aggrandize his family and raise money by the sale of crown CHAP. XIV. estates and privileges. His individual action and personal Policy of the relation to the subject was replaced by a merely legal and Emperors. formal one: he represented order and legitimate ownership, and so far was still necessary to the political system. But imperial progresses through the country were abandoned unlike his predecessors, who, when they assumed the sceptre, had turned from the administration of their own domains to the service of the nation, he lived mostly in his own states, sometimes beyond the Empire's frontier.

How thoroughly the national character of the office was gone is shewn by the repeated attempts to bestow it on foreign or half-foreign potentates, who could not fill the place of a German king of the good old vigorous type. Not to speak of Richard and Alfonso, the French Charles Count of Valois was proposed against Henry VII, and Edward III of England actually elected against Charles IV (the English parliament forbade him to accept). Sigismund, though he belonged to the house of Luxemburg, was, when chosen, a Hungarian king with interests primarily Hungarian; and George Podiebrad who was elected against Frederick III ruled over a Bohemia which felt itself more Slavonic than Germanic. The Emperor's only hope would have been in the support of the cities. During Power of the the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they had increased cities. wonderfully in population, wealth, and boldness: the Hanseatic confederacy was the mightiest power of the North, and cowed the Scandinavian kings: the towns of Swabia and the Rhine formed great commercial leagues, maintained regular wars against the counter-associations of the nobility, and seemed at one time, by an alliance with

As to Peter Du Bois' scheme for securing power in Italy to the kings of France, see Note XIV at end.

Financial distress.

CHAP. XIV. the already virtually independent Switzers, on the point of turning West Germany into a federation of free municipalities. Feudalism, however, was still too strong; the cavalry of the nobles was irresistible in the field, and the thoughtless Wenzel, who might have helped and used them, let slip a golden opportunity of repairing the losses of two centuries. After all, the Empire was perhaps past redemption, for one fatal ailment paralyzed all its efforts. The Empire was poor. The constructive abilities of Frederick I and his grandson, which ought to have been applied, as was the constructive talent of the English Henry II, to the establishment of an immediate financial control by the crown, and the introduction of some scheme of direct taxation, were distracted by their enterprises in Italy; and neither from princes, from ecclesiastics, nor from cities was any adequate royal revenue secured. The crown lands, which had suffered heavily under Frederick II, were further usurped during the confusion that followed; till at last, through the reckless prodigality of sovereigns who sought only their immediate interest, little was left of the vast and fertile domains along the Rhine from which the Saxon and Franconian Emperors had drawn the chief part of their revenue. Regalian rights, the second fiscal resource, had fared no better. Tolls, customs, mines, rights of coining, of harbouring Jews, and so forth, were either seized or granted away even the advowsons of churches had been sold or mortgaged; and the imperial treasury depended mainly on an inglorious traffic in honours and exemptions. Things were so bad under Rudolf that the electors refused to make his son Albert king of the Romans, declaring that, while Rudolf lived, the public revenue which with difficulty

b The first League of the three Forest Cantons was formed in 1308. Others were added by degrees: and the number of eight was completed by the accession of Bern in 1353.

supported one monarch, could much less maintain two at CHAP. XIV the same time. Sigismund told his Diet, 'Nihil esse imperio spoliatius, nihil egentius, adeo ut qui sibi ex Germaniae principibus successurus esset, qui praeter patrimonium nihil aliud habuerit, apud eum non imperium sed potius servitium sit futurum.' Patritius, the secretary of Frederick III, declared that the revenues of the Empire scarcely covered the expenses of its ambassadors.a Poverty such as these expressions point to, a poverty which became greater after each election, not only involved the failure of the attempts which were sometimes made to recover usurped rights, but put every project of reform within or war without at the mercy of a jealous Diet. The three orders of which that Diet consisted, electors, princes, and cities, were each of them bent on its own interests and mutually hostile; their niggardly grants did no more than keep the Empire from dying of inanition.

e

Charles IV (A.D. 1347

1378), and

The changes thus briefly described were in progress when Charles the Fourth, king of Bohemia, son of that blind king John of Bohemia who fell at Cressy, and grand- his electoral son of the Emperor Henry VII, found himself settled constitution.

