The Empire of the West, which Charlemagne had constructed at so much
cost of blood and treasure, fell to pieces after he had gone to the
grave; and the crown of Germany, being separated from that of the
Frankish monarchy, was worn by one branch of the Carlovingian race,
while the members of another were enacting the part, without
exercising the authority, of kings on the banks of the Seine. But in
911, the various princes of Germany, assuming an attitude of
independence, elected Conrad of Franconia to the Imperial throne; and
he, after a reign rendered troublous by the inroads of the Hungarians,
was succeeded by Henry of Saxony, surnamed the Fowler.
Previous to the time of Charlemagne, the Germans considered it
indicative of servitude to live in cities, and argued that even the
fiercest animals lost their courage when confined. The prejudice had
gradually worn away; and Henry, in order to resist the Hungarian
horsemen, induced his subjects to build towns, surrounded them with
ramparts, fortified them with towers, and enjoined a certain number of
his nobles, albeit their favorite occupation was hunting, to reside
within the walls.
Otho the Great, son of Henry, becoming emperor in 938, checked the
indefatigable Hungarians, rendered Bohemia tributary to the Imperial
crown, forced the Danes to receive baptism, and, on the invitation of
the pope, marched to settle the affairs of Italy. At Rome he was
crowned emperor, dignified with the title of Cæsar Augustus, and
invested with the right of nominating the pope.
The son and grandson of Otho having successively enjoyed the Imperial
dignity, it was, on the decease of the latter, conferred on his
nephew, Henry of Bavaria, who asserted by arms his claim to the
sovereignty of Italy.
Conrad II, duke of Bavaria, or the Salic, next enjoyed the crown, and
rendered fiefs hereditary. By his wife, Gisella of Swabia, he had a
son, who succeeded him, in the person of Henry III, surnamed the
Black; and he, being a prince of spirit and ability, vindicated his
right to create popes, nominated three in succession, and departing
this life in 1056, left an infant son of his own name, under the care
of his widow, Agnes of Guienne.
Henry IV succeeded to the Imperial throne on the eve of a great and
momentous struggle, to which he was sacrificed from his youth upward.
Being carried off from his widowed mother and intrusted to intriguing
prelates, his young mind was deliberately corrupted; and he was
encouraged to indulge in vicious courses. He was then commanded by
pope Alexander to appear before the tribunal of the Holy See, and
answer for his debaucheries. Henry treated this mandate with contempt;
but soon after, Alexander died, and the papal throne was ascended by
Hildebrand, one of the most remarkable men Europe ever saw.
Hildebrand, the son of a carpenter in a little town of Tuscany, had
risen to be prior of Clugny, and in that capacity had become
conspicuous for austerity and self-denial. On the nomination of Leo IX
to the papal chair, he had pursuaded that pious prelate that an
emperor had no right to create a pope, and even prevailed on Leo’s
successor to confer on the College of cardinals the exclusive right of
voting at papal elections. For his services to the church, Hildebrand
had successively been appointed cardinal and chancellor of the Holy
See; and in 1073, he was elected as pope by the Sacred College. But
before assuming the tiara, he obtained the youthful emperor’s assent,
and then assuming the title of Gregory VII, he prepared to throw off
his mask, and execute his mission of ‘pulling down the pride of
kings.’
Meantime the Saxon subjects of the emperor, on the verge of revolt,
sent deputies to demand an audience of him, and explain their
grievances. The deputies found Henry engaged with a game of hazard,
and he contemptuously bade them to wait till it was finished. The
Saxons indignantly rose in arms under Otho of Nordhim, and in a few
hours the emperor was a fugitive. A Diet, or Assembly of the States,
was held to depose him, and bestow the crown on Rodolph of Swabia; but
a display of excessive loyalty on the part of the citizens of Worms
caused the dissolution of the Diet, and Henry, panting for vengeance,
led, in the depth of a severe winter, his gallant army to the Saxon
frontier. There, however, he found the insurgent forces of Otho so
much superior to his own, that he was under the necessity of
capitulating; but at this point, the great feudatories of the empire
taking up his quarrel, Henry, with the whole strength of Germany,
encountered the rebellious Saxons on the banks of the Unstrut, and, at
a fearful cost of life, gained a bloody victory.
