THE GERMANIC CONSTITUTION: THE SEVEN ELECTORS.
[Sidenote: Territorial Sovereignty of the Princes.]
[Sidenote: Adolf, 1292-1298.]
[Sidenote: Albert I, 1298-1308.]
[Sidenote: Henry VII, 1308-1314.]
[Sidenote: Lewis IV, 1314-1347.]
The reign of Frederick the Second was not less fatal to the domestic
power of the German king than to the European supremacy of the
Emperor. His two Pragmatic Sanctions had conferred rights that made
the feudal aristocracy almost independent, and the long anarchy of the
Interregnum had enabled them not only to use but to extend and fortify
their power. Rudolf of Hapsburg had striven, not wholly in vain, to
coerce their insolence, but the contest between his son Albert and
Adolf of Nassau which followed his death, the short and troubled reign
of Albert himself, the absence of Henry the Seventh in Italy, the
civil war of Lewis of Bavaria and Frederick duke of Austria, rival
claimants of the imperial throne, the difficulties in which Lewis, the
successful competitor, found himself involved with the Pope--all these
circumstances tended more and more to narrow the influence of the
crown and complete the emancipation of the turbulent nobles. They now
became virtually supreme in their own domains, enjoying full
jurisdiction, certain appeals excepted, the right of legislation,
privileges of coining money, of levying tolls and taxes: some were
without even a feudal bond to remind them of their allegiance. The
numbers of the immediate nobility--those who held directly of the
crown--had increased prodigiously by the extinction of the dukedoms of
Saxony, Franconia, and Swabia: along the Rhine the lord of a single
tower was usually a sovereign prince. The petty tyrants whose boast it
was that they owed fealty only to God and the Emperor, shewed
themselves in practice equally regardless of both powers. Pre-eminent
were the three great houses of Austria, Bavaria, and Luxemburg, this
last having acquired Bohemia, A.D. 1309; next came the electors,
already considered collectively more important than the Emperor, and
forming for themselves the first considerable principalities.
Brandenburg and the Rhenish Palatinate are strong independent states
before the end of this period: Bohemia and the three archbishoprics
almost from its beginning.
[Sidenote: Policy of the Emperors.]
The chief object of the magnates was to keep the monarch in his
present state of helplessness. Till the expenses which the crown
entailed were found ruinous to its wearer, their practice was to
confer it on some petty prince, such as were Rudolf and Adolf of
Nassau and Gunther of Schwartzburg, seeking when they could to keep it
from settling in one family. They bound the newly-elected to respect
all their present immunities, including those which they had just
extorted as the price of their votes; they checked all his attempts to
recover lost lands or rights: they ventured at last to depose their
anointed head, Wenzel of Bohemia. Thus fettered, the Emperor sought
only to make the most of his short tenure, using his position to
aggrandize his family and raise money by the sale of crown estates and
privileges. His individual action and personal relation to the subject
was replaced by a merely legal and formal one: he represented order
and legitimate ownership, and so far was still necessary to the
political system. But progresses through the country were abandoned:
unlike his predecessors, who had resigned their patrimony when they
assumed the sceptre, he lived mostly in his own states, often without
the Empire's bounds. Frederick III never entered it for twenty-seven
years.
[Sidenote: Power of the cities.]
[Sidenote: Financial distress.]
How thoroughly the national character of the office was gone is shewn
by the repeated attempts to bestow it on 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, Charles of Valois was proposed
against Henry VII, Edward III of England actually elected against
Charles IV (his parliament forbade him to accept), George Podiebrad,
king of Bohemia, against Frederick III. Sigismund was virtually a
Hungarian king. The Emperor's only hope would have been in the support
of the cities. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they had
increased 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 the Swiss, 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 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 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 supported one monarch, could much less maintain two at
the same time[263]. Sigismund told his Diet, 'Nihil esse imperio
spoliatius, nihil egentius, adeo ut qui sibi ex Germaniæ principibus
successurus esset, qui præter patrimonium nihil aliud habuerit, apud
eum non imperium sed potius servitium sit futurum[264].' Patritius,
the secretary of Frederick III, declared that the revenues of the
Empire scarcely covered the expenses of its ambassadors[265]. 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[266], 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 mutually hostile, and by consequence
selfish; their niggardly grants did no more than keep the Empire from
dying of inanition.
