Chapter IV: , VII (83)

Frederick was succeeded by his son Henry the Sixth, who had
already been chosen King, and who in the next year, 1191, was
crowned Emperor. The chief event of his reign was the conquest
of the Kingdom of Sicily, which he claimed in right of his
wife Constance, the daughter of the first King William. He
died in 1197, leaving his son Frederick a young child, who had
already been chosen King in Germany, and who succeeded as
hereditary King in Sicily. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily thus
came to an end, except so far as it was continued through
Frederick, who was descended from the Norman Kings through his
mother. On the death of the Emperor Henry, the election of
young Frederick seems to have been quite forgotten, and the
crown was disputed between his uncle Philip of Swabia and Otto
of Saxony. He was son of Henry the Lion, who had been Duke of
Saxony and Bavaria, but who had lost the more part of his
dominions in the time of Frederick Barbarossa. Otto's mother
was Matilda, daughter of Henry the Second of England. ... Both
Kings were crowned, and, after the death of Philip, Otto was
crowned Emperor in 1209. But presently young Frederick was
again chosen, and in 1220 he was crowned Emperor, and reigned
thirty years till his death in 1250. This Frederick the
Second, who joined together so many crowns, was called the
Wonder of the World. And he well deserved the name, for
perhaps no King that ever reigned had greater natural gifts,
and in thought and learning he was far above the age in which
he lived. In his own kingdom of Sicily he could do pretty much
as he pleased, and it flourished wonderfully in his time. But in
Germany and Italy he had constantly to struggle against
enemies of all kinds. In Germany he had to win the support of
the Princes by granting them privileges which did much to
undermine the royal power, and on the other hand he showed no
favour to the rising power of the cities. In Italy he had
endless strivings with one Pope after another, with Innocent
the Third; Honorius the Third, Gregory the Ninth, and Innocent
the Fourth; as well as with the Guelfic cities, which
withstood him much as they had withstood his grandfather. He
was more than once excommunicated by the Popes, and in 1245
Pope Innocent the Fourth held a Council at Lyons, in which he
professed to depose the Emperor. More than one King was chosen
in opposition to him in Germany, just as had been done in the
time of Henry the Fourth, and there were civil wars all his
time, both in Germany and in Italy, while a great part of the
Kingdom of Burgundy was beginning to slip away from the Empire
altogether."