Meanwhile, Gregory, having enacted a law forbidding priests to marry,
and another precluding kings from the right of investing spiritual
dignitaries, sent two legates to cite Henry to appear before him for
his delinquencies, in continuing to bestow and sell investitures. This
brought the dispute between the pope and the emperor to a crisis, for
the legates being unceremoniously dismissed, and a Diet held at Worms
having deposed Hildebrand, he, in retaliation, excommunicated the
emperor, and released all that prince’s subjects from their oath of
allegiance.
It was about the opening of the year 1076, that Henry, returning to
Utrecht from a campaign against the revolted Saxons, became aware that
he was under the papal ban; and in autumn a Diet held at Tribur
decided that, in the event of the emperor not being received into the
bosom of the Church by the following February, a Diet should be held
at Augsburg, and his crown given to another. Henry, thereupon, took up
his residence at Spire, where, deserted by his courtiers, he was
consoled by his injured but forgiving wife――the pure and faithful
Bertha. When months had worn away, and the pope still refused to
receive him in Italy as a penitent, the proud emperor, assuming the
garb of a pilgrim, and accompanied by Bertha, with their infant child
in her arms, undertook, in the midst of a singularly severe winter, to
cross the Alps, which, after the utmost danger and fatigue, they
almost miraculously accomplished.
About the end of January the emperor appeared as a humble suppliant at
the gate of the castle of Canossa, in whose feudal halls the pope was
enjoying the hospitality of his faithful adherent, Matilda, countess
of Tuscany. In the trenches of that Italian fortress, while the
Aphenines were covered with snow, and the mountain streams with ice,
Henry, cold, fasting, barefoot, and unclad, save with a scanty woolen
garment, stood for three whole days, imploring, with tears of agony
and cries for mercy, the pity of Hildebrand. As the third day was
drawing to a close, the pope relaxed, admitted the humiliated emperor
to his presence, and after subjecting the royal victim to the depth of
debasement, revoked the papal anathema.
The degradation to which the emperor had been exposed so galled his
subjects, that they meditated a removal of the imperial crown to the
head of his infant son, Conrad; the Saxons having elected Rodolph as
their sovereign, defeated Henry in two battles; and Hildebrand once
more pronounced against him the sentence of excommunication. But the
emperor had his revenge; for his rival, Rodolph, having fallen in
battle by the hand of Godfrey of Bouillon, and the pope’s Norman
allies being absent in the East, the banners of Germany were suddenly
displayed before the walls of Rome. In the spring of 1084 the
besiegers entered the Eternal City. Gregory took refuge in the castle
of St. Angelo, and Clement III, a rival pontiff, placed the Imperial
crown on Henry’s brow. But the return of the warlike Normans caused
the Imperial troops to retreat with precipitation; while the Roman
citizens rising against his allies compelled Hildebrand to fly for
shelter to Salerno. There, broken with time and trouble he expired;
and his last words were, ‘I have loved righteousness and hated
iniquity; therefore I die in exile.’
Henry returned to Germany, where he reigned for a while undisturbed by
civil war; but Pope Pascal, aspiring to follow in the footsteps of
Hildebrand, incited Henry, the Emperor’s eldest son, to rebellion; and
the youth declaring that he could not acknowledge as king or father a
man who was excommunicated, treacherously imprisoned his sire, and
assembling a Diet was proclaimed in his stead. Two prelates were sent
to demand the regalia from the deposed Emperor; he, receiving them in
his symbols of sovereignty, refused; but, laying violent hands on him,
they dragged him from his chair, and forcibly divested him of the
regal robes. Poor and distressed, Henry escaped from prison, and
raised a considerable force to assert his rights; but he died at Liége
in 1106, before active operations commenced. His body, denied a
resting-place in consecrated ground, was interred in a cave near
Spire.
Henry V, though indebted to the Pope for support in his parricidal
rebellion, was no sooner established on the Imperial throne, than,
reviving the claim of investiture for which his father had contended,
he invited the Pope to Germany, that they might settle the dispute.