[Sidenote: Charles IV (A.D. 1347-1378), and his electoral
constitution.]
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 grandson of the Emperor Henry VII, was chosen to
ascend the throne. 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.
[Sidenote: 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[267]. 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 same manner as the regal,
transmissible by blood. 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 any family, nor pass like a private estate by the
ordinary rules of descent.
[Sidenote: Electoral body in primitive times.]
The right to choose the war-chief belonged, in the earliest ages, to
the whole body of freemen. Their suffrage, which 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 St.
Henry, and Conrad the Franconian duke were chosen[268]. 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[269].' St. Thomas says, 'Election ceased from the times
of Charles the Great to those of Otto III, when Pope Gregory V
established that of the seven princes, which will last as long as the
holy Roman Church, who ranks above all other powers, shall have judged
expedient for Christ's faithful people[270].' Since it tended to exalt
the papal power, this fiction was accepted, no doubt honestly
accepted, and spread abroad by the clergy. And indeed, like so many
other fictions, it had a sort of foundation in fact. The death of Otto
III, the fourth of a line of monarchs among whom son had regularly
succeeded to father, threw back the crown into the gift of the nation,
and was no doubt one of the chief causes why it did not in the end
become hereditary[271].
[Sidenote: Encroachments of the great nobles.]
Thus, under the Saxon and Franconian sovereigns, the throne was
theoretically elective, the assent of the chiefs and their followers
being required, though little more likely to be refused than it was to
an English or a French king; practically hereditary, since both of
these dynasties succeeded in occupying it for four generations, the
father procuring the son's election during his own lifetime. And so it
might well have continued, had the right of choice been retained by
the whole body of the aristocracy. But at the election of Lothar II,
A.D. 1125, we find a certain small number of magnates exercising the
so-called right of prætaxation; that is to say, choosing alone the
future monarch, and then submitting him to the rest for their
approval. A supreme electoral college, once formed, had both the will
and the power to retain the crown in their own gift, and still further
exclude their inferiors from participation. So before the end of the
Hohenstaufen dynasty, two great changes had passed upon the ancient
constitution. It had become a fundamental doctrine that the Germanic
throne, unlike the thrones of other countries, was purely
elective[272]: nor could the influence and the liberal offers of Henry
VI prevail on the princes to abandon what they rightly judged the
keystone of their powers. And at the same time the right of
prætaxation had ripened into an exclusive privilege of election,
vested in a small body[273]: the assent of the rest of the nobility
being at first assumed, finally altogether dispensed with. On the
double choice of Richard and Alfonso, A.D. 1264, the only question was
as to the majority of votes in the electoral college: neither then nor
afterwards was there a word of the rights of the other princes, counts
and barons, important as their voices had been two centuries earlier.
[Sidenote: The Seven Electors.]
[Sidenote: Golden Bull of Charles IV, A.D. 1356.]
The origin of that college is a matter somewhat intricate and obscure.