_E. A. Freeman,
General Sketch of European History,
chapter 11._

"It is probable that there never lived a human being endowed
with greater natural gifts, or whose natural gifts were,
according to the means afforded him by his age, more
sedulously cultivated, than the last Emperor of the House of
Swabia. There seems to be no aspect of human nature which was
not developed to the highest degree in his person. In
versatility of gifts, in what we may call manysidedness of
character, he appears as a sort of mediæval Alkibiadês, while
he was undoubtedly far removed from Alkibiadês' utter lack of
principle or steadiness of any kind. Warrior, statesman,
lawgiver, scholar, there was nothing in the compass of the
political or intellectual world of his age which he failed to
grasp. In an age of change, when, in every corner of Europe
and civilized Asia, old kingdoms, nations, systems, were
falling and new ones rising, Frederick was emphatically the
man of change, the author of things new and unheard of--he was
stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis.
{1447}
A suspected heretic, a suspected Mahometan, he was the subject
of all kinds of absurd and self-contradictory charges; but the
charges mark real features in the character of the man. He was
something unlike any other Emperor or any other man. ... Of
all men, Frederick the Second might have been expected to be
the founder of something, the beginner of some new era,
political or intellectual. He was a man to whom some great
institution might well have looked back as its creator, to
whom some large body of men, some sect or party or nation,
might well have looked back as their prophet or founder or
deliverer. But the most gifted of the sons of men has left
behind him no such memory, while men whose gifts cannot bear a
comparison with his are reverenced as founders by grateful
nations, churches, political and philosophical parties.
Frederick in fact founded nothing, and he sowed the seeds of
the destruction of many things. His great charters to the
spiritual and temporal princes of Germany dealt the death-blow
to the Imperial power, while he, to say the least, looked
coldly on the rising power of the cities and on those
commercial Leagues which were in his time the best element of
German political life. In fact, in whatever aspect we look at
Frederick the Second, we find him, not the first, but the
last, of every series to which he belongs. An English writer
[Capgrave], two hundred years after his time, had the
penetration to see that he was really the last Emperor. He was
the last Prince in whose style the Imperial titles do not seem
a mockery; he was the last under whose rule the three Imperial
kingdoms retained any practical connexion with one another and
with the ancient capital of all. ... He was not only the last
Emperor of the whole Empire; he might almost be called the
last King of its several Kingdoms. After his time Burgundy
vanishes as a kingdom. ... Italy too, after Frederick,
vanishes as a kingdom; any later exercise of the royal
authority in Italy was something which came and went wholly by
fits and starts. ... Germany did not utterly vanish, or utterly
split in pieces, like the sister kingdoms; but after Frederick
came the Great Interregnum, and after the Great Interregnum
the royal power in Germany never was what it had been before.
In his hereditary Kingdom of Sicily he was not absolutely the
last of his dynasty, for his son Manfred ruled prosperously
and gloriously for some years after his death. But it is none
the less clear that from Frederick's time the Sicilian Kingdom
was doomed. ... Still more conspicuously than all was
Frederick the last Christian King of Jerusalem, the last
baptized man who really ruled the Holy Land or wore a crown in
the Holy City. ... In the world of elegant letters Frederick
has some claim to be looked on as the founder of that modern
Italian language and literature which first assumed a
distinctive shape at his Sicilian court. But in the wider
field of political history Frederick appears nowhere as a
creator, but rather everywhere as an involuntary destroyer.
... Under Frederick the Empire and everything connected with
it seems to crumble and decay while preserving its external
splendour. As soon as its brilliant possessor is gone, it at
once falls asunder. It is a significant fact that one who in
mere genius, in mere accomplishments, was surely the greatest
prince who ever wore a crown, a prince who held the greatest
place on earth, and who was concerned during a long reign in
some of the greatest transactions of one of the greatest ages,
seems never, even from his own flatterers, to have received
that title of Great which has been so lavishly bestowed on far
smaller men. ... Many causes combined to produce this singular
result, that a man of the extraordinary genius of Frederick,
and possessed of every advantage of birth, office, and
opportunity, should have had so little direct effect upon the
world. It is not enough to attribute his failure to the many
and great faults of his moral character. Doubtless they were
one cause among others. But a man who influences future ages
is not necessarily a good man. ... The weak side in the
brilliant career of Frederick is one which seems to have been
partly inherent in his character, and partly the result of the
circumstances in which he found himself. Capable of every
part, and in fact playing every part by turns, he had no
single definite object, pursued honestly and steadfastly,
throughout his whole life. With all his powers, with all his
brilliancy, his course throughout life seems to have been in a
manner determined for him by others. He was ever drifting into
wars, into schemes of policy, which seem to be hardly ever of
his own choosing. He was the mightiest and most dangerous
adversary that the Papacy ever had. But he does not seem to
have withstood the Papacy from any personal choice, or as the
voluntary champion of any opposing principle. He became the
enemy of the Papacy, he planned schemes which involved the
utter overthrow of Papacy, yet he did so simply because he
found that no Pope would ever let him alone. ... The most
really successful feature in Frederick's career, his
acquisition of Jerusalem [see CRUSADES: A. D. 1216-1229], is
not only a mere episode in his life, but it is something that
was absolutely forced upon him against his will. ... With
other Crusaders the Holy War was, in some cases, the main
business of their lives; in all cases it was something
seriously undertaken as a matter either of policy or of
religious duty. But the Crusade of the man who actually did
recover the Holy City is simply a grotesque episode in his
life. Excommunicated for not going, excommunicated again for
going, excommunicated again for coming back, threatened on
every side, he still went, and he succeeded. What others had
failed to win by arms, he contrived to win by address, and all
that came of his success was that it was made the ground of
fresh accusations against him. ... For a man to influence his
age, he must in some sort belong to his age. He should be
above it, before it, but he should not be foreign to it. ...
But Frederick belongs to no age; intellectually he is above
his own age, above every age; morally it can hardly be denied
that he was below his age; but in nothing was he of his age."

_E. A. Freeman,
The Emperor Frederick the Second
(Historical Essays, volume 1, Essay 10)._

For an account of Frederick's brilliant Sicilian court, and of
some of the distinguishing features of his reign in Southern
Italy, as well as of the end of his family, in the tragical
deaths of his son Manfred and his grandson Conradin (1268).

See ITALY: A. D. 1183-1250.

ALSO IN:
_T. L. Kington,
History of Frederick the Second._

_J. Bryce,
The Holy Roman Empire,
chapters 10-13._

_H. H. Milman,
History of Latin Christianity,
book 8, chapter 7, and book 9._

{1448}

GERMANY: A. D. 1142-1152.
Creation of the Electorate of Brandenburg.

See BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1142-1152.

GERMANY: A. D. 1156.
The Margravate of Austria created a Duchy.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 805-1246.

GERMANY: A. D. 1180-1214.
Bavaria and the Palatinate of the Rhine acquired by the house
of Wittelsbach.

See BAVARIA: A. D. 1180-1356.

GERMANY: A. D. 1196-1197.
The Fourth Crusade.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1196-1197.

GERMANY: 13th Century.
The rise of the Hanseatic League.

See HANSA TOWNS.

GERMANY: 13th Century.
Cause of the multiplication of petty principalities and
states.

