Pictures of German Life in the XVth, XVIth, and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. I.

by Gustav Freytag

The Emperor was still considered the nominal centre of the Empire, and the source of all power. All hastened, upon his accession, to obtain from him the confirmation of old freedoms and privileges, and he was the first judge and first general of the Empire, but could not raise a single thaler of money or a single soldier without the consent of the Diet. And what was of still greater importance, he could only obtain taxes and soldiers from among the vassals, by the consent of their feudal lords. Hesitatingly and sparingly did the Diet grant subsidies, and so defective was the payment that the grant became a mere farce.

Within the Empire, Electors, princes, nobles, and Imperial cities ruled their territories, with many gradations of sovereign rights. The greater princes were real sovereigns, their power only restricted by their states. Noble families, holding temporal principalities in heritable possession, strove incessantly to enlarge their power, to put down the smaller lords round them, and to limit the sovereign rights of the Emperor. In the fifteenth century they had reduced the Imperial power almost to a shadow. It was only by extending the power of his house that the Emperor Maximilian was able to maintain himself against them.

We may easily perceive that there were two ways of remodelling this clumsy state edifice of the middle ages. In one case the power of the great princes might rise so high, that the temporal influence of the Pope and the supremacy of the Emperor would be overthrown; then Germany would be divided into a number of individual states, whose conflicts, wars, and destinies might for centuries throw the whole of central Europe into weakness and confusion, and which at last, in another state of development, might lead to new endeavours to restore unity to the Empire. It has been the fate of Germany up to the present time to follow this dangerous path.

In the other case, the Emperor might have succeeded in adding to the old groundwork of his power, such real strength, that the opposition of all the ruling princes would be broken, and Germany gradually changed into a modern state, that would either enclose the individual governments in perfect unity, or at least concentrate all the highest powers of government in the hand of one ruler. To form such a state, the Hapsburgers of the sixteenth century, and with more wilful obstinacy those of the seventeenth, have striven to the injury of the German nation and themselves; yet in the year 1519, when Maximilian died, the prospect opened to an able prince was grand, though the power of his house was moderate.

The time had arrived when a German Emperor might raise his power above the heads of all the princes, and with irresistible strength overthrow every opponent; for just at that time a new power arose in Germany, imperative in its demands, and capable of the greatest results,--public opinion. The Reform movement in the Church combined also within it the germ of great political reforms. Had an Emperor arisen who would have sympathized with the needs of the German spirit, who would have united himself with the Reformation, and known how to raise it for his own aims in an exalted spirit, he would have had it in his power to form out of the Empire a new state and a united German Church: it was the highest prize that ever was offered to an ambitious prince; and how favourable would have been his position! The nation was deeply roused against the hierarchy and Romish influence, and the Reformation began with a struggle against the highest of the ecclesiastical electors. Three Electorates, more than seventy Imperial dignities, comprising the largest third of the whole country of Germany, were in the hands of ecclesiastical lords, who would all have fallen had the Reformation been undertaken by the Emperor and people. The Emperor would have found in the movement, powers which would have made his Imperial army irresistible; the evangelical preachers could not in a moment have transformed awkward peasants into skilled soldiers; but they might have infused into the armies of the Emperor, much of the enthusiasm and reckless daring which the best among them made proof of in their own lives; besides which, comprehensive ideas of political reform sprang up in the circle of the Huttens and Sickingens; and a German Emperor might well have found in such ideas the means of reconciling the conflicting interests of peasants, citizens, and knights, at least sufficiently so to serve his own purposes. How could the German princes, disunited as they always were, have withstood an Emperor with such allies, strengthened by a well-established income, and leader of an army which for the first time since the Crusades would have been animated by a great idea? Good grounds would such an emperor have had to have respected old families: it would not have been necessary for him to take the Electoral crown from off their heads, but he might have reduced them to be dignitaries of one great united empire, in which the highest jurisdiction and the power of the army would have been vested in him alone: the want of such a man was for centuries the misfortune of Germany.

