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.
"The March of Brandenburg is one of those districts which was
first peopled by the advance of the German nation towards the
east during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was in
the beginning, like Silesia, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Prussia,
and Livonia, a German colony settled upon an almost
uncultivated soil: from the very first, however, it seems to
have given the greatest promise of vigour. ... Possession was
taken of the soil upon the ground of the rights of the
princely Ascanian house--we know not whether these rights were
founded upon inheritance, purchase, or cession. The process of
occupation was so gradual that the institutions of the old
German provinces, like those constituting the northern march,
had time to take firm root in the newly-acquired territory;
and owing to the constant necessity for unsheathing the sword,
the colonists acquired warlike habits which tended to give them
spirit and energy. ... The Ascanians were a warlike but
cultivated race, incessantly acquiring new possessions, but
generous and openhanded; and new life followed in their
footsteps. They soon took up an important political position
among the German princely houses: their possessions extended
over a great part of Thuringia, Moravia, Lausitz, and Silesia;
the electoral dignity which they assumed gave to them and to
their country a high rank in the Empire. In the Neumark and in
Pomerelllen the Poles retreated before them, and on the
Pomeranian coasts they protected the towns founded by the
Teutonic order from the invasion of the Danes. It has been
asked whether this race might not have greatly extended its
power; but they were not destined even to make the attempt.
{1454}
It is said that at the beginning of the fourteenth century
nineteen members of this family were assembled on the
Margrave's Hill near Rathenau. In the year 1320, of all these
not one remained, or had even left an heir. ... In Brandenburg
... it really appeared as if the extinction of the ruling
family would entail ruin upon the country. It had formed a
close alliance with the imperial power--which at that moment
was the subject of contention between the two great families
of Wittelsbach and Luxemburg--was involved in the quarrels of
those two races, injured by all their alternations of fortune,
and sacrificed to their domestic and foreign policy, which was
totally at variance with the interests of Brandenburg. At the
very beginning of the struggle the March of Brandenburg lost
its dependencies. ... At length the Emperor Sigmund, the last
of the house of Luxemburg, found himself so fully occupied
with the disturbances in the Empire and the dissensions in the
Church, that he could no longer maintain his power in the
March, and intrusted the task to his friend and relation,
Frederick, Burgrave of Nürnberg, to whom he lay under very
great obligations, and who had assisted him with money at his
need. ... It was a great point gained, after so long a period
of anarchy, to find a powerful and prudent prince ready to
undertake the government of the province. He could do nothing
in the open field against the revolted nobles, but he assailed
and vanquished them in their hitherto impregnable strong-holds
surrounded with walls fifteen feet thick, which he demolished
with his clumsy but effective artillery. In a few years he had
so far succeeded that he was able to proclaim a Landfriede, or
public peace, according to which each and everyone who was an
enemy to him, or to those comprehended in the peace, was
considered and treated as the enemy of all. But the effect of
all this would have been but transient, had not the Emperor,
who had no son, and who was won by Frederick's numerous
services and by his talents for action, made the Electorate
hereditary in his family. ... The most important day in the
history of the March of Brandenburg and the family of Zollern
was the 18th of April, 1417, when in the market-place of
Constance the Emperor Sigmund formally invested the Burgrave
with the dignity of Elector, placed in his hands the flag with
the arms of the March and received from him the oath of
allegiance. From this moment a prospect was afforded to the
territory of Brandenburg of recovering its former prosperity
and increasing its importance, while to the house of Zollern a
career of glory and usefulness was opened worthy of powers
which were thus called into action."
_L. von Ranke,
Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg,
book 1, chapter 2._
See, also, BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1168-1417;
and HOHENZOLLERN, RISE OF THE HOUSE OF.
GERMANY: A. D. 1467-1471.
Crusade against George Podiebrad, king of Bohemia.
See BOHEMIA: A. D. 1458-1471.
GERMANY: A. D. 1467-1477.
Relations of Charles the Bold of Burgundy to the Empire.
See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1467, and 1476-1477.
GERMANY: A. D. 1492-1514.
The Bundschuh insurrections of the Peasantry.
Several risings of the German peasantry, in the later part of
the 15th and early part of the 16th century, were named from
the Bundschuh, or peasants' clog, which the insurgents bore as
their emblem or pictured on their banners. "While the peasants
in the Rhætian Alps were gradually throwing off the yoke of
the nobles and forming the 'Graubund' [see SWITZERLAND: A. D.
1396-1499], a struggle, was going on between the neighbouring
peasantry of Kempten (to the east of Lake Constance) and their
feudal lord, the Abbot of Kempten. It began in 1423, and came
to an open rebellion in 1492. It was a rebellion against new
demands not sanctioned by ancient custom, and though it was
crushed, and ended in little good to the peasantry (many of
whom fled into Switzerland), yet it is worthy of note because
in it for the first time appears the banner of the Bundschuh.
