lished by the emperor Henry IV. in 1085 to put bounds to the numerous feuds which were looked upon—much as the duel is still looked upon by the German nobility—as the only possible means for wiping away the shame of certain real or fancied wrongs. To forbid such feuds absolutely was not feasible; no attempt was made to do so until the year 1495. The present effort to restrict them met with no success—certainly not in the reign of the unfortunate monarch who made it, and who was finally deposed, ostensibly because he was unable to restore peace and quiet to his land.
No. VI. is a similar document issued eighty years later by Frederick Barbarossa. It will be seen from § 10 that knights of good family might still engage in wager of battle against their equals, although, in other respects a breach of the peace was to be severely punished.
No. VII. concerns the establishment of the Duchy of Austria in 1156. Austria had hitherto been simply a margravate and been comprised in the duchy of Bavaria. The act was performed by Fred. Barbarossa as a compromise. There were two claimants for Bavaria—one the son of that Henry the Proud who had expected to be made king in 1137, and who had been rejected for the apparently paradoxical reason that he already was the most powerful noble in Germany. Conrad III. had been made king in his stead and had soon found cause to quarrel with his powerful rival, conferring Bavaria on his own half brother the margrave Liutpold. After the death of Henry the Proud there had been concessions and reconciliations with regard to Bavaria—but at the end of Conrad's reign the young Henry the Lion still considered himself the heir, while the duchy was actually held by the king's brother Henry of Austria. Frederick Barbarossa in 1156, intent on the Italian expedition which was to gain him the imperial crown, hastened to heal the discord between his
