by the admission of Bavaria and Hanover, and at one time popes, were his creation, that a recognition of the old Bohemian and prerogatives like these conferred no suffrage was at length formally agreed upon. small influence on their possessor. The And even thus, the connexion of this king- prestige attached to the Imperial crown dom with the Germanic States was so slight even in more recent times, may be inferred that it was never included in any of the divi- from the anxiety with which it was contestsions of the Circles, nor did it ever con- ed by sovereigns, to whom, excepting in tribute any quota to the imperial levies. these traditional privileges, it could bring but little increase of power. A dignity to which was annexed, by ever so visionary a title, the dominion of the world, could never be otherwise than venerable, and the empire, as a nation, shared in this equivocal supremacy of its chief. Germany was considered the metropolis of the Holy Roman Empire, of which all other European states were subordinate dependencies. Such persuasions as these conferred advantages not altogether unsubstantial on the Germanic empire, and gave to the group of states comprised under this title a visible precedence among the nations of Christendom. Less inconsistent in its terms was the connexion of Hungary with the Germanic Empire. That it was alleged to be an imperial fief was of course nothing extraordinary, but it entered into no relations with the empire, excepting as part of the patrimonial possessions of the reigning House. The crown of this kingdom became united in the 16th century to that of Bohemia, and both fell together, as we shall presently remark, to the House of Hapsburg. Poland stood in relation to the empire not altogether dissimilar, except that its dependence on the Imperial crown appears to have been in early times somewhat more expli- Most certainly, however, it was not from citly asserted, and the decline of the Hohen- any effective union that this presumption stauffen dynasty has even been mentioned of strength arose. Taking into consideraas marking the period of its emancipation. Even a grand prince of Kief-the representative of the future monarchy of Russiatendered his allegiance, it is said, to the Emperor Henry IV.; but traditions like these point only to pretensions which might as well have been extended to the frontiers of China, and are of no import in ascertaining the real boundaries of the Germanic Empire. The truth is, that the eastern districts of even the old Prussian and Austrian territories were not included in the quasi confederacy, so that the actual dimensions of the Imperial State may be brought within very reasonable limits. The times of which we have been hitherto speaking are too early to suggest any inquiry as to the influence exerted by the German nation, under this constitution, upon the affairs of Europe. The political system of the European commonwealth had not yet been constructed, nor had any of those combinations been formed into which a nation might claim to enter according to its natural power. As far as any external action of the empire can be traced, its effect will be found to result, not from any judicious union of national strength, but from those pretensions of which we have so often spoken as inherited from an earlier state of things. "The emperor" held the first place upon European earth. Kings", The prerogative of conferring the royal title was disputed by the emperor and the pope, the one as the tion the extent of territory and the martial character of the population, the influence of Germany in the affairs of Europe should have had a more enduring foundation. But at no period were the inconsistencies in the constitutional character of the empire more conspicuous than at that of which we are now speaking-the period, namely, which elapsed between the decline of the ancient imperial authority and the rise of the Aus head of the temporal, and the other of the spiritual world, and their pretensions were complicated by the additional right which each claimed of creating the other. In practice, a superior title has usually been assumed with the consent, or at the instance, of some one power most immediately concerned, of crowned heads according as intrigue or negotiaand subsequently recognized gradually by the class tion could procure the successive ratifications. It is difficult of course to see what superior power is to create an emperor, and thus snch title has generally been self-assumed, as in the case of France, Brazil, and Russia. It was after pushing forward his frontiers to the Baltic, and gaining that great object of Russian ambition, a sea-board, that Peter thought himself entitled to the distinction. The new dignity was recognized by all powers but Poland and Turkey, and a war with the Porte was very near resulting. Sometimes a count or duke was proclaimed king after a successful battle, as in the case