"While the duchies and counties of Germany retained their
original character of offices or governments, they were of
course, even though considered as hereditary, not subject to
partition among children. When they acquired the nature of
fiefs, it was still consonant to the principles of a feudal
tenure that the eldest son should inherit according to the law
of primogeniture; an inferior provision or appanage, at most,
being reserved for the younger children. The law of England
favoured the eldest exclusively; that of France gave him great
advantages. But in Germany a different rule began to prevail
about the thirteenth century. An equal partition of the
inheritance, without the least regard to priority of birth,
was the general law of its principalities. Sometimes this was
effected by undivided possession, or tenancy in common; the
brothers residing together, and reigning jointly. This tended
to preserve the integrity of dominion; but as it was
frequently incommodious, a more usual practice was to divide
the territory. From such partitions are derived those numerous
independent principalities of the same house, many of which still
subsist in Germany. In 1589 there were eight reigning princes
of the Palatine family; and fourteen, in 1675, of that of
Saxony. Originally these partitions were in general absolute
and without reversion; but, as their effect in weakening
families became evident, a practice was introduced of making
compacts of reciprocal succession, by which a fief was
prevented from escheating to the empire, until all the male
posterity of the first feudatory should be extinct. Thus,
while the German empire survived, all the princes of Hesse or
of Saxony had reciprocal contingencies of succession, or what
our lawyers call cross-remainders, to each other's dominions.
A different system was gradually adopted. By the Golden Bull
of Charles IV. the electoral territory, that is, the
particular district to which the electoral suffrage was
inseparably attached, became incapable of partition, and was
to descend to the eldest son. In the 15th century the present
house of Brandenburg set the first example of establishing
primogeniture by law; the principalities of Anspach and
Bayreuth were dismembered from it for the benefit of younger
branches; but it was declared that all the other dominions of
the family should for the future belong exclusively to the
reigning elector. This politic measure was adopted in several
other families; but, even in the 16th century, the prejudice
was not removed, and some German princes denounced curses on
their posterity, if they should introduce the impious custom
of primogeniture. ... Weakened by these subdivisions, the
principalities of Germany in the 14th and 15th centuries
shrink to a more and more diminutive size in the scale of
nations."

_H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 5 (volume 2)._

See, also,
CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE, OF GERMANY.

GERMANY: A. D. 1212.
The Children's Crusade.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1212.

GERMANY: A. D. 1231-1315.
Relations of the Swiss Forest Cantons to the Empire and to the
House of Austria.

See SWITZERLAND: THE THREE FOREST CANTONS.

GERMANY: A. D. 1250-1272.
Degradation of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Great Interregnum.
Anarchy and disorder universal.
Election of Rudolf of Hapsburg.

"With Frederick [the Second] fell the Empire. From the ruin
that overwhelmed the greatest of its houses it emerged, living
indeed, and destined to a long life, but so shattered,
crippled, and degraded, that it could never more be to Europe
and to Germany what it once had been. ... The German kingdom
broke down beneath the weight of the Roman Empire. To be
universal sovereign Germany had sacrificed her own political
existence. The necessity which their projects in Italy and
disputes with the Pope laid the Emperors under of purchasing
by concessions the support of their own princes, the ease with
which in their absence the magnates could usurp, the
difficulty which the monarch returning found in resuming the
privileges of his crown, the temptation to revolt and set up
pretenders to the throne which the Holy See held out, these
were the causes whose steady action laid the foundation of
that territorial independence which rose into a stable fabric
at the era of the Great Interregnum. Frederick II. had, by two
Pragmatic Sanctions, A. D. 1220 and 1232, granted, or rather
confirmed, rights already customary, such as to give the
bishops and nobles legal sovereignty in their own towns and
territories, except when the Emperor should be present; and
thus his direct jurisdiction became restricted to his narrowed
domain, and to the cities immediately dependent on the crown.
With so much less to do, an Emperor became altogether a less
necessary personage; and hence the seven magnates of the
realm, now by law or custom sole electors, were in no haste to
fill up the place of Conrad IV., whom the supporters of his
father Frederick had acknowledged. William of Holland [A. D.
1254] was in the field, but rejected by the Swabian party: on
his death a new election was called for, and at last set on
foot. The archbishop of Cologne advised his brethren to choose
some one rich enough to support the dignity, not strong enough
to be feared by the electors: both requisites met in the
Plantagenet Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of the English
Henry III. He received three, eventually four votes, came to
Germany, and was crowned at Aachen [A. D. 1256]. But three of
the electors, finding that his bribe to them was lower than to
the others, seceded in disgust, and chose Alfonso X. of
Castile, who, shrewder than his competitor, continued to watch
the stars at Toledo, enjoying the splendours of his title
while troubling himself about it no further than to issue now
and then a proclamation. Meantime the condition of Germany was
frightful. The new Didius Julianus, the chosen of princes
baser than the prætorians whom they copied, had neither the
character nor the outward power and resources to make himself
respected. Every floodgate of anarchy was opened: prelates and
barons extended their domains by war: robber-knights infested
the highways and the rivers: the misery of the weak, the
tyranny and violence of the strong, were such as had not been
seen for centuries.
{1449}
Things were even worse than under the Saxon and Franconian
Emperors; for the petty nobles who had then been in some
measure controlled by their dukes were now, after the
extinction of the great houses, left without any feudal
superior. Only in the cities was shelter or peace to be found.
Those of the Rhine had already leagued themselves for mutual
defence, and maintained a struggle in the interests of
commerce and order against universal brigandage. At last, when
Richard had been some time dead, it was felt that such things
could not go on for ever: with no public law, and no courts of
justice, an Emperor, the embodiment of legal government, was
the only resource. The Pope himself, having now sufficiently
improved the weakness of his enemy, found the disorganization
of Germany beginning to tell upon his revenues, and threatened
that if the electors did not appoint an Emperor, he would.
Thus urged, they chose, in 1272 [1273?], Rudolf, count of
Hapsburg, founder of the house of Austria. From this point
there begins a new era. We have seen the Roman Empire revived
in A. D. 800, by a prince whose vast dominions gave ground to
his claim of universal monarchy; again erected, in A. D. 962,
on the narrower but firmer basis of the German kingdom. We
have seen Otto the Great and his successors during the three
following centuries, a line of monarchs of unrivalled vigour
and abilities, strain every nerve to make good the pretensions
of their office against the rebels in Italy and the
ecclesiastical power. Those efforts had now failed signally
and hopelessly. Each successive Emperor had entered the strife
with resources scantier than his predecessors, each had been
more decisively vanquished by the Pope, the cities, and the
princes. The Roman Empire might, and, so far as its practical
utility was concerned, ought now to have been suffered to
expire; nor could it have ended more gloriously than with the
last of the Hohenstaufen. That it did not so expire, but lived
on 600 years more, till it became a piece of antiquarianism
hardly more venerable than ridiculous--till, as Voltaire said,
all that could be said about it was that it was neither holy,
nor Roman, nor an empire--was owing partly indeed to the
belief, still unshaken, that it was a necessary part of the
world's order, yet chiefly to its connection, which was by
this time indissoluble, with the German kingdom. The Germans
had confounded the two characters of their sovereign so long,
and had grown so fond of the style and pretensions of a
dignity whose possession appeared to exalt them above the
other peoples of Europe, that it was now too late for them to
separate the local from the universal monarch. If a German
king was to be maintained at all, he must be Roman Emperor;
and a German king there must still be. ... That head, however,
was no longer what he had been. The relative position of
Germany and France was now exactly the reverse of that which
they had occupied two centuries earlier. Rudolf was as
conspicuously a weaker sovereign than Philip III. of France,
as the Franconian Emperor Henry III. had been stronger than
the Capetian Philip I. In every other state of Europe the
tendency of events had been to centralize the administration
and increase the power of the monarch, even in England not to
diminish it: in Germany alone had political union become
weaker, and the independence of the princes more confirmed."

