Besides these main clauses the ‘Golden Bull’ secured to the seven Electors enormous privileges and rights of jurisdiction, thus raising them to a much higher social and political level than the other princes of Germany, who were merely represented in the Imperial Diet or Parliament. The Electors became, in fact, more influential than the Emperor himself, and Charles has often been blamed for handing over Germany to a feudal oligarchy.
It is possible that he did not foresee the full results or permanence of the ‘Golden Bull’, but was determined only to construct for the time being a workable scheme that would prevent anarchy. There is also the supposition that he was more interested in the position of the kingdom of Bohemia, his own hereditary possession, which he raised to the first place among the electing territories, than in the rôle of Emperor to which he had been chosen. Whatever Charles’s real motive, it is at any rate clear that he had the sense to see that the Empire as it stood was an outworn institution, and thus to try and mould it into a less fantastic form of government. Like Edward I of England and Philip IV of France, though without the genius of the one or the opportunities of the other, he stands for posterity as one of those rulers of Europe during whose reign their country was enabled to shake off some of its mediaeval characteristics. Charles wore the imperial crown longer than any of his predecessors without arousing serious opposition—a sign that, if not an original politician, he yet moved with his times towards a more Modern Age.
Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. [368–73].
| The Perpetual League | 1291 |
| Charles ‘the Bold’ | 1433–77 |
| Valdemar III | 1340–75 |
| Ladislas V of Poland | 1386–1433 |
| Treaty of Thorn | 1466 |
| Emperor Henry VII | 1308–13 |
XXI
ITALY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES
When the ‘Company of Death’ repulsed the German army of Frederick Barbarossa on the field of Legnano[41] it raised aloft before the eyes of Europe not only the banner of democracy but also of nationality. Others, as we have seen, followed these banners once displayed: the Swiss Cantons shook off the Habsburg yoke: the Flemish towns defied their counts and French overlords: the Hanse cities formed political as well as commercial leagues against Scandinavia: France, England, and Spain emerged, through war and anarchy, modern states conscious of a national destiny.
This slow evolution of nations and classes is the history of the later Middle Ages; but in Italy there is no steady progress to record; rather, a retrogression that proves her early efforts to secure freedom were little understood even by those who made them.
Frederick II had ruled Lombardy in the thirteenth century through tyrants; but, long after the Hohenstaufen had disappeared, and the quarrels of Welfs and Waiblingen had dwindled into a memory in Germany, the feuds of Guelfs and Ghibellines were still a monstrous reality in towns south of the Alps, where petty despots enslaved the Communes and reduced the country to perpetual warfare.