of Prance was at this time prostrated by continual defeats. England alone remained inaccessible. The invasion of that country was a favourite project with the daring and brilliant con- queror; but a project much too dangerous to be attempted without first acquiring a great maritime power. He therefore had recourse to the system, already mentioned, which has been connnonly called the continental blockade. Pussia and Denmai-k took j^art with him in this policy, which required them to break off all communication with England; and at length those powers joined Prance openly in the war. This juncture discloses also a new scene of events which necessarily withdraws attention, for a short time, from the politics of the northern pov.'^ers of Europe. The Rising in Portugal and Spain. — Portugal refus- ing to associate herself with this new policy, Napoleon, in concert with Charles IV., King of Spain, sent an army under Junot to invade Portugal, and drive the English, one of her oldest allies, out of that kingdom. The Prince Regent of Portugal sailed for Brazil, and the French troops took possession of Lisbon (30th November 1807). During these operations, the court of Madrid presented to the world a most sorrowful spectacle. The hereditary prince was conspiring against his father, influenced by an unworthy favourite; and the King invoked the aid of the French Emperor. Napoleon met the King and Prince at Bayonne, and decided the old monarch to abdicate in his, the Emperor's, favour (9th May 1808), who placed 2 / b inSTORY OV GERMANY. [PEillOD VIII. on the tlirone his brothex- Joseph, King oi" Naples. This attempt to lay hands upon Spain was Napoleon's greatest fault, and one of the causes of the fall of the empire. The Spaniards, indignant at the insult offered to their country by thus elevating a foreigner to the throne, rose with enthusiasm to repel the intrusion. Imploring the aid of England, an English army, under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Marquis and Duke oi Wellington), was promptly dispatched to assist these struggles in the Peninsula. Juuot was forced to evacuate -Portiigal, and nearly at the same time Joseph quitted Madrid. In November 1808, however, Napoleon him- self entered Spain, and soon made himself master of the greater part of the country. Madrid submitted to him, December 4. Austria rises against Napoleon. — In spite of the success with which the French arms had thus been almost everywhere crowned, the resistance they had met Avith in Spain taught the Emperor of Austria how much might be effected by the swoixls of a united people, and awakened the slumbering spirit of the other powers of the continent. The natives of Germany, it was hoped, thoroughly weary of the Erench yoke, would patriotically answer the sum- mons of Austria. The commercial interests of the whole of Europe were almost ruined by the effect of those decrees which precluded, or at least extremely embar- rassed, the ti'ade with England ; and the Emperor Francis was impatient imder his past losses, and eager to redeem them. In the spring of 1809, the Tyrol revolted. The Westphalians expelled King Jerome from his new domin- ions, and it was believed that Prussia was ready to take advantage of the first reverses of Napoleon to join her forces to those of the Aixstrians. Unhaj)pily the move- ments of Austria were so slow as to allow Napoleon tinie to return from Madrid into Germany, and ^^lace himself at the head of the Pthenish Confederac}^ " I come not," he said, "as Emperor of France — I stand here as the jjrotector of your land and of the German league. Not a French soldier is among us. Alone 3^ou shall beat the enemy." 17S9-1S15.] THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 27S In the montli of April 1809, Napoleon five times defeated the Austrians, gaining successive victories at Eckmnhl and Essling; a second time took possession of Vienna; and, though beaten in a terrible engagement at Asperne. where, for the first time, Napoleon was completely over- thrown, he, a short time after^vards, conquered at the bloody battle of Wagram (6th July). He then dictated a peace, called the Peace of Schonbriin, which was signed. October 14, 1809. Napoleon at the Summit of Power (1810-1812).— The Continent was now again prostrate at the feet ol Napoleon. The Tyrol was given up to devastation; the Pope dethroned; Bernadotte, a French general, was elected successor to the throne of Sweden; and Louis, King of Holland, although brother to the French Emperor, yet being thought to allow of a freer intercourse with England than the jealousy of Napoleon would tolerate, was dispossessed of his kingdom, and the Dutch territories were incorporated with France. Now also Napoleon allied himself by marriage with the most ancient and illustrious house in Europe. He divorced the Empress Josephine, and was united to Marie Louisa, Archduchess of Austria, a daughter of the Emperor Francis IL (March 11,1810). In the following year the birth of a son (March 20), to whom was given the title of King of Home, swelled to the utmost the tide of his prosperity. The Russian Campaign (1812). — By the Peace of Schonbriin, Napoleon had reached such a climax of suc- cess, that all hope appeared then lost of ever seeing hia power broken. But even amidst all the glory and triumph and prosperity which he enjoyed during the br'ief interval aftbrded by this peace, a new war was preparing. The Emperor of Russia, during the French campaign against Austria, which ended in the disaster of Wagram, main- tained the alliance he had contracted at Tilsit, though he repented of a policy which appeared daily to add new strength to the overbearing power of France. In the latter part of 1810, he renewed his intercourse with Eng- land ; and during that year both he and Napoleon pre- 280 insTorvY of Germany, [pertob vni. pared for a contest, which, through the latter's rashness and unprincipled ambition, was destined to prove the chief cause of his ruin, by enabling Germany to cast off the yoke he had imposed npon her. Already his arms were no longer invincible. In Spain, Junot, Massena himself, had not been able to conquer Portugal, and General Dupont had signed his disgraceful capitulation of Baylen. The hoj)es of his enemies brightened, and England once more succeeded in detaching Eussia fi'om his alliance. To constrain that j^ower to re-enter the system of the continental blockade, Napoleon entered upon the rashest of enterprises. On the 24th June 1812, he crossed the Niemen, at the head of 450,000 men. He thereupon issued a proclamation, in which he declared war against Eussia. The expedition appeared at first to succeed. The Eussians Avere everywhere beaten; at Witejisk, at Smolensk, at Valoutina. On the 7th September, he engaged in a great battle with the Eussian army, near Borodino, a village in the environs of Moscow. This sanguinary battle proved indecisive, but, a few days afterwards, Kutiisoff, the Eussian general, thought it expedient to retreat and deliver up Moscow, the second capital of the empire, to Napoleon, which city the Eussian governor caused to be set on fire on quitting it. Napoleon had thus far triumphed, but this was the term fixed by Providence of his success. He installed himself inauspiciously in the Kremlin (the ancient palace of the Czars), Avhen the flames of the burnt city had exhaiisted themselves. But the Eussian power was still imbroken; his communication with France would soon be cut ofi"; and the vast armies of the enemy advance on him in the spring. All this was obvious. Yet he hoped that the eclat of his conquest would now induce Alexander to seek for peace. Failing in this hope, he himself pro- l)osed to negotiate; but was answered promptly, that no terms could be entered into while an enemy remained in the Eussian territories. After twice renewing the same proposal, and with the same ill success, Napoleon, though 17S0-1S15.] THS GERMAN CAMPAIGN. 281 in the fiice of a Russian winter, wbicli tliat year com- menced earlier tlian ordinary, determined to begin his retreat. The circumstances of tliat cahxmitons retreat are well known. A great part of the army, all the horses, all the baggage, perished or were abandoned, either amidst the snow, or in the disastrous passage of the Beresina. Napoleon himself, on the 5tli Deceinber, set out on a sledge for Paris, whilst the relics of his army arrived on the 12tli at Kowno, the same place Avhere, six months before, they had crossed the JNiemen in their invasion of Russia. How different the state in which they now re- crossed it ! Of half a million of men, including Prussians and Austrians, who are supposed to have engaged in this disastrous expedition, not 50,000, it is calculated, escaped death or captivity. However, those of the soldiers who still remained in arms resisted eveiy attempt to dispei-se them, and Napoleon, on reaching Pai'is, made immense preparations towards repairing his losses. Bat it was all over with the prestige of his invincible power. All his allies turned one after another against him. General York, who commanded the Prussian army had no sooner gained the frontiers of his own country than he abandoned the French, and proposed to the King that he should immediately join the Russians; a suggestion which Frederick William adopted without hesitation, in the hope that was now given of crushing for ever the insatiable ambition of the French Emperor. Sweden also acceded to this new coalition, but Austria showed much tergiversation. The German Campaign — Battles of Gross-Beeren and Lutzen. — Though France was able to march a very large and powerful force into Germany early in the spring, new enemies had arisen in the meantime. The coalition confronted Napoleon with 500,000 soldiers, 1600 guns, and a reserve, ready to bring into line, of 250,000 more. Two Frenchmen were in its ranks: the Prince-royal of Sweden, Bernadotte, and the victor of Hohenlinden, Moreau, who, a.t the invitation of the Empress of Russia, had returned from America to aim a deadly blow against 282 iirsTORY OP Germany. [period viu. his country.* Nevertlieless, ISTapoleon was still alert and intrepid. On May 2, 1813, he gained a victory over the Russians and Prussians at Lntzen. On the 20th and 21st, he gained another at Bautzen. The Emperor of Austria then proposed a mediation. An armistice was concluded on the 4th June, and a congress assembled at Prague to take into consideration terms of peace. The terms proposed were, that the French empire should be bounded by the Alps, the Rhine, and the Mouse, and that the German States should be restored to their independ- . ence. These terms were positively rejected by Bonaparte, and the armistice terminated August 10. Immediately afterwards Austria joined the confederates. The French Emperor had upon the Elbe and under hand only 360,000 men; still, however, presuming too far upon his strength, notwithstanding the inequality of numbers, and that his battalions Avere mostly filled by conscripts, he dared to threaten at one and the same time Berlin, Breslau, and Prague; which enfeebled him at his centre, at Dresden, where, however, in a great battle near that city on the 26th and 27th August, Napoleon defeated the allies and compelled them to retreat. But whilst the great army of Bohemia was in disorderly flight across the mountains whence it had descended, Napoleon learned that Macdonald had just sustained a disaster at Katzbach (26th-29th Axigust), and that Oudinot had been beaten on the 23rd at Gross-Beeren, upon his march to Berlin, and that Bavaria had joined the coalition. These bad tidings prevented him from following up in person the pursuit of the defeated army and overwhelming it. Van- . damme, operating in Bohemia, but not being supported, was crushed at Kulm (30th August), which nullified the victory at Dresden by leaving to the Austrians the bul- wark of the Bohemian Mountains, with the facility ol issuing therefrom at will in order to turn the right of the * Whilst Moreaxi v/as in the act of indicathig to the Emperor Alexander a certain mancenvre to be carried out, a cannon bal] from Napoleon's artillery of the guard broke both his thigha. Ee died four days afterwards. 17S9-1S15.] THE GERMAN CAMPAIGN. 283 French army. Tlie defeat of Macdonald Lad lost Silesia a,nd brouglit Bliiclier into Saxony; that of Oudinot and anothei* sustained by Ney at Dennewitz (6th Sej)tember), in attempting to re-open the road to Berlin, allowed Bernadotte to reach Wittenberg, whence he joined hands with Bliicher. Davout, who was already in the middle of Mecklenburg, where he had taken Wismar, Avas forced to follow the general movement of retreat beyond the Elbe. Thus, from Wittenberg to Tojplitz, the forces of the coalition formed a segment of a circle bristling Avith 300,000 sabres and bayonets threatening the front of the French, at the same time that its extremities made efforts to join ranks in the rear of Napoleon, with the intention of cutting off his return to France. Thus brought to bay, the French Emperor once again attempted to cut his way through the encircling enemy. On Napoleon concentrat- ing his forces round Leipzic, that city being in the occu- pation of the French, the allied army was immediately formed into a crescent, having a single opening to the south-west, which they intended to fill up on the arrival of the Swedish army, under Bernadotte, and the Russian and Austrian divisions of Bennigsen and Colloredo. With such dispositions, Bonaparte resolved to stand the hazard of a general engagement, and on the 1 6th of Oct. ■was fought what the Germans have called the Battle of the Nations — a conflict the most murderous of modern history; 190,000 Frenchmen sustaining, during three doys, the furious attacks of 133,000 allied enemies. The Saxons and Wurtemberg cavalry went over to the enemy upon the field of battle, and fired their cannon already loaded wdth French balls ujDon the French soldiery. So great was the vibration caused by the discharge of at least 1200 pieces of artillery, that "the ground shook and reeled as with an earthquake." At the end of the third day's struggle the reserves of the French artillery were exhausted, thei-e remaining munitions for only 15,000 discharges, that is to say, for two hours' further combat; and the numbers of their enemies were incessantly increas- ing. As in 1812, the great captain was compelled to fall 28-1 HlStOUY OF GERMANY. [PERIOb Vlit» back witliout having been conquered, which voluntary retreat became a disaster; so in 1813 also that retreat involved a catastrophe only less calamitous than that of Moscow, because a less distance was to be crossed before he could reach a place of safety; and because he had not now to contend with the climate of Russia, or with the hardships of a rigorous season. Napoleon, with a view not to reveal too plainly his intentions, had not cavised bridges to be thrown over the Elster and Pleisse; one only, long and narrow, had been constructed at the divided branches of the two rivers. Therefrom arose a great obstacle to the crossing of the troops, delay, and then a fatal error. Soon after Napoleon had crossed, a miner blew up the Elster bridge before the last division of the army with two marshals and many commanders of corps had cleared it; so that 25,000 men were in consequence cut to pieces, taken prisoners by the allies, or drowned in the river. Macdonald swam across it; Lauriston and Eeynier were made prisoners; the valiant Poniatowsky, after fighting bravely until the streets of Leipzic were strewn with the bodies of his soldiers, retreated towards the Elster; but finding the bridge destroyed, he tried tc swim his horse across the stream. Bat the bank being steep on the other side, the horse, in attempting to clear it, fell back on his rider, and both were drowned. Soon after the evacuation by the French, the two Emperors and the King of Prussia entered Leipzic, amidst the acclamations of the grateful citzens (19th October). On the 7th November, Napoleon crossed the Phine at Mentz, and two days afterwards arrived in Paris. Campaign of 1814 — Invasion of France. — Another period of war was about to scourge the nations of Europe. Yet the naked sword of vengeance was now visibly sus- pended over the head of that iron-hearted man, whose insatiable ambition still urged him to further sacrifice to it innumerable victims. Napoleon had scarcely crossed the Pthine when the whole of the Phenish confederacy abandoned him — an example soon folloAved by Holland, Switzei'land, and Italy. The tide of war, which since the 1789-1815.] INVASION OP FRANCE. 285 revolution liad ovei'flowecl Germany and the surroitnding nations, was now rolled back on France itself. At the commencement of 1814, four armies invaded that country fi-om different quarters, and advanced into the heart of France. On the 1st January, Bliicher crossed the Rhine with the Prussian army of the centre, that nation bringing into the field 130,000 men, the Austrians and Russians, advancing on the Swiss frontier, 150,000; Bernadotte with 100,000 by way of the Netherlands. At the same time the Aiistrians had another army in Italy. Murat, King of Naples, also joined the confederates, and Lord Wellington was already upon French territory with 80,000 English, Spaniards, and Portuguese. Finally, the German Empire placed on foot from 150,000 to 160,000 men, in eight divisions. Half a million of men at least, therefore, were steadily about to hem in the French army, whilst the forces of the latter could not have amounted to so much as half the strength of its adversaries. Opposed by so many and such formidable foes, Napoleon appeared not to lose either his courage or his military genius. He disconcerted the allies by the rapidity of his movements, and gained several brilliant successes ; which, though they did not carry with them any lasting advan- tage, made his enemies still dovibtful of the result. On the 29th of January, Bliicher was attacked by Napoleon near Brienne so suddenly that he narrowly escaped being- taken prisoner. Negotiations for a peace were however commenced at Chatillon early in February 1814; but the insincerity which marked the conduct of the French com- missioners prevented them from coming to any conclusion. Napoleon had at length beaten his enemies into the art of conquering, so that whilst he was mano3uvring in their rear, the Prussians and Austrians made a rush on Paris, which fell almost without resistance, capitulated (30th March), and the Senate decreed the imperial crown for- ieited, and the empire fallen. Napoleon abdicated (11th April), and Louis XVIIL was recalled from exile to p.scend the throne of his ancestors. The ex-Emperor had 28 G HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD VIII- assigned to him the island of Elba as an independent sovereignty, with a pension of two millions of fiancs. The duchies of Parma and Placentia were settled on his wife and son. The Peace of Paris.— On the 4th May 1814, the white banner of the Bourbons replaced the tricolor of Austerlitz, and, on the SOtli of the same month, Talleyrand, the real head of the provisional government, signed with the allies a convention, with the view of aflbrding France the benefits of peace before a regular treaty could be pre- ■pared. The allies, by their celebrated Declaration qj Franhfort (1st December 1813), had announced their wish to see France great, powerful, and happy, because she was one of the corner stones of the Euro]3ean system ; and they agreed, therefore, to evacuate the French terri- tory, according to the ancient limits of it, on January 1 , 1792, but with some few a,dditions, partly in the Nether- lands, and partly in Savoy. The terms, ijideed, were so highly favourable to France that the veteran Blilcher^ amongst some other provisions, protested vehemently but ineffectually against the French being allowed to retail. the Gl-erman provinces of Lorraine and Alsace. Thus vanished with the stroke of a pen the fruits of twenty years of bloodshed and conquest ! Congress of Vienna — The Return from Elba— The Hundred Days (20th March- 22nd June).