_J. Bryce,
The Holy Roman Empire,
chapter 13._

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1250-1520.

GERMANY: A. D. 1273-1308.
The first Hapsburg kings of the Romans, Rodolph and Albert.

The choice made (A. D. 1273) by the German Electors of Rodolph
of Hapsburg for King of the Romans (see AUSTRIA: A. D.
1246-1282), was duly approved and confirmed by Pope Gregory
X., who silenced, by his spiritual admonitions, the rival
claims of King Alfonso of Castile. But Rodolph, to secure this
papal confirmation of his title, found it necessary to
promise, through his ambassadors, a renewal of the
Capitulation of Otho IV., respecting the temporalities of the
Pope. This he repeated in person, on meeting the Pope at
Lausanne, in 1275, On that occasion, "an agreement was entered
into which afterwards ratified to the Church the long disputed
gift of Charlemagne, comprising Ravenna, Æmilia, Bobbio,
Cesena, Forumpopoli, Forli, Faenza, Imola, Bologna, Ferrara,
Comacchio, Adria, Rimini, Urbino, Monteferetro, and the
territory of Bagno. Rodolph also bound himself to protect the
privileges of the Church, and to maintain the freedom of
Episcopal elections, and the right of appeal in all
ecclesiastical causes; and having stipulated for receiving the
imperial crown in Rome he promised to undertake an expedition
to the holy land. If Rodolph were sincere in these last
engagements, the disturbed state of his German dominions
afforded him an apology for their present non-fulfilment: but
there is good reason for believing that he never intended to
visit either Rome or Palestine; and his indifference to Italy
has even been the theme of panegyric with his admirers. The
repeated and mortifying reverses of the two Frederics were
before his eyes; there was little to excite his sympathy with
the Italians; and though Lombardy seemed ready to acknowledge
his supremacy, the Tuscan cities evinced aspirations after
independence." During the early years of Rodolph's reign he
was employed in establishing his authority, as against the
contumacy of Ottocar, King of Bohemia, and the Duke of Bavaria.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1246-1282.

