chamber to move beyond the region of official routine. Thus before the Thirty Years’ War the Empire had virtually ceased to exist, Germany having become a loose confederation of principalities and free cities. For a moment the emperor Ferdinand appeared to have touched the ideal of Charles V. in so far, at least, as it related to Germany, but only for a moment. The stars in their courses fought against him, and at the time of his death he saw how far beyond his power were the forces with which even Charles had been unable to contend. The state of things which actually existed the peace of Westphalia made legal. So nearly complete was the independence of the states that each received the right to form alliances with any of the others, or with foreign powers, nominally on condition that their alliances should not be injurious to the emperor or to the Empire. Any authority which still lawfully belonged to the emperor was transferred to the diet. It alone had now the power of making laws, of concluding treaties in the name of Germany, and of declaring war and re-establishing peace. No one, however, expected that it would be of any real service. From 1663 it became a permanent body, and was attended only by the representatives of the princes and the cities; and from that time it occupied itself mainly with trifles, leaving the affairs of each state to be looked after by its own authorities, and those of the country generally to such fortunes as chance should determine.
It would not have been strange if so shadowy an Empire had been brought altogether to an end. Some slight bond of connexion was, however, necessary for defence against common dangers; and the Empire had existed so long, Continuance of the empire. and so many great associations were connected with it, that it seemed to all parties preferable to any other form of union. Moreover, Sweden, and other states which were now members of the Empire, warmly supported it; and the house of Habsburg, on which it reflected a certain splendour, would not willingly have let it die. An Austrian ruler, even when he spoke only in the name of Austria, derived authority from the fact that as emperor he represented many of the greatest memories of European history.
The effect of the Thirty Years’ War on the national life was disastrous. It had not been carried on by disciplined armies, but by hordes of adventurers whose sole object was plunder. The cruelties they inflicted on their victims National life. are almost beyond conception. Before the war the population was nearly twenty millions; after it the number was probably about six millions. Whole towns and villages were laid in ashes, and vast districts turned into deserts. Churches and schools were closed by hundreds, and to such straits were the people often reduced that cannibalism is said to have been not uncommon. Industry and trade were so completely paralysed that in 1635 the Hanseatic League was virtually broken up, because the members, once so wealthy, could not meet the necessary expenditure. The population was not only impoverished and reduced in numbers but broken in spirit. It lost confidence in itself, and for a time effected in politics, literature, art and science little that is worthy of serious study.
The princes knew well how to profit by the national prostration. The local diets, which, as we have seen, formed a real check on petty tyranny, and kept up an intimate relation between the princes and their subjects, were nearly The princes. all destroyed. Those which remained were injurious rather than beneficial, since they often gave an appearance of lawfulness to the caprices of arbitrary sovereigns. After the Thirty Years’ War it became fashionable for the heirs of principalities to travel, and especially to spend some time at the court of France. Here they readily imbibed the ideas of Louis XIV., and in a short time nearly every petty court in Germany was a feeble imitation of Versailles. Before the Reformation, and even for some time after it, the princes were thorough Germans in sympathies and habits; they now began to be separated by a wide gulf from their people. Instead of studying the general welfare, they wrung from exhausted states the largest possible revenue to support a lavish and ridiculous expenditure. The pettiest princeling had his army, his palaces, his multitudes of household officers; and most of them pampered every vulgar appetite without respect either to morality or to decency. Many nobles, whose lands had been wasted during the war, flocked to the little capitals to make their way by contemptible court services. Beneath an outward gloss of refinement these nobles were, as a class, coarse and selfish, and they made it their chief object to promote their own interests by fostering absolutist tendencies. Among the people there was no public opinion to discourage despotism; the majority accepted their lot as inevitable, and tried rather to reproduce than to restrain the vices of their rulers. Even the churches offered little opposition to the excesses of persons in authority, and in many instances the clergy, both Protestant and Catholic, acquired an unenviable notoriety for their readiness to overlook or condone actions The cities. which outraged the higher sentiments of humanity. In the free imperial cities there was more manliness of tone than elsewhere, but there was little of the generous rivalry among the different classes which had once raised them to a high level of prosperity. Most of them resigned their liberties into the hands of oligarchies, and others allowed themselves to be annexed by ambitious princes. (A. W. H.*)
Ferdinand III. succeeded to the throne when the fortunes
of his house were at a low ebb, and he continued the Thirty
Years’ War, not in the hope of re-establishing the
Roman Catholic religion or of restoring the imperial
Ferdinand III.
Leopold I.
authority, but of remedying as far as he could the
havoc caused by his father’s recklessness. After the conclusion
of peace nothing happened to make his reign memorable. His
son Leopold I. was a man of narrow intellect and
feeble will; yet Germany seldom so keenly felt the
need of a strong emperor, for she had during two generations to
contend with a watchful and grasping rival. For more than a
century it had been the policy of France to strengthen herself
by fostering the internal dissensions of Germany. This was now
easy, and Louis XIV. made unscrupulous use of the
advantages his predecessors had helped to gain for
Louis XIV. of France.
him. Germany, as a whole, could not for a long time
be induced to resist him. His schemes directly
threatened the independence of the princes; but they were too
indolent to unite against his ambition. They grudged even the
contributions necessary for the maintenance of the frontier
fortresses, and many of them stooped to accept the bribes he
offered them on condition that they should remain quiet. In his
war with the United Provinces and Spain, begun in 1672, he was
opposed by the emperor as ruler of Austria, and by Frederick
William, the elector of Brandenburg; and in 1675 the latter
gained a splendid victory at Fehrbellin over his allies, the Swedes.
At the end of the war, in 1678, by the peace of Nijmwegen, Louis
took care that Frederick William should be deprived of the
fruits of his victory, and Austria had to resign Freiburg im
Breisgau to the French. Under the pretence that when France
gained the Austrian lands in Alsace she also acquired a right
to all places that had ever been united to them, Louis began a
series of systematic robberies of German towns and territories.
“Chambers of Reunion” were appointed to give an appearance
of legality to these proceedings, which culminated, in 1681, in
the seizure of Strassburg. Germans of all states and ranks were
indignant at so gross a humiliation, but even the loss of Strassburg
did not suffice to move the diet. The emperor himself might
probably have interfered, but Louis had provided him with
ample employment by stirring up against him the Hungarians
and the Turks. So complete was his hold over the majority of
the princes that when the Turks, in 1683, surrounded Vienna,
and appeared not unlikely to advance into the heart of Germany,
they looked on indifferently, and allowed the emperor to be saved
by the promptitude and courage of John Sobieski, king of Poland.
At last, when, in 1689, on the most frivolous pretext, Louis
poured into southern Germany armies which were guilty of
shameful outrages, a number of princes came forward and aided
the emperor. This time France was sternly opposed by the
league of which William III. of England was the moving spirit;
