CHAP. XX. by electing a prince of some other line', or by passing a law that there should never be more than two, or four, successive Emperors of the same house. France ever and anon renewed her warnings to the electors, that their freedom was passing from them, and the sceptre becoming hereditary in one haughty family. But it was felt that a change would be difficult and disagreeable, and that the heavy expense and scanty revenues of the Empire required to be supported by larger patrimonial domains than most German princes possessed. The heads of states like Prussia and Hanover, states whose size and wealth would have made them suitable candidates, were Protestants, and thus practically excluded both by the connection of the imperial office with the Church, and by the majority of Roman Catholics in the electoral college, who, however jealous they might be of Austria, were led by habit and by sympathy to rally round her in moments of peril. The one occasion on which these considerations were k i So the elector of Saxony proposed in 1532 that, Albert II, Frederick III, and Maximilian having been all of one house, Charles V's successor should be chosen from some other. Moser, Römische Kayser. See the various attempts of France in Moser. The coronation engagements (Wahlcapitulation) of every Emperor bound him not to attempt to make the throne hereditary in his family. In 1658 France offered to subsidize the Elector of Bavaria if he would become Emperor. Whether an Evangelical was eligible for the office of Emperor was a question often debated, but never actually raised by the candidature of any but a Roman Catholic prince. The 'exacta aequalitas' conceded by the Peace of Westphalia might appear to include so important a privilege. But it must be remembered that the peculiar relation in which the Emperor stood to the Holy Roman Church was one which no one out of the communion of that Church could hold, and that the coronation oaths could not have been taken by, nor the coronation ceremonies (among which was a sort of ordination) performed upon a Protestant. The Emperor Sigismund is said to have officiated as a deacon at a solemn mass at the opening of the Council of Constance, and chanted the Gospel. disregarded shewed their force. On the extinction of CHAP. XX. the male line of Hapsburg in the person of Charles the Sixth, the intrigues of the French envoy, Marshal Belle isle, procured the election of the Elector Charles Albert Charles VII, of Bavaria, who stood first among the Catholic princes. 1742-1745. His reign was a succession of misfortunes and ignominies. Driven out of Munich by the Austrians, the head of Francis I, the Holy Empire lived in Frankfort on the bounty of 1745-1765. France, cursed by the country on which his ambition had brought the miseries of a protracted war.' The choice in 1745 of Duke Francis of Lorraine, husband of the archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary, Maria Theresa, was meant to restore the crown to the only power capable of wearing it with dignity: in Joseph the Second, her son, it again rested on the brow of a scion of the ancient line." In the war of the Austrian succession, m The following nine reasons for the long continuance of the Empire in the House of Hapsburg are given by Pfeffinger (Vitriarius Illustratus), writing early in the eighteenth century: — 1. The great power of Austria. 2. Her wealth, now that the Empire was so poor. 3. The majority of Catholics among the electors. 4. Her fortunate matrimonial alliances. 5. Her moderation. 6. The memory of benefits conferred by her. 7. The example of evils that had followed a departure from the blood of 8. The fear of the confusion that would ensue if she were deprived of the crown. 9. Her own eagerness to have it. CHAP. XX. Joseph II, 1765-1790. which followed the death of Charles the Sixth, the Empire as a body took no part; in the Seven Years' War its whole might broke in vain against one resolute member. Under Seven Years' Frederick the Great Prussia approved herself at least a War, match for France and Austria leagued against her, and the 1756-1763. semblance of unity which the predominance of a single power had hitherto given to the Empire was replaced by the avowed rivalry of two military monarchies. The Emperor Joseph the Second, a sort of philosopher-king, than whom few have more narrowly missed greatness, made a desperate effort to set things right, striving to restore the disordered finances, to purge and vivify the Imperial Chamber. Nay, he renounced the intolerant policy of his ancestors, quarrelled with the Pope," and presumed to visit Rome, whose streets heard once more the shout that had been silent for three centuries, Long live our Emperor! You are in your own house! You are the master!'