It is mentioned A.D. 1152, and in somewhat clearer terms in 1198, as a
distinct body; but without anything to shew who composed it. First in
A.D. 1265 does a letter of Pope Urban IV say that by immemorial custom
the right of choosing the Roman king belonged to seven persons, the
seven who had just divided their votes on Richard of Cornwall and
Alfonso of Castile. Of these seven, three, the archbishops of Mentz,
Treves, and Cologne, pastors of the richest Transalpine sees,
represented the German church: the other four ought, according to the
ancient constitution, to have been the dukes of the four nations,
Franks, Swabians, Saxons, Bavarians, to whom had also belonged the
four great offices of the imperial household. But of these dukedoms
the two first named were now extinct, and their place and power in the
state, as well as the household offices they had held, had descended
upon two principalities of more recent origin, those, namely, of the
Palatinate of the Rhine and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The Saxon
duke, though with greatly narrowed dominions, retained his vote and
office of arch-marshal, and the claim of his Bavarian compeer would
have been equally indisputable had it not so happened that both he and
the Palsgrave of the Rhine were members of the great house of
Wittelsbach. That one family should hold two votes out of seven seemed
so dangerous to the state that it was made a ground of objection to
the Bavarian duke, and gave an opening to the pretensions of the king
of Bohemia, who, though not properly a Teutonic prince[274], might on
the score of rank and power assert himself the equal of any one of the
electors. The dispute between these rival claimants, as well as all
the rules and requisites of the election, were settled by Charles the
Fourth in the Golden Bull, thenceforward a fundamental law of the
Empire. He decided in favour of Bohemia, of which he was then king;
fixed Frankfort as the place of election; named the archbishop of
Mentz convener of the electoral college; gave to Bohemia the first, to
the Count Palatine the second place among the secular electors. A
majority of votes was in all cases to be decisive. As to each
electorate there was attached a great office, it was supposed that
this was the title by which the vote was possessed; though it was in
truth rather an effect than a cause. The three prelates were
archchancellors of Germany, Gaul and Burgundy, and Italy respectively:
Bohemia cupbearer, the Palsgrave seneschal, Saxony marshal, and
Brandenburg chamberlain[275].
[Sidenote: Eighth Electorate.]
[Sidenote: Ninth Electorate.]
These arrangements, under which disputed elections became far less
frequent, remained undisturbed till A.D. 1618, when on the breaking
out of the Thirty Years' War the Emperor Ferdinand II by an
unwarranted stretch of prerogative deprived the Palsgrave Frederick
(king of Bohemia, and husband of Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of
England) of his electoral vote, and transferred it to his own
partisan, Maximilian of Bavaria. At the peace of Westphalia the
Palsgrave was reinstated as an eighth elector, Bavaria retaining her
place. The sacred number having been once broken through, less scruple
was felt in making further changes. In A.D. 1692, the Emperor Leopold
I conferred a ninth electorate on the house of Brunswick Lüneburg,
which was then in possession of the duchy of Hanover, and succeeded to
the throne of Great Britain in 1714; and in A.D. 1708, the assent of
the Diet thereto was obtained. It was in this way that English kings
came to vote at the election of a Roman Emperor.
It is not a little curious that the only potentate who still continues
to entitle himself Elector[276] should be one who never did (and of
course never can now) join in electing an Emperor, having been under
the arrangements of the old Empire a simple Landgrave. In A.D. 1803,
Napoleon, among other sweeping changes in the Germanic constitution,
procured the extinction of the electorates of Cologne and Treves,
annexing their territories to France, and gave the title of Elector,
as the highest after that of king, to the duke of Würtemburg, the
Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hessen-Cassel, and the archbishop
of Salzburg. Three years afterwards the Empire itself ended, and the
title became meaningless.
As the Germanic Empire is the most conspicuous example of a monarchy
not hereditary that the world has ever seen, it may not be amiss to
consider for a moment what light its history throws upon the character
of elective monarchy in general, a contrivance which has always had,
and will probably always continue to have, seductions for a certain
class of political theorists.
[Sidenote: Objects of an elective monarchy: how far attained in
Germany.]
[Sidenote: Choice of the fittest.]