— In order to settle the general affairs of Europe, it had been deter- mined to assemble a Congress at Vienna, which was formally opened November 1, 1814. While the leading- powers were thus endeavouring to restore Europe to its ancient system, an event occurred which threatened to render all their deliberations useless. Napoleon, escaping from Elba with 900 of his veterans, landed near Cannes, in the Gulf of Juan, March 1, 1815. The army every- where declared in his favour, and almost the whole of the civil authorities readily acknowledging his cause, Napoleon was thus once more seated on his abdicated throne by the most rapid transition known in history (20th March). The nevAS of this event fell like a thunderbolt among the 17S9-1S15.] BATTLE OP ^YATERLOO, 287 statesmen assembled at Vienna. The allied i)owers agree- ing unanimously that they would have neither peace nor truce with the violator of treaties, it became evident, therefore, that there must be another appeal to the sword, and both parties made the most gigantic preparations. The three allied sovereigns and tlie Prince B,egent of England launched afresh 800,000 men against France, and i^laced Bonaparte under the ban uf the nations. The tisurper had tried to rally round him the liberals, by proposing institutions of a nature favourable to liberty, and similar to those of Louis's constitutional charter. But he clearly saw that his real strength lay in his army; and it was plain, that if victory should restore his authoiity, all the national and civil institutions would again bend before his will. The Campaign of Four Days — Battle of Waterloo (18th Jime 1815).— About the middle of April, Bliicher marched into the Netherlands and established his head- quarters at Liege, and early in June he found himself at 288 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD VIII. the liead of an army of 117,000 men, with, which he occnpied the country between the Sambre and the Meuse, while the Duke of Wellington with 100,000 occupied the whole of Flanders from Brussels to the sea. Napoleon, with his characteristic decision and promptitude, put him- self at the head of 150,000 selected troops, and rapidly advanced against the Prussians. In the afternoon of the 16th, Napoleon, with 124,000 men, advanced to attack Bliicher's position at Ligny. The Prussians fought with their accustomed bravery, and for five hours maintained their ground; but at about seven o'clock in the evening, a vigorous charge, lead by Napoleon in person, threw their infantiy into irretrievable disorder. Bliicher, at the head of his light cavalry, now attacked the heavy Prench dragoons; but as he galloped forward, cheering on his men, his horse, struck by a cannon-ball, fell to the ground, crushing the rider beneath its body. The remnant of his army retreated in tolerable order, and left no trophy to the enemy but the field of battle. On the same day at Quatre Bras, Marshal Ney had a severe struggle Avith the English, under the Prince of Orange, in which neither party gained complete superiority. In this action the Duke of Brunswick was killed — the son of that duke who had commanded the Prussian army in the war which broke out at the commencement of the revolution. Both these actions are memorable as the precursors of the decisive battle which followed on the 18th, at Waterloo, and which terminated for ever Napoleon's eventful career. Never, perhaps, was any defeat more bloody or more disastrous than that which he was there destined to sustain. He had issued his orders, and viewed the battle from a convenient distance ; and an ofiicer who stood near him affirmed that ''his astonishment at the resistance of the British was extreme; his agitation became violent ; he took snufi" by handfuls at the repulse of each charge." At last, he took the officer by the arm., saying, " The affair is over — we have lost the day — let iis be off!" In this heartless manner, and thinking only of himself, Napoleon abandoned an 1789-1815,] THE GERMANIC CONFEDERATION. 289 army whicli was wholly devoted to liim. Such was that campaign of four days. The defeated Emperor reached Paris on the 20th Juno, and again abdicated in favour of his son (22nd). On the 29th he set out for E-ochefort, in the hope of escaping to America; but finding that it was impossible to baffle the vigilance of the English cruisers, he surrendered himself to Captain Maitland, of the Belleroi^hon. When the allies were informed of this event, they decided that he should be sent as a prisoner to the Island of St. Helena, in the Southern Atlantic. There he died (5th May 1821). The advance of the allied army on Paris was unob- striicted, and altogether a victorious march. On the 7th July the city surrendered, and on the 8th Louis XVIII. re-entered it. Thus closed finally that succession of revolutions which had distracted Europe for a period of twenty-five years. Peace was again restored nearly on the basis of the treaty which had been contracted the year before, but with some resumption of territory by the allies on the frontiers of the Netherlands, of Germany, and of Savoy, all the provinces of Germany being restored which had belonged to her before the revolution, and had been torn from her during the wars that followed it. It was also provided that an allied army of 150,000 men should occupy, for the space of three or five years, a line of fortresses from Cambray to Alsace; the possession of which would enable them, in any case of necessity, to march upon Paris with- out opposition. This army was to be maintained wholly at the expense of France, and Prance agreed also to pay 700,000,000 of francs, to be divided in difterent portions among the allied powers, as a partial indemnification for the expenses of this last contest. The definitive treaty was signed at Paris on the 20th Novembex^ 1815. The Germanic Confederation (1814-1815). — At a great congress of all the European powers opened at Vienna, a confederation of thirty-eight German states was formed under the ausjDices of the Holy Alliance (or league of tlio three' great continental sovereigns), for purposes of mutual T 290 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [rERIOD VIII. protection; eacli state being required to furnisli a con- tingent of troops proportionate to tlie number of its inhabitants, but being in all other respects free and inde- pendent. That army was to consist of 300,000 men, of whom Austria v/as to furnish 94,000; Prussia, 79,000; Bavaria, 35,000; Wurtemberg, 13,600; HanoA^er, 13,000; Saxony, 12,000; Baden, 10,000; Hesse-Darmstadt, 6000; Hesse-Cassel, 5400; and the other states in the same proportion. Their general affairs were to be discussed at a Diet sitting at Frankfort-on-the-Main, under the presi- dency of the Emperor of Austria, In a congress held at Aix-la-Chapelle in the autumn of 1818, it was resolved by the allied monarchs to withdraw their army, as no longer necessary for the maintenance of order in France, Subsequent congresses were held at Troppau in 1819, Leibach in 1821, and Verona in 1822, for the purpose of settling the affairs of Greece, Naples, and Spain. TABLE OF CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. ^91 t^9 ^^g U^f fj o " pj S' W > s to s H M f"^f-C W 1-1 y-i > P 1 I-- h-i i-i h-j 1 OD^ o o o o 1 1— Oi t-so 1?^ r=jO Irl II >s £2 P CD n' '"^' TJ B ^ ^K- t3 P M 'fl P i'^ hi h-t y 1 -^1 CO o o 1 -J c» H S3 TO O •^ O ^CJ 1— 1 § tr;>^ f3 p-S f i p " <^ > O S<1 1-^ P 1 t— < h- 1 j_, !_, ,_, oo oo^ 1-. o o 1 CC --J Cl hi^ to hrJC Q S tr 1 1 ^ W 1 K a t^ ^ <|S w t^ ?* P OOO !SH tJ'f:! S n ^s- i'i' r§^ K — ' 1 r^ O ^ S to 1 o NINTH PERIOD. FROM THE PEACE OF PARIS TO THE FRANCO- PRUSSIAN WAR (1816—1870-71). Affairs of Germany after 1816. — There lias been little to relate of the affairs of Germany since the Act of Con- federation substituted in 1816 for the confederation of the Rhine (1806). While most of the nations of Europe were struggling for freedom or independence, the Ger- manic mass had long remained inert. The subdivision of the people into a number of petty states, seemed to damp the feeling of nationality and patriotism, which was also cowed and subdued by the immense standing armies of the two great military German despotisms, supported in the background by the Russian autocrat. The Commercial Union of Germany — The Zollverein (1818). — The German princes who were reinstated at the Peace of Paris, mostly neglected their promises of giving their subjects constitutional governments; still the pre- vailing spirit widely tended towards progress and union. A decided advance in that direction was made as Prussia gradually, from 1818 onwards, became the centre of a commercial union amongst most of the German states called the Zollverein, the members of which agreed to levy no duties on merchandise passing from one state to another, but to levy them only at the common frontier. The Gei-mans in general, as already said, were desirous of an extension of their political liberties, and a confirma- tion of them by means of constitutions, which had indeed been promised by the Acb of Confederation, This matter occasioned some serious disputes between the King of "VVu-rtemberg and his subjects. But the Germans are a people who seem little capable of initiating revolutionary 1816-1871.] AUSTRIAN SWAY IN ITALY. 293 movements, and require to be influenced by an impulse from without. Till the second French Revolution in 1830, political demonstrations in Germany were mostly confined to the students of the universities. These, however, were mere harmless mummeries, such as the adoption of a particular dress, the displaying of the Ger- man colours, and other acts of the same kind. Ee-establishment of the Austrian Sway in Italy. — Italy had received French institutions from Napoleon. These liberal institutions, which the Italians had hoped to pi'eserve, disappeared. Four revolutions in Turin, Naples and Sicily were suppressed one after another by the Austrians. Faithful to her traditions, Aiistria assimi- lated the Italian jDrovinces to the German provinces. Milan, moreover, she looked upon as simply an old possession, eveiything was there re-established upon its former footing. The city which Napoleon had made the capital of Italy, lost its senate, its legislative, and con- sultative body, its court of r.ccounts, its ministers, great schools, its superior tribunals, and its army. Everything had to be derived from Vienna, for all important matters recourso must be made direct to Vienna. The Austrian code was resumed in all its vigour. The Italians, re- clothed in the white uniform, and scattered amongst the Austrian regiments, were obliged to stifle in their bosoms every patriotic sentiment; the censorship of the journals arrested all complaint; the police denounced it, the bas- tonade punished it. Nevertheless, the after-shocks of that great social con- vulsion which had agitated Europe were also felt in Italy as well as in Germany. The revolution in France of July 1830, partially stirred even the inert mass of the German confederation, and liberal innovations were intro- duced. Later on, the principles of Mazzini pervaded Austi'ian Italy, as well as the south of that peninsula. The Austrian government affected mildness, but it is diflicult to reconcile men to a foreign yoke. Italy, in the chains of the hated Teuton, was struggling to break her fetters. 294 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [pERIOD IX. Austrian Aggression in Italy Opposed by France (1832). — The Austrians having quitted the Papal States for a short time, had re-entered them. The French minister, Casimir Perier, however, having determined to make the piinciple of non-intervention respected, sent a flotilla into the Adriatic, and the French troops seized upon Ancona. The appeai'ance of the tricolor in the centre of Italy was almost a declaration of war against Austria. The latter did not pick up the glove, but with- drew her troops. Ferdinand I., Emperor of Austria (1835), — The imperial throne of Austria was now occupied by Ferdi- nand I. Francis, the last of the German and the first of the Austrian Emperors, after an eventful reign, which had commenced almost contemporaneously with the first French Kepublic, expired March 2, 1835. His son and successor would have been still less fitted for such event- ful times. Ferdinand was the personification of good nature, but weak both in body and mind, without all knowledge of business, and led like a child by his minister, Prince Mette7'nich. The Crown of Hanover separated from the English Crown (1837).— The death of William IV. of England, in 1837, had also vacated the crown of Hanover, and severed it from its connection with Great Britain. Our jn-esent gracious sovereign, who ascended the throne of these realms on the death of her uncle, was disqualified by her sex, according to the law of Hanover (the Salique law), from succeeding to that crown, which consequently devolved to her uncle, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumber- land. One of the first acts of the new King's reign was to abolish the constitution which had been established in 1863, and to restore that of 1819. But the coup cV Hat was attended by no more serious result than the resigna- tion of seven Gottingen professors. King Frederick William III. of Prussia had expired June 7, 1840. Of this King it may be said, that as few sovereigns of modern times have experienced greater mis- fortunes and humiliations, so few or none more deserved iSlG-lSTl.] DENMARK AKi) THE DUCHIES. 205 tlieui by the vacillation and timidity of liis counsels, Lis want of all political principles, and his treacheiy toward his neighbours and allies. His son and successor, Trederick William IV., began his reign with some liberal measures, which, however, soon appeared to be the effects of Aveakness rather than of Avisdom and benevolence. Denmark and the Duchies — The Schleswig-Holstein Question. — About 1846, complications began to arise con- cerning the Danish boundary. The old King of Denmark, Frederick VI., had died in 1839. He was succeeded by his great nei^hew. Christian VIII., then fifty-four years of age, whose only son, Frederick, did not promise to leave any posterity. In 1846, Christian VIIT., in the interests of Prussian policy, issued letters-patent extending the Danish law of female succession to the whole of his dominions, thus annihilating with the stroke of a pen all the hopes of the German party in Schleswig and Holstein. The Germans now began an agitation on this subject, in which they confounded the totally distinct rights of the two duchies. The latter duchy (Holstein) having an entirely German population, and being a member of the German Bxind, its afluirs came properly under the con- sideration of the German Diet. With Schleswig the case was entirely different. The duchy was ceded to Canute, King of Denmark and England, by the Emperor Conrad II., in 1030, when the boundary of the Eyder was re- established as the natural one of Denmark ; Avhilst Holstein did not come under the dominion of the Danish crown till 1460, in the reign of Christian I., Count of Olden- burg, who had claims on the female side. The German Bund had no right to interfere with the internal affairs of Schleswig. Matters remained in a state of agitation till the death of Christian VIII. (January 20, 1848), when his son, Frederick VII., on his accession at once gave his people a constitution. Denmark had remained previously an absolute monarchy. Since then endless disputes ensued. A war went on from 1848 to 1851, but this time Den- mark kept both duchies. In 1864, however, tmder tliR 296 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD IS. present King, Christian IX., disputes arose again; a war followed, and the duchies were given up by Denmark to Prussia and Austria, and again in 1866 by Austria to Prussia alone. The northern or Danish part of Sleswick Avas to have been given back to Denmark, but this has not been done. Collapse of the Austrian System of Repression (1848). — In 1847, the Austrians were in occupation of Ferrara; Pope Pius IX., who was then arousing Italy from its torpor, protested against the Austrian tyranny, but was badly supported. At Milan, the German garrison perpetrated odious brutalities (February 1848). The French minister, Guizot, contented himself with negotiat- ing in behalf of the victims. Thus France became tem- porarily the ally of an empire which only sustained itself by oppressing in turn the various peojiles which it held enslaved. But on arrival of the news of the third French Revolution (1848), the whole strength of that vast but ill-compacted empire seemed to collapse in a single day. Kossuth carried in the Diet at Pesth an address to the Emperor (March 3), demanding " a national government purged from all foreign influences." Prince Metternich now quitted Vienna for London, and the Emperor granted freedom of the press, a national guard, and a liberal Con- stitution for the whole empire. Effects of the French Revolution of 1848.— The bi-eaking out of the third French Revolution not only inflamed Austria and its dependencies, but set all Ger- many in combustion. In the smaller states it displayed itself in a desire for German unity, while in the Austrian dominions it produced an insurrection of the Hungarians, Slavonians, and Italians. Revolutionary symptoms first appeared on the banks of the Rhine. At Mannheim, the people assembled and demanded a German Parliament, freedom of the press, and the arming of the people. The governments of the larger middle states — Bavai-ia, Saxony, Hanover, alone opposed any resistance to the people, till Austria and Prussia were likewise observed to be in con- fusion. In 1848, Free Bands were organised in Switzer- 1816-1871.] THE AUSTRIAK QUESTION. 