would have been a vain and dangerous attempt to CHA P. impose a monarch on the armed freemen, who were XLIX. impatient of a magistrate; on the bold, who refused to obey; on the powerful, who aspired to command. The empire of Charlemagne and Otho was distributed among the dukes of the nations or provinces, the counts of the smaller districts, and the margraves of the marches or frontiers, who all united the civil and military authority as it had been delegated to the lieutenants of the first Cæsars. The Roman governors, who, for the most part, were soldiers of fortune, seduced their mercenary legions, assumed the Imperial purple, and either failed or succeeded in their revolt, without wounding the power and unity of government. If the dukes, margraves, and counts of Germany, were less audacious in their claims, the consequences of their success were more lasting and pernicious to the state. Instead of aiming at the supreme rank, they silently laboured to establish and appropriate their provincial independence. Their ambition was seconded by the weight of their estates and vassals, their mutual example and support, the common interest of the subordinate nobility, the change of princes and families, the minorities of Otho the third and Henry the fourth, the ambition of the popes, and the vain pursuits of the fugitive crowns of Italy and Rome. All the attributes of regal and territorial jurisdiction were gradually usurped by the commanders of the provinces; the right of peace and war, of life and death, of coinage and taxation, of foreign alliance and domestic œconomy. Whatever had been seized by violence was ratified by favour or distress, was granted as VOL. IX. P the XLIX. CHA P. the price of a doubtful vote or a voluntary service; whatever had been granted to one could not, without injury, be denied to his successor or equal; and every act of local or temporary possession was insensibly moulded into the constitution of the Germanic kingdom. In every province, the visible presence of the duke or count was interposed between the throne and the nobles; the subjects of the law became the vassals of a private chief; and the standard, which he received from his sovereign, was often raised against him in the field. The temporal power of the clergy was cherished and exalted by the superstition or policy of the Carlovingian and Saxon dynasties, who blindly depended on their moderation and fidelity; and the bishoprics of Germany were made equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth and population, to the most ample states of the military order. As long as the emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on every vacancy these ecclesiastic and secular benefices, their cause was maintained by the gratitude or ambition of their friends and favourites. But in the quarrel of the investitures, they were deprived of their influence over the episcopal chapters; the freedom of election was restored, and the sovereign was reduced, by a solemn mockery, to his first prayers, the recommendation, once in his reign, to a single prebend in each church. The secular governors, instead of being recalled at the will of a superior, could be degraded only by the sentence oftheir peers. In the first age of the monarchy, the appointment of the son to the duchy or county of his father, was soli. 1 XLIX. solicited as a favour; it was gradually obtained as CHA P. a custom, and extorted as a right: The lineal succession was often extended to the collateral or female branches; the states of the empire (their popular, and at length their legal appellation) were divided and alienated by testament and sale; and all idea of a public trust was lost in that of a private and perpetual inheritance. The emperor could not even be enriched by the casualties of forfeiture and extinction: Within the term of a year, he was obliged to dispose of the vacant fief, and in the choice of the candidate, it was his duty to consult either the general or the provincial diet. man ic constitu A. D. After the death of Frederick the second, Ger- The Germany was left a monster with an hundred heads. A crowd of princes and prelates disputed the ruins tion, of the empire: The lords of innumerable castles 1250. were less prone to obey, than to imitate their superiors; and according to the measure of their strength, their incessant hostilities received the names of conquest or robbery. Such anarchy was the inevitable consequence of the laws and manners of Europe; and the kingdoms of France and Italy were shivered into fragments by the violence of the same tempest. But the Italian cities and French vassals were divided and destroyed, while the union of the Germans has produced, under the name of an empire, a great system of a fœderative republic. In the frequent and at last the perpetual institution of diets, a national spirit was kept alive, and the powers of a common legislature are still exercised by the three branches or colleges of the electors, the princes, and the free and ImP 2 perial XLIX. CHA P. perial cities of Germany. I. Seven of the most powerful feudatories were permitted to assume, with a distinguished name and rank, the exclusive privilege of chusing the Roman emperor ; and these electors were the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburgh, the count palatine of the Rhine, and the three archbishops of Mentz, of Treves, and of Cologne. II. The college of princes and prelates purged themselves of a promiscuous multitude: They reduced to four representative votes, the long series of independent counts, and excluded the nobles orequestrian order, sixty thousand of whom, as in the Polish diets, had appeared on horseback in the field of election. III. The pride of birth and dominion, of the sword and the mitre, wisely adopted the commons as the third branch of the legislature, and, in the progress of society, they were introduced about the same æra into the national assemblies of France, England, and Germany. The Hanseatic league commanded the trade and navigation of the north: The confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and intercourse of the inland country: The influence of the cities has been adequate to their wealth and policy, and their negative still invalidates the acts of the two superior colleges of electors and princes*. * In the immense labyrinth of the jus publicum of Germany, I must either quote one writer or a thousand; and I had rather trust to one faithful guide, than transcribe, on credit, a multitude of names and passages. That guide is M. Pfeffel, the author of the best legal and constitutional history that I know of any country. (Nuvel. Abregé Chronologique de l'Histoire et du Droit Public d'Allemagne, Paris, 1776, 2 vols. in 4to.) His learning of the emperor It is in the fourteenth century that we may view, CHA P. in the strongest light, the state and contrast of the XLIX. Roman empire of Germany, which no longer held, Weakexcept on the borders of the Rhine and Damube, a ness and single province of Trajan or Constantine. Their poverty unworthy successors were the counts of Haps- German burgh, of Nassau, of Luxemburgh, and of Schwart- Charles zenburgh: The emperor Henry the seventh IV. A. D. pro- 1347cured for his son the crown of Bohemia, and his 1378. grandson Charles the fourth was born among a people, strange and barbarous in the estimation of the Germans themselves *. After the excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or promise of the vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the exile and captivity of Avignon, affected the dominion of the earth. The death of his competitors united the electoral college, and Charles was unanimously saluted king of the Romans, and future emperor; a title which, in the same age, was prostituted to the Cæsars of Germany and Greece. The German emperor was no more P 3 than learning and judgment have discerned the most interesting facts ; his simple brevity comprises them in a narrow space; his chronological order distributes them under the proper dates; and an elaborate index collects them under their respective heads. To this work, in a less perfect state, Dr Robertson was gratefully indebted for that masterly sketch which traces even the modern changes of the Germanic body. The Corpus Historiæ Germanica of Struvius has been likewise consulted, the more usefully, as that huge compilation is fortified, in every page, with the original texts. * Yet, personally, Charles IV. must not be considered as a Barbarian. After his education at Paris, he recovered the use of the Bohemian, his native, idiom; and the emperor conversed and wrote with equal facility in French, Latin, Italian, and German; (Struvius, p. 615, 616.) Petrarch always represents him as a polite and learned prince. |