First of all then it deserves to be noticed how difficult, one might
almost say impossible, it was found to maintain in practice the
elective principle. In point of law, the imperial throne was from the
tenth century to the nineteenth absolutely open to any orthodox
Christian candidate. But as a matter of fact, the competition was
confined to a few very powerful families, and there was always a
strong tendency for the crown to become hereditary in some one of
these. Thus the Franconian Emperors held it from A.D. 1024 till 1125,
the Hohenstaufen, themselves the heirs of the Franconians, for a
century or more; the house of Luxemburg (kings of Bohemia) enjoyed it
through three successive reigns, and when in the fifteenth century it
fell into the tenacious grasp of the Hapsburgs, they managed to retain
it thenceforth (with but one trifling interruption) till it vanished
out of nature altogether. Therefore the chief benefit which the scheme
of elective sovereignty seems to promise, that of putting the fittest
man in the highest place, was but seldom attained, and attained even
then rather by good fortune than design.
[Sidenote: Restraint of the sovereign.]
No such objection can be brought against the second ground on which an
elective system has sometimes been advocated, its operation in
moderating the power of the crown, for this was attained in the
fullest and most ruinous measure. We are reminded of the man in the
fable, who opened a sluice to water his garden, and saw his house
swept away by the furious torrent. The power of the crown was not
moderated but destroyed. Each successful candidate was forced to
purchase his title by the sacrifice of rights which had belonged to
his predecessors, and must repeat the same shameful policy later in
his reign to procure the election of his son. Feeling at the same time
that his family could not make sure of keeping the throne, he treated
it as a life-tenant is apt to treat his estate, seeking only to make
out of it the largest present profit. And the electors, aware of the
strength of their position, presumed upon it and abused it to assert
an independence such as the nobles of other countries could never have
aspired to.
[Sidenote: Recognition of the popular will.]
[Sidenote: Conception of the electoral function.]
Modern political speculation supposes the method of appointing a ruler
by the votes of his subjects, as opposed to the system of hereditary
succession, to be an assertion by the people of their own will as the
ultimate fountain of authority, an acknowledgment by the prince that
he is no more than their minister and deputy. To the theory of the
Holy Empire nothing could be more repugnant. This will best appear
when the aspect of the system of election at different epochs in its
history is compared with the corresponding changes in the composition
of the electoral body which have been described as in progress from
the ninth to the fourteenth century. In very early times, the tribe
chose a war chief, who was, even if he belonged to the most noble
family, no more than the first among his peers, with a power
circumscribed by the will of his subjects. Several ages later, in the
tenth and eleventh centuries, the right of choice had passed into the
hands of the magnates, and the people were only asked to assent. In
the same measure had the relation of prince and subject taken a new
aspect. We must not expect to find, in such rude times, any very clear
apprehension of the technical quality of the process, and the throne
had indeed become for a season so nearly hereditary that the election
was often a mere matter of form. But it seems to have been regarded,
not as a delegation of authority by the nobles and people, with a
power of resumption implied, but rather as their subjection of
themselves to the monarch who enjoys, as of his own right, a wide and
ill-defined prerogative. In yet later times, when, as has been shewn
above, the assembly of the chieftains and the applauding shout of the
host had been superseded by the secret conclave of the seven electoral
princes, the strict legal view of election became fully established,
and no one was supposed to have any title to the crown except what a
majority of votes might confer upon him. Meantime, however, the
conception of the imperial office itself had been thoroughly
penetrated by religious ideas, and the fact that the sovereign did
not, like other princes, reign by hereditary right, but by the choice
of certain persons, was supposed to be an enhancement and consecration
of his dignity. The electors, to draw what may seem a subtle, but is
nevertheless a very real distinction, selected, but did not create.
They only named the person who was to receive what it was not theirs
to give. God, say the mediæval writers, not deigning to interfere
visibly in the affairs of this world, has willed that these seven
princes of Germany should discharge the function which once belonged
to the senate and people of Rome, that of choosing his earthly viceroy
in matters temporal. But it is immediately from Himself that the
authority of this viceroy comes, and men can have no relation towards
him except that of obedience. It was in this period, therefore, when
the Emperor was in practice the mere nominee of the electors, that the
belief in this divine right stood highest, to the complete exclusion
of the mutual responsibility of feudalism, and still more of any
notion of a devolution of authority from the sovereign people.