297 land to aid the establishment of a republic in Germany, Austria and Prussia concerted together a reform of the Confederation, but the Congress of Princes was prevented by Austria herself becoming absorbed in the revolution- aiy vortex. Riots also occurred in several parts of Prussia, as Breslau, Konigsburg, Erfurt. In Berlin a riot ensued in which two hundred persons lost their lives. Prussia rises into Germany (1848). — Part of the Prussian ministry, at least, having resolved on an attempt to place Frederick William IV. at the head of the new German nationality, that monarch lent himself to the project with the same feeble mixture of covetousness and irresokition which his father had displayed with regard to the filching of Hanover. On the 21st March the army having assumed the German cockade in addition to the Prussian, it was declared " that Prussia rises into Ger- many," and that the Princes and States of Germany shall deliberate in common as an assembly of German States, for the regeneration and refoundation of Gei-many. The King rejected, indeed, the titles of "Emperor" and " King of the Germans," which had been given him in one of these proclamations. But he yielded entirely to the demands for internal reform. The proceedings at Berlin on the 21st March 1848 produced a bad imj)ression in Germany; Frederick William's attempt at usurpation being received with the unconcealed scorn of all parties at Vienna, Munich, and Stuttgardt. The Austrian Question. — A new element of discord arose out of what may be called the Austrian question. The ancient House of Hapsburg showed no disposition to be absorbed in the new combination of the German states, and refused to form part of the Confederation. It thus became an anxious subject of speculation in Europe, whether the general peace could be preserved while the great Austrian empire was isolated from the German family of states, and watched with jealousy the preten- sions of Pi-ussia and her monarch to supremacy. An sijttempt was made to join Germany together imder an Emperor and a common Parliament instead of the lax 298 ttlSTOBY OF GERMANY. [pERIOD IX. Confederation which had gone on since 1815. This led to a treaty between Austria and Prussia for the forma^ tion of a new central power for a limited time; appeal to be made to the governments of Germany. In conse- quence, however, of the relations thus brought about between Prussia and the smaller German states, Austria protested against their alliance with the rival kingdom. Harrassed by these dissensions, the Aveak-minded Emperor abdicated in favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph, his brother, Francis Chaides, having renounced his rights (2nd December 1848). Lombardy wrested from Austria. — At the close of 1848, it was little thought that before a few months had elapsed a gigantic struggle would take place between the armies of Fi-ance and Sardinia on the one side, and the army of Austria on the other; and that, as the result of one short campaign, Lombardy would be wrested from the grasp of Austria, the duchies of Tuscany, Parma, and Modena, annexed to Piedmont, and the fii'st great era of Italian independence would begin. Europe was in a state of profound peace, and France had given no indica- tion of wishing to disturb it. Ambitious designs of Prussia. — Early in 1850, the ambitious designs of Prussia becoming more clearly de- veloped, a tx'eaty was entered into between Bavaria, Saxony, and Wurtemberg, for a revision of the German Jjiond, and, on the occasion of its signature, the King of Wurtemberg denounced the insidious ambition of Prussia. These contentions went on for several years, until at length the Diet of the Confederation [Bund) being re- established at Frankfort, things reverted to much the same state as they were before. Russian influence in Germany (1851-1856). — Ever since the treaties of 1815, Eussia had exercised a menac- ing preponderance over Europe. The Czar Nicholas had become the personification of a formidable system of repression and conquest. In Germany, he had supported the sovereigns in their resistance to the popular will. After having saved Austria by crushing the Hungarians 1816-1871.] THE WAR m ITALY. 299 wlio revolted against liei", lie liacl thought that the pre- sence of a ISTapoleon on the throne of France guaranteed to Riissia the alliance of England, and he believed that the moment had come for grasping the ever-cherished object of Muscovite covetousness — Constantinople. In the Crimean war, however, the Emperor Napoleon III. secured the neutrality of Austria and Prussia. The Crown-Prince of Prussia Appointed Regent. — On the 25th January 1858, Prince Frederick William, the eldest son of the Crown-Pi-ince of Prussia, heir pre- siimptive to the throne, Avas married to the Princess Poyal of England, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria. As the state of the King's (Frederick William lY.) health did not improA^e, he signed a decree (October 7), appoint- ing his brother, the Crown-Prince William, regent of the kingdom. Disagreement between France and Austria. — At the commencement of 1859, there was great excitement caused by the address of the Emperor Napoleon III. to the Austrian ambassador at a reception on New Year's Day. "I regret," said the French Emjjeror, "that our relations with your government are not as good as formerly, and I beg of you to tell the Emperor that my personal senti- ments for him have not changed." The Emjjcror of Austria replied in almost the same words. During the following month Austria made preparation for war; enlai'ging her armies in Italy, and strongly fortifying the banks of the Ticino, the boundary of her Italian provinces and Sardinia, France and Sardinia also pre- pared for war. The War in Italy — Peace of Villafranca and Treaty of Zurich (1858, 1859). — After Russia, Austria had been most opposed to modern ideas. As the former had weighed heavily upon Turkey, so did the latter upon Italy. During the Crimean war, Austria had played an equivocal part, whilst the King of Sardinia had not feared to join his young army to the Anglo-French forces. That circumstance had made France the natural protector of Piedmont, and consequently of Italy, of which that little 300 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOT) IX. kingdom was, as it were, tlie citadel. Thus, wlien the Emperor of Austria, Francis Joseph, in spite of the efforts of European diplomacy, crossed the Ticino, as the Emperor Nicholas had passed the Pruth, Finance found herself face to face with the new aggressor and on the side of the oppressed.* The Emperor Napoleon resumed by that war the secular policy of France, which consists in not suffering the prepotency of Austria or of Germany in Italy; that is to say, on the south-east frontier of France. If he had, as President of the Republic, contributed to the return of the Pope to Pome, it was not to perpetuate in the Penin- sula the Austrian oppression and the general slavery. The appearance of a French army, divided into five corps, commanded by distinguished generals, upon that soil on which French, arms, during three centuries, had left so many glorious traces, announced a new era in European policy. Italy, seeing that the moment had come for claiming her independence, arose at the call of France. Europe looked on v/ith excited attention; England with good wishes; Pussia and Prussia with astonishment; Austria and France alone remained confronted with each other. The war lasted scarcely two months. After the brilliant affair of Montebello, which frus- trated a surprise attempted by the Austrians, the Franco- Piedmontese army was concentrated round Alessandria; then, by a bold and skilful movement, turned the right of the Austrians, which had already crossed the Ticino, and compelled them to repass that river. Taken between the divisions of General MacMahon and the impei'ial guard at Magenta, the Austrians lost 7000 killed or Avounded, and 8000 i^risoners (4th June). Two days after, the French entered Milan. The Austrians, astonished at so rude a collision, aban- * On April 23, Austria demanded tlie disarmament of Sardinia in three days. That demand was rejected on the 26th, and the Austrians crossed the Ticino. On the 27th, French troops entered Piedmont, and on May 3, the French Emperor dechvred war to expel the Austrians from Italy 1S16-1S71.] THE LIBERATION OF ITALY. 301 (lonecl their first line of defence, find retired upon the Adda, after having vainly made a momentary stand at a spot already famous — Mai'ignan, and upon the Mincio, beyond the celebrated plains of Castiglione, between the two strong fortresses of Peschiera and Mantua. The Austrian army then thought itself posted in an inexpug- nable position — the great quadrilateral of Yerona. There the Emperor of Austria, with a new general and con- siderable reinforcements, had come to await the French. The Austrians had long studied this strategic battle-field. They were then 160,000 strong upon the heights, over- looking the village and tower of Solferino, ready to sweep down iipon the plain. Napoleon III. had scarcely 140,000 men in hand, and was obliged to fight upon a line of five leagues in extent. Whilst the right wing struggled against the enemy in the plain, to avoid being tiTrned, and King Victor Emmanuel with his Piedmontese resisted bravely on the left, the centre made a vigorous attack, and, after an heroic struggle, carried successively Mont Fenile, Mont des Cypres, and lastly the village of Solferino. The enemy's line was broken and his reserves reached, before they could engage, by the balls of the new rifled cannon. Thereupon ensued a frightful pell-mell ; but at the same time a terrific storm, accompanied by hail and torrent-like rain, stopped the victors, and enabled the Austrians to recross the Mincio, leaving 25,000 behinc' them. The Emperor Napoleon took up his quarters that evening in the same chamber which had been occupied in the morning by Francis Joseph (24th June 1859). Great excitement arose in Germany in consequence of the French successes in Lombardy, and which led to a meeting of the French Emperor and the German sove- reigns at Baden, as well as of the Czar and Emperor of Austria, and the Eegent of Prussia at Toeplitz, in the year following. A meeting was also held at Coburg in favour of German unity against French aggression (Sept. 5, 1860). Results of the Liberation of Italy. — Twice a con- 302 HISTORY OP GERMANY. [PERIOD IX. queror, Napoleon III. had suddenly made an offer of peace to his Austrian foe. Italy was free, although a portion of the Italian territory, Venice, still remained in the hands of Austria. Europe, astounded by these rapid victories, could not conceal its nev/ly awakened jealousy. The French Emperor thought he had done enough for Italy by driving back the Austrian across the Mincio, whose forces had so shortly previous occupied the banks of the Ticino, and he signed with Francis Joseph, at Villafranca, a peace the principal conditions of which were confirmed at the close of that year by the treaty ot Zurich. By that peace Austria abandoned Lombaixly with which France aggrandised Piedmont, in order to secure to herself a faithful ally on the other side of the Alps. The Miircio became the boundary of Austria in the Peninsula, the several states of which it was proposed shoidd fox'm a great confederation under the presidency of the Pope. But this plan was rejected by all parties interested in it, and the revolutionary movement con- tinued. The Emperor confined himself to preventing Austria from intervening. Then the governments of Parma, Modena, the Roman Legations, Tuscany, and Naples, which, since 1814, had been nothing more than lieutenances of Austria, were seen successively to colla,pse; and Italy was free to form one kingdom only, minus Rome and Venice. All the European powers, howevei*, have subsequently recognised the unity of the Italian Peninsula, including the two last-mentioned cities.* Prussian Aggression. — During the dispute between Prussia and Denmark respecting the rights of Holstein * In Milan tliere is a lofty monument, originally reared by the first Napoleon, called tlie Arco della Pace. Tliis triiimplial arcli was afterwards degraded by paltry tropliies and fulsome pane- gyrics of an Austrian Kaiser. These have now been replaced by an inscription uasiii-passed for pathos and nobility by any sculptured stone in Europe — the purport of which is, that when Napoleon III. and Victor Emmanuel II. entered the capital of Lombardy as liberators, ' ' Exulting Milan tore from those marbles the emblems of slavery, and wrote up instead that Italy v,^a3 fre§. 1S16-1S71.] PRUSSIAN AGGRESSION. 303 nnci Slcswick, King Frederick William IV. tUeil (Jan. 2, 18G1), find Avas succeeded by liis brother, William I., the present Emperor of Germany. Prussia, which, since Frederick the Great, had dreamed of reconstituting the Germp.n empire, knew well that she could not realise that object, so threatening to Europe, until after the military humiliation of France, and she now prepared the means for it with increased and untiring perseverance. Events were rapidly hastening on to " raise Prussia into Germany." Irritation between the Prussian and Austrian Governments. — Early in March 1866, a feeling of great irritation had sprung up between the govern- ments of Austria and Prussia, the ostensible cause of which was the question of the occupation of the duchies ox Schleswig and Holstein by Prussia, but the real reason Avas the rivalry between the two powers, each of which aspired to rule Germany, and found herself checked and thwarted by the other. Italy made no secret of her wish to come to hostilities with Austria, and made active war- like preparations for a contest which she was resolved to precipitate. This justified Austria in increasing her armaments, but Prussia chose to take offence at her pi'o- ceedings, and she assumed that the increase of the military strength of Austria was intended as a menace against herself. The truth is, that Count Bismarck was only too glad to find a pretext for quarrelling with Austria, and thus enable him to execute, at the risk of failure and ruin, the ambitious schemes of aggrandisement which he had long cherished for his country. On the 24tli March the Prussian government sent a circular despatch to the minor German states, pointing out the necessity of their coming to an immediate decision as to Avhich of the two powers, Prussia or Austria, they would side with in the struggle which the armaments going on in Austria seemed to render imminent. Several of the states thus appealed to answered by referring to the 11th clause of the Fedei'al Act, by which war between German governments, membex'S of the Bund, was pro- 304 HISTORY OP GERMANY [PERIOD IX. liibited, and a pacific mode of settling disputes provided. The Bavarian government said in their reply, that a federal state which, by disregarding those provisions, attempted to do itself justice, and declare war against another federal state, must be considered as having violated the Federal Constitution. Yet, when shortly afterwards, the helmets of Prussia shone over a prostrate Confederation, remarkable moderation was shown in the treatment of Bavaria by the court of Berlin. In the result, 17 out of the 33 states that formed the Bund seceded from it, and all the minor northern states, with the exception of the elder House of Beuss, made common cause with Prussia. Secret Treaty between Italy and Prussia against Austria. — Before the end of March, a secret treaty of alli- ance was entered into between Prussia and Italy, the terms of which, so far as they were known, show how resolved the two countries were to engage in waa.- with Austria. According to these, Italy engaged to declare war against Austria as soon as Prussia should have either declared war or committed an act of hostility. Prussia engaged to carry on the war until the mainland of Yenetia, with the exception of the fortresses and the city of Yenice, either was in the hands of the Italians, or until Austria declared herself ready to cede it voluntarily; and King Yictor Emmanuel promised not to lay down his arms until the Prussians should be in legal possession of the Elbe duchies. The Seven Weeks' War — Battles of Sadowa, Lissa, and Custozza. — In July 1866, what bade fair to become a European war began in earnest. Immediately on receipt of an adverse vote passed by the German Diet (16th Jvme), Count Yon Bismarck presented an ultimatum to the Courts of Hanover and Saxony, demanding that they should disarm and accejDt the Prussian project of reform, under penalty of war. Both courts refused, and on the 18th June, the Prussians entered Dresden, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and Hambui-g, without apparently firing a shot. The King of Hanover retreated with his army to 181G-1S71.] AUSTRIA SUERENDERS VENETIA. 305 Gofctingen, leaving his family in the capital; the King of Saxony and his 25,000 men retired into Bohemia; and the Elector of Hesse-Cassel became a state prisoner of Prussia. The Germanic Confederation was, in fact, broken np. The rapid successes of the Prussians cul- minated in a pitched battle fought at Sadowa (3rd July 1866), near the fortress of Koniggratz in Bohemia, under Prince Frederick Charles against the AiTstrians (the latter assisted by Saxon troops), under Field Marshal Benedek, There were about 250,000 troo})s available on each side. The battle raged obstinately till the afternoon, when a second Prussian army, under the Crown Prince, which had approached the battle-field by forced marches, appeared on the flank of the Austrian position, and drove them from the field with great slaughter. Thus defeated, the Austrians retired iipon Vienna. A naval battle was also fought on 20th July ofi' Lissa, in the Adriatic, between the Austrian fleet under Admiral Tegethoff", and that of Italy under General Persano. Iron-clad ships were prominently engaged on both sides; but the result of the action was disputed. A few days after this sea-fight, a battle was fought at Custozza, near Verona, between the Italian and Austrian forces, result- ing in the repulse of the former; the victorious general being the Archduke Albert. In this campaign, Prussia got the better in so short a time, that it has been called the Seven WeeM War. Austria Surrenders Venetia to France. — Through the mediation of Napoleon III., to whom the Emperor of Austria surrendered Venetia, an armistice was ultimately agreed ujion, followed by a cessation of hostilities and a treaty definitively signed at Prague on the 23rd August. By the peace which was now made, Austria was shut out from Germany altogether, and the kingdom of Hanover and some smaller states were annexed to Prussia, and the northern states were formed into the North German Confederation, under the presidency of Prussia, with a common constitution and assembly. Let us now see what was the territorial position of u 306 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD IX. Prussia before the war, and what she gained by its suc- cessful issue. Before the war the kingxloni of Prussia consisted of nine provinces — 1. Eastei'n Prussia, with Konigsberg as its capital. 2. Western Prussia; capital, Dantzig. 3, The Grand Duchy of Posen, or Polish Prussia; capital, Posen. 4. Silesia; capital, Breslau. 5. Brandenburg, in which is situated Berlin. 6. Pomerania; capital, Stettin. 7. Saxon Prussia, in which is situated the strong fortress of Magdeburg. 8, Westphalia. 