Meantime, Gregory X. and three short-lived successors in the
papal office passed away, and Nicholas III. had come to it
(1277). That vigorous pontiff called Rodolph to account for
not having yet surrendered the states of the Church in due
form, and whispered a hint of excommunication and interdict.
"Rodolph was too prudent to disregard this admonition: he
evaded the projected crusade and journey to Rome; but he took
care to send thither an emissary, who in his name surrendered
to the Pope the territory already agreed on. ... During his
entire reign Rodolph maintained his indifference towards
Italy." His views "were rather directed to the wilds of
Hungary and Germany than to the delicious regions of the
south. ... He compelled Philip, Count of Savoy, to surrender
Morat, Payerne, and Guminen, which had been usurped from the
Empire. By a successful expedition across the Jura, he brought
back to obedience Otho IV. Count of Burgundy; and forced him
to renounce the allegiance he had proffered to Philip III.
King of France. ... He crushed an insurrection headed by an
impostor, who had persuaded the infatuated multitude to
believe that he was the Emperor Frederic II.
{1450}
And he freed his dominions from rapine and desolation by the
destruction of several castles, whose owners infested the
country with their predatory incursions." Before his death, in
1291, Rodolph "grew anxious to secure to his son Albert the
succession to the throne, and his nomination by the Electors
ere the grave closed upon himself. ... But all his entreaties
were unavailing; he was coldly reminded that he himself was
still the 'King,' and that the Empire was too poor to support
two kings. Rodolph might now repent his neglect to assume the
imperial crown: but the character of Albert seems to have been
the real obstacle to his elevation. With many of the great
qualities of his father, this prince was deficient in his
milder virtues; and his personal bravery and perseverance were
tainted with pride, haughtiness; and avarice." On Rodolph's
death, the Electors chose for his successor Adolphus, Count of
Nassau, a choice of which they soon found reason to repent. By
taking pay from Edward I. of England, for an alliance with the
latter against the King of France, and by attempts to enforce
a purchased claim upon the Landgraviate of Thuringia, Adolphus
brought himself into contempt, and in 1298 he was solemnly
deposed by the Electors, who now conferred the kingship upon
Albert of Austria whom they had rejected six years before.
"The deposed sovereign was, however, strongly supported; and
he promptly collected his adherents, and marched at the head
of a vast army against Albert, who was not unprepared for his
reception. A great battle took place at Gelheim, near Worms;
and, after a bloody contest, the troops of Adolphus were
entirely defeated," and he himself was slain. But Albert, now
unopposed in Germany, found his title disputed at Rome.
Boniface VIII., the most arrogant of all popes, refused to
acknowledge the validity of his election, and drove him into a
close alliance with the Pope's implacable and finally
triumphant enemy, Philip IV. of France (see PAPACY: A. D.
1294-1348). He was soon at enmity, moreover, with a majority
of the Electors who had given the crown to him, and they,
stimulated by the Pope, were preparing to depose him, as they
had deposed Adolphus. But Albert's energy broke up their
plans. He humbled their leader, the Archbishop-Elector of
Mentz, and the rest became submissive. The Pope now came to
terms with him, and invited him to Rome to receive the
imperial crown; also offering to him the crown of France, if
he would take it from the head of the excommunicated Philip;
but while these proposals were under discussion, Boniface
suffered humiliations at the hands of the French king which
caused his death. During most of his reign, Albert was busy
with undertakings of ambition and rapacity which had no
success. He attempted to seize the counties of Holland,
Zealand, and Friesland, as fiefs reverting to the crown, on
the death of John, Count of Holland, in 1299. He claimed the
Bohemian crown in 1306, when Wenceslaus V., the young king,
was assassinated, and invaded the country; but only to be
beaten back. He was defeated at Lucka, in 1308, when
attempting to grasp the inheritance of the Landgrave of
Thuringia--under the very transaction which had chiefly caused
his predecessor Adolphus to be deposed, and he himself
invested with the Roman crown. Finally, he was in hostilities
with the Swiss Forest Cantons, and was leading his forces
against them, in May, 1308, when he was assassinated by
several nobles, including his cousin John, whose enmity he had
incurred.

_Sir R. Comyn,
History of the Western Empire,
chapters 14-17 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN;
_W. Coxe,
History of the House of Austria,
chapter 5 (volume 1)._

GERMANY: A. D. 1282.
Acquisition of the duchy of Austria by the House of Hapsburg.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1246-1282.

GERMANY: A. D. 1308-1313.
The reign of Henry of Luxemburg.

The king (subsequently crowned emperor) chosen to succeed
Albert was Count Henry of Luxemburg, an able and excellent
prince. The new sovereign was crowned as Henry VII. "Henry did
not make the extension of his private domains his object, yet
favoring fortune brought it to him in the largest measure.
Since the death of Wenzel III., the succession to the throne
of Bohemia had been a subject of constant struggles. A very
small party was in favor of Austria; but the chief power was
in the hands of Henry of Carinthia, husband of Anna, Wenzel's
eldest daughter. But he was hated by the people, whose hopes
turned more and more to Elizabeth, a younger daughter of
Wenzel; though she was kept in close confinement by Henry, who
was about to marry her, it was supposed, below her rank. She
escaped, fled to the emperor, and implored his aid. He gave
her in marriage to his young son John, sending him to Bohemia
in charge of Peter Aichspalter; to take possession of the
kingdom. He did so, and it remained for more than a century in
the Luxemburg family. This King John of Bohemia was a man of
mark. His life was spent in the ceaseless pursuit of
adventure--from tournament to tournament, from war to war,
from one enterprise to another. We meet him now in Avignon,
and now in Paris; then on the Rhine, in Prussia, Poland, or
Hungary, and then prosecuting large plans in Italy, but hardly
ever in his own kingdom. Yet his restless activity
accomplished very little, apart from some important
acquisitions in Silesia. Henry then gave attention to the
public peace; came to an understanding with Leopold and
Frederick, the proud sons of Albert, and put under the ban
Everard of Wirtemberg, long a fomenter of disturbances,
sending against him a strong imperial army. ... At the Diet of
Spires, in September, 1309, it was cheerfully resolved to
carry out Henry's cherished plan of reviving the traditional
dignity of the Roman emperors by an expedition to the Eternal
City. Henry expected thus to renew the authority of his title
at home, as well as in Italy, where, in the traditional view,
the imperial crown was as important and as necessary as in
Germany. Every thing here had gone to confusion and ruin since
the Hohenstaufens had succumbed to the bitter hostility of the
popes. The contending parties still called themselves Guelphs
and Ghibellines, though they retained little of the original
characteristics attached to these names. A formal embassy,
with Matteo Visconti at its head, invited Henry to Milan; and
the parties every where anticipated his coming with hope. The
great Florentine poet, Dante, hailed him as a saviour for
distracted Italy. Thus, with the pope's approval, he crossed
the Alps in the autumn of 1310, attended by a splendid escort
of princes of the empire.
{1451}
The news of his approach excited general wonder and
expectation, and his reception at Milan in December was like a
triumph. He was crowned King of Lombardy without opposition.
But when, in the true imperial spirit, he announced that he
had come to serve the nation, and not one or another party,
and proved his sincerity by treating both parties alike, all
whose selfish hopes were deceived conspired against him.
Brescia endured a frightful siege for four months, showing
that the national hatred of German rule still survived. At
length a union of all his adversaries was formed under King
Robert of Naples, the grandson of Charles of Anjou, who put
Conradin to death. Meanwhile Henry VII. went to Rome, May
1312, and received the crown of the Cæsars from four
cardinals, plenipotentiaries of the pope, in the church of St.
John Lateran, south of the Tiber, St. Peter's being occupied
by the Neapolitan troops. But many of his German soldiers left
him, and he retired, with a small army, to Pisa, after an
unsuccessful effort to take Florence. From the faithful city
of Pisa he proclaimed King Robert under the ban, and, in
concert with Frederick of Sicily, prepared for war by land and
sea. But the pope, now a mere tool of the King of France,
commanded an armistice; and when Henry, in an independent
spirit, hesitated to obey, Clement V. pronounced the ban of
the Church against him. It never reached the emperor, who died
suddenly in the monastery of Buon-Convento: poisoned, as the
German annalists assert, by a Dominican monk, in the
sacramental cup, August 24, 1313. He was buried at Pisa.
Meanwhile his army in Bohemia had been completely successful
in establishing King John on the throne."