[Sidenote: General results of Charles IV's policy.]
Peace and order appeared to be promoted by the institutions of Charles
IV, which removed one fruitful cause of civil war. But these seven
electoral princes acquired, with their extended privileges, a marked
and dangerous predominance in Germany. They were to enjoy full
regalian rights in their territories[277]; causes were not to be
evoked from their courts, save when justice should have been denied:
their consent was necessary to all public acts of consequence. Their
persons were held to be sacred, and the seven mystic luminaries of the
Holy Empire, typified by the seven lamps of the Apocalypse, soon
gained much of the Emperor's hold on popular reverence, as well as
that actual power which he lacked. To Charles, who viewed the German
Empire much as Rudolf had viewed the Roman, this result came not
unforeseen. He saw in his office a means of serving personal ends, and
to them, while appearing to exalt by elaborate ceremonies its ideal
dignity, he deliberately sacrificed what real strength was left. The
object which he sought steadily through life was the prosperity of the
Bohemian kingdom, and the advancement of his own house. In the Golden
Bull, whose seal bears the legend,--
'Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi[278],'
there is not a word of Rome or of Italy. To Germany he was indirectly
a benefactor, by the foundation of the University of Prague, the
mother of all her schools: otherwise her bane. He legalized anarchy,
and called it a constitution. The sums expended in obtaining the
ratification of the Golden Bull, in procuring the election of his son
Wenzel, in aggrandizing Bohemia at the expense of Germany, had been
amassed by keeping a market in which honours and exemptions, with what
lands the crown retained, were put up openly to be bid for. In Italy
the Ghibelines saw, with shame and rage, their chief hasten to Rome
with a scanty retinue, and return from it as swiftly, at the mandate
of an Avignonese Pope, halting on his route only to traffic away the
last rights of his Empire. The Guelf might cease to hate a power he
could now despise.
Thus, alike at home and abroad, the German king had become practically
powerless by the loss of his feudal privileges, and saw the authority
that had once been his parcelled out among a crowd of greedy and
tyrannical nobles. Meantime how had it fared with the rights which he
claimed by virtue of the imperial crown?
FOOTNOTES:
[263] Quoted by Moser, _Römische Kayser_, from _Chron. Hirsang._:
'Regni vires temporum iniuria nimium contritæ vix uni alendo regi
sufficerent, tantum abesse ut sumptus in duos reges ferre queant.'
[264] At Rupert's death, under whom the mischief had increased
greatly, there were, we are told, many bishops better off than the
Emperor.
[265] 'Proventus Imperii ita minimi sunt ut legationibus vix
suppetant.'--Quoted by Moser.
[266] Albert I tried in vain to wrest the tolls of the Rhine from the
grasp of the Rhenish electors.
[267] The Æthelings of the line of Cerdic, among the West Saxons, and
the Bavarian Agilolfings, may thus be compared with the Achæmenids of
Persia or the heroic houses of early Greece.
[268] Wippo, describing the election of Conrad the Franconian, says,
'Inter confinia Moguntiæ et Wormatiæ convenerunt cuncti primates et,
ut ita dicam, vires et viscera regni.' So Bruno says that Henry IV was
elected by the '_populus_.' So Gunther Ligurinus of Frederick I's
election:--
'Acturi sacræ de successione coronæ
Conveniunt proceres, totius viscera regni.'
So Amandus, secretary of Frederick Barbarossa, in describing his
election, says, 'Multi illustres heroes ex Lombardia, Tuscia, Ianuensi
et aliis Italiæ dominiis, ac maior et potior pars principum ex
Transalpino regno.'--Quoted by Mur. _Antiq._ Diss. iii. And see many
other authorities to the same effect, collected by Pfeffinger,
_Vitriarius illustratus_.