But Pascal having appealed to the King of France, and a fruitless
conference having been held at Chalons, Henry entered Italy with
eighty thousand men, and after a tedious interview in the church of
St. Peter, ordered his guards to take Pascal into custody. The
populace of Rome rushed to the Pope’s rescue; a battle was fought
under the walls; and the carnage was so terrible that the waters of
the Tiber were stained with blood. Pascal, taken prisoner, crowned the
Emperor, and confirmed the right of investiture; but hardly had Henry
departed when the Pope changed his tune, and pronounced a sentence of
excommunication. The Emperor once more entered Rome, chased the Pope
to the territories of the Norman princes, and marched to take
possession of Tuscany, which Matilda, during Hildebrand’s visit to
Canossa, had bequeathed to the Church. Meanwhile Pascal died, and the
States of the Empire having implored Henry to make peace with the new
Pope, a Diet was held at Worms, and the matter accommodated. In 1125 a
pestilential disease carried Henry to the grave; and the Imperial
dignity, after being enjoyed till 1138 by Lothario II, was bestowed
upon Henry’s nephew, Conrad, duke of Franconia. A rival appeared in
the person of the haughty Duke of Bavaria, whose followers called
themselves Guelphs, from his family name; while the adherents of the
Emperor adopted the appellation of Ghibelines, from Hihghibelin, the
village of which Frederick, the brother of Conrad, was a native. Both
parties took up arms, and during the contest a romantic incident
occurred at the siege of Weinsberg. The Guelphs in the castle, after
being long besieged, yielded on condition that the Duke of Bavaria and
his officers should be allowed to retire unmolested: but the noble
Duchess, apprehending a breach of faith, stipulated that she and the
other women in the castle should be allowed to come forth and be
conducted to a place of safety, with as much as each of them could
carry. Conrad, who expected to see the ladies loaded with jewels,
gold, and silver, was in no small degree surprised when the Duchess
and her fair comrades appeared carrying their gallant husbands; and he
was so touched at this display of conjugal affection, that he granted
most favorable terms to the Guelphs.
The preaching of St. Bernard, though in French, and therefore
unintelligible to the Germans, had nevertheless a powerful effect on
the latter; and Conrad, resolving to take part in the second Crusade,
embarked with a mighty army: but being betrayed by Greek guides in
Asia Minor, his forces were surprised and defeated amidst the defiles
of Laodicea. The defeated Emperor, returning to Europe, died in 1151,
and was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick Barbarossa, who was soon
involved in a struggle with Henry the Lion duke of Saxony, with the
Italian cities, and with another enemy infinitely more formidable than
either.
Early in the twelfth century, Nicolas Breakspear, an English
mendicant, was strolling about from place to place, when chance
directed his vagrant steps to the convent of St. Rufus, in Provence,
where the canons received him as a servant. Being afterward admitted
as a monk, Nicolas rose to the rank of Abbot. In 1154, by personal
merit and good fortune, the Anglo-Saxon beggar was placed in the papal
chair as Adrian IV, and before crowning Frederick he insisted that the
Emperor should on bended knee kiss his foot, hold his stirrup, and
lead his white mule by the bridle for nine paces. Frederick
reluctantly consented to perform the ceremony at Venice; but purposely
mistaking the stirrup, he remarked with a sneer, ‘I have yet to learn
the business of a groom.’
The Emperor proved himself an able politician and a stout soldier. To
abridge the power of the martial nobles, he followed the example of
Louis VI, of France, and conferred charters of community, which
enfranchised the people and formed them into corporations.
Going to the third Crusade, this great ruler was drowned in crossing
the river Seneff, and was succeeded on the Imperial throne by his son,
Henry VI, who was speedily involved in Italian wars.
A few years earlier the throne of Sicily had been filled by William, a
king of the Guiscard line, who had espoused Joan, a sister of Richard
of England, without being blessed with heirs. William, however, had an
aunt, named Constance, whose chance of being queen appeared so
certain, that Henry, who was at once poor and avaricious, wedded, with
great pomp, the princess, though she was thirty-two――an advanced age
for a royal Italian bride. But when William died, so strong was the
prejudice against a female sovereign, that his illegitimate son
Tancred was proclaimed King. Henry prepared to assert his claim, but
the lion-hearted King of England, on his way to Palestine, arrived at
Sicily, and indignant to find his sister deprived at once of her dower
and her freedom, commenced aggressions. Subsequently, however, Richard
concluded with Tancred a league, offensive and defensive, and the
Emperor, however he might have dealt with the Sicilian King, had no
fancy for playing at the game of carnage with Richard _Cœur de Lion_.
He therefore waited till the English King’s departure, and entering
Italy, laid siege to Naples in the summer of 1091; but when a fever,
which carried off a large portion of his army, prostrated himself, the
Emperor, in alarm, raised the siege, and executed an inglorious
retreat. But he treasured up his malice, and his day of triumph came.
When Richard had been seized, imprisoned, and forced to pay an
enormous ransom, Tancred died, and his son was placed on the throne.
