A History of Germany from the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by Bayard Taylor

Although Albert had agreed to yield many privileges to the Church, the Pope, Bonifacius VIII., refused to acknowledge him as king of Germany, declaring that the election was null and void. But the same Pope, by his haughty assumptions of authority over all monarchs, had drawn upon himself the enmity of Philip the Fair, of France, and Albert made a new alliance with the latter. He also obtained the support of the cities, on promising to abolish the Rhine-dues, and with their help completely subdued the Archbishops, who claimed the dues and refused to give them up. This was a great advantage, not only for the Rhine-cities, but for all Germany: it tended to strengthen the power of the increasing middle-class.

The Pope, finding his plans thwarted and his authority defied, now began to make friendly overtures to Albert. He had already excommunicated Philip the Fair, and claimed the right to dispose of the crown of France, which he offered to Albert in return for the latter's subjection to him and armed assistance. There was danger to Germany in this tempting bait; but in 1303, Bonifacius, having been taken prisoner near Rome by his Italian enemies, became insane from rage, and soon died.

Albert's stubborn and selfish attempts to increase the power of his house all failed: their only result was a wider and keener spirit of hostility to his rule. He claimed Thuringia and Meissen, alleging that Adolf of Nassau had purchased those lands, not for himself but for the Empire; he endeavored to get possession of Holland, whose line of ruling Counts had become extinct; and after the death of Wenzel II. of Bohemia, in 1307, he married his son, Rudolf, to the latter's widow. But Counts Frederick and Dietzmann of Thuringia defeated his army: the people of Holland elected a descendant of their Counts on the female side, and the Emperor's son, Rudolf, died in Bohemia, apparently poisoned, before two years were out. Then the Swiss cantons of Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden, which had been governed by civil officers appointed by the Emperors, rose in revolt against him, and drove his governors from their Alpine valleys. In November, 1307, that famous league was formed, by which the three cantons maintained their independence, and laid the first corner-stone of the Republic of Switzerland.

1308. MURDER OF ALBRECHT OF HABSBURG.

The following May, 1308, Albert was in Baden, raising troops for a new campaign in Thuringia. His nephew, John, a youth of nineteen, who had vainly endeavored to have his right to a part of the Hapsburg territory in Switzerland confirmed by the Emperor, was with him, accompanied by four knights, with whom he had conspired. While crossing a river, they managed to get into the same boat with the Emperor, leaving the rest of his retinue upon the other bank; then, when they had landed, they fell upon him, murdered him, and fled. A peasant woman, who was near, lifted Albert upon her lap and he died in her arms. His widow, the Empress Elizabeth, took a horrible revenge upon the families of the conspirators, whose relatives and even their servants, to the number of one thousand, were executed. One of the knights, who was captured, was broken upon the wheel. John, called in history John Parricida, was never heard of afterwards, although one tradition affirms that he fled to Rome, confessed his deed to the Pope, and passed the rest of his life, under another name, in a monastery.

Thus, within five years, the despotic plans of both Pope Bonifacius VIII. and Albert of Hapsburg came to a tragic end. The overwhelming power of the Papacy, after a triumph of two hundred years, was broken. The second Pope after Bonifacius, Clement V., made Avignon, in Southern France, his capital instead of Rome, and the former city continued to be the residence of the Popes, from 1308, the year of Albert's murder, until 1377.

The German Electors were in no hurry to choose a new Emperor. They were only agreed as to who should not be elected,—that is, no member of a powerful family; but it was not so easy to pick out an acceptable candidate from among the many inferior princes. The Church, as usual, decided the question. Peter, of Mayence (who had been a physician and was made Archbishop for curing the Pope), intrigued with Baldwin, Archbishop of Treves, in favor of the latter's brother, Count Henry of Luxemburg. A Diet was held at the "King's Seat," on the hill of Rense, near Coblentz, where the blast of a hunting-horn could be heard in four Electorates at the same time, and Henry was chosen King. He was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 6th of January, 1309, as Henry VII.

1310.

His first aim was to restore peace and order to Germany. He was obliged to reëstablish the Rhine-dues, in the interest of the Archbishops who had supported him, but he endeavored to recompense the cities by granting them other privileges. At a Diet held in Speyer, he released the three Swiss cantons from their allegiance to the house of Hapsburg, gave Austria to the sons of the murdered Albert, and had the bodies of the latter and his rival, Adolf of Nassau, buried in the Cathedral, side by side. Soon afterwards the Bohemians, dissatisfied with Henry of Carinthia (who had become their king after the death of Albert's son, Rudolf), offered the hand of Wenzel II.'s youngest daughter, Elizabeth, to Henry's son, John. Although the latter was only fourteen, and his bride twenty-two years of age, Henry gave his consent to the marriage, and John became king of Bohemia.

In 1310 the new Emperor called a Diet at Frankfort, in order to enforce a universal truce among the German States. He outlawed Count Eberhard of Würtemberg, and took away his power to create disturbance; and then, Germany being quiet, he turned his attention to Italy, which was in a deplorable state of confusion, from the continual wars of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. In Lombardy, noble families had usurped the control of the former republican cities, and governed with greater tyranny than even the Hohenstaufens. Henry's object was to put an end to their civil wars, institute a new order, and—be crowned Roman Emperor. The Pope, Clement V., who was tired of Avignon and suspicious of France, was secretly in favor of the plan, and the German princes openly supported it.