[269] Alciatus, _De Formula Romani Imperii_. He adds that the Gauls
and Italians were incensed at the preference shewn to Germany. So too
Radulfus de Columna.
[270] Quoted by Gewoldus, _De Septemviratu Sacri Imperii Romani_,
himself a violent advocate of Gregory's decree, though living as late
as the days of Ferdinand II. As late as A.D. 1648 we find Pope
Innocent X maintaining that the sacred number _Seven_ of the electors
was 'apostolica auctoritate olim præfinitus.' Bull _Zelo domus_ in
_Bullar. Rom._
[271] Sometimes we hear of a decree made by Pope Sergius IV and his
cardinals (of course equally fabulous with Otto's). So John Villani,
iv. 2.
[272] In 1152 we read, 'Id iuris Romani Imperii apex habere dicitur ut
non per sanguinis propaginem sed per principum electionem reges
creentur.'--Otto Fris. Gulielmus Brito, writing not much later, says
(quoted by Freher),--
'Est etenim talis dynastia Theutonicorum
Ut nullus regnet super illos, ni prius illum
Eligat unanimis cleri populique voluntas.'
[273] Innocent III, during the contest between Philip and Otto IV,
speaks of 'principes ad quos principaliter spectat regis Romani
electio.'
[274] 'Rex Bohemiæ non eligit, quia non est Teutonicus,' says a writer
early in the fourteenth century.
[275] The names and offices of the seven are concisely given in these
lines, which appear in the treatise of Marsilius of Padua, _De Imperio
Romano_:--
'Moguntinensis, Trevirensis, Coloniensis,
Quilibet Imperii sit Cancellarius horum;
Et Palatinus dapifer, Dux portitor ensis,
Marchio præpositus cameræ, pincerna Bohemus,
Hi statuunt dominum cunctis per sæcula summum.'
It is worth while to place beside this the first stanza of Schiller's
ballad, _Der Graf von Hapsburg_, in which the coronation feast of
Rudolf is described:--
'Zu Aachen in seiner Kaiserpracht
Im alterthümlichen Saale,
Sass König Rudolphs heilige Macht
Beim festlichen Krönungsmahle.
Die Speisen trug der Pfalzgraf des Rheins,
Es schenkte der Böhme des perlenden Weins,
Und alle die Wähler, die Sieben,
Wie der Sterne Chor um die Sonne sich stellt,
Umstanden geschäftig den Herrscher der Welt,
Die Würde des Amtes zu üben.'
It is a poetical licence, however (as Schiller himself admits), to
bring the Bohemian there, for King Ottocar was far away at home,
mortified at his own rejection, and already meditating war.
[276] The electoral prince (Kurfürst) of Hessen-Cassel. His retention
of the title has this advantage, that it enables the Germans readily
to distinguish electoral Hesse (Kur-Hessen) from the Grand Duchy
(Hessen-Darmstadt) and the landgraviate (Hessen Homburg). [Since the
above was written (in 1865) this last relic of the electoral system
has passed away, the Elector of Hessen having been dethroned in 1866,
and his territories (to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants,
whom he had worried by a long course of petty tyrannies) annexed to
the Prussian kingdom, along with Hanover, Nassau, and the free city of
Frankfort. Count Bismarck, as he raises his master nearer and nearer
to the position of a Germanic Emperor, destroys one by one the
historical memorials of that elder Empire which people had learned to
associate with the Austrian house.]
[277] Goethe, whose imagination was wonderfully attracted by the
splendours of the old Empire, has given in the second part of _Faust_
a sort of fancy sketch of the origin of the great offices and the
territorial independence of the German princes. Two lines express
concisely the fiscal rights granted by the Emperor to the electors:--
'Dann Steuer Zins und Beed, Lehn und Geleit und Zoll,
Berg-, Salz- und Münz-regal euch angehören soll.'
[278] This line is said to be as old as the time of Otto III.