° But his indiscreet haste was met by a sullen resistance, and he died disappointed in plans for which the time was not yet ripe, leaving no result save the league of princes which Frederick the Great had formed to oppose his designs on Bavaria. His successor, Leopold the Second, abandoned the projected reforms, and a calm, the calm before the hurricane, settled down again upon Germany. The existence of the Empire was almost forgotten by its subjects: there was nothing to remind them of it but a feudal investiture now and then at Vienna (real feudal rights were obsolete, as Joseph II found when he tried to enforce them); a concourse of solemn old lawyers Leopold II, 1790-1792. Last phase of the Empire. n The Pope undertook a journey to Vienna to mollify Joseph, and met with a sufficiently cold reception. When he saw the famous minister Kaunitz and gave him his hand to kiss, Kaunitz took it and shook it. • Joseph was the first Emperor since Charles the Bald who had kept his Christmas at Rome. at Wetzlar puzzling over interminable suits, and some CHAP. XX. thirty diplomatists at Regensburg, the relics of that Imperial Diet where once a hero-king, a Frederick or a The Diet. Henry, enthroned amid mitred prelates and steel-clad barons, had issued laws for every tribe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. The solemn triflings of this socalled 'Diet of Deputation'-which Frederick the Great compared to dogs in a yard baying the moon - have probably never been equalled elsewhere. Questions of precedence and title, questions whether the envoys of princes should have chairs of red cloth like those of the electors, or only of the less honourable green, whether they should be served on gold or on silver, how many hawthorn boughs should be hung up before the door of each on May-day; these, and such as these, it was their chief employment not to settle but to discuss. The pedantic formalism of old Germany passed that of Spaniards or Turks; it had now crushed under a mountain of rubbish whatever meaning or force its old institutions had contained. It is the penalty of greatness that its form should outlive its substance: that gilding and trappings should remain when that which they were meant to deck and clothe has departed. So our sloth or our timidity, not seeing the mischief which a soulless sham can do, main P Shortly before the Empire ended, there were more than sixty thousand lawsuits waiting to be heard. 9 In 1764 the revenue of the Emperor (from the Empire) was estimated at 13,884 florins and 32 kreutzers. Some one remarks that one day's journey, in Germany, might take a traveller through the territories of a free city, a sovereign abbot, a village belonging to an imperial knight, and the dominions of a landgrave, a duke, a prince, and a king, so small, so numerous, and so diverse were the principalities. He said of the Diet, Es ist ein Schattenbild, eine Versammlung aus Publizisten die mehr mit Formalien als mit Sachen sich beschäftigen, und, wie Hofhunde, den Mond anbellen.' CHAP. XX. Feelings of the German people. tains in being what once was good long after it has become helpless and hopeless: so now at the close of the eighteenth century, strings of sounding titles were all that was left of the Empire which Charles had founded, and Frederick had adorned, and Dante had sung. The German mind, just beginning to put forth the first blossoms of its noblest literary epoch, turned away in disgust from the spectacle of ceremonious imbecility more than Byzantine. National feeling seemed gone from princes and people alike. Not to speak of cynical monarchs like Frederick the Great and Joseph II, even Lessing, who did more than any one else to create the German literary spirit, says, 'Of the love of country I have no conception: it appears to me at best a heroic weakness which I am right glad to be without.' There were nevertheless persons who saw how fatal such a system was, lying like a nightmare on the people's soul. Speaking of the Union of Princes (Fürstenbund) formed by Frederick of Prussia to preserve the existing condition of things, Johannes von Müller writes: If the German Union serves for nothing better than to maintain the status quo, it is against the eternal order of God, by which neither the physical nor the moral world remains for a moment in the status quo, but all is life and motion and progress. To exist without law or justice, without security from arbitrary imposts, doubtful whether we can preserve from day to day our children, our honour, our liberties, our rights, our lives, helpless before superior force, without a beneficial connection between our states, without a national spirit at all, this is the status quo of our nation. And it was this that the Union was meant to maintain. If it be this and nothing more, then bethink you how when Israel saw that Rehoboam would • Deutschlands Erwartungen vom Fürstenbunde. |