be a temporary expedient, an unsatisfactory compromise CHAP. XXI between the reality of local sovereignty and the semblance The Gerof national union, which, after an ignoble and often- manic Confederation, threatened life of half a century, fell unregretted upon the A.D. 1815fields of Königgrätz and Langensalza. 1866. CHAPTER XXII CHAP. XXII. General summary. SUMMARY AND REFLECTIONS AFTER what has been already said in examining each of the phases through which the Holy Empire passed, only a few concluding pages are needed to describe its character and to sum up the results of its long-continued life. A general character can hardly help being either vague or misleading, for the aspects which the Empire. took are as many and as various as the ages and conditions of society during which it continued to exist. Among the peoples around the Mediterranean, whose national feeling had died out, whose national faiths were extinct or had turned to superstition, whose thought and art had lost their force and freshness, there arose a gigantic military power, the power first of a city, then of an administrative system culminating in an irresponsible monarch, which pressing with equal weight on all its subjects, gave them a new imperial nationality, and became to them a religion as well as a government. When this system, weakened by internal decay, was at length beginning to dissolve, the tribes of the North came down, too rude to maintain the elaborate institutions they found subsisting, too few and scattered to introduce their own simpler institutions, and in the weltering confusion that followed, the idea of a civilized commonwealth would have perished, had not the association of a young and vigorous faith with the name and the authority of Rome formed the foundation for a new unity, politically weak, but morally close and durable. Then the strong hand of the first of the name of Rome. Frankish Emperor raised the fallen image and bade the CHAP. XXII. nations bow down to it once more. Under him it was for some brief space a sort of military theocracy; under his German successors the first of feudal kingdoms, the centre of European chivalry. As feudalism wanes, the imperial office, as well as the imperial idea, was again transformed, and after promising for a time to become an hereditary Hapsburg monarchy, it sank at last into the presidency, not more dignified than powerless, of an international league. To the modern world, penetrated by a critical and prac- Perpetuation tical spirit, a perpetuation under conditions so diverse of the same name and the same pretensions appears at first sight absurd, a phantom too vain to impress the most superstitious mind. Closer examination corrects such a notion. No power was ever based on foundations more sure and deep than those which Rome laid during three centuries of conquest and four of undisturbed dominion. If her empire had been an hereditary or local kingdom, it might have fallen with the extinction of the royal line, the overthrow of the tribe, the destruction of the city, to which it was attached. But it was not so limited. It was imperishable because it was universal; and when its power had ceased, it was remembered with awe and love by the races whose separate existence it had destroyed, because it had spared the weak while it smote down the strong; because it had granted equal rights to all, and closed against none of its subjects the path of honourable ambition. When the military power of the conquering city had departed, her sway over the world of thought began. By her the Greek theory of a commonwealth of mankind had been reduced to practice; the magic of her name remained, and she held a sway over the imagination which the passing of century after century scarcely reduced. She had gathered up and embodied in her literature and institu CHAP. XXII. tions all the ideas and all the practical results of ancient thought. Embracing and organizing and propagating the new religion, she made it seem her own. Her language, her theology, her laws, her architecture, made their way where the eagles of war had never winged their flight, and with the spread of civilization have found new homes on the Ganges and the Mississippi. Parallel instances. Claims to represent the Roman Empire. France. Nor is such a claim of government prolonged under changed conditions by any means a singular phenomenon. Titles sum up the political history of nations, and are as often causes as effects: if significant to-day, how much more so in ages of ignorance when tradition was stronger than reason. Even in our time various pretensions have been put forward to represent the Empire of Rome, all of them without historical foundation, none of them without practical import. Austria clings to a name which seems to perpetuate the primacy held by Charles the Fifth in Europe, and was wont, while she held Lombardy, to justify her position there by invoking the feudal rights of the Franconian and Swabian sovereigns. With no more legal right than a prince of Reuss or a grand duke of Mecklenburg might pretend to, she continued after the disappearance of the old Empire to use its arms and devices, and being almost the youngest of European monarchies, she became respected as the oldest and most conservative. Bonapartean France, as the self-appointed heir of the Carolingians, grasped for a time the sceptre of the West, and under the ruler who fell in 1870 aspired to hold the balance of European politics, and be recognized as the leader and patron of the so-called 'Latin races' on both sides of the Atlantic. Professing the creed of Constanti This was put forward in Louis Napoleon's letter to General Forey, explaining the object of that unlucky expedition to Mexico which helped to undermine his throne. nople, Russia claims the crown of the Eastern Caesars, CHAP. XXII. and looks forward to the day when the capital which Russia. prophecy has promised for a thousand years will echo to the tramp of her armies. The doctrine of Panslavism, under an imperial head of the Orthodox Eastern Church, has become a formidable engine of aggression in the hands of a mighty despotism and a growing race, naturally drawn to expand its frontiers toward the south. Another tes- Greece. timony to the enduring influence of old political combinations is supplied by the eagerness with which modern Hellas embraced the notion of gathering the peoples of South-eastern Europe and Asia Minor that profess the Orthodox creed into a revived Empire of the East, The Turks. with its capital on the Bosphorus. Nay, the intruding Ottoman himself, different in faith as well as in blood, long ago declared himself the representative of the Eastern Caesars, whose dominion he extinguished. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent assumed the name of Emperor, and refused it to Charles the Fifth; his successors were once preceded through the streets of Constantinople by twelve officers, bearing straws aloft, a faint semblance of the consular fasces that had escorted a Quinctius or a Fabius through the Roman forum. Yet in no one of these cases was there that apparent legality of title which the shouts of the people and the benediction of the pontiff conveyed to Charles and Otto." These examples, however, are minor parallels: the com- Parallel of plement and illustration of the history of the Empire is to b Many other instances might be adduced: consider for instance the perpetuation of the office of consul at Rome and Constantinople for at least five centuries after it had ceased to carry power; consider the retention long after all claims to France had been abandoned of the title 'King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland' (its ultimate relinquishment distressed many persons); consider the retention to-day in Great Britain of the title 'Defender of the the Papacy. |