Availing himself of the money extorted from Richard, Henry――who had
meanwhile incorporated into a regular order the Teutonic knights,
originally destined for the service of the sick in Palestine, and
built for them a house at Coblenz――announced his resolution of
undertaking a Crusade. But instead of going to the Holy Land, he
marched into Sicily, the throne of which he seized, after perpetrating
revolting cruelties. At length, one of the Norman princes having been
tied naked to a chair of red-hot iron, and crowned with a circle of
the same burning metal, the Empress in disgust turned against her
husband, incited the inhabitants to rebel, and imposed upon him the
most humiliating conditions. Henry died at Messina, poisoned, as was
said, by his Italian spouse, and his son, Frederick II, was placed on
the Imperial throne; but the German princes, indignant at seeing the
crown become hereditary, held a Diet at Cologne, and elected Otho,
duke of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion. Civil war arose between the
princes, and Otho IV was crowned at Rome by the Pope; but Frederick
allied himself with Philip Augustus, king of France, who at the
village of Bovines, in 1214, totally defeated and ruined the rival.
Upon this disaster Otho retired to Brunswick, where he became a
devotee; while Frederick, having been crowned with unwonted
magnificence, afterward undertook a Crusade without the papal
sanction, and on his return was excommunicated by Gregory IX. From
that period his life was one long and vexatious struggle with the
Popes; the Dominican friars preached a holy war against him; a defeat
before Parma made him retire to recruit his army in Sicily; and there
he died in the year 1251.
His son Conrad, last Emperor of the house of Swabia, assumed the
Imperial title; but after his death, in 1254, there was an interregnum
of several years, during which Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of
Henry III of England, spent large sums to secure his election as King
of the Romans, which he deemed a certain step to the Imperial dignity;
but several of the Electors being favorable to Alphonso, king of
Castile, Richard’s aspiration was not fulfilled.
At length, in 1274, the German princes, though impatient of
subordination, willing that the throne should be occupied by an
emperor whose influence was not such as to excite their jealousy,
elected Rodolph of Hapsburg, a Swiss baron; but the king of Bohemia,
of whose household Rodolph had been steward, unable to brook the
sovereignty of his former inferior, not only refused homage for his
fiefs, but seized on the Duchy of Austria. He was soon compelled to
give up Austria and do homage for Bohemia and Moravia, but bargained
for the latter ceremony being performed in private. To gratify him in
this particular, a close pavilion was erected on the small island of
Cumberg, and thither came the Bohemian, decked with gold and jewels,
while the Emperor appeared in plain and simple habiliments. The
Bohemian was nervously anxious to avoid a public scene; but at a
critical moment the curtains of the pavilion, falling aside, revealed
to thousands of soldiers the proud King on bended knee before his
former steward. Incited by a haughty spouse, he renounced his
allegiance; but the Emperor taking the field, slew the hapless King in
battle, and, to aggrandize the house of Hapsburg, bestowed Austria on
his second son, Count Albert.
Adolph of Nassau being next elected Emperor, Count Albert of Austria,
incited by Philip IV of France and supported by a minority of the
Electors, rose in arms, slew Adolph in a battle at Spire, and was soon
after crowned as Emperor. Thereupon Pope Boniface summoned him to
answer for Adolph’s murder; but a bitter feud arising between the
French King and the Pope, the latter found it convenient to court
Albert’s alliance, and transferred to him the sovereignty of France.
However, Albert soon had his hands full at home; for having, as
hereditary sovereign of several Swiss cantons, made an attempt to
seize the whole of the provinces, the natives combined, and with a
small army won successive victories.
The end of Albert was particularly tragical. In 1309 he was walking
one day on the banks of the Russ, when his companion, a nephew, whose
patrimony he had unjustly retained, drawing his sword, inflicted a
mortal wound; and the Electors raised to the throne Henry of
Luxembourg, the most renowned knight of an age which boasted of Robert
Bruce and Giles de Argentine. The martial Emperor having avenged his
predecessor’s assassination, fought his way to Rome, imposed a tribute
on the Italian States, and died in 1314; poisoned, as was supposed, by
emissaries of the Pope. Louis of Bavaria was then elected; and, after
a long dispute, defeated and captured Frederick the Handsome, of
Austria. But successive Popes proved his mortal foes; and though the
death of his Austrian competitor left Louis without a rival, Benedict
XII, who resided at Avignon, vindictively pursued him to the grave.
