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

by Bayard Taylor

1356.

Then was promulgated the decree known as the "Golden Bull," which remained a law in Germany until the Empire came to an end, just 450 years afterwards. It commences with these words: "Every kingdom which is not united within itself will go to ruin: for its princes are the kindred of robbers, wherefore God removes the light of their minds from their office, they become blind leaders of the blind, and their darkened thoughts are the source of many misdeeds." The Golden Bull confirms the former custom of having seven Chief Electors—the Archbishops of Mayence, Treves and Cologne, the first of whom is Arch-Chancellor; the King of Bohemia, Arch-Cupbearer; the Count Palatine of the Rhine, Arch-Steward; the Duke of Saxony, Arch-Marshal, and the Margrave of Brandenburg, Arch-Chamberlain. The last four princes receive full authority over their territories, and there is no appeal, even to the Emperor, from their decisions. Their rule is transmitted to the eldest son; they have the right to coin money, to work mines, and to impose all taxes which formerly belonged to the Empire.

These are its principal features. The claims of the Pope to authority over the Emperor are not mentioned; the position of the other independent princes is left very much as it was, and the cities are prohibited from forming unions without the Imperial consent. The only effect of this so-called "Constitution" was to strengthen immensely the power of the four favored princes, and to encourage all the other rulers to imitate them. It introduced a certain order, and therefore was better than the previous absence of all law upon the subject; but it held the German people in a state of practical serfdom, it perpetuated their division and consequent weakness, and it gave the spirit of the Middle Ages a longer life in Germany than in any other civilized country in the world.

The remaining events of Karl IV.'s life are of no great historical importance. In 1363 his son, Wenzel, only two years old, was crowned at Prague as king of Bohemia, and soon afterwards he was called upon by the Pope, Urban V., who found that his residence in Avignon was becoming more and more a state of captivity, to assist him in returning to Rome. In 1365, therefore, Karl set out with a considerable force, entered Southern France, crowned himself king of Burgundy at Arles—which was a hollow and ridiculous farce—and in 1368 reached Rome, whither Pope Urban had gone in advance. Here his wife was formally crowned as Roman Empress, and he humiliated himself by walking from the Castle of St. Angelo to St. Peter's, leading the Pope's mule by the bridle,—an act which drew upon him the contempt of the Roman people. He had few or no more privileges to sell, so he met every evidence of hostility with a proclamation of amnesty, and returned to Germany with the intention of violating his own Golden Bull, by having his son Wenzel proclaimed his successor. His departure marks the end of German interference in Italy.

1376. WENZEL ELECTED SUCCESSOR.

For ten years longer Karl IV. continued to strengthen his family by marriage, by granting to the cities the right of union in return for their support, and by purchasing the influence of such princes as were accessible to bribes. He was so cool and calculating, and pursued his policy with so much patience and skill, that the most of his plans succeeded. His son Wenzel was elected his successor by a Diet held at Frankfort in January, 1376, each of the chief Electors receiving 100,000 florins for his vote, and this choice was confirmed by the Pope. To his second son, Sigismund, he gave Brandenburg, which he had obtained partly by intrigue and partly by purchase, and to his third son, John, the province of Lusatia, adjoining Silesia. His health had been gradually failing, and in November, 1378, he died in Prague, sixty-three years old, leaving the German Empire in a more disorderly state than he had found it. His tastes were always Bohemian rather than German: he preferred Prague to any other residence, and whatever good he intentionally did was conferred on his own immediate subjects. More than a century afterwards, the Emperor Maximilian of Hapsburg very justly said of him: "Karl IV. was a genuine father to Bohemia, but only a step-father to the rest of Germany."

During the latter years of his reign, two very different movements, independent of the Imperial will, or in spite of it, had been started in Southern and Northern Germany. In Würtemberg the cities united, and carried on a fierce war with Count Eberhard, surnamed the Greiner (Whiner). The struggle lasted for more than ten years, and out of it grew various leagues of the knights for the protection of their rights against the more powerful princes. In the North of Germany, the commercial cities, headed by Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen, formed a league, which soon became celebrated under the name of "The Hansa," which gradually drew the cities of the Rhine to unite with it, and, before the end of the century, developed into a great commercial, naval and military power.

1375.

The Hanseatic League had its agencies in every commercial city, from Novgorod in Russia to Lisbon; its vessels filled the Baltic and the North Sea, and almost the entire commerce of Northern Europe was in its hands. When, in 1361, king Waldemar III. of Denmark took possession of the island of Gothland, which the cities had colonized, they fitted out a great fleet, besieged Copenhagen, finally drove Waldemar from his kingdom and forced the Danes to accept their conditions. Shortly afterwards they defeated king Hakon of Norway: their influence over Sweden was already secured, and thus they became an independent political power. Karl IV. visited Lübeck a few years before his death, in the hope of making himself head of the Hanseatic League; but the merchants were as good diplomatists as himself, and he obtained no recognition whatever. Had not the cities been so widely scattered along the coast, and each more or less jealous of the others, they might have laid the foundation of a strong North-German nation; but their bond of union was not firm enough for that.

The German Order, by this time, also possessed an independent realm, the capital of which was established at Marienburg, not far from Dantzic. The distance of the territory it had conquered in Eastern Prussia from the rest of the Empire, and the circumstance that it had also acknowledged itself a dependency of the Papal power, enabled its Grand Masters to say, openly: "If the Empire claims authority over us, we belong to the Pope; if the Pope claims any such authority, we belong to the Emperor." In fact, although the Order had now been established for a hundred and fifty years, it had never been directly assisted by the Imperial power; yet it had changed a great tract of wilderness, inhabited by Slavonic barbarians, into a rich and prosperous land, with fifty-five cities, thousands of villages, and an entire population of more than two millions, mostly German colonists. It adopted a fixed code of laws, maintained order and security throughout its territory, encouraged science and letters, and made the scholar and minstrel as welcome at its stately court in Marienburg, as they had been at that of Frederick II. in Palermo.