CHAPTER VII.
Germany, which had always been a loosely compacted mass, was at the close of the Hohenstaufen dynasty composed of 60 independent cities, 116 priestly rulers, and 100 reigning dukes, princes, counts, and barons, always rivals and usually at war with each other, in perpetually changing combinations for attack or defense.
Lying beneath this body of small and struggling sovereigns was a people in whom was the first dawning consciousness of human rights; which consciousness was gradually extending to that helpless mass underlying the whole—the peasantry.
In 1273 the German princes succeeded in electing an Emperor; and the Great Interregnum was over.
It is a curious fact that the two names Hapsburg and Hohenzollern should have appeared simultaneously in German history. Rudolf, Count of Hapsburg, through the influence of his brother-in-law Frederick of Hohenzollern, Count of Nuremburg, was chosen to fill the vacant throne. It was during the reign of Albert, son of this first Hapsburg, that the Swiss first revolted against imperial authority.
Gessler, who had been sent by Albert to subdue the refractory Alpine shepherds, so exasperated them by his atrocities that he was shot by William Tell. It was a long way from Tell to Swiss freedom and independence. But the people from that hour never wavered in their determination not to be serfs to the house of Hapsburg.
The Hanseatic League in North Germany, and the invincibly free spirit in Switzerland, were the two things of deepest significance at this time of political chaos.
Side by side with this assertion of political rights, there had commenced a general intellectual awakening. The Bishop of Ratisbon, Albertus Magnus, was so learned in mathematics and in science that people believed he was a sorcerer.[[1]] Godfrey of Strasburg had written an epic poem about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Wolfram of Eschenbach had told of the Holy Grail in his Parsifal; and a learned history of Denmark had been written, without which our own literature would have suffered immeasurable loss, for in it Shakspeare found the story of Hamlet!
It was at this time (1356) that the famous "Golden Bull" was issued, a new electoral system, which reduced the number of electors to seven.