The next rising was in Elsass (Alsace), in 1493, the peasants
finding allies in the burghers of the towns along the Rhine,
who had their own grievances. The Bundschuh was again their
banner, and it was to Switzerland that their anxious eyes were
turned for help. This movement also was prematurely discovered
and put down. Then, in 1501, other peasants, close neighbours
to those of Kempten, caught the infection, and in 1502, again
in Elsass, but this time further north, in the region about
Speyer and the Neckar, lower down the Rhine, nearer Franconia,
the Bundschuh was raised again. It numbered on its recruit
rolls many thousands of peasants from the country round, along
the Neckar and the Rhine. The wild notion was to rise in arms,
to make themselves free, like the Swiss, by the sword, to
acknowledge no superior but the Emperor, and all Germany was
to join the League. They were to pay no taxes or dues, and
commons, forests, and rivers were to be free to all. Here,
again, they mixed up religion with their demands, and 'Only
what is just before God' was the motto on the banner of the
Bundschuh. They, too, were betrayed, and in savage triumph the
Emperor Maximilian ordered their property to be confiscated,
their wives and children to be banished, and themselves to be
quartered alive. ... Few ... really fell victims to this cruel
order of the Emperor. The ringleaders dispersed, fleeing some
into Switzerland and some into the Black Forest. For ten years
now there was silence. The Bundschuh banner was furled, but
only for a while. In 1512 and 1513, on the east side of the
Rhine, in the Black Forest and the neighbouring districts of
Würtemberg, the movement was again on foot on a still larger
scale. It had found a leader in Joss Fritz. A soldier, with
commanding presence and great natural eloquence, ... he bided
his time. ... Again the League was betrayed ... and Joss
Fritz, with the banner under his clothes, had to fly for his
life to Switzerland. ... He returned after a while to the
Black Forest, went about his secret errands, and again bided
his time. In 1514 the peasantry of the Duke Ulrich of
Würtemberg rose to resist the tyranny of their lord [in a
combination called 'the League of Poor Conrad']. ... The same
year, in the valleys of the Austrian Alps, in Carinthia,
Styria, and Crain, similar risings of the peasantry took
place, all of them ending in the triumph of the nobles."
_F. Seebohm,
The Era of the Protestant Revolution,
part 1, chapter 4._
See, also, below: A. D. 1524-1525.
GERMANY: A. D. 1493.
Maximilian I. becomes emperor.
{1455}
GERMANY: A. D. 1493-1519.
The reign of Maximilian.
His personal importance and his imperial powerlessness.
Constitutional reforms in the Empire.
The Imperial Chamber.
The Circles.
The Aulic Council.
"Frederic [the Third] died in 1493, after a protracted and
inglorious reign of 53 years. ... On the death of his father,
Maximilian had been seven years king of the Romans; and his
accession to the imperial crown encountered no opposition. ...
Scarcely had he ascended the throne, when Charles VIII., king
of France, passed through the Milanese into the south of
Italy, and seized on Naples without opposition.
See ITALY: A. D. 1494-1496.
Maximilian endeavoured to rouse the German nation to a sense
of its danger, but in vain. ... With difficulty he was able to
despatch 3,000 men to aid the league, which Spain, the pope,
the Milanese, and the Venetians had formed, to expel the
ambitious intruders from Italy. To cement his alliance with
Fernando the Catholic, he married his son Philip to Juana, the
daughter of the Spaniard. The confederacy triumphed; not
through the efforts of Maximilian, but through the hatred of
the Italians to the Gallic yoke. ... Louis XII., who succeeded
to Charles (1498), ... forced Philip to do homage for
Flanders; surrendering, indeed, three inconsiderable towns,
that he might be at liberty to renew the designs of his house
on Lombardy and Naples. ... The French had little difficulty
in expelling Ludovico Moro, the usurper of Milan, and in
retaining possession of the country during the latter part of
Maximilian's reign.
See ITALY: A. D. 1499-1500.
Louis, indeed, did homage for the duchy to the Germanic head;
but such homage was merely nominal: it involved no tribute, no
dependence. The occupation of this fine province by the French
made no impression on the Germans; they regarded it as a fief
of the house of Austria, not of the empire: but even if it had
stood in the latter relation, they would not have moved one
man, or voted one florin, to avert its fate. That the French
did not obtain similar possession of Naples, and thereby
become enabled to oppose Maximilian with greater effect, was
owing to the valour of the Spanish troops, who retained the
crown in the house of Aragon. His disputes with the Venetians
were inglorious to his arms; they defeated his armies, and
encroached considerably on his Italian possessions. He was
equally unsuccessful with the Swiss, whom he vainly persuaded
to acknowledge the supremacy of his house. ... For many of his
failures ... he is not to be blamed. To carry on his vast
enterprises he could command only the resources of Austria:
had he been able to wield those of the empire, his name would
have been more formidable to his enemies; and it is no slight
praise, that with means so contracted he could preserve the
Netherlands against the open violence, no less than the subtle
duplicity, of France. But the internal transactions of
Maximilian's reign are those only to which the attention of
the reader can be directed with pleasure. In 1495 we witness
the entire abolition of the right of diffidation [private
warfare, see LANDFRIEDE],--a right which from time immemorial
had been the curse of the empire. ... The passing of the
decree which for ever secured the public peace, by placing
under the ban of the empire, and fining at 2,000 marks in
gold, every city, every individual that should hereafter send
or accept a defiance, was nearly unanimous. In regard to the
long-proposed tribunal [to take cognizance of all violations
of the public tranquillity], which was to retain the name of
the Imperial chamber, Maximilian relaxed much from the
pretensions of his father. ... It was solemnly decreed that
the new court should consist of one grand judge, and of 16
assessors, who were presented by the states, and nominated by
the emperor. ... Though a new tribunal was formed, its
competency, its operation, its support, its constitution, the
enforcement of its decisions, were left to chance; and many
successive diets--even many generations--were passed before
anything like an organised system could be introduced into it.