9. Bhenish Prussia. After the war, in addition to these territories, she incorporated into her dominions, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, Hesse-Hombourg, the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, a,nd Lauenberg (these last, however, had been previously annexed), that part of Hesse- Darmstadt which lies to the north of the Maine, and the little principality of HohenzoUern — the cradle of the Prussian Royal House — situated on the borders of Lake Constance, between Wurtemberg and Switzerland. Prussian Preparations for War with France. — Still further territorial acquisition, the result of conquest, and even empire, were destined speedily to fall within the grasp of the House of HohenzoUern. Prussia stimulated, through the means of history, poetry, and science, German patriotism, against those whom she called in her news- papers "the hereditary enemy." She armed all her male population from 20 to 60; she reqxiired from her officers the most complete instruction, from her troops the most severe discipline ; and, by an organization which left no portion of the national forces inactive, by a foresight which utilised all the resources of science and industry, she con- stituted, in the centre of Europe, the most formidable machinery of war that the world has yet seen — 1,500,000 men trained and armed — every man a soldier. And that terrible machinery she confided to be pu.t in action to men whom few sciaiples of justice, legality, or honour, could stop, since they said openly — " Force overcomes right" {La force prime le droit), and they acted accordingly. "Fi-ance saw nothing- or desired to seo nothing in ihom lSlG-1871.] FRENCH WAR AGAINST GERMANY, 307 immense prepai'ations, whicli were being completed even on her own territory, by the minute and secret study of every means of action or of resistance. Ideas of peace and economy predominated in the legislative body; a blind confidence in France's military superiority, an equal distrust against the armament of the whole country, pre- vented the proportioning of the forces of France to the greatness of the struggle which was approaching; and, through the incapacity of officials and the insufficiency of the administrations, those which existed were badly handled. Prance declares War against Germany. — An an- nouncement was made in the beginning of July 1870, by the Spanish ministers, of their intention to recommend Prince Leopold of HohenzoUern Sigmaringen, a German prince belonging to a branch of the house widely separated from that which reigned in Prussia, to the long vacant thi'one of Spain. The personal and family circumstances of Prince Leopold allied him in some measure, it might seem, with French and Napoleonic interests. The branch of the HohenzoUerns to which he belonged was Roman Catholic; his paternal grandmother was a Murat; his maternal grandmother a Beauharnais; his mother was of the hovise of Braganza-Bourbon. It was more than five centuries since he and the King of Prussia had had a common ancestor. On the 6th, the Duke de Grammont said in the Frencli Legislature that it was undoiibtedly true that Marshal Prim had ofiered the crown to the HohenzoUern prince, and that the latter had accepted it; but the Spanish peoi^le had not yet declared themselves. Meanwhile, in view of the dangers to the peace of Europe which wei'e arising, Prince Leopold himself decided on giving in his resigna- tion, and a momentary hope arose that the threatened storm had blown over. It was not, however, as was shortly seen, when a credit of fifty millions was demanded by the minister of war and granted. On the 19th July, war was formally declared. Thus, as a finishing stroke of dexterity, Prussia had had th© arfe to evoke a deelara- 308 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD XI. tion of the war wliich slie so ardently clesii'ecl, and for which she had been preparing for some fifteen years. To 700,000 soldiers moved up in fifteen days to the frontier, and concentrated in a small space, from Treves to Landau, the French opposed 240,000 men scattered over a line of 100 leagues. Thus, they were overwhelmed at Wissemboui'g, at Reichsofien, and at Forbach by an enemy three or four times superior in numbers, fighting at a distance, under cover of the woods, and covered by an innu.merable artillery, the range of which was greater than that of the French guns (4th and 6th August). The Emperor capitulated at Sedan (2nd Sept.), and Marshal at Metz (26th Oct.). Strasburg succumbed after a bombardment which burned the library, the museum, and threatened to demolish the cathedral. On the 19th Sept., Paris invested, fought its first battle at Chatillon. In detaining before its walls during more than four months (18th Sept. to 27th Jan.), the principal PrussiarL forces, it gave France time to raise herself up. All the regular 1816-1871.] TREATY OP VERSAILLES. 309 army, save four Algeiian regiments, was prisoner in Germany. It was necessaiy to improvise soldiers, can- nons, rifles, and commissariat. The provincial forces were crushed; and when, after 131 days of siege and a month's bombardment, famine forced Paris to lower the drawbridges of her forts, nothing more remained but to s\ibmit to the law of the conqueror. Treaty of Versailles. — A treaty of peace between Gei-many and France was, after miich patient negotia- tion, concluded at Versailles on Feb. 26, 1871. The JEmperor "William, " with a deeply-moved heart and with gratitude to God," telegraphed the result at once to Berlin. The negotiations were conducted with the utmost secrecy, and removed altogether from any influence likely to be exercised by neuti-als either for advice or guarantee. The only modification the Germans were understood to have made in the original severity of their terms was the I'esti- tution of the fortress of Belfort, commanding the passes of the Vosges, conceded, it was said, as an equivalent for ])ei"mitting the German army to march through Paris. The major conditions of the Treaty were the cession of Alsace and German Lorraine, and the payment of a war indemnity of five milliards of francs (X200,000,000)— demands, it was thought as great as Europe would allow, and not unlikely to create a jDermanent feeling of hatred between the two countries. The payment, it was sti])u- lated, of one milliard, was to take place during 1871, and the remainder within three years from the ratification of the then existent preliminaries. On the 28th, when the victorious Germans entered Paris in triumph, the terms of the ti-eaty were ratified in the French National As- sembly by 546 votes to 107. At the same sitting, a formal proposal was submitted, ainid enthusiastic cheers, for the deposition of Napoleon III. as the pei-son ''resi:)on- sible for all our misfortunes, the ruin, the invasion, and the dismemberment of France." For the first time during four centuries, France retro- graded. In 1815, she had at least very nearly preserved the frontiers which her old monarchy had given her; but 310 HISTORY OF GERMANY. [PERIOD VIlI. by the Treaty of Versailles (1871), a wound was inflicted upon her Avhich will ever bleed, by tearing away the two provinces, Alsace and a portion of Lorraine, which had never been connected with the German Empire, save by the most feeble ties. Strasburg had voluntarily given itself to Louis XIV. in 1681, and Metz to Henry IL in 1552. New Political Divisions of Grermany — Recapitula- tion. — The events just recorded have involved an entire change in the political relationship of the German States to one another, and to the i-est of Europe. This change has been immediately diViQ— firstly, to the Austro-Prussian war of 1866; and, secondly, to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1. Its remoter causes, however, had long been in preparation. The Old German Empire — elective in its constitution, constantly weakened by the mutual jealousies betAveen its members, and the consequent Avant of unity in its dealings with foreign states — Avas terminated in 1806, during the military success of Napoleon I. With the doAvnfall of Napoleon, a German Confederation, composed of 39 states (subsequently diminished, by failure of succession and other causes, to 33 in number), Avas organised by the Congress of Vienna, in 1815. Austria, ruled by sove- reigns of the House of Hapsburg, which had occupied, during many successiA'e generations, the imperial throne, had the foremost place in the Confederation; Prussia, the second; Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Hanover, Saxony, and the smaller States, taking successive grades of inferior import- ance. A Diet, assembling at Erankfort-on-the-Maine, regulated the affairs of the Confederation as a Avhole, its dealings with foreign poAvers, &c. ; each State remaining (at least nominally) a sovereign power in all internal regards. This cumbrous machinery, after enduring just half a century, fell to pieces in 1866. The brief war of that year resulted, as already shown, in the decisive suc- cess of the Pnissian armies over those of Austria, gained on the field of Koniggratz. Prussia dissolved the then existing Confederation, and erected in its place a ncAV 1816-1871.] GERJLiN UKlTY. 311 " ISTortli German Confederation " {N'ord Deutsclier Bund), from which Austria was expressly excluded. All the States of Germany lying north of the river Maine and the Erz Gebirge (Luxembiirg alone excepted) became members of the new Confederation, with Prussia at their head. The increase of the Prussian monarchy at this time, by the absorption within its limits of some half- a-dozen of the smaller states, has been previously detailed. German Unity. — The vfar declared by France against Prussia, in 1870, at once aroused the German nation to a recollection of the sufferings which, above half a century previously, had resulted from former disunion, and to a conviction of the necessity of united action, with a viev/ to preserve the possible recurrence of like disasters. The combined action of all the German States, with the exception of Austria, in arms against Prance, was the immediate result. The King of Prussia created Emperor of Germany. — While the German siege of Paris was going on (Jan. 1871), the various sovereign states of Germany — the South German, as well as the members of the lately organ- ised federation — determined on a revival of the Empire, and the impeiial crown v/as, at their joint instance, con- ferred on the King of Prussia, on behalf of himself and his descendants. King William, being in the great hall of Louis XIY. at Versailles, received the title of German Emperor from the princes and free cities of Germany, even the King of Bavaria playing a leading part in the memorable ceremonial. This was, in fact, a restoration, not of the Empire, bat of the Kingdom of Germany; as, under the ancient imperial system, the title of Emperor could be held only by one who was, or asserted himself to be, monarch of either the old or the new Rome. However, now that several of the German princes are ctilled kings, it would have been difficult to iind a more appropriate title than Emperor for the chief of the Con- federation which has kings amongst its members. The New German Empire unites under one rule the entire German nation, the subjects of Austria alone excej^tcd, 312 HISfORY OP GEHMANY. [tERIOD IX. much more closely than it had been ever since the Thirty Years' War, or indeed since the great " interregnum." The sovereign rights of the various states are limited to their own internal affairs. The revival of the ancient title of Emperor of Germany, in the person of the Prussian monarch, was proclaimed to the Prussian Diet on the 18th Jan. 1871. Eai'ly in March the conquerors were home again. The 22nd was the new Emperor's birthday, when he attained the age of 74 years. Numerous German princes seized the occasion to offer their congratulations in person, and municipalities presented addresses. " More than four centuries and a half have elapsed," said the Burgomaster of Berlin, " since Divine Providence sent the Hohen- zollerns to take care of our Marches, then a prey to every kind of disorder. In this long time the princes of your Poyal House have worked and toiled for us in a spii'it of pateraial solicitude, and without ever resting from the task they had undertaken. May the Emperor who has extended our frontiers and added fresh laurels to our banners, be destined alike to promote the blessings of peace, and to increase and develop our welfare, liberty, and culture ! " The new representative of Charlemagne showed himself not unmindful of the Paladins who had stood by his side in the hour of victory; by whom the basis of each victory was laid. Bismarck was raised fi'om the rank of count to that of prince; Count Moltke was made a Eield-Marshal; to Yon E.oon the title of count was accorded. Large donations in land and in money Avere subsequently accorded to the heroes of the war, and fresh honours and titles added to those which the princes of the Imj)erial House already bore. One can hardly experience a greater sense of contrast than in turning one's thoughts from thecorfdition of France in the year 1871 — marked by ruin, discord, disintegration • — • to that of Germany — triumphant, powerful, and occupied in consolidating, by a mighty principle of attraction, the hitherto loosely-compacted elements of the national jiolicy. TABLE OF CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 313 >t2;t> ^>n^^ t—^Cr.t—, •-! CD i-i p i-( SO X tr'M POP C« g M p> 'S 1-1 ►^ " o 1=^ H > " hH SI t— 1 j> j_i j_ 1 t^ >-' cocc 1 CO c» Ol lO ►f^CO C;i Oi 1 (X> Ox ^^5^5^ l>t>^*^ edWillia ■edWillia illiam I. rorof Gei fill > mill mlV Em- •man; ^ ? • < 1^ 7 t— "h-. 1 )— ' 1 H-l 1 C» (X 1 O tf.. 1 GO 1 CO 1 ;si ^ It '"^^i^^r 1^ § H -.Z'>-'h-- 1 <» CO IX) CO ex CO 03 •^ Ol ►p. CO lO 1 o s^9^~ ^^11 ederick VI. ristianVIII sderickVII. ristian IX. 1 '^^3 CO CO cc 1 Oi w to wfe?= 1 -500 O OC hjQhJt-Hhj harles XIII. harles John XIV. scar I. S'S 5-§ S- cZ2 Ill 1 |_i |_, 1 l-J h-1 1— 1 f-i ^ £ 1 cocoaocn >(^ w to lO 1 If* CO 1 O t— o w GERMAN PROGRESS IK LITERATURE, ART, AND SCIENCE. The comjDarative silence of the Roman liistorians on the subject of the civilization of the Germans, whom, in comparison with their own refinement, they looked npon as barbarians, whose commerce^ arts, and sciences were yet in their infancy, has led some later writers to describe the Teutons generally, at the period of the birth of JeSUS Christ, as a race of savages little diifering from the North American Hurons. But history, unconfronted Avith no direct evidence to support such a conclusion, is justified in drawing other deductions from indisputable facts j)oint- ing in a contrary direction. It may be ir^ferred v,dth much greater reason that the Germans, who, about the time of Our Saviour, were able with rude arms and simiDle tactics to make head against the Romans, trained in war by 500 years of struggles against the whole of the then known woi-ld; that a peoi^le who held marriage, the domestic hearth, and the national honour as sacred, could not have been in the state of barbarism thus represented. Agricultvire, and the care of flocks and herds, pre- suppose a certain rural economy, and even necessary implements. However simple they might be, the Ger- man, by fabricating them himself, must have known how to work in iron, and equally so for the forging of his weapons. It is difficult to cast iron, and its manipulation is no easy labour. It is possible indeed that the Teutons only used foreign ore, and thus had no occasion to mine the movmtains in order to find it. Tacitus, however, speaks of iron mines in Gothland, now Silesia; but helmets and coats of mail were imknown among them until they concjuered the Romans, and clothed themselves in their spoils. Tlieii" weapons Avere the spear and the long two-handed sword; and for defence they carried on the left arm a buckler of painted wood or osier, four or MUSICAL SCIENCE. 315 five feet long, and two in breadth. In their expeditions and battles, particularly in those of the Cimbri, we hear of waggons and carriages in great numbers, in which they carried their wives and children, and with which they entrenched their canips. At the same period the Ger- mans navigated vessels upon the rivers and sea coasts, and even gave battle to the Romans in ships. The art of spinning and weaving wool cannot be carried on without a certain description of tools and machines; it was, how- ever, the daily occupation of the women. If the art of hovise-building had not yet far advanced, there was never- theless an essential difference between the hut of the serf, and the abode of the man of distinction, as history describes them. It seems even probable that they used stone in their constructions, since they had cellars or vaults ill which provisions were kept. These must necessarily have been supported by walls. Traffic and Commerce were not unknown amongst the ancient Grermaiis; and they were acquainted with money. Tacitus remarks that they knew very well how to dis- tinguish the different sorts, and that for the small ex- changes they preferred silver to gold. Great quantities of Roman coins, found buried in the ground, prove that their commerce must have been considerable; although, indeed, it must be owned that the Germans had taken much booty in the victories over the Romans. Arminius (Hermann), before the battle of Idistavisus (a.d. 16), offered 200 sesterces a day to each Roman deserter. Musical Science was limited to war songs, and the rude instruments before spoken of (see Introduction) ; and they had certain heroic chants for festive occasions. It cannot be doubted that the early days of Germany could boast of their enthusiastic bards and minstrels, as in an earlier time the Greeks had had their Homer. Tacitus, indeed, tells us so, and if his testimony were wanting, the ideas of glory and grandeur diffused among the German people would sufficiently indicate it. The art of writing, however, was as yet wholly unknown to them. 316 HISTORY OF GERMANY. Fire-Burial. — In the dawn of history, in the countries north of the Alps, we find fire-burial, even as among the Hindoos, the Greeks, and the Romans, also among the other branches of the Aryan race in Europe — among the Kelts, the Germans and the Sclavonians. When Csesar Avarred in Gaul, he observed that the natives practised cremation to the fullest extent. The funeral ceremonies of the Gauls are described by him as "magnificent and costly." Those of the Germans, on the contrary, were of a simpler kind, according to the testimony of Tacitus. In his concise phraseology, Tacitus takes fire-burial as a self- understood Germanic custom. He consequently only lays stress on the fact of the simplicity of a German funeral being but slightly deviated from in the case of their chieftains, for whose incineration '-'special kinds of wood" were set apart. The Thuringians of Germany burnt their dead down to the 7 th century. In an epistle of Winfried (or Boni- face), the so-called Apostle of the Germans, the custom of incinei'ation among the Saxons is referred to, Charle- magne, who displayed such zeal in fighting against the pagan and freedom-loving hosts of Witakind that on a single day he had nearly 6000 prisoners of war decapitated, whilst at other times he drove the vanquished rebels by shoals into the rivers there to be baptised — Charlemagne made a special enactment against cremation: " If any one lets the body of a dead person be consumed by fire, and the bones be reduced to ashes, according to the rites of the heathens, he shall sufier capital punishment. " (Cap. vii). Although there is no direct testimony for cremation among the Goths of Ulfilas, yet, as Grimm has shown, we are fully warranted in concluding that they too had practised fire-burial. The fact is, when fire-bux'ial as a sanitary practice, founded on a religious ordinance, was abolished by the introduction of a new creed, the pyre and the hurdle were retained as modes of criminal i:>nnish- ment, or for the purpose of laying ghosts or wraiths to rest ! * * Karl Blind on Dr. Jacob Grimm's masterly sj)ecial treatise. CHARACTER OF THE TEUTONIC LAWS. 317 Conversion of the Teutons to Christianity. — In those districts of the Rhine and Danube, occupied by the Romans, there had sprung up a number of municipia (cities) in which tlie luxury, language, and laws of Rome exclusively prevailed. From these cities, after the recog- nition of Christianity by Constantino, its doctrines spread over the rest of Germany at first slowly; for it was xmpalatable to the revengeful spirit which was a marked feature both in the political and social temperament of the Teutons. A great jDortion of the Goths, however, seemed to have embraced Christianity even before the conversion of Constantino; for at the Council of Nice in 325, at which that Emperor presided, there were present Gothic bishops. Other races of Teutonic origin yet remained in a condition of Pagan barbarism until converted by the Anglo-Saxon monk, Winifried, or Boniface, whose mission has been noticed in the first period of this history (718- 775 A.D.) Barbaric Character of the Teutonic Laws. — The laws of the Teutons show how backward they were in civiliza- tion even as late as the fifth and sixth centuries. Murdei was not looked upon as a great crime, unless it were accompanied by cowardice and treason; and every kind of murder might be expiated by a fine. For the murder of a free barbarian, companion, or leude of the King, killed in his own dwelling Sols. by an armed band, among the Salians, . . 