_C. T. Lewis,
A History of Germany,
book 3, chapter 10._

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1310-1313.

GERMANY: A. D. 1314-1347.
Election of rival emperors, Lewis (Ludowic) of Bavaria and
Frederic of Austria.
Triumph of Lewis at the Battle of Mühldorf.
Papal interference and excommunication of Lewis.
Germany under interdict.
Unrelenting hostility of the Church.

"The death of Heinric [Henry] replunged Germany into horrors
to which, since the extinction of the Swabian line of
emperors, it had been a stranger. The Austrian princes, who
had never forgiven the elevation of the Luxemburg family,
espoused the interests of Frederic, their head; the Bohemians
as naturally opposed them. From the accession of John, the two
houses were of necessity hostile; and it was evident that
there could be no peace in Germany until one of them was
subjected to the other. The Bohemians, indeed, could not hope
to place their king on the vacant throne, since their project
would have found an insurmountable obstacle in the jealousy of
the electors; but they were at least resolved to support the
pretensions of a prince hostile to the Austrians. ... The diet
being convoked at Frankfort, the electors repaired thither,
but with very different views; for, as their suffrages were
already engaged, while the more numerous party proclaimed the
duke of Bavaria as Ludowic V., another no less eagerly
proclaimed Frederic. Although Ludowic was a member of the
Austro-Hapsburg family--his mother being a daughter of Rodolf
I.--he had always been the enemy of the Austrian princes, and
in the same degree the ally of the Luxemburg faction. The two
candidates being respectively crowned kings of the Romans,
Ludowic at Aix-la-Chapelle, by the archbishop of
Mentz--Frederic 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. ... The
contest would have ended in favour of the Austrians, but for
the rashness of Frederic, who, in September 1322, without
waiting for the arrival of his brother Leopold, assailed
Ludowic between Mahldorf and Ettingen in Bavaria. ... The
battle was maintained 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 Nuremburg decided the fortune of the day.
Heinric of Austria was first taken prisoner; and Frederic
himself, who disdained to flee, was soon in the same
condition. To his everlasting honour, Ludowic received
Frederic with the highest assurances of esteem; and though the
latter was conveyed to the strong fortress of Trapnitz, in the
Upper Palatinate, he was treated with every indulgence
consistent with his safe custody. But the contest was not yet
decided; the valiant Leopold was still at the head of a
separate force; and pope John XXII., the natural enemy of the
Ghibelins, incensed at some succours which Ludowic sent to
that party in Lombardy, excommunicated the king of the Romans,
and declared him deposed from his dignity. Among the
ecclesiastics of the empire this iniquitous sentence had its
weight; but had not other events been disastrous to the king,
he might have safely despised it. By Leopold he was signally
defeated; he had the mortification to see the inconstant king
of Bohemia join the party of Austria; and the still heavier
misfortune to learn that the ecclesiastical and two or three
secular electors were proceeding to another choice--that of
Charles de Valois, whose interests were warmly supported by
the pope. In this emergency, his only chance of safety was a
reconciliation with his enemies; and Frederic was released on
condition of his renouncing all claim to the empire. But
though Frederic sincerely resolved to fulfil his share of the
compact, Leopold and the other princes of his family refused;
and their refusal was approved by the pope. With the
magnanimity of his character, Frederic, unable to execute the
engagements which he had made, voluntarily surrendered himself
to his enemy. But Ludowic, who would not be outdone in
generosity, 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 Frederic. Two
such men could not long remain even politically hostile; and
by another treaty, 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, Ludowic
proposed to take Italy as his seat of government, and leave
Germany to Frederic. But the death [1326] of the war-like
Leopold--the great support of the Austrian cause--and the
continued opposition of the states to any compromise, enabled
Ludowic to retain the sceptre of the kingdom; and in 1329,
that of Frederic strengthened his party. But his reign was
destined to be one of troubles. ... His open warfare against
the head of the church did not much improve his affairs, the
vindictive pope, in addition to the former sentence, placing
all Germany under an interdict. ...
{1452}
In 1338, the diet of Frankfort issued a declaration for ever
memorable in the annals of freedom. That the imperial
authority depended on God alone; that the pope had no temporal
influence, direct or indirect, within the empire; ... it
concluded by empowering the emperor (Ludowic while in Italy
[see ITALY: A. D. 1313-1330] had received the imperial crown
from the anti-pope whom he had created in opposition to John
XXII.) to raise, of his own authority, the interdict which,
during four years, had oppressed the country. Another diet,
held the following year, ratified this bold declaration. ...
But this conduct of the diet was above the comprehension of
the vulgar, who still regarded Ludowic as under the curse of
God and the church. ... Unfortunately for the national
independence, Ludowic himself contradicted the tenor of his
hitherto spirited conduct, by mean submissions, by humiliating
applications for absolution. They were unsuccessful; and he
had the mortification to see the king of Bohemia, who had
always acted an unaccountable part, become his bitter enemy.
... From this moment the fate of Ludowic was decided. In
conjunction with the pope and the French king, Charles of
Bohemia, who in 1346 succeeded to his father's kingdom and
antipathy, commenced a civil war; and in the midst of these
troubled scenes the emperor breathed his last [October 11,
1347]. Twelve months before the decease of Ludowic, Charles of
Bohemia [son of John, the blind king of Bohemia, who fell,
fighting for the French, at the battle of Crecy], assisted by
Clement VI., was elected king of the Romans."