His subjects were made to choose between their sovereign and the
pontiff: discord and disorder loosened the frame-work of society; and
the fraternity known as the Friends of God, by the spread of their
doctrines, prepared the way for that religious reformation which was
accomplished in the following century.
On the death of Louis, in 1348, the king of Bohemia, favored by the
Pope, obtained the vacant throne, with the title of Charles IV. This
Emperor issued the celebrated Golden Bull, which limited the number of
Electors to seven, because of the seven mortal sins and the
candlestick with seven branches. The publication was signalized by an
ostentatious ceremony, in which the Electors took their appropriate
parts as hereditary officers. The Archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and
Triers, carried the Imperial seals of Germany, Italy, and Gaul; the
Duke of Luxembourg, as proxy of the Bohemian King, officiated as
cupbearer, and poured wine from a golden flagon into the Emperor’s
golden cup; the Duke of Saxony, as grand-marshal, appeared with a
silver measure of oats; the Elector of Brandenburg presented the
Emperor and Empress with water in basins of gold; and the Count
Palatine, in presence of the great officers of state, served up the
viands in dishes of the most precious metal.
The Emperor Maximilian, known as the Moneyless, described Charles as
‘the pest of the empire,’ and not without cause; for he first
dissipated the Imperial territories in Italy, and in 1376, to secure
the election of his son, Wenceslaus, as King of the Romans, he
promised each of the Electors a hundred thousand crowns. Unable to pay
so large a sum, he alienated the ample Imperial domain which stretched
along the banks of the Rhine from Basil to Cologne, and dying in 1378,
was succeeded by the son for whom he had made so great a sacrifice.
Wenceslaus proved himself the most cruel and vicious of mankind. He is
said to have walked the streets with an executioner, to put to death
such persons as incurred his dislike, to have drowned in the Moldau a
monk who refused to reveal the confessions of his wife, the Queen of
Bohemia, and even to have, in an hour of intoxication, ordered his
cook to be roasted alive. The tyrant was, in consequence of his gross
incapacity, deprived of the Imperial crown, which was given to Robert,
the Count Palatine; and he, in his turn, was succeeded by Sigismund,
brother of Wenceslaus, and King of Hungary.
Christendom was at that period scandalized by the great schism of the
West, produced by the cardinals having elected three rival popes――each
considering himself endowed with all the attributes which Hildebrand
had claimed for the Vicar of Christ; and Sigismund, eager to settle
the controversy, visited England to consult Henry V. But finding that
hero wholly occupied with French wars, the Emperor returned, and in
1418 summoned the Council of Constance, which settled the dispute by
degrading the three rivals and electing Martin V.
The new pontiff was installed by an imposing ceremony. Arrayed in
pontifical vestments, he mounted a richly-caparisoned mule, which was
led by the reins, with due solemnity, by the Emperor and the Elector
of Brandenburg. A magnificent canopy was held over the Pope’s head by
four Counts; several princes walked around; and forty thousand
equestrians took part in the procession. The Council then went to more
serious work, and summoned John Huss, a disciple of Wicliffe. Huss,
after defending the articles of his faith, was declared a heretic,
stripped of his sacerdotal habit, crowned with a mitre of paper, on
which were painted three devils, and condemned to be burned with his
writings. The victim died praising God, and was followed to the stake
by Jerome of Prague.
When Sigismund went down to his tomb in 1436, his son-in-law, Albert
of Austria, who inherited the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, was
raised to the Imperial throne; and after dividing Germany into six
circles, each regulated by a Diet, he was succeeded by his cousin,
Frederick III. At the beginning of this long and languid reign, while
war was raging between the Turks and Hungarians, John Guttenberg
invented at Strasburg the art of printing, which brought into
operation the power of the pen; and that potent weapon being, on the
revival of learning, directed first against spiritual, and then
against temporal despotism, materially influenced those revolutions
which have gradually removed ancient landmarks, and changed the face
of Continental Europe.