1500 The Duke among the Bavarians, the Bishoj) among the Alamans, . . . . . 900 The relatives of the Duke among the BaA'arians, . (340 Every leude of the King, a count, a priest, or judge free born, COO A deacon among the E-ipuarians, . . , 500 The Salian or Bipuarian freeman, . . . 20O The barbarian freeman of other trioes, . . 160 The slave (a good workman), .... 150 The Roman proprietor, 100 The manumitted slave, SO The blacksmith slave, .50 The serf of the King's church and the Pvoman tributary, 45 The swine-herd, 30 The slave among the Bavariansw . k » i 20 318 HISTORY OF GERMANY. Ill tlie earlier times there existed no laws, save those of usage; but, by degrees, written codes were introduced, composed in Latin, the German language being still too rude and unformed for that purpose. There was another kind of law, Avhich has been called " poetical legislation," namely, the embodying legal abstractions, or subjecting them to the evidence of the senses. The rendering sensible we conceive to belong to the earliest state of society, and gradually to assume the symbolical character as a nation advances in civilization. At all events, this seems to have been the course of things in Germany. "When possession of land was given by a clod of earth from the ploughed field, a turf from the meadow, a branch of a forest tree from the wood, and of a fruit tree or vine from the orchard or vineyard to be delivered, these acts, although considered as partly symbolical by Grimm,* appear, at least in the earlier times, simple modes of rendering the delivery evident and sensible, without troubling the court of justice, or the summoning of numerous witnesses. The similar use made by the Romans of turf, etc., appears to have been purely sym- bolical, inasmuch as a turf cut from the nearest grass- plot, we believe, delivered an estate in Asia. So was amongst the Germans the straw, when a straw picked up in the road, supplied the place of the turf, etc. It was plainly a mere abstract idea, not being like the other things necessai'ily a part of the property delivei'ed, but gathered anywhere. Moreover the word stipulatio seems to indicate its Latin origin ; and as its instrumentality in delivering possession is found only amongst the Franks, or the countries that once owned their authority, it is not unlikely that they might adopt it from their Eoman siibjects. But the mode of employing it became more picturesque under the influence of German imagination. A man who wished to transfer or bequeath an estate to a person not of his blood, flung a straw into the bosom of him to be endowed, or into that of the lord who gave it over to him; the straw was thenceforward care* ♦ ^tutonk Legal AndqulUm By Dn Jjioob Grimmi CHARACTER OF THE TEUTONIC LAWS. 319 fally pi'eserved as a voucher for the transaction. A straw was otherwise symbolically used. Breaking a straw was a form of engagement as solemn and irre- vocable as the striking of hands, which bears a peculiar name in almost every Teutonic language, and is still j)ractised among the lower orders in Germany as it is in England.* Amongst various fanciful forms of transacting which appear to blend two characters, some few are worth noticing. The ado2:)tion of a son was effected in Lom- bardy by the adopter's trimmi-ng, for the first time, the beard of the adopted; in Scandinavia, by his giving him his shoe to put on. This form seems to have implied a recognition of the shoe-proprietor's authority; and, as such, was reqiiired from a bride, who completed the marriage ceremony by putting on the bridegroom's shoe. Taking the keys from a wife was equivalent to a divorce; and a widow freed herself from her deceased husband's debts by throwing his keys into his grave, which Avas a virtual abandonment of her claims upon his property. We entirely lose sight of symbols, and return to the senses, and the act of the party most concerned, in the custom of giving land in quantities measured by the receiver's riding, driving, or crawling over or round it, during some determinate period of time, as whilst the royal donor bathed, or took his after-dinner nap. This custom, however, was not peculiar to the Germans. We find grants almost literally similar in Herodotus, in Livy, and in Oriental history or fable; and, in spirit, they resemble Dido's purchase of the land a bull's hide would cover, which, indeed, was often literally copied by Ger- man candidates for real property. It went out of fashion, probably from the constant cheating to which it seems to have given bii'th. A prince of one of the most heroic families in Germany, the Guelphs, and consequently an ancestor of the sovereign of the British Empire, having obtained from the Emperor Louis the grant of as much * Schiller, in his William Tell, says, "The peasant's hand- stnUe pledgss a man'a worfli' 320 HISTORY OF GERMANY. land as lie could either plough with a golden plough or drive a golden waggon round, it is not clear which, during his imperial majesty's noontide slumber, fairly, or rather unfairly, put a golden toy-waggon or plough into his pocket, and rode full gallop with what seems to have been relays of horses. This mode of granting land originated, probably, in the ordinary form of taking possession of domains, whether inherited or otherwise acquired, by riding over them. Even kings were frequently bound thus to ride round or over their kingdoms, after- having, upon their succession or election, been lifted on high upon a shield, and thus exhibited to their people for their approbation or homage — a practice, by the way, borrowed from the Germans by the Romans, when their armies came to consist princi- pally of Germans. Characteristics of the Feudal System in the Germanic Empire. — The interminable dependence and superiority in vassalage of the feudal system, however revolting to the enlightened love of liberty of the nineteenth century, had in it something venerably patriarchal ; but it is the dark side of feudalism. That the unfree, or the whole of the infeiior classes collectively, were cruelly and unreason- ably degraded, is undeniable. The very appellation of the better class of villeins (litus) seems to have been vitu- perative, as derived from the adjective " lazy." Other denominations of the unfree imply obedience and subjec- tion. The unfree were distinguished from the free by their names, or rather their want of family names, by the colour and shape of their clothes, and by the cutting of their hair. The long hair, which was the distinctive characteristic of the Merovingian kings, seems at one time or other to have been common to all nobles, if not to all freemen, as there are laws of sevei-al old nations extant against cropping long-haii'ed children without their parents' consent, and against letting the hair of the unfree of either sex grow. In fact, the long hair of the higher ranks seems to have been held in almost equal honour with the beard ! a woman swore, if not by her FEUDAL SYSTEM, 321 /■•• ^ tresses, yet holding tliem in liei' left hand, whilst her right was laid iipon her bosom; and some of the old Scandinavian legends record the anxiety of heroes at the block to preserve their hair from being soiled with blood by their decapitation. Further, the unfree had no wergeld, or fixed damages, for their murder; but their lives were not, therefore, unprotected, except against their master. The patriarchal indulgence, modifying the harshness of the feudal system, is pleasingly displayed in the partial relaxation of one of its generally harsher features — the game laws. In the laws respecting the treatment of strangers the admixture of the kindly and severe spirit appears. Travellers were not only entitled to hospitality, but whilst journeying were permitted to cut wood for the repair of their conveyance, whatever that might be, to feed their tired horses with grain, corn, and grass, or hay from a stack; to gather fruit for themselves, and even to catch fish, provided they lighted a fire, and dressed and ate it upon the spot. But if they remained a year and a day in one place, they forfeited the rights of freemen, be- coming the property of the lord of the soil. But nowhere does this mixed character appear moi-e strongly than with regard to criminals. Whilst the punishments awarded to guilt are fearfully sanguinary, and sometimes so disgustingly atrocious as to be almost indescribable, there is always to be discovered an evident disposition to enable the culprit to escape; Hanging between wolves and dogs upon a leafless tree, burning, boiling, flaying, impaling, every kind of mutilation, tarring and feathering, casting to wild beasts, were the ordinary doom, when offences were not compounded for by a sum of money. Cowards were drowned, or rather smothered, in mud. Removers of boundary stones were buried up to the neck in the earth, and ploughed to death with a new plough by four unbroken horses, and a plough- man who had never before turned a furrow. Forest burners were seated at a distance from a fire of a certain magnitude, to which their bare feet were turned till tho 322 HISTORY OF GERMANY. soles dropped of. But tlie most horrible punishments awaited him who was detected in barking trees. His navel was dug ou.t, and nailed to the injured tree, round which he was driven, dragging out his own bowels, and winding them upon it in lieu of the despoiled bark. And this whilst every injury to a fellow-creature, even murder, might be expiated with a sum. of money. The Dawn of German Literature (771-800)— From Charlemagne to the Accession of the Swabian Dynasty. — The reign of Charlemagne may be considered as the commencement of German literature, although there are some fragments of translations from ecclesiastical books which were made probably prior to that epoch. Charle- magne, who was very anxious to promote the cultivation of his native language, introduced German names of months. He ordered the scattered monuments of the Teutonic language, particularly laws or customs, and songs, to be collected. He also ordered the ministers of religion to preach in German, and directed the translation of several things from the Latin for the information of the common people. It is impossible to know whether the songs collected by the order of Charlemagne were of the same kind as those which, according to the descrip- tion of Tacitus, were in vise among the Germans about the beginning of our era, or to form any corx-ect idea of them, as the collection is entu'ely lost. The two most ancient German poems are, the " Lay of Hildebrand and Hadubrand," and the "Prayer of Weiszenbrun," which have been published by Grimm, and which belong to the eighth century. After the reign of Charlemagne, the Christian religion being established throughout all Germany, many frag- ments of the Bible and some ecclesiastical wr'itings were paraphrased from the Latin into the vulgar tongue. The separation of the Gei-manic Empire from the Frankish, which took place in the middle of the ninth century, acted beneficially on the national language and literature. The earliest known German poem of that time is a song written in commemoration of the victory which Louis III. GERMAN POETRY. 323 of France gained over the Normans in 881. But tlie most remarkable production is the metrical paraphrase of the Gospels by Ottfried, a Benedictine monk, made about 870, which shows an uncommon poetical genius in the author, who had to contend with all the difficulties presented by a rude and uncultivated language. German Poetry — The "Minnesingers — From the Accession of the Suabian Dynasty to the Reforma- tion of Luther (1137-1517).— The reign of the Emperors of the Suabian family of Hohenstauffen is the golden age of the I'omantic or chivalrous poetry of Germany. This poetry being written in the Suabian dialect, which came into fashion through the influence of the reigning family, is generally called the Suabian. Germany at that time had made great progress in civilization, particularly by its frequ.ent intercourse with Italy, which was owing to the expeditions of the Emperors to that country. This circumstance led to an acquaintance with the Troubadours of Provence; and the Crusades also, which brought the Germans into contact with the more civilised nations, such as the Greeks and Saracens, powerfully contributed to advance the intellectual development of the nation, and to exalt its chivalrous spirit. The poets of that period are known under the name of Minnesingers, from the old German word minne, which signifies "love." They may be compared in many respects with the Troubadours of Provence, and were generally knights and nobles, whose life was divided between the occupations of love, war, and devotion, which inspired their poetical effusions with tender, noble, and pious feelings. They lived chiefly at the courts of German princes, who were fond of poetry, and many of whom were poets themselves. Such were, among others. Emperor Ei'ederick II., Leopold IV., Duke of Austria, Henry Margrave of Misnia, Herman Margrave of Thurginia, etc. The court life, which was spent amidst tournaments and splendid entertainments of every kind, gave to their poetry a high degree of refinement and brilliancy. The decline of chivalry pvit an end to the Minnesingers, and the art of poetry descended from the 324 HISTORY OP GERMANY. nobles to the burghers of cities; welfare and civilization being secured by their fortified towns, gave them a decided advantage over the nobles, who abandoned themselves to the greatest excesses, and lived in a most lawless state, being constantly engaged in mutual feuds and depreda- tions during the troubles which agitated the German empire in the latter part of the thirteenth century, after the death of Frederick II. Downfall of Chivalry through the use of Gunpowder. — Europe, during the fifteenth century, had become ripe for great reforms which, their results once obtained, were calculated to change widely the social condition of the masses. The use of gunpowder, an invention attributed to Swartz, had already caused such an innovation in the art of war as to bring about the downfall of chivalry, an institution which had existed for centuries, and lai-gely modified the middle ages. The art of printing, combined with the invention of paper made from flax, creating a new means of communicating ideas, it became possible to act upon men's minds from one end of Europe to another with astonishing rapidity. The discovery of a new world, and a route by sea to the East Indies had wholly changed the paths of commerce; so that all the activity and power that followed in her train were exchanged between nations Avhich, until then, were scarcely known to each other. Diplomacy, and political science in government, taking their rise chiefly in Italy and France, assumed quite novel forms. Good faith was sacrificed to interest, and self-interest became the fundamental law in the alliances or enmities of states. Thus, in the mutual relations of nations, another law governed than that which was exjDected to control the mutual relations existing between individuals. The Influence of Classical Studies and Natural Philosophy on German Theology. — The dead-letter spirit, prevalent in Germany among the Lutherans, having again degraded theology to mere scholasticism, and not only maintained but strengthened the ancient superstition of the multitude (as, for instance, in ADVANCE OF GENERAL EDUCATION, 325 respect to witchcraft), had gradually vanished as know- ledge was increased by the study of the classics and of natui'al philosophy. Halle became for this second period of the Reformation what Wittenberg had been for the first. As Luther formerly struggled against the monks and monkish superstition, Thomasius (a.d. 1728) com- bated Lutheran orthodoxy, overthrew the belief in witch- craft, and reintroduced the use of the German language in the cathedral service, whence it had been long expunged. He was succeeded (a.d. 1754) by the philosopher Wolf, the scholar of the great Leibnitz, who beneficially en- lightened the ideas of the theological students. Before long, the ci'itical study of the Bible, and a positive divinity, which sought to unite the Bible with philosophy, prevailed. The founders of this school were Michaelis at Gottingen, Semler at Halle, and Ei'nesti at Leipzig. Mosheim at Berlin, and Gellert at Leipzig greatly ele"s^ated the tone of morality. The Advance of General Education, Art, and Science. — In proportion as the universities shook off the yoke im- posed by theological and juridical ignorance (as evidenced by the trials for witchcraft), the study of philosophy, languages, history, and the natural sciences gained ground. A wide range was thus opened to learning, and a spirit of liberality began to prevail, which, as the first effect of its cosmopolital tendency, completely blunted the patriotic feelings of the German, by renderiog his country a more secondary object of interest arid inquiry. The struggle between modern ideas and ancient usage began also in the lower academies. Kousseau proposed the fundamental transformation of the htiman race, and the creation of an ideal people by means of education. John Basedow attempted to put his novel plans of educa- tion into practice by the seminary, known as the " Philan- thropium," established by him at Dessau, in which many excellent teachers were formed, and by which great good was effected. The new plans of education, adopted by a few private establishments, and recommended in the numerous new publications on the subject, more parti- 326 History op Germany, cularly owed their gradual adoption to the tutors, who, in their freer sphere of action, bestowed their attention upon the arts most tiseful in practical life, and, out of respect for the parents, introduced a more humane treat- ment of the children. Private and individual efforts would, however, have but little availed without the beneficial reformation that took place in the public academies. In England, the study of the ancient classics, so well suited to the stern character and liberal spirit of the j)eople, had produced men noted for depth of learning, by whom the humanities and the spirit of antiquity were revived. Their influence extended to Hanover. At Gottingen, Heyne created a school, which opposed the spirit to the dead letter, and, in the study of the classics, sought not merely an acquaint- ance with the language, but also with the ideas of ancient times, and Winckelmann visited Italy in order to furnish Germany with an account of the relics of antiquity, and to inspire his countrymen with a notion of their sublimity and beauty. The attention of the student was drawn to mythology, to ancient history, and an acquaintance with the lives of the ancients led to the knowledge of modern history and geography. Political Science. — The Dutch took the lead in political science. As early as 1638, Althausen laid the majestas Ijopuli down as a principle, and Hugo Grotius laid the first foundation to the law of nations; and the jealousy between the houses of Hohenzollern and Hapsburg f)er- mitted Pufendorf, a Brandenburg privy-counsellor, to commence a tolerably liberal criticism on the German constitution. Mathematics and General Science.