of Alfonso of Portugal. One of our exiled Stuarts tried to tempt the Elector of Hanover away from England, by promising to procure him a royal title in his own more ancient dominions. It is rather a remarkable fact that the archdukes of Auskings by the emperor Frederick II., so that there is tria (of the Bamberg line) were actually created a dormant title in the House ready for any of those contingencies which are now daily contemplated. trian House to a compensatory grandeur presentative, according to the habits of the upon its own patrimonial possessions. The times, would have been a powerful and digGermanic nation had no efficient represen- nified sovereign, one who could wield the tative for any external manifestation of its sceptre of his dominions to good purpose, strength. There was neither a king nor a and who could combine the whole resources congress-neither a sceptre like that of of the nation for any enterprise of profit or Constantinople, nor a senate like that of renown, and such, perhaps, had been some Venice. Originally the domains attached of the emperors of the Saxon line. But peculiarly to the Imperial crown had been this central power was now completely gone, extensive enough to raise their elected pos- and, what was more, it had not been sucsessor at once to a level with his richest ceeded by any fresh machinery for developsubject; so extensive, indeed, that it was ing and exerting the forces of the nation thought they could not be united to any under the new constitution which had inprivate patrimony without creating a terri- sensibly grown up. There was, as yet, no torial influence incompatible with the safe- organized system for ascertaining or exety of the constitution, and the early empe- cuting the resolutions of the constituent rors, like the kings of France, were com- states; there was no permanent diet, no pelled, upon their accession, to make over federal court, no supreme authority, no arto other parties such estates and dignities rangement of departments, contingents, or as they already enjoyed. But, before the contributions. The Germanic empire had conclusion of the fourteenth century, these not even a metropolis. The "Successors domains and privileges had been alienated, of the Cæsars" were left to find a Rome of either in bribes or donations, so effectually, their own. The Bavarian emperors usually that the revenues of the imperial posses- kept court at Munich; the Luxemburghers sions were altogether insufficient, of them- rarely stirred from Prague, a city without selves, for the decent maintenance of the the limits of the empire; and Frederick imperial household. Such as lay along the IV. was literally without a house in which banks of the Rhine had fallen to the three to rest his head. When there was neither ecclesiastical electors and the Count Pala- imperial nor federal authority to preserve tine, the detached and outlying properties any semblance of domestic peace, or any had been appropriated by the princes of security for life or property, it is not to be the contiguous territory, and all the tolls conceived that there could be externally and contributions which were destined for any imposing manifestation of national the support of the imperial family had been power. Maximilian and Charles V. availed redeemed from some needy or ambitious themselves of their improved opportunities emperor by the sagacious management of to remedy some of these constitutional imthe states. An Emperor of Germany, perfections. Domestic anarchy was checked with all his titles and prerogatives, was one by the peremptory proclamation of a "public of the poorest sovereigns in Europe, unless peace," the Imperial Chamber and Aulic he carried an ample patrimony of his own Council were instituted as supreme tributo the maintenance of his state. The Lux-nals of the nation, and the division of the emburgh family supported themselves by empire into circles, both recognized its unity their kingdom of Bohemia, though the inadequacy of even this royal appanage is shown by the current story of the arrest of Charles IV. for a private debt, by a butcher of Worms. But when the Imperial crown had passed into the as yet unaggrandized House of Austria, the scandal was complete. Frederick IV., throughout a considerable part of his long reign, was a fugitive and a beggar, unable, by all the forces of the empire which an emperor could raise, to recover his family duchy, from which he had been expelled by a hostile invasion. In this way was Germany left without any effective representative of the country in its national capacity. Its natural re and facilitated the combination of its resources. But even these expedients, together with the reforms and improvements subsequently suggested, were altogether insufficient to develop the full powers of the empire. Its constitution still suffered from the collision between tradition and reality. Nominally a monarchy, and