For the execution of its decrees the Swabian league was soon
employed; then another new authority, the Council of Regency.
... But these authorities were insufficient to enforce the
execution of the decrees emanating from the chamber; and it
was found necessary to restore the proposition of the circles,
which had been agitated in the reign of Albert II. ...
Originally they comprised only--
1. Bavaria,
2. Franconia,
3. Saxony,
4. the Rhine,
5. Swabia, and
6. Westphalia; thus excluding the states of Austria and the
electorates. But this exclusion was the voluntary act of the
electors, who were jealous of a tribunal which might encroach
on their own privileges. In 1512, however, the opposition of
most appears to have been removed; for four new circles were
added.
7. The circle of Austria comprised the hereditary dominions of
that house.
8. That of Burgundy contained the states inherited from
Charles the Rash in Franche-Comté; and the Netherlands.
9. That of the Lower Rhine comprehended the three
ecclesiastical electorates and the Palatinate.
10. That of Upper Saxony extended over the electorate of that
name and the march of Brandenburg. ...
Bohemia and Prussia ... refused to be thus partitioned. Each
of these circles had its internal organisations, the elements
of which were promulgated in 1512, but which was considerably
improved by succeeding diets. Each had its hereditary
president, or director, and its hereditary prince convoked,
both offices being frequently vested in the same individual.
... Each circle had its military chief, elected by the local
states, whose duty it was to execute the decrees of the
imperial Chamber. Generally this office was held by the prince
director. ... The establishment of the Imperial Chamber was
... disagreeable 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 competency of this tribunal was soon
extended; from political affairs, investitures, charters, and
the numerous matters which concerned the Imperial chancery, it
immediately passed to judicial crimes. ... By an imperial
edict of 1518, the Aulic Council was to consist of 18 members,
all nominated by the emperor. Five only were to be chosen from
the states of the empire, the rest from those of Austria.
About half were legists, the other half nobles, but all
dependent on their chief. ... When he [Maximilian] laboured to
make this council as arbitrary in the empire as in Austria, he
met with great opposition. ... But his purpose was that of
encroachment no less than of defence; and his example was so
well imitated by his successors, that in most cases the Aulic
Council was at length acknowledged to have a concurrent
jurisdiction with the Imperial Chamber, in many the right of
prevention over its rival."
_S. A. Dunham,
History of the Germanic Empire,
book 3, chapter 1 (volume 2)._
{1456}
"The received opinion which recognises in [Maximilian] the
creative founder of the later constitution of the empire, must
be abandoned. ... He had not the power of keeping the princes
of the empire together; ... on the contrary, everything about
him split into parties. It followed of necessity that abroad
he rather lost than gained ground. ... The glory which
surrounds the memory of Maximilian, the high renown which he
enjoyed even among his contemporaries, were therefore not won
by the success of his enterprises, but by his personal
qualities. Every good gift of nature had been lavished upon
him in profusion. ... He was a man ... formed to excite
admiration, and to inspire enthusiastic attachment; formed to
be the romantic hero, the exhaustless theme of the people."
_L. von Ranke,
History of the Reformation in Germany,
volume 1, pages 379-381._
ALSO IN:
_L. von Ranke,
History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations
from 1494 to 1514,
book 1, chapter 3,
and book 2, chapters 2 and 4._
See, also, AUSTRIA: A. D. 1477-1495.
GERMANY: A. D.1496-1499.
The Swabian war.
Practical separation of the Swiss Confederacy from the Empire.
See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1396-1499.
GERMANY: A. D. .1508-1509.
The League of Cambrai against Venice.
See VENICE: A. D. 1508-1509.
GERMANY: A. D. 1513-1515.
The emperor in the pay of England.
Peace with France.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1513-1515.
GERMANY: A. D. 1516.
Abortive invasion of Milaness by Maximilian.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1516-1517.
GERMANY: A. D. 1517-1523.
Beginning of the movement of Religious Reformation.
Papal Indulgences, and Luther's attack on them.