Maximilian I succeeded his brother Frederick in 1493, and, to
terminate the calamities created by private feuds, instituted, at the
stately city of Frankfort, the Imperial Chamber, consisting of a
president appointed by the Emperor, and sixteen judges, chosen by him
and the States; and he prevailed on the Diet to consent to the Aulic
Council as the Emperor’s Court, and without appeal. After wearing the
crown with honor, and exhibiting much enthusiasm for science and
literature, Maximilian, in 1519, disappeared from the stage of affairs
on the eve of great events; and his grandson Charles, the juvenile
King of Spain, who inherited Austria, became a candidate for the
Imperial dignity. In this he was opposed by Francis I, whose
ambassadors impressed upon the Electors the necessity of showing that
the empire was not an heir-loom in the house of Austria; and the
Electors, with whom it was a rule not to select any prince already
occupying an important position, caring little for either candidate,
laid the diadem at the feet of Frederick of Saxony, a man of great
prudence and popularity. Frederick, however, declined the distinction,
and recommended them to choose the King of Spain, who was accordingly
elected on 28th June, 1520, and crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle in the
following October.
Thirty-seven years before that important event, the wife of a miner,
named Luther, (a worthy, studious, and stubborn man), had, in the
little town of Eisleben, become the mother of a boy, who was named
Martin, from having been born on St. Martin’s Eve. Removed in infancy
to Mansfeld, on the banks of the Vipper, young Luther, while standing
by his father’s forge, or accompanying his mother to gather fagots in
the forest, indulged in the anticipation of becoming a scholar, and
being sent, after some preparatory training, to Erfurt, he excited by
his intellectual powers the admiration of the whole university. One
day, while reading keenly in the library, he came upon a Latin copy of
the Bible, the pages of which he perused with breathless interest; and
resolving upon a monastic life, he entered the Convent of St.
Augustine at the age of twenty-one. After spending three years in the
cloister, Luther accepted a professorship in the University of
Wittemberg, which Frederick, the Elector of Saxony, had founded. And
in 1512 being sent as envoy to Rome, where Pope Julius then reigned,
and his monastic illusions vanishing into air, he commenced his career
as a Reformer, and was excommunicated by Leo X, who did not like his
hunting, shooting, and fishing to be disturbed by heretics. Luther
retaliated by publishing the ‘Babylonish Captivity;’ and the book
being burned, he, in 1520, publicly committed to the flames the Pope’s
bull and decretals.
The popular spirit in Germany was in Luther’s favor; for though, from
the days of Louis of Bavaria, the Emperors had acknowledged the
ascendancy of the Popes, the people had exhibited an increasing
dislike to the yoke of Rome, and in 1512 the populace of the Rhenish
provinces had displayed their discontent by forming the League of
Shoes. Maximilian, it appears, had not manifested any dislike to the
new faith; but Charles V had inherited enough of Spanish bigotry to
decide his opinions, and in 1521 he summoned Luther to appear before
the Diet of Worms, and answer for his doctrines. The bold Reformer
soon arrived from Wittemberg in a wagon, defended himself with great
spirit, and afterward escaped into Saxony, where, secured by his
friend the Elector in the fortress of Wartberg, while branded by the
Pope as ‘a viper of hell,’ he commenced his translation of the Bible.
And matters did not rest here, for the mind of Europe was in
agitation.
While, in England, Henry was attacking alike the Catholics and
Protestants; while, in Scotland, Cardinal Beaton was feasting his eyes
with the burning of heretics; while, in France, the brave and
glory-loving Francis was sullying his fame by consenting to the
villages of the Vaudois being converted into a desert waste; the
Emperor Charles was by no means indifferent to the interest of the
Romish Church within the Imperial dominions. And when freed by the
death of his impetuous rival from apprehensions of war, he gained, at
Muhlberg, a victory over the Confederates at Smalcalde, which placed
the venerable Frederick of Saxony in his power. Strangely, at that
crisis, the Lutherans turned for aid to Henry II of France, who,
though bent on persecution at home, on certain conditions proclaimed
himself their champion. But ere his services could be rendered,
Maurice of Saxony, to whom Charles had given the Electorate,
preferring to be a chief of the Protestants to figuring as the
Emperor’s creature, after much dissimulation marched on Inspruck, and
almost succeeded in capturing Charles, who, after escaping over the
Alps in a litter, sick and solitary, signed the Convention of Passau,
which was converted into a definitive peace in 1552――the era of
religious liberty in Germany.
At the close of this war, weary of the world, the great Emperor,
having previously abdicated the Spanish throne in favor of his son
Philip, resigned the Imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, king of
the Romans. After a reign of eight years, that prince was succeeded by
his son, Maximilian II, who died in 1596, while preparing to support
his election as King of Poland.