parading the symbols of monarchical power with unusual pomp, it was actually a confederacy of independent states. There was thus no room for unity or force, either in one view of the constitution or the other. There was not the absolutism which could support an emperor, nor the spirit which should animate a league; and thus ensued all those complications and perplexities which neutralized the strength of the German people in the struggle of nations which was to come. But while the domestic revolutions of the Germanic empire were thus destructive of national unity, they operated most remarkably indeed in originating and aggrandizing certain particular states, which were afterwards to enter independently with such conspicuous influence into the system of Europe. It did not happen that the states thus accidentally elevated to such extraordinary grandeur were those which enjoyed the greatest power in the early days of the empire. The ancient duchies had either become extinct, as in the case of Swabia and Franconia, or had been transferred to new Houses and merged into other possessions, like Brandenburgh, or had been partitioned into insignificant patrimonies like Saxony Even the ultimate union of Bavaria and the Palatinate did not result in a state of any signal magnitude; but the Archduchy of Austria and the Electorate of Brandenburgh eventually swelled into such gigantic proportions, and by incidents so strange, that we should be tempted to sketch the process, even if the episode bad a less direct or important bearing than it will be found to possess upon the actual subject of our remarks. Few people, perhaps, are accustomed to consider the three great powers of the North as very modern formations, and yet at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Henry IV. and Sully were projecting a re-organization of the European continent, no such names as those of Austria, Russia, or Prussia, entered into their calculations. Even a whole century later an English ambassador wrote home from the Hague, and excused himself from saying much about Peter the Great, as the movements or disposition of such a personage could be of no great concern to Western Europe. Austria, like most border provinces of the empire, was originally a margraviate; and when first rising into notice, appears in the possession of the House of Bamberg. Frederick Barbarossa had occasion, for his own convenience, to abstract a little of the territory of the ruling margrave; and by way of compensation, he conferred upon the fief, in 1156, some titles and privileges which were considered a fair return for the loss. The margraviate was henceforth to be an archduchy, indivisible, and inalienable; and taking rank immediately after the electorates. With such distinctions it flourished till 1245, when the Bamberg line having become extinct, it was presently appropriated by Ottacar of Bohemia. On the accession of Rodolf of Hapsburg to the Imperial throne a few years afterwards, he demanded from Ottocar the restitution of the imperial fiefs which he had thus presumptuously seized, and homage for the remainder of his possessions. As Ottocar withheld both the compliment and the surrender, Rodolf extinguished him by force of arms; and, according to established precedent,-a privilege which, in fact, was one of the most valuable branches of the imperial prerogative-bestowed the recovered fiefs on his own family. In this way was the family removed from Hapsburg to Austria, the domains and title of which they have ever since retained. The Imperial crown, as we have observed, quitted the new family for a century and a half; but, though not emperors, they were still archdukes of the empire, with a territory, it is true, not very considerable, but with a title and a rank which they took every precaution to confirm. Considerable jealousy was excited in the 14th century by a conspicuous parade of these claims, which appear to have been for a while forgotten, and doubts were thrown upon the validity of the original grant, or the due directness of the succession. The pertinacity of the family at length prevailed, and they were allowed their extraordinary precedence in a country where such pretensions were not very readily acceded to. But it was still thought advisable to seize the earliest op portunity of placing the matter beyond dispute; and, accordingly, when the Imperial crown again fell to the lot of the House under Frederick IV., that impoverished emperor confirmed the dignities of the House, though he could not defend its possessions, and pronounced himself and his decendants archdukes for ever, with as much gravity as Shah Alum assumed in conferring titles of honor on General Lake. Afterwards, in conformity with the now accepted pedigree of the empire, a more exalted source was sought for these distinctions, and written patents of Julius Cæsar and Nero were produced at Vienna to testify to the precedence