THE MINOR GERMAN STATES
[Sidenote: German States Other than Austria and Prussia]
Of the three hundred other states which composed the empire, few were sufficiently large or important to exert any considerable influence on the issue of the contest. A few, however, which took sides, deserve mention not only because in the eighteenth century they preserved a kind of balance of power between the rivals but also because they have been more or less conspicuous factors in the progress of recent times. Such are Bavaria, Saxony, and Hanover.
[Sidenote: Bavaria]
Bavaria lay on the upper Danube to the west of Austria and in the extreme southeastern corner of what is now the German Empire. For centuries it was ruled by the Wittelsbach family, whose remarkable prince, Maximilian I (1597-1651), had headed the Catholic League and loyally supported the Habsburgs in the Thirty Years' War, and by the peace of Westphalia had gained a part of the Palatinate [Footnote: The other part of the Palatinate, under another branch of the Wittelsbachs, was reunited with Bavaria in 1779.] together with the title of "elector." His successor had labored with much credit in the second half of the seventeenth century to repair the wounds caused by the war, encouraging agriculture and industries, building or restoring numerous churches and monasteries. But the Bavarian electors in the first half of the eighteenth century sacrificed a sound, vigorous policy of internal reform to a far-reaching ambition in international politics. Despite the bond of a common religion which united them to Austria, they felt that their proximity to their powerful neighbor made the Habsburgs their natural enemies. In the War of the Spanish Succession, therefore, Bavaria took the side of France against Austria, and when Maria Theresa ascended the throne in 1740, the elector of Bavaria, who had married a Habsburg princess disbarred by the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VI, immediately allied himself with Frederick of Prussia and with France in order to dismember the Austrian dominions.
[Sidenote: Saxony]
The Saxony of the eighteenth century was but a very small fraction of the vast Saxon duchy which once comprised all northwestern Germany and whose people in early times had emigrated to England or had been subjugated by Charlemagne. Saxony had been restricted since the thirteenth century to a district on the upper Elbe, wedged in between Habsburg Bohemia and Hohenzollern Brandenburg. Here, however, several elements combined to give it an importance far beyond its extent or population. It was the geographical center of the Germanies. It occupied a strategic position between Prussia and Austria. Its ruling family—the Wettins—were electors of the empire. It had been, moreover, after the championship of Martin Luther by one of its most notable electors, [footnote: Frederick the Wise( 1486-1525)] a leader of the Lutheran cause, and the reformer's celebrated translation of the Bible had fixed the Saxon dialect as the literary language of Germany. At one time it seemed as if Saxony, rather than Brandenburg-Prussia, might become the dominant state among the Germanies. But the trend of events determined otherwise. A number of amiable but weak electors in the seventeenth century repeatedly allied themselves with Austria against the Hohenzollerns and thereby practically conceded to Brandenburg the leadership of the Protestant states of northern Germany.[Footnote: Another source of weakness in Saxony was the custom in the Wettin family of dividing the inheritance among members of the family. Such was the origin of the present infinitesimal states of Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Saxe-Meiningen, and Saxe-Altenburg.]
[Sidenote: Personal Union of Saxony and Poland]
Then, too, toward the close of the century, the elector separated himself from his people by becoming a Roman Catholic, and, in order that he might establish himself as king of Poland, he burdened the state with continued Austrian alliance, with war, and with heavy taxes. The unnatural union of Saxony and Poland was maintained throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century: it was singularly disastrous for both parties.
[Sidenote: Hanover, and its Personal Union with Great Britain]
A part of the original ancient territory of the Saxons in north western Germany was included in the eighteenth century in the state of Hanover, extending between the Elbe and the Weser and reaching from Brandenburg down to the North Sea. Hanover was recognized as an electorate during the War of the Spanish Succession, [Footnote: The emperor had given the title of elector to Ernest Augustus in 1692; the Powers recognized George I as elector in 1708.] but its real importance rested on the fact that its first elector, through his mother's family, became in 1714 George I of Great Britain, the founder of the Hanoverian dynasty in that country. This personal union between the British kingdom and the electorate of Hanover continued for over a century, and was not without vital significance in international negotiations. Both George I and George II preferred Hanover to England as a place of residence and directed their primary efforts towards the protection of their German lands from Habsburg or Hohenzollern encroachments.
Enough has now been said to give some idea of the distracted condition of the Germanies in the eighteenth century and to explain why the Holy Roman Empire was an unimportant bond of union. Austria, traditionally the chief of the Germanies, was increasingly absorbed in her non-German possessions in Hungary, Italy, and the Netherlands. Prussia, the rising kingdom of the North, comprised a population in which Slavs constituted a large minority. Saxony was linked with Poland; Hanover, with Great Britain. Bavaria was a chronic ally of France. Add to this situation, the political domination of France or Sweden over a number of the petty states of the empire, the selfishness and jealousies of all the German rulers, the looming bitter rivalry between Prussia and Austria, and the sum-total is political chaos, bloodshed, and oppression.