Rodolph II, son of Maximilian, was so entirely devoted to the study of
astronomy and astrology that he saw with indifference his dominions
usurped by his brother Matthias, who, succeeding to the Empire in
1612, procured the election of his cousin Ferdinand to the thrones of
Hungary and Bohemia. Both nations revolted, and the Hungarians were
appeased; but Ferdinand was a pupil of the Jesuits, and the Bohemian
Protestants, to whom he was obnoxious, advanced in arms to the gates
of Vienna; and, while Matthias was on his dying bed, commenced that
terrible conflict known in history as the Thirty Years’ War.
Ferdinand, though elevated to the Imperial throne, was sternly
rejected by the Bohemians, who offered their crown to Frederick, the
Elector Palatine, and son-in-law of the first James of England.
Frederick, proceeding to Prague, accepted the gift, but rashly, as it
soon appeared; for in November, 1620, the Imperialists coming thither,
under Tilly, inflicted a defeat, which made the Elector and his fair
spouse, whom men called the Queen of Hearts, fly to the Hague, while
their friends surrendered town after town in the Palatinate to the
Italian general Spinola. The Duke of Batavia, ere long, took
possession of the Electorate; and its hereditary sovereign, homeless
and houseless, in spite of the alliance of the King of Denmark,
remained a pensioner on Dutch bounty at the Hague.
The tyranny of Ferdinand speedily led to the confederacy of Leipsic,
of which Gustavus Adolphus, the heroic King of Sweden, was chief.
After bearing the banner of Protestantism in triumph through Germany,
that Lion of the North fell in the battle of Lutzen, and the fortunes
of the Elector seemed desperate. But when the Emperor had closed his
checkered career, and been succeeded by his son Ferdinand III, and
when Germany was suffering from famine and poverty, the consequence of
the long war, the Protestants, with the aid of France, found matters
assuming a more favorable aspect. Turenne won the battle of
Sommerhausen; Wrangel captured Prague; and the great Condé’s victory
at Lens, where the Archduke Leopold, brother of the Emperor, had his
army routed, compelled Ferdinand to consent to the Peace of
Westphalia, by which the Palatine family were restored and religious
equality decreed.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF EISENSTADT, HUNGARY.]
[Illustration: KING OF DENMARK.]
The peace was grateful to the inhabitants after their long struggle.
Their losses were gradually repaired, their lands cultivated, and
their towns rebuilt; but on the death of Ferdinand, and the accession
of his unamiable son, Leopold, in 1658, the Hungarians rose in
insurrection, made Tekeli their prince, and called in the Turks to
their aid. The reigning Sultan, in 1683, raised the most formidable
force ever sent against Christendom; and Lorrain, the Imperial
general, retired before the Turkish crescent. Leopold and his
household fled from Vienna; two-thirds of the inhabitants followed;
the city was besieged, and it would have fallen but for the timely
arrival of John Sobieski, king of Poland, who defeated the invaders,
and took the famous standard of Mohammed, which was sent as a present
to the Pope. Fearful was the vengeance which Leopold now took on the
Hungarians. A scaffold, erected in the market-place of Eperies, stood
there so many months, that the executioners were weary of victims. At
length, the Hungarian nobles having been summoned to Vienna, declared
the crown hereditary: the States at Presburg confirmed the decree; and
the Emperor’s son, Joseph, at the age of nine, was acknowledged as
King of Hungary.
When Charles, king of Spain, breathed his last, without heirs, and
Louis XIV sent his grandson Philip V to Madrid, Leopold, whose mother
was daughter of Philip III, claimed the Spanish throne for his second
son, the Archduke Charles. England supported the Austrian claim, and
the war was still raging when, in 1705, Leopold dying, was succeeded
on the Imperial throne by his son Joseph, who seized Mantua and Milan,
assailed the temporal power of the Pope, and made everything bend to
his power. In the midst of his successes he expired, in 1711, and
Charles VI, whom the allies were attempting to place on the Spanish
throne, having obtained the Imperial crown, the treaty of Utrecht
terminated the War of Succession. To that treaty Charles at first
refused his assent; but when a French army under Marshal Villars had
passed the Rhine, he acceeded to the views of the allies, and obtained
Milan, Naples, and the Netherlands.
One of the greatest and most successful captains of that age was
Prince Eugène. His father being a member of the house of Savoy, and
his mother a niece of Cardinal Mazarin, he applied to Louis XIV first
for an abbey, and then for a regiment. The Grand Monarch, little
understanding the applicant’s character, refused in both cases. Prince
Eugène, taking service with the Emperor, was associated with the
illustrious Marlborough in those brilliant victories that have made
the name of the ‘handsome Englishman’ immortal, had the distinction of
expelling the French from Italy, and in 1717, undertook the memorable
siege of Belgrade, the strongest castle in Europe. Surrounded in his
camp by a hundred and fifty thousand Turks, he routed them with
immense slaughter, and captured the place, which remained in
possession of Austria for twenty-two years.