_S. A. Dunham,
History of the Germanic Empire,
book 1, chapter 4 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN:
_J. I. von Döllinger,
Studies in European History,
chapter 5._

_J. C. Robertson,
History of the Christian Church,
book 8, chapter 2, V. 7._

_M. Creighton,
History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation,
introduction, chapter 2._

GERMANY: A. D. 1347-1493.
The Golden Bull of Charles IV.

The Luxemburg line of emperors, and the reappearance of the
Hapsburgs.
The Holy Roman Empire as it was at the end of the Middle Ages.

"John king of Bohemia did not himself wear the imperial crown;
but three of his descendants possessed it, with less
interruption than could have been expected. His son Charles
IV. succeeded Louis of Bavaria in 1347; not indeed without
opposition, for a double election and a civil war were matters
of course in Germany. Charles IV. has been treated with more
derision by his contemporaries, and consequently by later
writers, than almost any prince in history; yet he was
remarkably successful in the only objects that he seriously
pursued. Deficient in personal courage, insensible of
humiliation, bending without shame to the pope, to the
Italians, to the electors, so poor and so little reverenced as
to be arrested by a butcher at Worms for want of paying his
demand, Charles IV. affords a proof that a certain dexterity
and cold-blooded perseverance may occasionally supply, in a
sovereign, the want of more respectable qualities. He has been
reproached with neglecting the empire. But he never deigned to
trouble himself about the empire, except for his private'
ends. He did not neglect the kingdom of Bohemia, to which he
almost seemed to render Germany a province. Bohemia had been
long considered as a fief of the empire, and indeed could
pretend to an electoral vote by no other title. Charles,
however, gave the states by law the right of choosing a king,
on the extinction of the royal family, which seems derogatory
to the imperial prerogative. ... He constantly resided at
Prague, where he founded a celebrated university, and
embellished the city with buildings. This kingdom, augmented
also during his reign by the acquisition of Silesia, he
bequeathed to his son Wenceslaus, for whom, by pliancy towards
the electors and the court of Rome, he had procured, against
all recent example, the imperial succession. The reign of
Charles IV. is distinguished in the constitutional history of
the empire by his Golden Bull [1356]; an instrument which
finally ascertained the prerogatives of the electoral college.

See above: A. D. 1125-1152.

