The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648

by Samuel Rawson Gardiner

As far, however, as the period now under review is concerned, though the name of Emperor was retained, it is unnecessary to trouble ourselves with the rights, real or imaginary, connected with the imperial dignity. Charles the Great, before the imperial crown was conferred on him, ruled as king, by national assent or by conquest, over a great part of Western Europe. When his dominions were divided amongst his successors, the rule of those successors in Germany or elsewhere had no necessary connexion with the imperial crown. Henry the Fowler, one of the greatest of the Kings of the Germans, was never an emperor at all, and though, after the reign of his son Otto the Great, the German kings claimed from the Pope the imperial crown as their right, they never failed also to receive a special German crown at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) or at Frankfort as the symbol of their headship over German lands and German men.

§ 4. Its connexion with the Empire.

When, therefore, the writers of the 16th or 17th centuries speak of the rights of the Emperor in Germany, they really mean to speak of the rights of the Emperor in his capacity of German king, just as, when they speak of the Empire, they mean what we call Germany, together with certain surrounding districts, such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, Lorraine, and Eastern Burgundy or Franche Comté, which are not now, if Alsace and the newly-conquered part of Lorraine be excepted, included under that name. In the same way the mere fragments of feudal supremacy, and the payment of feudal dues which the emperors claimed in Italy, belonged to them, not as emperors, but simply as Italian kings, and as wearers of the iron crown of Lombardy, which, as the legends told, was formed of nails taken from the Saviour's cross.

§ 5. Some confusion unavoidable.

Not that it would be wise, even if it were possible, to do otherwise than to follow the practice of contemporaries. The strange form, Emperor of Germany, by which, at a later period, men unfamiliar with Germany history strove to reconcile the old claims with something like the actual fact, had not been yet invented. And, after all, the confusions of history, the use of words and titles when their meaning is changed, are so many tokens to remind us of the unity of successive generations, and of the impossibility of any one of them building anew without regarding the foundations of their fathers. All that is needed is to remember that the emperor of later times is a personage whose rights and functions can be profitably compared with those of Henry VIII. of England or Lewis XIV. of France, not with Julius or Constantine whose successor he professed himself to be.

§ 6. The great vassals.

'Take away the rights of the Emperor,' said a law book of the fifteenth century, in language which would have startled an old Roman legislator, 'and who can say, "This house is mine, this village belongs to me?"' But the princes and bishops, the counts and cities, who were glad enough to plead on their own behalf that their lands were held directly from the head of the Empire, took care to allow him scarcely any real authority. This kingly dignity which passed under the name of the Empire was indeed very weak. It had never outgrown the needs of the Middle Ages, and was still essentially a feudal kingship. From circumstances which it would take too much space to notice here, it had failed in placing itself at the head of a national organization, and in becoming the guardian of the rights of the tillers of the soil and the burghers of the towns, who found no place in the ranks of the feudal chivalry.

§ 7. Their independence.

The immediate vassals of the Empire, in fact, were almost independent sovereigns, like the Dukes of Normandy in the France of the tenth century, or the Dukes of Burgundy in the France of the fifteenth century. They quarrelled and made war with one another like the Kings of England and France. Their own vassals, their own peasants, their own towns could only reach the Emperor through them, if anybody thought it worth while to reach him at all.

§ 8. Prospect of order.