179 : 10. Mikklegard. “The Great City.” This was the name given to
Byzantium by the Goths.
180 : 2–11. Procopius, _Vandalic War_; Gibbon, chaps. XXXI-XXXVIII;
Freeman, _Historical Geography of Europe_.
181 : 14. Gibbon, chaps. XXXVII and XXXVIII.
182 : 1. Eginhard, _The Life of Charlemagne_.
183 : 24. _The Political History of England_, vol. V, by H. A. L.
Fisher, p. 205: “While the sovereigns of Europe were collecting tithes
from their clergy for the Holy War, and papal collectors were selling
indulgences to the scandal of some scrupulous minds, the empire became
vacant by the death of Maximilian on January 19, 1519. For a few months
diplomacy was busy with the choice of a successor. The king of France
(Francis I) poured money into Germany, and was supported in his
candidature by the pope; the king of England (Henry VIII) sent Pace to
counteract French designs with the electors; but the issue was never
really in doubt. Germany would not tolerate a French ruler; and on June
28, 1519, Charles of Spain was elected king of the Romans.”
184 : 8. Depopulation. (Thirty Years’ War.) _Cambridge Modern History_,
vol. IV, p. 418, says that Germany was particularly afflicted. The data
are unreliable, but the population of the empire was probably reduced by
two-thirds, or from 16,000,000 to less than 6,000,000. Bavaria,
Franconia and Swabia suffered most. W. Menzel says: “Germany is reckoned
by some to have lost one-half, by others, two-thirds, of her entire
population during the Thirty Years’ War. In Saxony 900,000 men had
fallen within ten years; in Bohemia the number of inhabitants at the
demise of Frederick II, before the last deplorable inroads made by
Barier and Torstenson, had sunk to one-fourth. Augsburg, instead of
80,000 had 18,000 inhabitants. Every province, every town throughout the
Empire had suffered at an equal ratio, with the exception of Tyrol....
The working class had almost totally disappeared. In Franconia the
misery and depopulation had reached such an extent that the Franconian
estates, with the assent of the ecclesiastical princes, abolished in
1650 the celibacy of the Catholic clergy and permitted each man to have
two wives.... The nobility were compelled by necessity to enter the
services of the princes, the citizens were impoverished and powerless,
the peasantry had been utterly demoralized by military rule and reduced
to servitude.” It has been said that the city of Berlin contained but
300 citizens; the Palatinate of the Rhine but 200 farmers. In character,
intelligence and in morality, the German people were set back two
hundred years. There are, in addition to the authorities quoted here,
numerous others who make the same observations, in fact, this
depopulation is one of the outstanding results of the Thirty Years’ War.
See also Anton Gindely, _History of the Thirty Years’ War_, p. 398.
184 : 22 _seq._ The _British Medical Journal_ for April 8, 1916; and
Parsons, _Anthropological Observations on German Prisoners of War_.
185 : 6. See the note to p. 196 : 27.