The Golden Bull terminated the disputes which had arisen
between different members of the same house as to their right
of suffrage, which was declared inherent in certain definite
territories. The number was absolutely restrained to seven.
The place of legal imperial elections was fixed at Frankfort;
of coronations, at Aix-la-Chapelle: and the latter ceremony
was to be performed by the arch-bishop of Cologne. These
regulations, though consonant to ancient usage, had not always
been observed, and their neglect had sometimes excited
questions as to the validity of elections. The dignity of
elector was enhanced by the Golden Bull as highly as an
imperial edict could carry it: they were declared equal to
kings, and conspiracy against their persons incurred the
penalty of high treason. Many other privileges are granted to
render them more completely sovereign within their dominions.
It seems extraordinary that Charles should have voluntarily
elevated an oligarchy, from whose pretensions his predecessors
had frequently suffered injury. But he had more to apprehend
from the two great families of Bavaria and Austria, whom he
relatively depressed by giving such a preponderance to the
seven electors, than from any members of the college. By his
compact with Brandenburg [see BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1168-1417] he
had a fair prospect of adding a second vote to his own. ...
The next reign, nevertheless, evinced the danger of investing
the electors with such preponderating authority. Wenceslaus
[elected in 1378], a supine and voluptuous man, less
respected, and more negligent of Germany, if possible, than
his father, was regularly deposed by a majority of the
electoral college in 1400. ... They chose Robert count
palatine instead of Wenceslaus; and though the latter did not
cease to have some adherents, Robert has generally been
counted among the lawful emperors. Upon his death [1410] the
empire returned to the house of Luxemburg; Wenceslaus himself
waiving his rights in favour of his brother Sigismund of
Hungary." On the death of Sigismund, in 1437, the house of
Austria regained the imperial throne, in the person of Albert,
duke of Austria, who had married Sigismund's only daughter,
the queen of Hungary and Bohemia. "He died in two years,
leaving his wife pregnant with a son, Ladislaus Posthumus, who
afterwards reigned in the two kingdoms just mentioned; and the
choice of the electors fell upon Frederic duke of Styria,
second-cousin of the last emperor, from whose posterity it
never departed, except in a single instance, upon the
extinction of his male line in 1740.
{1453}
Frederic III. reigned 53 years [1440-1493], a longer period
than any of his predecessors; and his personal character was
more insignificant. ... Frederic, always poor, and scarcely
able to protect himself in Austria from the seditions of his
subjects, or the inroads of the king of Hungary, was yet
another founder of his family, and left their fortunes
incomparably more prosperous than at his accession. The
marriage of his son Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy
[see NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1477] began that aggrandizement of the
house of Austria which Frederic seems to have anticipated. The
electors, who had lost a good deal of their former spirit, and
were grown sensible of the necessity of choosing a powerful
sovereign, made no opposition to Maximilian's becoming king of
the Romans in his father's lifetime."

_H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 5 (volume 2)._

"It is important to remark that, for more than a century after
Charles IV. had fixed his seat in Bohemia, no emperor
appeared, endowed with the vigour necessary to uphold and
govern the empire. The bare fact that Charles's successor,
Wenceslas, was a prisoner in the hands of the Bohemians,
remained for a long time unknown in Germany: a simple decree
of the electors' sufficed to dethrone him. Rupert the Palatine
only escaped a similar fate by death. When Sigismund of
Luxemburg, (who, after many disputed elections, kept
possession of the field,) four years after his election,
entered the territory of the empire of which he was to be
crowned sovereign, he found so little sympathy that he was for
a moment inclined to return to Hungary without accomplishing
the object of his journey. The active part he took in the
affairs of Bohemia, and of Europe generally, has given him a
name; but in and for the empire, he did nothing worthy of
note. Between the years 1422 and 1430 he never made his
appearance beyond Vienna; from the autumn of 1431 to that of
1433 he was occupied with his coronation journey to Rome; and
during the three years from 1434 to his death he never got
beyond Bohemia and Moravia; nor did Albert II., who has been
the subject of such lavish eulogy, ever visit the dominions of
the empire. Frederic III., however, far outdid all his
predecessors. During seven-and-twenty years, from 1444 to
1471, he was never seen within the boundaries of the empire.
Hence it happened that the central action and the visible
manifestation of sovereignty, in as far as any such existed in
the empire, fell to the share of the princes, and more
especially of the prince-electors. In the reign of Sigismund
we find them convoking the diets, and leading the armies into
the field against the Hussites: the operations against the
Bohemians were attributed entirely to them. In this manner the
empire became, like the papacy, a power which acted from a
distance, and rested chiefly upon opinion. ... The emperor was
regarded, in the first place, as the supreme feudal lord, who
conferred on property its highest and most sacred sanction.
... Although he was regarded as the head and source of all
temporal jurisdiction, yet no tribunal found more doubtful
obedience than his own. The fact that royalty existed in
Germany had almost been suffered to fall into oblivion; even
the title had been lost. Henry VII. thought it an affront to
be called King of Germany, and not, as he had a right to be
called before any ceremony of coronation, King of the Romans.
In the 15th century the emperor was regarded pre-eminently as
the successor of the ancient Roman Cæsars, whose rights and
dignities had been transferred, first to the Greeks, and then
to the Germans in the persons of Charlemagne and Otho the
Great; as the true secular head of Christendom. ... The
opinion was confidently entertained in Germany that the other
sovereigns of Christendom, especially those of England, Spain,
and France, were legally subject to the crown of the empire:
the only controversy was, whether their disobedience was
venial, or ought to be regarded as sinful."

_L. von Ranke,
History of the Reformation in Germany,
volume 1, pages 52-56._

ALSO IN:
_Sir R. Comyn,
History of the Western Empire,
chapter 24 (volume l)._

_E. F. Henderson,
Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,
book 2, number 10._

See, also,
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1330-1364, to 1471-1491.

GERMANY: A. D. 1363-1364.
Tyrol acquired by the House of Austria, with the reversion of
the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1330-1364.

GERMANY: A. D. 1378.
Final surrender of the Arelate to France.

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1127-1378.

GERMANY: A. D. 1386-1388.
Defeat of the Austrians by the Swiss at Sempach and Naefels.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1386-1388.

GERMANY: A. D. 1405-1434.
The Bohemian Reformation and the Hussite wars.

See BOHEMIA: A. D. 1405-1415, and 1419-1434.

GERMANY: A. D. 1414-1418.
Failure of demands for Church Reform in the Council of
Constance.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1414-1418.

GERMANY: A. D. 1417.
The Electorate of Brandenburg conferred on the Hohenzollerns.