— The study of the mathematics was greatly promoted by Liebnitz, the inventor of differential calculus, and was carried to higher perfection by Lambert of Alsace, by the family of Bernouilli of Basle, Euler, etc. The Germans made great discoveries in astronomy. Scheiuer (a.d. 1650) discovered the spots in the sun; Hevel (a.d. 1687) and Dorfel fomad out the paths of the comets; Eimmart of dHEMlS^R-?, BOTANY, AND PHAUMACOLOGY. 327 Kuremberg measured several of the fixed stars. Herschel (born A.D. 1740, died a.d. 1822) discovered, with his giant telescope in England (a.d. 1781), the planet Uranus, nebulous stars, planetary nebulae, etc. Huygens improved the telescojie, Lowenhoek and Hontsoecker the micro- scope (in Holland). Lieberkiihn of Breslau invented the solar microscope; Tschirnhausen, burning-glasses; Snell discovered the laws of refi'action. The study of physics was greatly promoted by Otto von Guericke, burgomaster of Magdeburg (a.d. 1686), the inventor of the air-pump and of the electrifying machine; by Sturm (a.d. 1703), the founder of experimental physics; by Fahrenheit, who (a.d. 1714) invented the thermometer; by Kercher, the inventor of the speaking trumpet; by Hansen, who improved the electrifying machine. Chemistry.— Among the chemists, before whose science alchemy fled, Glauber, who gave his name to a celebrated salt, Becher, Stahl, Brand, the discoverer of phosphorous, and Gmelin merit particular mention. Werner acquired great note as a mineralogist at the close of the eighteenth century. ->>- Botany was industriously studied by Haller of Switzer- land, KleiD, the noted travellers Pallas, Blumenbach, and Bechstein, were celebrated as zoologists. Geography and natural history were greatly promoted by travels, undertaken for scientific purposes. Eeinhold and George Forster accompanied Cook round the world (a.d. 1716). Carsten Niebuhr was the most celebrated among the travellers in Persia and Arabia. Pallas and Gmelin explored Siberia. In Pharmacology the Germans have done more than any other nation; after them the Dutch. Helmont, although not free from the alchemical prejudices of his age, did much good by his dietary method, all diseases, according to him, proceeding from the stomach. Hermann Boerhaave, the most eminent physician of his time, en- couraged by the anatomical discoveries of Lowenhoek and Buysch, carefully investigated the internal formation of the human body in search of the piimary causes of 32$ HISTORY OF GERMAir^. diseases, but was led astray by the meclianical notion that all diseases originated in the improper circulation or diminution of the humours of the body. Boerhaave's numerous works are, nevertheless, still regarded as text- books by the profession; his knowledge as an anatomist, chemist, and botanist, as well as the causes, nature, and treatment of diseases, was unrivalled. In Germany proper, medicine was not brought to any degree of perfection until a later period. The discovery of animal magnetism by Mesmer (a.d. 1775), was an important one, not only in medicine, but more particularly in psychology. It was first studied as a science by Gmelm, professor of chemistry and natural history at Gottingen, and has since engaged the attention of numerous physicians and psychologists. A mu-aculous property has been attributed to this discovery, which is certainly one of the most extraordinary ever made in inventive Germany. Som- mering was the most eminent of the German anatomists. Gall gained a transient fame by his novel phrenological ideas, and Lavater of Zurich by his science of physiog- nomy. The belief in apparitions was again spread through- out the Protestant world by this pious enthusiast, and by Jung Stilling, whilst Father Gassner, at the same time, about a.d. 1770, inspired the Catholic population of Upper Swabia with terror by his exoi'cism. Philosophy gave, however, at that period the tone to learning. The eighteenth centuiy was termed the age of philosophy, being that in which the French began in their Encyclopaedia to regard all human knowledge in an independent point of view, neither ecclesiastical nor Christian. The Germans, although borrowing their frivolous mock-enlightenment from France, imitated the English in the serious study of philosophy and philology. Under the protection of the King of England, Von Leibnitz, the mathematician and philosopher, shone at Hanover, like Albertus Magnus, in every branch of learning. His system was a union of the Christian mysticism of former times, and of the scholastic scientific modern philosophy, the result of the study of mathematics Art AiCD FASHION. 329 and the classics. The gradual deviation of philosophy from Christianity, and the increasing similarity between it and heathenism, were in accordance with the spirit of the age. In 1G77, Spinosa, the Dutch Jew, reproduced, with subtle wit, the old doctrine of the mystic Weigel, concerning the original conti'adictions apparent in the world, which he explained, not by a Christian idea of love, but by a mathematical solution. Spinosa renounced the Jewish religion for that of Calvin. He afterwards became a Mennonist, and at last fell into the most dangerous scepticism, if not downright atheism. Mathe- matical reasoning was certainly useful for the proper arrangement of ideas, but was essentially devoid of pur- port. In England, it led to mere scepticism, to a system of doubt and negation, whence, instead of returning to the study of theology, the English philosophei's turned to a zealous research in psychology, in which they were imitated by the Germans, Platner, Reimarus, Mendelssohn, the physician Zimmermann, etc.; all of whom were sur- passed by Kant, in 1804, at Konigsberg, in his "Critical Inquiry into the Nature of Pure Reason," which contains a critical analysis of every mental faculty. Art and Fashion. — Although Art had, under French influence, become unnatural, bombastical, and contrary to every rule of good taste, the courts, vain of their collections of works of art, still emulated each other in the patronage of the artists of the day, whose creations, tasteless as they were, nevertheless afforded a species of consolation to the people, by diverting their thoughts from the miseries of daily existence. Architecture de- generated in the gTeatest degree. Its siiblimity was gi'adually lost as the meaning of the Gothic style became less understood, and a tasteless imitation of the Roman style, like that of St, Peter's at Rome, was brought into vogue by the -Jesuits and by the court-architects, by whom the chateau of Versailles was deemed the highest chef- cVo&uvre of art. Miniature turnery-ware and microscopical sculptui'e also came into fashion. This taste was not, howevei", utterly useless. The predilection for ancient 330 HISTORY OF GERMANY. gems promoted the study of the remains of antiquity, as Stoscli, Lippert, and Winckelmaun jn'ove, and that of natural history was greatly facilitated by the collection of natural curiosities. Painting. — The style of painting was, however, still essentially Gennan, although deprived by the Reforma- tion and by French influence of its ancient, sacred, and spiritual character. Nature was now generally studied in the search after the beautiful. Among the pupils of Rubens, the great founder of the Dutch school, Jordaens was distinguished for brilliancy and force of execution, Van Dyk for grace and beauty, although principally a porti'ait painter, and incapable of idealising his subjects, in which Rembrandt, who chose more extensive historical subjects, and whose colouring is remarkable for depth and effect, was equally deficient. Whilst certain of these painters, such as the two Mieris, Terbourg and Nelscher, Honthoi'st, Van der "Werf, and Van Loo, belonged to the higher orders of society, of which their works give evi- dence, numerous others studied the lower classes with still greater success, as Teniers, Ostade, and Jan Steen. Landscape painting alone gave evidence of a higher style. In the commencement of last century, landscape painting also degenerated, and became mere ornamental flower painting, of which the Dutch were so passionately fond that they honoured and paid the most skilful artists in this style like princes. Huysum was the most celebrated of the flower painters, with Rachel Ruysch, Von Arless, and others of lesser note. Fruib and kitchen pieces were also greatly admii-ed. Hondekotter was celebrated as a painter of birds. Painting was, in this manner, confined to a slavish imitation of nature, for whose lowest objects a predilec- tion was evinced until the middle of the eighteenth century, when a style, half Italian, half antique, was introduced into Germany by the operas, by travellers, and more particularly by the galleries founded by princes, and was still further promoted by tlie leai-ned researches of connoisseurs, more especially by those of Winckelmaun. ARCHITECTUUE. 331 Architecture flourislied during the Middle Ages, paint- ing at the time of the Reformation, and music in modern times. The same spirit tliat spoke to the eye in the eternal stone, now breathed in transient melody to the ear. The science of music, transported by Dutch artists into Italy, had been there assiduously cultivated; the Italians had speedily sui-passed their masters, and had occupied themselves with the creation of a peculiar church music and of the profane opera, whilst the Netherlands and the whole of Germany was convulsed by bloody religious wars. On turning to the history of those neigh- bouring countries, it will be found that the glorious epoch of French literature (reign of Louis XIV.), was certainly a centiiry later than that of the English, whilst the literature of Germany, a country which now excels in Arts as well as Arms, is of a still later date. o R I K INDEX. Adalgisius, kingof Lombavdy, driven into exile by Charlemagne, 01. Adelbert, bishop of Bruneii, shares the regency with Hanno, his character and conduct, 103. Adolph of Nassau procures the imperial oown by bribery, 153; his throne de- clared vacant, is slain near Worms, 15+. Adrian I., Pope, implores the aid of Charlemagne, 60. Adrian IV., his arrogant pretensions, 121. jEgidius adopted chief of the Franks, 31. .(Etius conquers Attila, 30. Agnes (regent-mother of Henry IV.), troubles of her regency, 101. Alaric (the Visigoth) despoils Greece and invades Italy, 20. Albert of Austria (son of Eodolph I.) chosen by the electors to fill the throne vacant by the deposition of Adolph of Nassau, his chai-acter and life, revolt of the Swiss Cantons, 154; is assassinated by his nephew and other conspirators, 156. Albert II. of Austria (son-in-law of Sigismund), his brief reign of scarcely two years, ISl. Albert of Saxony, the heavy debt of gratitude owed him by Maximilian I., 191. Albert of Longwy, created Duke of Upper Lorraine, 101. Albert the. Bear, founder of the Mar- graviate of Brandenburg and the city of Berlin, 115. Albert the Degenerate, margrave of Thuringia, sells his territories to Adolph of Nassau, 153. Alfonso X. the Wise (of Spain) pur- chases the crown of Germany, 143; his claim set aside, 147. Almayne, name of, whence derived, 9. Anabaptists, The, seize on Miinster, 211. Anne of Brittany married by proxy to Maximilian I.; assumes the title of Queeu of the Romans, 1S9; com- pelled to accept Charles VIII. of France as her husband, consequences of the rupture of the matriage, 190. Ansegise, son of Arnoulf, 4S. Arcadius obtains the empire of the East, 20. Ardouin, a margrave, made King of Italy, 94. Ariovistus defeated by Cfesar, 17. Arminius (Hermann) destroys the legions of Varus, 18. Arnold of Brescia, seeking to restore the ancient Roman republic, is put to death, 121. Arnould, king of Germany, defeats the Normans, 74. Arnoulf, bishop of Metz, 48. Astolphus, king of the Lombards, con- quered by Pepin, 54. Ataulf (the Visigoth) wrests Spain from the Suevi and Alains, 22. Attila (the Hun), his invasion of Europe; defeated by ^tius, 80. Augustus Csesar, rebellion of the Ger- mans against, 17; loss of his legions under Varus, 18. Augustus III. of Poland, his succession disputed by Stanislaus Leczinski, 257. Augsburg, the Diet of, 209. Austerlitz and the treaty of Presburg, 274. Austria, the House of, loses its pre- ponderance in Europe, 248. Austrian sway in Italy, re-establish- ment of, 293; its aggression in Italy opposed by France, 294; collapse of its system of repression, 296. Austrian Question, The, a new element of discord In Europe, 297. Azzo, lord of Milan and Genoa, becomes aUied to the Guelphs, 99. Banier, the Swedish general, repeat- edly defeats the imperialists, 242; lays waste Thuringia; his retreat and death, 243. Bavaria, Duke Henry of, his attempt on the crown of Germany, 91. Berenger, duke of Ivrea, usurps regal power in Italy, deposed by Otho the Lion, 88. Bernard of Hildesheim, his elevated character, 94. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, preauhea the Second Crusadci 116; 334 Bertha of Susa, queen of Henry IV., her admirable character, 105. Bethlem Gabor, prince of Transyl- Prince, 312. Black Death, The, destroys one-third of the population, 167. Bonaparte, Napoleon, his campaign against the Austrians, 267; his im- petuous march upon Vienna, brings over Austria to sign a peace, 268; his policy of creating disunion be- tween Austria and Prussia, sud- denly embarks for Egypt, 269; aifairs to his assumption of the chief power, 270; reconquers Italy from the Aus- trians, 272 : chosen Emperor, 273 ; humiliates the Emperor of Austria and deposes the Pope, 275; defeats the Prussians at Auerstadt and Jena, and their monarchy ceases to exist, 275; wins the battles of Eylau and Friedland, results of the Peace of Tilsit, 276; his conquests, 277; Aus- tria rises against him, 278 ; at the summit of power; the Russian cam- paign, 279; the German campaign, 281; campaignof 1814, 284; Peace of Paris, Congress of Vienna, 286; cam- paign of four days (Waterloo), 287. Boniface, St., the "apostle of Germany, 54, 58. Brunehaut, queen of Siegebert, her crimes and terrible death, 43. Burgundians, The, found a kingdom in Gaul, 22. Burgundy, conquest of, by the sons of Clovis, 39 ; reunited to Germany under Conrad II., 97. Byzantine empire. The, destruction of by Mahomet II., 183. C^SAR, Julius, his conquests on the Bhine, 17. Campo Formio, treaty of, 268. Canute, king of England, at corona- tion of Conrad II. at Rome, 97. Oarloman I. (son of Charles Martel), 53. Carloman II. (son of Pepin the Short), 55. Carlovingians, their origin, 53 ; their extinction in Germany, 76. Charlemagne (Charles the Great), his character and career, 56 ; his long wars with the Saxons, he subdues and Christianises them, 59 ; con- quei-s Didier, king of Lombardy, sub- dues Southern Italy, 61; his war in Spain, becomes Emperor of the West, 62; extent of his empire, 33; results of his wars and conquests, 65; his death, 66; his empire rent asunder, 72. . Charibert I., king of Paris, 41. • Charibert II., king of Aquitaine, 47. Charles of Anjou (brother of Louis IX. of'Prance) defeats and slays Manfred at Beneventum, and takes possession of his dominions, 144; infuriated by the conspiracy of the Sicilian Ves- pers, lays siege to Messina, but is compelled to retire to Calabria, 146. Charles the Bald (first king of later France) defeated at Andernach by his nephews, 73. Charles the Fat oifered the crown of France, 73; his character; cedes Friedland to Godfrey the Norman, and afterwards murders him, 73 ; purchases a disgraceful peace of the Normans, 73 ; his deposition and death, 74 ; the Carlovingian empire irrevocably dismembered, 74. Charles IV., margrave of Moravia (son of John of Bohemia), elected King of the Romans, and declared emperor by Clement VI., 164; from his shame- ful capitulation with the Pope, the princes are unwilling to confirm his election; the imperial crown offered to Edward III. of England; his state craft, the tool of papal and French policy, 165; among the first to flee at Crecy, whilst liis blind father bravely falls; publishes the Golden Bull, and imprudently places the whole power of the state in the hands of the elec- tors, 166; his character and career, 167. Charles the Rash, duke of Burgundy, invades the Rhenish provinces, his daughter and heiress Mary betrothed to Maximilian, son of Frederick III., 185. Charles V. of Austria (grandson of Maximilian, and king of Spain), elected emperor; the most powerful monarch of the age of the Reforma- tion; his career; declared enemy of Francis I., struggle between Austria and France, 204; state of Germany on his arrival there, 205 ; league against Francis I., 206; places his preceptor on the papal throne; the war in Italy; the Constable of Bour- bon deserts to the emperor, 207; Rome captured and sacked by the Imperialists, 208; campaigns against the Turks, 209; attempts the con- quest of France; his disasti-ous expe- dition against Algiers, 212; 10,000 Imperialists fall in the battle of Cerisoles, 213; Philip, his son, mar- 335 ries Mary of England; Charles abdi- cates, 217; his death, 219. Charles I. of England aids Gustavus Adolphus against Austria, 239. Charles VI. (younger son of Leopold I.) presumptive heir of Charles II. of Spain, lands at Lisbon with Eng- lish and Dutch troops to enforce his claim, 254 ; dominions awarded to him by the Treaty of Utrecht; result of the Spanish succession war, 255; issues the Pragmatic Sanction; the last male offspring of the House of Austria-Hapsburg, 257. Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria, chosen emperor in opposition to Maria Theresa, by the title of Charles VII., 258. Charles, the archduke, of Austria, beats the French under Jourdan, and compels Moreau to retreat; re- organises the Austrian army in Italy, 267; his plan of operations against Bonaparte, 268; defeats Jourdan at Ostrach, 270. Ohildebert II. reunites Austria and Burgundy, 47. Childebert and Clotaire, their expedi- tions and conquests, 41. Childeric driven into exile by the Franks, 31. Childeric III. (the last Merovingian) Chilperic, king of Neustria, marries Fredegonde, 43. Christianity, the spread of, in Hun- gai-y, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Russia, 95. Christian IV. of Denmark is opposed in the Thirty Years' War by Tilly and Wallen stein; expelled from the empire, 238. Cimbri, their invasions, 16. Clement, Pope, declares the throne of Apuha vacant, and offers it to Charles of Anjou, 144. Clodion, the SaUan chief, defeated by .ffitius, 28. Clodomir slain in battle by the Bur- gundians, 41. Clotaire I., his ferocity, 42. Clotaire II., sole king of the Franks, 43. Clotilda, a Christian princess, marries the pagan Clovis, 39. Clovis founds the Prankish monarchy, 31. Commercial union of Germany, 292. Confederation of the Rhine, dissolu- tion of the Germanic empire, 274. Conrad I. of Pranconia, his short and difficult reign, 77. Conrad II. surnamed The Saltan^ elected emperor, 96 ; forces Odo, count of Champagne, to acknowledge him King of Burgundy, 97; his army decimated by the plague in Italy, 98; diesof the plague, 98; important law promulgated by him in Italy and Germany, 99. Conrad IIL, the empire divided into two parties.Guelphs and Ghibellines, 115; "takes the Cross" on Bernard preaching the Second Crasade, 116; the shame and dishonour attendant upon it, 117; dies at Bamberg, 118. Conrad IV. (son of Frederick II.), by his father's will inherits the crown ; placed under the ban of the Church, and his title pronounced null by the Pope; conquers Naples; on his re- turn to Germany confronted with William of Holland whom he de- feats; falls sick and dies, not without suspicion of poison, 142. Couradino of Swabia (son of Conrad IV.), invited to resume tlie throne of Apulia; attempts to drive the French out of Italy , enters Rome in triumph, 144; his army cut to pieces in Apulia; betrayed by Frangipani of Astura, and delivered up to Charles of Anjou; his sad fate, 145. Constance (wife of Henry VI.), heiress of the last Norman King of Sicily. Constance (daughter of Manfi-ed), avenges the murder of Conradino by the conspiracy of the Sicilian Ves- pers, 146. Cornwall, Richard, earl of (brother of Henry III. of England), purchases the empire, and is crowned at Aix, 143. Corvinus, Matthias (son of Hunnides), raised to the throne of Hungary,183. Council of Constance, The, its professed objects the extinction of schism, and reformation of the Church, 174; tlie close of; its consequences, 179. Crescentius, his insurrection against Otho III., and death, 93. Crusade, the First, its influence on the authority of Rome, 93. Crusade, the Second, preached by St. Bernard, 116. Crusade, the Third, urged on the princes of Europe by Gregory VIII., 128. Cnnegonda, wife of Henry the Saint, 95. Cunihilda (daughter of Canute), re- sults of her marriage with Hem-y, son of Conrad, 97; dies of the plagua in Italy, 93. 