с

Quoted by Moser, Römische Kayser, from Chron. Hirsaug.: 'Regni vires temporum iniuria nimium contritae vix uni alendo regi sufficerent, tantum abesse ut sumptus in nutriendos duos reges ferre queant.' So at Rupert's death, under whom the mischief had increased greatly, most bishops were, we are told, better off than the Emperor.

d Proventus Imperii ita minimi sunt ut legationibus vix suppetant.' Quoted by Moser. In 1495, Maximilian told his Diet 'Das römische Reich sei jetziger Zeit ein grosser Last und falle davon kleiner Beth' (the Empire is a heavy burden, with little gain therefrom); and Granvella, Charles V's minister, said at the Diet of Speyer: 'The Emperor has, for the support of his dignity, not a hazel-nut's worth of profit from the Empire.'

e Albert I tried in vain to wrest the tolls of the Rhine from the grasp of the Rhenish electors.

The cities did not, however, definitely establish their right to appear as an Estate or College in the Diet until A.D. 1489.

CHAP. XIV. upon the throne which he had, as a candidate favoured by the Pope, disputed for some years with Lewis IV. His skilful and consistent policy aimed at settling what he perhaps despaired of reforming, and the famous instrument which, under the name of the Golden Bull, became the corner-stone of the Germanic constitution, confessed and legalized the independence of the electors and the powerlessness of the crown. The most conspicuous defect of the existing system was the uncertainty of the elections, followed as they usually were by a civil war. It was this which Charles set himself to redress.

German

kingdom not originally

elective.

The kingdoms founded on the ruins of the Roman Empire by the Teutonic invaders presented in their original form a rude combination of the elective with the hereditary principle. One family in each tribe had, as the offspring of the gods, an indefeasible claim to rule, but from among the members of such a family the warriors were free to choose the bravest or the most popular as king." That the German crown came to be purely elective, while in France, Castile, Aragon, England, and most other European states, the principle of strict hereditary succession established itself, was due to the failure of heirs male in three successive dynasties; to the restless ambition of the nobles, who, since they were not, like the French, strong enough to disregard the royal power, did their best to weaken it; to the intrigues of the churchmen, zealous for a method of appointment prescribed by their own law and observed in capitular elections; to the wish of the Popes to gain an opening for their own influence and make effective the veto which they claimed; above all, to the conception of the imperial office as one too holy to be, in

The Aethelings of the line of Cerdic, among the West Saxons, the Swedish Ynglings, the Bavarian Agilolfings, may thus be compared with the Achaemenids of Persia or the heroic houses of early Greece.

the same manner as the regal, transmissible by descent. CHAP. XIV. Had the German, like other feudal kingdoms, remained merely local, feudal, and national, it would without doubt have ended by becoming a hereditary monarchy. Transformed as it was by the Roman Empire, this could not be. The headship of the human race being, like the Papacy, the common inheritance of all mankind, could not be confined to a single family, nor pass like a private estate by the ordinary rules of succession.

tive times.

The right to choose the war-chief belonged, in the earliest Electoral ages, to the whole body of freemen. Their suffrage, which body in primi must have been very irregularly exercised, became by degrees vested in their leaders, but the assent of the multitude, although ensured already, was needed to complete the ceremony. It was thus that Henry the Fowler, and Henry the Saint, and Conrad II were chosen." Though even tradition might have commemorated what extant records place beyond a doubt, it was commonly believed, till the end of the sixteenth century, that the elective constitution had been established, and the privilege of voting confined to seven persons, by a decree of Gregory V and Otto III, which a famous jurist describes as 'lex a pontifice de imperatorum comitiis lata, ne ius eligendi penes populum Romanum in posterum esset.' St. Thomas says,

Wippo, describing the election of Conrad the Franconian, says, 'Inter confinia Moguntiae et Wormatiae dum convenissent cuncti primates et, ut ita dicam, vires et viscera regni,' cii; M. G. H., Script., xi. 257. So Bruno says that Henry IV 'regnum . . . electione communi suscepit': M. G. H., Script. v. p. 330. So Amandus, secretary of Frederick Barbarossa, in describing his election, says Multi illustres heroes ex Lombardia, Tuscia, Ianuensi et aliis Italiae dominiis, ac maior et potior pars principum in Transalpino regno.'Quoted by Mur. Antiq. Diss. iii. vol. i. p. 94. And see many other authorities to the same effect, collected by Pfeffinger, Vitriarius illustratus.

i Alciatus, De Formula Romani Imperii. He adds that the Gauls and Italians were incensed at the preference shewn to Germany. So too Landolfo Colonna, De Translatione Imperii Romani.