inherent in the Austrian House. To the territories, not very extensive, of Archducal Austria, the three contiguous counties of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, appear from very early times to have been attached; and all were comprised in the family settlement of Rodolf. The inheri tance was diminished for the space of a as the acknowledged equals of such Houses few years by the subtraction of Carinthia; as Luxemburgh and Bavaria. but about the middle of the 14th century this duchy also finally reverted to the possessions of the House. One or two acquisome importance were subsequently made. The valuable country of the Tyrol, to which the reigning Emperor has just now fled, as the most loyal and faithful province of his imperial dominions, fell into the family estates in 1363, by virtue of a deed of reversion which Rodolf IV. of Austria had contrived to negotiate with Margaret, the last heiress of those territo ries. Yet they were as liable as either Bavaria or Luxemburgh, to a decline and fall, and it is the sequel of their history, involving, as it does, so different a destiny, which presents such miraculous chapters to the student. We have been speaking of the patrimonial inheritance of the Austrian House. The original duchy, it will be remembered, was constituted "indivisible," that is, incapable of being partitioned among the various members of a family,— a provision which anticipated, in some sort, the effects of the principle of primogeniTwenty years later the city of Trieste ture subsequently introduced, and which, also, dissatisfied with the government of in the case of the empire itself, had only Venice, tendered its welcome allegiance to been at length formally sanctioned by Otho the Dukes of Austria. In the meantime, how- the Great. But this condition was not exever, the original hereditary possessions of tended to the whole of the agglomerated the Hapsburg family had been gradually inheritance, and the House of Austria ran lost. The territorial rights which the old the usual risks of dissolution, by the temCounts of this House possessed in Switzer-porary establishment of three separate lines land had been extended, by the power of in Austria, Styria, and the Tyrol, which, Rodolf the emperor and his sons, into a however, were fortunately re-united in the very important ascendency over the coun-person of Maximilian. But the old Austry; and even when the imperial crown trian patrimony was soon to be lost in the had passed from the rising House, the grandeur of new acquisitions. The two Dukes of Austria alleged pretensions to crowns of Bohemia and Hungary, which, Swiss dominion far more formidable than though both elective, were often considered ever had been put forth by the Counts of as constituting but a single prize, had both Hapsburg. We need not do more than al- fallen to the Luxemburgh family during the lude to the famous struggles by which their days of its supremacy, and at length, in pretensions were extinguished. Fortu- 1419, were settled on a single head in the nately for the independence of the moun-person of Sigismund, the last emperor of taineers, the sceptre of the empire had that line. The daughter and heiress of passed from the hands of the Hapsburghers this royal pluralist was secured, with the before arms were resorted to; and the characteristic fortune of the family, by battles of Morgarten and Sempach were Albert of Austria, to whom also descended fought only against the ducal forces of all the three elective crowns which had Austria. Aided by the jealousies to which distinguished his father-in-law-those of their lordly adversaries were exposed, and the Empire, Hungary, and Bohemia. The especially by the publication against one of imperial crown, as we have before remarked, them of the ban of the empire, the Swiss never again, except for a few short months, confederates eventually succeeded, not only departed from the Austrian House; nor is in emancipating their own lands, but in it very probable that the possession of annexing what had been the more legitimate the other two would have been interproperty of their former lords, till towards rupted, but for the singular incapacity of the commencement of the 15th century, Frederick IV., and the extraordinary merits the transplanted family of Hapsburg re- of Matthias Corvinus and George Podietained nothing of the estates from which brad, displayed to unusual advantage in they had migrated except the territorial the distracted state of the respective kingtitle. Their new inheritance, however, was doms. Even Maximilian could not recover amply sufficient to compensate such a loss these prizes, though they fell again in the as this; and within a century after the succeeding generation to the Austrian death of the emperor Rodolf, the petty family, in which they have remained to the chiefs of a small Swiss county took rank present day. among the foremost states of the empire