Charles, anxious that the hereditary dominions of the house of Austria
should be settled on his daughter, the celebrated Maria Theresa,
obtained the assent of the European powers to a pragmatic sanction.
But hardly had his eyes closed in 1740, when events verified the
observation of Prince Eugène: ‘The best guarantee in this case would
be an army of a hundred thousand men.’ Frederick the Great, king of
Prussia, claimed Selesia, captured Breslau, after winning the battle
of Molwitz; while Charles of Bavaria, whom Louis XV had caused to be
crowned as King of Bohemia, was chosen Emperor, with the title of
Charles VII. But Maria Theresa, though deserted by her allies, was a
woman of too high spirit to be daunted by adverse circumstances. She
convoked the States of Hungary, and taking her infant son in her arms,
addressed the assembly in Latin, the idiom of the States――‘I place in
your hands,’ she said, ‘the daughter and son of your kings. They look
to you for succor, and depend on you for safety.’
The Hungarian nobles, too chivalrous to resist such an appeal from
such lips, drew their glittering swords, and exclaimed with one
accord, ‘we will die for our Queen,’ and levied an army which brought
her enemies to reason. At length, after an English army had won the
battle of Dettingen, and Charles VII had been removed by death, peace
was restored, and the husband of the popular Queen was raised, in
1745, to the Imperial throne, with the title of Francis I. But, in
1756, the Seven Years’ War breaking out between France and England,
Maria Theresa, regretting the cession of Selesia to the Prussian King,
flattered the vanity of Madame Pompadour, and secured the aid of
France. The skill and intrepid courage of Frederick prevailed, and
after seven bloody campaigns, he signed a peace with the
Empress-Queen.
On the death of his father, Joseph, the son of Maria Theresa, ascended
the Imperial throne, and issued some oppressive edicts against the
Netherlands, which his grandfather had acquired at the close of the
Spanish war. The inhabitants had been contented under the rule of
Maria Theresa, but revolted at Joseph’s tyranny; and terrible was the
punishment. Their houses were ruthlessly entered at midnight; women
and their infants were slain with one bayonet, and their husbands
were, without trial, carried off prisoners to Vienna on the banks of
the Danube. These cruelties prompted the Netherlands to declare
themselves forever released from Austrian sway, and to treat every
offer of indemnity with contempt.
This Emperor’s conduct was otherwise praiseworthy; he abolished the
system of torture, with servitude and villeinage, granted a liberal
toleration in religion, and was easy and affable in communicating with
his subjects. He was succeeded in 1790 by his brother Leopold, who,
during his brief reign, restored tranquillity in the Netherlands, and
was hesitating about the course he should pursue toward revolutionary
France, when he died in 1792.
Francis II then succeeded his father, and took a conspicuous part in
the struggle, as has already been related. But in 1806, when fourteen
princes of Germany formed the Confederation of the Rhine, and
acknowledged the victorious Napoleon as their protector, Francis,
finding himself deprived of all his honors as head of the Germanic
body, abandoned the ancient title, and styled himself Emperor of
Austria.
When Napoleon, after making the kings of the earth bow down before his
mighty energies, fell in 1814, Vienna, the capital of the new empire,
was the scene of one of the most important assemblies of modern days.
There the Emperors of Austria and Russia, the King of Prussia, and
many of the Germanic princes, met the representatives of England and
France, to establish the territorial limits of the Continental States
upon recognized principles of international policy. That was the
celebrated Congress of Vienna; and while withholding the Netherlands
from Austria, it restored Lombardy, and added thereto all the ancient
possessions of the far-famed Venetian republic. The Germanic
Confederation was likewise dealt with, and something done toward
harmonizing the interests of the independent states into a
nationality.
The Emperor Francis died in 1835, after an eventful reign of
forty-three years, leaving his dominions to his son Ferdinand, under
the auspices of the profound Metternich. But during the revolutionary
epoch of 1848, while the Hungarians were in arms to assert their
independence, he abdicated; and his brother declining to accept the
Imperial crown, it came to the son of the latter, Francis Joseph, who
thereupon assumed the titles of Emperor of Austria and King of
Hungary.