It is difficult to do justice to the German princes of the sixteenth century; their position was unfavourable for the formation of their character and for the development of elevated political action. They were too great to be loyal vassals, but not powerful enough, with only moderate abilities, to conduct the affairs of the nation in a liberal spirit. They were for the most part pretentious Junkers; their selfishness appeared to foreigners rapacious, their manners rude, their greed insatiable.

The private life of many of them was stained by the blackest crimes; a few of them were at heart pious; their religion was, we hope, a restraint in the hour of temptation, but it did not contribute to enlarge their political views. There was a patriarchal feeling among many of them. Such were Frederic the Wise and his next successor; such also was the Margrave Ernest of Baden, who used to have condemned criminals brought to him before their execution, that he might give them comfort from the Gospel, and beg for their forgiveness (as he felt obliged to fulfil his duty), and who offered them his hand at parting. Besides men of this kind there were others, overbearing, profligate, and wicked; such was Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg, who stabbed Hans Hutten in the forest because he wished to obtain possession of his wife. But though at most of the courts consideration for wife and children compelled a certain degree of moderation, the ecclesiastical princes were not even under this restraint. They were in the worst repute, and the more athletic preferred the helmet and the hunting-spear to the vestments of the Church, which some of them wore very awkwardly. There were bishops and archbishops who hardly knew the ritual of their Church. Once when a Latin discourse was to be made, it appeared that the highest princes of the Church could not speak that language, and the Margrave of Brandenburg was obliged to do it.

It was through princes like these that Charles, sovereign of Lower Burgundy and the Netherlands, King of Spain and Naples, Duke of Milan, and Lord of the new world on the other side of the ocean, became also Emperor of Germany. It is well known how long and actively the intrigues both for him and the King of France were pursued. There was no Electoral house to which money or promises were not proffered by both parties, and none which did not negotiate for its own advantage. At last Frederic the Wise decided the election, and dear has his family paid for this decision. When the young king was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, where, to the great delight of the assembled multitude, he caused his horse to prance joyously before them, and when, after the coronation, the heralds proclaimed that the Emperor would, by permission of his Holiness the Pope, take the title of "Roman Emperor Elect," there were absent from the festive train the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, the Princes of the two houses which from henceforth were to lead the German opposition against the house of Hapsburg.

The fate of Germany was decided by the election of Charles V. He was not entirely a Burgundian, not always a Spaniard, not an Italian, and least of all a German. His position was too high, for him to make it the interest of his life to meet the requirements of any one of the many nations under his sway. The unfortunate part of his exalted position was, that he could only carry out a personal policy, subordinating sometimes one, sometimes another country to the course of his plans, the ultimate aim of which was the advantage of his own family. Had Charles been less able and less moderate, what was insupportable in these incongruities would have been felt as a grievance by all his states; but seldom has a prince maintained so long, a position in itself untenable. At last, however, the catastrophe arrived. After thirty years of fame and success, he broke down, and the misery of Germany became apparent.

Although he had so little in common with the Germans, still he was not unpopular in the Empire. The people of Germany looked upon him as Luther himself did. The confiding attachment with which the Germans received the grandson of Maximilian was almost touching; his noble, reserved, and composed bearing had an imposing effect upon all. In the beginning the best was hoped of him, and later also, even the Protestants who had experienced his displeasure, rejoiced when he encountered the Pope or conquered the French King. Long did the German nation continue to feel itself exalted by the glory and splendour of his government. Charles did his best; he spared the prejudices of the Germans, indulged them more than any of his other people, and even when he sided with a party, he knew how to conciliate his opponents by his benevolent dignity. At last, however, the time came when his pride and pretensions rose so high that the intractable independence of the Protestant party became insupportable to him, and then his long concealed opposition broke forth into hate. Suddenly, a storm arose against him among the people. As in the first years of Luther, a sea of small literature again overflowed the country: they fought against him in prose and verse, and they depended more on the support of heaven than was wise. The successor of Duke George of Saxony, that most zealous opponent of the Reformation, the Protestant Maurice, united himself with the Emperor against his own family, and the Protestant party was defeated.