336 Dagobert I., king of the Austrasians, murders his brother, 4S. Denmark and the duchies, 295, Desiderata, a Lombard princess, mar- ried to Charlemagne, 60. Didier (or Desiderius), king of the Lombards, captive to Charlemagne, 61. Drusus, his victories over North Ger- many, 17. EoBERT, of Brunswick, count, saves the young Emperor Henry IV. from drowning, 102. Elizabeth (daughter of James I. of England), queen of Bohemia, her ambitious character, 236. Emigrations, a series of, continued from 375 a.d. to 568 a.d., 20. Enzio (son of Frederick II.), king of Sicily, kept prisoner during 24 years by the Bolognese, 140. Esthonia, subdued by the knights of the Cross and Sword, 136. Eudes (son of Robert the Strong), with- stands a year's siege of Paris, Eugene, Prince, his victories, 253. Ferdinand I. (brother of Charles V.), elected King of the Romans, 210; succeeds as emperor; his claim to Bohemia involves a long war, 220; the temporal dependence of the empire on the See of Rome ends; endeavours unsuccessfully to effect a union of the two Communions, 221 ; Council of Trent, 222. Ferdinand II. of Austria (son of Charles, duke of Styria, and grandson of Ferdinand I.), his dark and hopeless position on his accession, 235; the Protestant States subdued, and that religion abolished in Bohemia; the leaders exiled, or put to death, 238; causes Wallenstein to be secretly assassinated; his unjust and cruel policy aud character, 241; he dies, leaving behind an odious name, 246. Ferdinand III. (son of Ferdinand II.), .succeeds without opposition, and pursues his father's Une of policy, 242; his death and character, 245. Ferdinand I., emperor of Austria (son of Francis, the last of the German, axiA first of the Austrian emperors), led by hia minster. Prince Mettei;- nich, 294. Flagellants, The, accuse the Jews of poisoning the wells and fountains, who are persecuted with incredible ,. fury, 168. Fontenaille, battle of, 70. Francis I., struggle between, and Charles V., league against, 206; thf defection of the Constable of Bour- bon; taken prisoner at Pavia; re- leased on yielding to Charles V. the duchy of Burgundy, 207. Francis I. of Lorraine, consort of Maria Theresa, elected emperor, 259. Francis II. (eldest son of Leopold II.), enters into an alliance with Frederick William of Prussia against the French Republic, 264; campaign of the French against the empire, 265; the French penetrate into the heart of the empire, 266; by a treaty made with Bonaparte, France gains the preponderance in Europe, 269 ; Austria assisted by the Russians, 270; murder of the French pleni- potentiaries at Rastadt, 271 ; the Austrians defeat the French in Italy, 217. France and Austria, disagreement be- tween, in 1859, 299; the war in Italy, 300. Franco-Prussian war (1870-1871), 308. France becomes the leading European power, 248; its influence over the affairs of the emi^ire, 251. Franconia, the House of, 95. Franks, The, a union of several Ger- manic tribes, 28; they unite them- selves with the Romans in Gaul to oppose Attila, 29; their religion the worship of Odin, 32; their passion for war, 32; division of the Frank monarchy between the sons of Clovis, 38; second partition of the kingdom between the sons of Clotaire, 42. Fredegonde, queen of Chilperic, her fearful crimes and death, 43. Frederick, duke of Swabia, brother-in- law of Henry V., a candidate for the imperial crown; his relentless hostility to Lothar of Saxony, 113. Frederick I. surnamed Barbarossa, duke of Swabia, elected emperor, his personal qualities and character; restores the duchy of Bavaria to Henry the Lion, son of Henry the Proud, 118; settles a quarrel between Sweyn and Canute touching Den- mark, 119; compels Boleslas, king of Poland, to do him homage; re- establishes the ancient influence of Germany in Burgundy by his man-iage with Beatrice, the Bur- gundian heiress, 119; deputies from Lodi having implored his aid against the Milanese, he crosses the Alps with an army, and promptly enforces homage of most of the Lombard 337 cities; after being crowned King of Lombardy, he marches upon Kome, 120; holds Adrian's stirrup, and is crowned by that Pope; his expedition against the Normans in the south fails through the unhealthiness of the chmate, ia2; the quarrel between Pope and Emperor; Pope and Anti- pope, 123 ; the rebellious Milanese subdued; they again revolt, andafter a three years' siege Milan surrenders at discretion, and is razed to its foundations, 125; is, with his con- sort, crowned at Rome; his army being assailed by a pestilence, he secretly quits Italy for Germany; his vigorous extension of the House of Hohenstaufen, 126 ; he crosses the Alps for the fifth time, and lays siege to Alessandi-ia, but fails to reduce it; suffers a defeat at Lignano by the Lombards, and narrowly escapes capture; affairs of Italy settled by a treaty of peace with the Lombards, and the Emperor returns to Germany, is crowned at Aries, 127; marries his eldest son to Con- stance, heiress presumptive of Naples and Sicily; the Pope excom- municates the bisliops who per- formed the rite; joins the Third Crusade in his seventieth year, 128; leads his army skilfully to the frontiers of Syria, and is drowned in the river Calycadnus, and buried in Antioch, 129. Frederick II. (son of Henry VI., grand- sou of Barbaiossa) , set up by Inno- cent HI., who carefully super- intends the education of the young Emperor after the decease of his mother, Constance; versed in the arts and sciences, he also cultivates poetry, and lashes the follies of his day in sharp satirical verse; his political energies expended in an ever-recurring struggle between the Pope and the empire, 133; neglects Germany for his inheritance of the two Sicilies: launches keen sarcasms agains the Holy See, and is excom- municated by Gregory IX.; special circumstance which gives rise to the quarrel with that Pope, 134; is crowned by the Sultan Alkamel, king of Jerusalem; hastens back to Italy, and compels the Pope to make peace with him, and remove the excommunication, 135 ; his son, Henry, left in Geimany to govern the empire, revolts against him, is deposed, and dies in prison, 136; the Emperor marries Isaliella, sister of Henry III. of England: Conrad, his younger son, elected successor, as king of the Romans; Frederick de- feats the Lombards ai\d Milanese; excommunicated a second time by Gregory IX., 137 ; deposed and banned by Innocent IV., 139; his death; his intellectual qualities and attainments and brilliant court, 141. Frederick of HohenzoUern (father-in- law of Rodolph of Hapsburg), de- puted to invite Rodolph to accept the imperial crown, 14S. Frederick the Bitten (son of Albert the Degenerale), severely bitten in the cheek by his mother as a lasting reminder of her wrongs, 153 ; expires, worn out with toil, after recovering his rights, 156. Frederick of Austria, rival of Louis of Bavaria, crowned King of the Romans; his forces defeated by the Swiss; assails Louis near MUhldorf and is taken prisoner, and confined in the Castle of Trausnitz; renounces all claim to the empire; his mag- nanimity ; an arrangement to exercise conjointly with Louis the govern- ment, 163. Frederick of the Empty Poclet (of the House of Hapsburg), excom- municated and placed under the imperial ban, 180; his subjects re- volt, the hereditai'y castle of Haps- burg laid in ruins, 181. Frederick III. elected emperor as eldest representative of the House of Hapsburg; his long, weak, and miserable reign, 181; divisions in the empire, 1S2; is crowned at Rome, marries Eleanor of Portugal, 183; acknowledges the leader, Podiebrad, King of Bohemia; besieged in Vienna by his brother, Albert; in spite of his political address he is regarded with contempt from his inglorious reign, 186. Frederick III. (Elector Palatine),quits Lutheranism for Calvinism, 224; his intolerance; introduces the Genevan creed by force, 229. Frederick V. (Elector Palatine), marries Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of England, aims at the Bohemian crown, 234; elected by the Bohemian States: his character, 236; disgusts his subjects by his Calvinistic fanaticism ; expelled from his king- dom, and put under the ban of the empire, 237; is degraded and de- prived of his electorship, 238; the , Y 338 Palatinate of the Rhine restored to his eldest son, 248. Frederick 'William II. of Prussia, the Great, invades Silesia, 258; invades Bohemia fruitlessly, 259. Frederick William III. of Prussia, his weak and treacherous character, 294. Frederick William, crown-prince of Prussia (son of William I., emperor of Germany), married to the Princesa- Royal of England, 299. Frederick William IV. of Prussia, succeeded by his brother, William I., the present Emperor of Germany; Prussian aggression; irritation be- tween the Prussian and Austrian governments, 303. French Revolution of 1848, its effects upon Germany, 297. GALLO-Romans, The, 44. Gaul, state of in Sixth Century, 44. Gauls, their invasion of Germany, 16. Genseric, the barbarian leader of the Vandals, founds a kingdom in Africa, 25. Gerald, archbishop of Mayence, bribes the electors to secure the nomination of his cousin Adolph of Nassau to the crown, 152; breaks with Adolph and procures his deposition, is reduced to submission by Albert of Austria, 154. Germam, its signification and deriva- tion, bounderies, 9 ; the name first applied, by Csesar, 17. Germanic Confederation, 289; afifairs of, after 1816, 292. Gei-manic Empire, dissolution of, 274; the old, 310. Germanic nations, origin of, 10: bar- barians ravage Gaul, 22; confedera- tions, the locality of, in fifth century, 23. Gei-man Unity, meeting in Cobuvg in favour of, against French aggression, 310, 311. Germanicus, his campaigns against the Germans, defeats Arminius, 19. Germans, religion of the ancient, 14; emigration of the, 20. German tribes, religion of, 14 ; the barbarian laws of, 45. Germany, a Teutonic word, 10 ; the imperial crown given exclusively to, and thence called the Holy German Empire, 88; its condition after the Thirty Years' War, 249; new political divisions of, 310. Geisa, king of Hungary, fulfils his vas- salage to Frederick Barbarossa in Italy, 119. Gelimer, last king of the Vandals, sub- dued by BelesariuSj 25. George, elector of Hanover and king of England, a descendant of the Guelphic House, 99. Gessler, bailiff of Uri, insults the Swiss patriots and is slain by Tell, 160. Ghibellines, The, a political party who took part with the Emperor against the Popes, 99. Gian Gastone, last of the Medici, suc- ceeded by Maria Theresa in Tuscany, 257. Giselle, wife of Conrad II., laments his loss until her death, 98. Godfrey, the Norman chief, obtains Friesland from Charles the Fat, who afterwards causes him to be mur- dered, 73. Gouthiam, kingof the Burgundians, 42. Gregory VIII., Pope, summons the princes of Europe to a Third Crasade, 128. Gregory IX., frustrated in holding an oecumenical council by Frederick II., dies through mortification, 138. Grimbald, son of Pepin d'Heristal, mayor of the palace, 53. Grumbach, William de, of Franconia, procures the assassination of Mel- chior, bishop of Wurtzburg; is put to death, 225. Guelphs and Ghibellines, commence- ment of the rivalry of, 114. Gunther of Schwartzenburg, chosen anti-Caesar to Charles IV., poisoned by an,emissary of the latter, 165. Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, his secret alliance with the Protes- tants of Germany; his character and abilities ; subsidised by Richelieu to check the power of Austria; gains a victory over Tilly; is repulsed by Wallenstein, 239; is killed at the battle of Lutzen, 240. Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, con- spires to carry off the young king Henry IV. and obtain the regency; proclaims himself regent, and as- sumes guardianship of the emperor, 102; his character and conduct, 103. Hanover, the crown of, separated from the English crown, 294. Hapsburg, the powerful counts of, 156; become the supporters and tools of the Pope, 161. Hengist and Horsa subdue England and form the Heptarchy, 28. Henry I., surnamed the Fowler, sub- dues and re-unites 1/orraine to Ger- many, 79; his frontier campaigus; 339 sangwinary conflict with the Hun- gariaus, 80; expedition agaiust the Danes, 81. Henry II., surnamed the Saint (the Bavarian), elected Emperor, 93; ob- tains the iron crown of Lombardy; his escape from assassination at Pa via, 94: crowned by the Pope; with his death the Saxon dynasty ends, 95; results of his treaty with Rudolph, king of Burgundy, 97. Henry, the Proud, duke of Bavaria, his dominion greater than that of the Emperor; marries Gertrude, only daughter of Lothar, 114; refuses sub- mission to Conrad III., and is de- prived of his duchies. Henry III., surnamed the Black, his character, defeats the Magyar nobles ou the Raab; convokes a council at Sutri, and deposes the three Popes, Benedict IX., Sylvester III., and Gregory VI., as illegally appointed; after Clement II. the Emperor gives three more popes to Rome, all bishops of Germany, 100; confers the German duchies on various princes from high political motives, his sud- den death, 101. Henry IV. ,troubles during his boyhood, 102; knighted and declared a man at fifteen; his campaign against the Hungarians, 104; marries Bertha of Susa ; the Saxons disinter and insult the corpse of Henry's son; he overcomes them in Thuringia, and they surrender, 105; commences the interminable wars of the investi- tures, 106; pronounces sentence of deprivation on the Pope; the Em- peror's degradation at Canossa by HUdebrand, 107; his children rebel against him; conquered and taken prisoner by his youngest son; strip- ped of aU his possessions, and dies in extremity of want and desolation, 109. Henry V. recommences the struggle about the right of investiture with Pascal II.; marches upon Rome with a large army and takes the Pope prisoner; the Pope renounces the right of investiture in favour of the Emperor and crowns him. 111; by the Concordat of Worms, the rights of Emperor and Pope are clearly defined; dies childless, and with him ends the SaUc or Prankish House of Saxony, 112. Henry the lion, the duchy of Bavaria restored him by Frederick I., 118; extends widely his conquests in Silesia and Ponierania; meets Bar- barossa at Chiavenna and refuses to join him in his campaign; punished by forfeiture of all his possessions save Brunswick and Luneburg, anil banishment from the empire, 127; retires to the court of his father-in- law, Henry II. of England (Plan- tagenet) ; his wife Matilda gives birth to a son, who becomes head of that branch of the House of Han- over now reigning in England, 128. Henry VI., eldest son of Barbarossa, succeeds him as Emperor, 129; in character cruel, avaricious, and nar- row-minded; his ignoble conduct to Richard Cceur de Lion for the affront to his brother Duke Leopold at Acre; his avarice and cruelty in Naples and Sicily; dies suddenly during an in- surrection in Sicily; in this reigu Styria is added to Austria, and the expense of fortifying Vienna paid out of the king of England's ransom, 131. Henry VII., of Luxemburg, elected Emperor through the intrigues of Peter, archbishop of Mentz; follows in the footsteps of Charlemagne and "Barbarossa and worthily upholds the dignity of the empire, 160; is crowned at Rome, dies suddenly near Sienna, poisoned; the empire falls a prey to factions, 161. Henry VIII. of England courted by the rival monarchs Francis I. and Charles V. Henry the Pious, duke of Lower Silesia, attempts to repel the Mongol inva- sion, but is slain near Liegnitz, 138. Henry the Iron, of Holstein, joins Edward III. of England against the French, 166. Honorius obtains the enipire of the West, 20. Hungarians, nine years' truce with, 79. Hungary, Invasion of, by the Turks, 211. Huns, The, their characteristics, 29; their invasion of Europe. Huss, John, a disciple of Wickliff, tried for heresy and burnt alive, 176. Hussites, the war of, 176. Innocent X., Pope, declares the treaties of Munster and Osnabruck void, 246. Interregnum, the imperial crown, put up to auction, the whole of Germany becomes a scene of bloodshed, pUlage, and anarchy, 143. Italy, results of the liberation of, in. 1859, 301; secret treaty with Prussia agaiust Austria, 304. 340 Jerome of Piague tiieii for heresy and burnt alive, 176. Jerusalere, the title of kin? of, passes from Frederick II. to the King of Naples and Sicily, 135. John of Bohemia, nephew of Albert of Austria, conspires to assassinate his uncle the Emperor, 155; flies into Italy, and is ooufiued for life at Pisa, 156. John XXII., Pope, the natural enemy of the Ghibellines, his rapacity, 163. John, the blind king of Bohemia, bravely falls at Crecy ; the inscription on his sword " Ich dien" assumed by the Prince of Wales as his motto, 166. John XXIII., Pope, escapes from the Council of Constance, but is delivered up to the Emperor and Council, de- posed and condemned to rigorous imprisonment, 175; Pope Martin IV. receives his submission, and the great western schism ends, 176. Joseph I. (son of Leopold I.) his short but eventful reign; Louis XIV. hum- bled, acknowledges the Archduke Chailes as King of Spain; the war of the Spanish Succession; the vic- tories of his general Prince Eugene, 253; his reign and character, 254. Joseph II. (eldest son of Maria Theresa and Francis of Lorraine) a cipher during his mother's lifetime, acquies- ces in the partition of Poland, 261. joins Catherine of Russia in a war against Turkey, 261. JiiannaofSpain (daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella) marries Philip, son of Maximilian 1., 193; imprisoned by command of her father, 1&5; becomes incurably insane at the death of Philip, 196. KoNiGSSiABK, the Swedish General, tiikes Prague, the last event of the Thirty Years' War, 247. Ladislaus, king of Hungary (son of Albert II. of Austria) universally recognised as King in Bohemia, but tlie powers of government exercised by two factions, 1S2. Ladislaus of Poland conquered and .slain by the Turks at Varna, 1S2. Ladislaus (son of Casimir, king of Poland) elected king of Bohemia, 18.). Leopold, the margrave of Austria (ute- rine brother of the Emperor Conrad) lays the foundations of Vienna, 115. Leopold, duke of Austria, his dastardly revenge against Richard Cceut de lion, his death from a fall from his horse, 130. Leopold I., emperor of Germany, his reign and character, 251-253. Leopold II., condition of Europe on his accession, 261; terror caused by outbreak of the French Revolution ; his efforts to save his sister Maria Antoinette; his character, 262. Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, his relations with French interests, Marshal Prim offers him the crown of Spain; gives in his resignation, 307. Lollius defeats the Segambri, 17. Lorabardy wrested from Austria, 298. Lothaire (eldest son of Louis the Good- natured) utterly defeated by his brothers at Fontenaille, obtains the title of Emperor, 71. Lothar of Saxony, 91. Lotharingia, or Land of Lothaire, now called Lorraine, 72. Lothar of Saxony, count of Supplin- burg, chosen emperor; renounces all the prerogatives of his predecessor, and consents to hold his crown as vassal of the Holy See, 113; marries his only daughter, Gertrude, to Henry the Proud, duke of Bavaria, and gives him the duchy of Saxony: commencement of the rivalry of tha Guelphs and Ghibellines; Lothar dies in a peasant's hut in the Tyrol, 114. Louis the Debonnaire, his weakness of character, does penance for putting out the eyes of his nephew, 68; re- bellion of his elder sons, 69; is twice Louis II, (son of Louis, the Good- natured), suraamed the German, made first King of Germany, 72. Louis the Child, king of Germany, last of the Carlovingians in Germany, 76. Lotiis V. of Bavaria (of the Aiistro- Hapsburg family) an enemy of the Austrian princes, and an ally of the Luxemburg factions; he and his rival, Frederick of Austria, both crowned Kings of the Romans; in the victory near Mtthldox'f owes his suc- cess to Schwepperniann, 162; is exco- municated by Pope John XXII.; his generous conduct towards Frederick his rival; retains the sceptre and leigiis alone; the whole empire placed under an intei'dict; assumes the iron crown at Milan, deposes the Pope, and places on the papal throne a monk, under the title of Nicholas V. ; Lis treachery towards Edward III. of England, 164; killed at a bear hunt, 105. 341 Luilolph (son of Otho the Lion), duke of Swabia, revolts against his father, ■who deprives him of his dukedom, 86. Ltither, Martin, his career before his opposition to Bome, 199; his sermon against indulgeucies ; attacked by Henry VIII. of Englandin a treatise; summoned to Eonie, and afterwards before the Diet of Worms, 201. Lutheran party, The, styled Protest- ants, 209. Manfred (natural son of Frederick II.) occupies Naples and Sicily; is defeated and slain by Charles of Anjou, 144. Margaret (daughter of Frederick II. >, wife of Albert the Degenerate, is re- pudiated by him; in excess of grief bites the cheek of her son as a re- minder of his parent's wrongs, and dies at Frankfort, 153. Maria Theresa (daughter of Charles VI.), archduchess of Austria, queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and Em- press of Germany; her succession disputed; Frederick of Prussia de- mands the surrender of Silesia, she flees to Hungary, and convokes the Diet, 258; the magnates rise in arms at her appeal; she wages a glorious war, 259; the "partition of Poland" the only reproach of her political life; her character, 260. Marius, defeats the Cirabri, 16. Marlborough, Duke of, his victories in the Low Countries, 253. Martel, Charles, delivers France from the Saracens, 50. Mary of Burgundy (daughter and heiress of Charles the Rash), marries Maximilian I., 187; dies from a fall from her horse, 189. Marzfelder ("fields of March,") the Frank assemblies, 47. < Matilda (heiress of Boniface of Tus- cany), her zealous partisanship of Hildebrand, 108. Matthias (son of Maximilian II.), the state of Germany on his accession, 233. Maurice of Saxony, death of, 216. Maximilian I. (son of Frederick III.) betrothed to Mary of Burgundy, 186; his unopposed succession on the hereditary principle; the situation of Germany changed on the death of Frederick III., 187; conse(iuences of the marriage with Mai7, 188, 189; after her death married by proxy to Anne of Brittany; failure of the marriage, 190; his imprisonment by " the Flemings, 101; marries Bianca Maria, sister of G.ileazzo Sforza of Milan; unsuccessful in a campaign against Florence, 192 ; relations of Germany and Spain; he founds the Auhc Council, 193; defeat of his army by the Swiss, 194; cedes Milan to France, 196; the treaty of Blois; defeated by the Venetians; his de- cline and death, 197. Maximilian II. (son of Ferdinand I.), his character and extraordinary ac- quirements, 223; his policy towards the Elector Palatine, 224; his waning influence and death, 226. Mayors of the palace, 48. Meroveus, the first Merovingian king. 29. Merovingian kings, their characteris- tics, 51. Merovingian empire, decadence of, 48. Jliddle Ages end with Maximilian, 202. Modern history, commencement of, 202. Mongols, The, overrun Germany, 138. Montebello, the brilliant battle of, 300. Nelson, Lord, disavows the capitula- tion of Naples to the Anstrians, 271. Nicephorous, the Greek usurper, in- sults Charlemagne, 64. Normans, The, make a piratical descent upon Friedland, 65 : they establish an independent dukedom in Normandy, 73. Oath, The Strasbnrg, 71. Odillon, abbot of Cluny, organises the "Truce of God," 98. Odoacer founds a barbaric kingdom in Italy, 31; overcome by Theodoric at Aquileia, 40. Otho I., surnamed the Lion (son of Henry the Fowler), his cliaracter, 82; his foreign wars, 84; crowned King of the Lombards; his victory over the Hungarians, 85; receives the im- perial crown from the Pope; end of his glorious career, 88. Otho II., surnamed the Red, his charac- ter; his army destroyed by Lothaire, king of France, 89 ; marches upon Paris, his disastrous retreat; defeated by the Greeks and Saracens, 90; dies of grie^ 91. Otho III., surnamed the Prodigy, his education and character, 92; his death, probably poisoned by Ste- phania, widow of Crescentius, 93. Otho IV. (son of Henry the Lion), chosen emperor by the Guelphic fac- tion, 131; to secure the support of Innocent III. he recognises in the 342 Pope the full power of bestowing the empire ; and after the assassination of Philip the rival emperor is crowned at Rome; marries a daughter of Philip in the hope of conciliating the Ghibellines; is driven out of Rome by the populace; the Pope sets up against him Frederick, son of Henry VI., and, on being formally deposed, retires to his duchy in North Ger- many, and there dies, 133. Otto the Illustrious, refuses the crown, 76. Ottocar of Bohemia, possessor of the hereditary states of Austria as well as Bohemia, is placed under ban by ' Eodolph of Hapsburg as a rebel; sur- renders Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola to the empire, 150: his bitter mortification and humilia- tion; he revolts, and is slain in battle near Marchefeld, 151. Oxenstiern, regent of Sweden, prose- cutes the war vigorously against Fer- dinand II. Paris, after a long siege, submits to the German forces, 309. Passau, the treaty of, its effeci on Pro- testantism, 215. [48. Pepin de Landen, mayor of the palace, Pepin d'Heristal, 48. Pepin the Short (son of Charles Mar- tel), sole major domus of France, 53; his wars and victories, 54; founder of the second or Carlovingian race of kings, 55. Peter, the Magyar king, restored to the rule of his country, as a fief, by the Emperor Henry III., 100. Philip of Hohenstaufen (uncle of Fre- derick, heir to Henry VI.), chosen emperor by a faction, whilst Otho, son of Henry the Lion, is also chosen by the Guelphic party and crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, thus dividing the authority of the empire, 131. Philip the Handsome {le bel), king of France, claims the imperial crown, 160. Philip (son of Maximilian I.), marries the Infanta Juanna of Spain, 193; Ferdinand of Aragon refuses to yield up to him the throne of Castile, 195; his mysterious death, 196. Piccolomini, the imperialist general, drives Banier out of Bohemia, 242. Poland, The first partition of, 260. Poles, The, summon to their aid against the Prussians, Hermann of Salza, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, 136. Popes, The, origin of the temporal power of, 54; the prerogative ac- quired by them through the corona- tion of Charlemagne, 64. Procopius, the monk, leader of the Taborites, defeats the mercenaries of Sigismund, and ravages Austria and other states; vanquished in the battle of Prague, 178. Prussians, The Pagan, conquered and civilised by the Knights of the Teu- tonic Order, and Prussia becomes their possession, 136. Prussia rises into Germany, 297; ter- ritorial position of, before and after the war with Austria; her prepa- rations for war with France, 30(3; France declares war against her (1870), 307. RAsroN, Henry, landgrave of Thurin- gia, chosen Emperor in place of Frederick II., 140, Ravenna, exarchate of, its donation to the Pope by Pepin, 54. Reformation, commencement of the, 198. Richelieu, Cardinal, subsidises Gusta- vus Adolphus to check Austria, 239, Roger, the Norman, of Naples, con- spires with Guelpli against Conrad III., 118. Rollo and the old pirate Hastings pillage Paris, 73. Roman empire divided between the two sons of Theodosius, 20. Roman France conquered by Teutonic France, 52. Romulus Angustulus dethroned by Odoacer, 31. Rodolph of Hapsburg, his character and career during the interregnum ; swears unconditional obedience to. Gregory X.; his coronation; begins his reign by purging Germany from internal disorder; suppresses the rob- ber chiefs and compels the homage of the great princes, 149; humbles the pride of Ottocar of Bohemia, 150; reduces all Austria as far as Vienna; founds the imperial dynasty of Aus- tria; cedes all the rights of the em- pire over the territories of the church , 151; dies universally lamented; the tranquillity of his reign, his admir- able character as a sovereign, 152. Rodolph II. (son of MaximUian II.), the right of i^rimogeniture in the House of Austria established; his character, his attempts to curtail religious liberty, 228; dissensions of the Lutherans and (jalvinists; civil 343 dissensions ruin the trade of Ger- many, 230 ; his eccentricities and misgovernment; compelled to abdi- cate Bohemia, Silesia, and Lusatia, •231; his decease, 232. Kudolph III,, of Burgundy, present at coronation of Conrad II, at Kome; his treaty with Henry II, and its consequences, 97, Rupert, Count Palatine, elected Em- peror; crosses the Alps, is defeated by tlie Duke of Milan, and inglori- ously retraces his steps, 172; his un- expected death, 173, Russian influence in Germany, 298. Saladin, sultan of Egypt, defeats the Christians near Tiberius, 128. Salian Franks, their laws, 45. Salic Law, The, 4(3, Saxons, The, subdued and christianised by Charlemagne, 59, Schleswig-Holstein, the question of the duchies of, 295, Schweppermann, by his skill gains the battle of Mtthldoi-f, 1622, his reward of two eggs, 163. Segambri, they repel the attacks of Agrippa, 17. Segovesus, king of the Keltre, 16, Sens, its six months heroic defence against the Normans, 74. Seven WeeJcs' War, The, battles of Sadowa, Lissa, and Custozza, 305, Sigebert, king of Austrasia, seizes upon theterritories of his brother Chilperic, is assassinated by Fredegonde, 43, Sigismund, margrave of Brandenburg, (brother of Wenceslaus), succeeds to the throne of Hungary; elected Em- peror, his arrogant character, 173 ; summons a council to meet at Con- stance; his misconduct during the Council; the Bohemians oppose his succession, and it costs him a war of sixteen years to attain it, 176 ; suc- ceeds to the crown of Bohemia, 178; his farcical coronation at Rome; the nobility conspire against him, his death, 179, Sigismund, John, and the Turks, 225, Soliman the Magnificent invades Hun- gary, dies from anxietv and fatigue, 226, Spinola ravages the Palatinate, 237. Stephen II. , Pope, crowns Pepin at St, Denis, 54. Stilicho invites Alaric to invade Italy, 20, Strasburg Oath, The, 71. Suevic race, its localities, political system and mode of life, 11; con- founded with the people of Spain and Portugal, a.d. 585, 26. Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, placed in the pontificial chair by Henry 111., and takes the name of Clement II. Swiss War of Independence, The, 156. Swabia, The duke of (second son of Barbarossa), dies of the plague before Antioch, in his twentieth year, 129. TANCMAR.half-brothev of Otlio the Lion, revolts against him and is slain, S3. Tell, WiUiam, the Swiss patriot, 158. Theodobert, king of Austria, conquers the Greeks and Goths in Italy, 41. Theodobert II., king of Austria, 47. Theodoric erects the empire of the Ostrogoths, 40; arrests the career of Clovis, 41. Theophania, daughter of the Greek Emperor Nicephorous, marries Otho II., 88; governs the empire for her infant son, 91. Thierry (son of Clovis, and King of Metz), massacres the Thuringians, 39, Thierry II., his four sons assassinated, 43; king of Burgundy, 47. Thierry III,, (last of the "Sluggard Kings ") nominally governs Austria and Neustria, 50. Thirty Years' War, the, 235; vicissi- tudes of, ended by the Peace of Weit- phalia, 244; its varied horrors, 246. Tiberius, intrigues with the Germans, 17; guards the Rhine, IS. Tilly, Count (General of Ferdinand II.), completes the conquest of the Palatinate, 238; is killed at the pas- sage of the Lech, 239. Trajan defeats the Germans, 19. Trent, the Council of, 213, " Truce of God," The, organization and operation of, 98. Turenne, Marshal, gains the victory of Zummerhausen and invades Bavaria and Bohemia, 244. Urban III., Pope, dies on hearing of the defeat of the Christians by the Saracens, 128, Vandals, The, found a kingdom in Africa, 25. Varus, Quintilius, provokes the Ger- mans to rebellion by his extortions, 17; his legions cut to pieces by Ar- minius, 18, Venetia surrendered by Austria to France, 305, Verdun, treaty of, repartition of Char- lemagne's empire, 71; the unity of Christian Europe dissolved by the treaty of, 72. 544 VersaiUes, treaty of (1871), 30f». Vitigis, king of the Ostrogoths, cedes Provence to the Franks, 41. ■VVailenstein commands the army of Ferdinan d II . ; is secretjyassassiaated by the Emperor's orders, 240. War, the Eeligious, in France and Germany begins, 214. War of the Spanish Succession, 252. War of the Austrian Succession, 257; ended by the Peace of Aix-la-Cha- pelle, 259. War, the Seven Years', 259. Weimar, the Duke of Saxe, defeats the imperialists; his mysterious death, 242. Weinsberg, Duke Guelph of, defeated by Conrad III. at, 115; the scene of theWeibertreue ".woman's fidelity," 116. VV^enceslaus(sou of Charles IV.)sucoeeds to the throne; his vicious life and detestable character, 168; the Bohe- mians rise against liim and consign him to a dungeon for four months, 169 ; divides the empire into four circles, 170; is deposed 171; is driven out of Prague aud dies in an apo- plectic fit, 177. Westphalia, the treaty of the Z,'«;/ of modern histoiy; its conditions, 248. Wicklifife, the Bohemians made ac- quainted with the writings of, by the marriage of Anna, sister of Wen- ceslaus,with Richard II. of England, 171. William of Holland, his pretensions to the imperiaV throne, 142. William I., king of Prussia, made Emperor of the New German Em- pire, 311. Winkelried, his patriotism at Sem- pach, 171. Witenagemots (Councils of the Wise), the Anglo-Saxon, 47. Wittikind, the Saxon leader, long re- sists Charlemagne, 89. Wladislas, duke of Bohemia, obtains the title of King through his fidelity to Frederick Barbarossa, 119. Wurtembevg, the King of, denounces the insidious ambition of Prussia,298, Zapoli, John of. Palatine of Transyl- vania, 220. Ziska, leader of the Taborites, defeats Sigismund and captures Prague, 177. Zwentibold obtains the duchy of Bo- hemia from Aruulf, 74. WILLIAM COLLINS AND COaiPANY, PRI>'TERS, GLASGOW. PUTNAM'S SERIES OF ATLASES. I. THE STUDENT'S ATLAS OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, Consisting of 20 Maps witli Descriptive Letterpress. Illustrated by numerous Engravings. Glasgow and New York. Imp. 8vo, cloth extra, $2.50. II. THE COLLEGIATE ATLAS. A new comprehensive and useful Atlas of Modern Geography for the Library and for ordinary reference, with about 40 Maps. Glasgow and New York. Imp. 8vo, cloth extra, $4.00. III. FOR REFERENCE, LIBRARIES, AND FOR FAMILY USE. THE INTERNATIONAL ATLAS-GEOGRAPHICAL, POLITICAL, CLASSICAL, AND HISTORICAL. Consisting of 65 Maps — .35 of Modern Geography, showing all the latest Discoveries and changes of Boundaries; and 30 of Historical and Classical Geography, with Descriptive Letterpress of Histori- cal and Classical Geography, by Wm. T. Collier, LL.D,, and Leonhakd Schmitz, LL.D. Imp. 8vo, cloth extra, $6.00; half morocco extra, $8.00. IV THE STUDENT S ATLAS OP CLASSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 'mp. 8v< , LL.D. Leonhakd Schmitz, LL.D. Cloth, $1.50, V, THE STUDENT'S ATLAS OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY. Consisting of 16 Maps, Imp. 8vo. Constructed and Engraved by Miller, with Descriptive Letterpress by Wm. F. Collier, LL.D., and full Index. Cloth, $1.50. VI. THE STUDENT'S ATLAS OP HISTORICAL AND CLASSICAL GEOGRAPHY. (The two above works bound together). Containing 30 Maps, with Descriptive Letterpress. Cloth, $2.50. Vil. THE PORTABLE ATLAS. OF MODERN GEOGRAPHY. Constructed and Engraved by John Bartholomew, F. R. S. A, With 16 Maps. Imp. 8vo, cloth, $1. •nil, THE ATLAS OF SCRIPTURE GEOGRAPHY. 16 Maps, witli Questions on eacl;i Map. Small 4to, flexible, cloth, 75 cents. 1. The Ancient World. 2. Countries mentioned in the Scrip- tures. 8. Canaan, in the time of the Patriarchs. 4. Journeying of the Israelites. 5. Canaan as divided amongst the Tribes. C. Dominions of David and Solomon. 7. Countries of the Jewisli Captivities. 8. Palestine in the time of Christ, 9. Modern Palestine. 10. Physical Map of Palestine. 11. Journeys of the Apostle Paul. 12. The distribution of the Prevailing Religions of tlie World. 13. The Tabernacle, Camp, etc. 14. Solomon'sTemple and Herod'sTemple, 15. Ancient Jerusalem. 16. Modern Jerusalem. IX. THE HANDBOOK OF SCRIPTURE GEOGRAPHY. 10 Maps and Plans, with Questions and Answers on each map. 16mo, cloth extra. ^• THE STUDENT'S ATLAS OF MODERN AND CLASSICAL GEOGRAPHY, Consisting of 50 Maps, with Descriptive Letterpress, Half morocco, extra, $6.00. XI. THE ACADEMIC ATLAS. Consisting of 32 Maps, Imp. 4to, with a copious Index. Cloth extra., $2.50. XII. THE LIBRARY ATLAS. C&nsisting of 100 Maps of Modern, Historical, and Classical Geo- graphy, etc., with Descriptive Letterpress and copious Indices. Imp. 8vo, half morocco extra, $14.0. Some fell) of the Criticisms on "Putnam's Series of Atlases." "The Interkational Atlas ... is handsome and accurate, beautifully engi-aved and exq[uisitely coloured ... of exceptional completeness."— iV. Y. Evening Mail. " The Maps are well executed, and the work is most convenient for reference."— N. Y. Tribune. "The Maps of the Classical Atlas are of exquisite clearness and beauty."— Cliristian Union. "The Maps of the Portable Atlas are excellent, and the series to which it belongs contains the best low-priced atlases in the marl^et." — N. Y. Evening Mail. "The Scripture Atlas is full, accurate, clear, and portable." — Christian Union. " We refer to it with edification and delight."— iJ/jode Island Schoolmaster. "A very complete and compendious worii, apparently accurate and in beautiful style."— iJev. Stephen H. Tyng, D.J). G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 182 Fifth Avenue, New York. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 029 937 654 h it kli ao I A