for influence and power, and were reckoned We have thus traced the formation of what is now called the "Austrian Empire," as far almost as it is included within the | The other reposed in rival grandeur upon Germanic limits. Aggrandizement still its heritage of Spain and the Indies, and more prodigious remained behind, though counted Italy and the Netherlands as proit was preceded by a period of depression vinces of its crown. It is not within our so singular, that it seems as if the smallest purpose to trace minutely the interchanges unlucky impulse would then have precipi- and partitions of this gigantic inheritance tated the House of Austria to the level of between the two Austrian dynasties of Oldenburg or Darmstadt. For more than Germany and Spain. The Italian territohalf of the fifteenth century did Frederick ries, which are now the scene of a doubtIV. of Austria wield the imperial sceptre ful war, are not, as we have before menof Germany, and yet so low were the for- tioned, any portion of the old imperial intunes of his House, that they might have heritance. At the close of those protracted been overmatched by those of the most conflicts which succeeded the invasion of petty potentate of Europe. The patrimony the Peninsula by Charles VIII, the Miand prerogative of the imperial crown had lanese remained in the possession of Spain, been reduced, as we have before observed, rather by right of Ferdinand's conquests to empty names, and even these were not than by any title derived from Austria. yet the assured inheritance of Austria. After the extinction, however, of the AusThe crowns of Hungary and Bohemia had tro-Spanish line, the territorial arrangepassed away, the Swiss territories were ments of the Treaty of Utrecht transferred gone, and even from the old patrimonial to the surviving branch of the Hapsburg duchy of the House was the emperor ex- family these famous districts, together with pelled by an invasion of his Hungarian such vast additional possessions in the Penrival. Fortunately Frederick had yet one insula, that it was presently thought adresource, which has seldom failed the family visable to exalt the Dukes of Savoy into of Hapsburg-a marriageable son. On the kings, and to create in the plains of Piedopposite frontier of Otho's Empire reigned mont, for the purpose of counterbalancing a prince who had concentrated a score of the dangerous preponderance of Austria, duchies in his single coronet, and who had that very Power which is at this moment one female child. By the several processes occupied in the ostensible discharge of such of inheritance, purchase, extortion, or en- duties. The kingdom of Lombardy was quest, Burgundy, Flanders, Namur, Lux- subsequently completed by the annexation emburgh, Brabant, Limburg, Hainault, of the Venetian territories, an arrangement Holland, Zealand, West Friesland, Guel- which, it is said, was not very cordially derland, and Zutphen, had become the welcomed by the Emperor Francis II., who dominions of Charles the Bold, and the foresaw the embarrassments awaiting his dowry of Mary of Burgundy. Maximilian, successors from their transalpine dominions. though not without a stroke as bold as such Of the spoils of Poland it is unnecessary a wife demanded, secured his prize, was to speak, as the crowning act of absorption elected, by aid probably of this very in- must be fresh in the memory of all. Such heritance, to succeed his father, and when were the destinies of the House of Austria: the next generation brought the powers of -in 1250 the petty lords of a hill country, Europe upon a common field, took rank in 1450 the degraded occupants of a preamong them proportioned to his titles and carious and impoverished throne, in 1550 his crown. We need do no more than the hereditary successors of the Cæsars, barely allude to a match even more mag- and the partitioners of one half of the nificent, which brought down upon the Aus- known world. trian House an avalanche of empires so Prussia supplies a yet more singular and prodigious, as to overwhelm even the dig- far more complicated illustration of the nities which they had already amassed. process by which states are formed. The The alliance of Philip of Austria with Austrian dominions had been already conJoanna of Castile exalted the House of solidated before the style or title of this Hapsburg to a pitch of substantial gran- rival power was known to Europe; and so deur which might bear a comparison with rapid, indeed, has been the advancement the glories of Constantine or Charlemange. of this state, now pretending, and not withOne branch of the House had converted out plausibility, to the supremacy of the the old Germanic empire into a family new empire, that there must be persons yet perquisite, and accumulated besides a pa- living who may remember when its sovetrimony almost equal to the empire itself. reign had not succeeded in obtaining the VOL. XV. No. I. 3 |