Charles IV. was fully alive to these dangers. He had accompanied his father to Italy in 1330, had acted for a time as his vicegerent, and had then acquired an insight into Italian politics which profoundly influenced his subsequent policy. It is hardly too much to say that his guiding motive was to preserve Germany from the fate which nominal subjection to imperial rule had brought upon Italy. And though he was connected by relationship, education, and past alliances with the Valois House of France, he was by no means blind to the dangers of French aggression in the west. It was in the vain hope of checking the constant falling away of border lands that in 1365 he went through the ceremony of being crowned King of Arles, disused by his predecessors since Frederick Barbarossa.
On the subject of imperial elections, the provisions of the Golden Bull are clear and precise, and they remained a |The Golden Bull, 1356.| fundamental law until the Holy Roman Empire ended its shadowy existence in 1806. The number of electors is fixed at seven—viz. three ecclesiastics, the Archbishops of Mainz, Köln, and Trier, and four lay princes, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The three ecclesiastical electors are to be archchancellors of the three kingdoms: the Archbishop of Mainz in Germany, the Archbishop of Köln in Italy, and the Archbishop of Trier in Arles. The four secular electors are to hold the great household offices: the King of Bohemia is chief cup-bearer, the Count Palatine grand-seneschal, the Duke of Saxony grand-marshal, and the Margrave of Brandenburg grand-chamberlain. The election of the Kings of the Romans and future Emperors is to be held in Frankfort, and decided by a majority of votes. The elected prince is to be crowned at Aachen, and to hold his first diet at Nürnberg. The territories to which the electoral dignity is attached are never to be divided, and the succession is to be regulated by the rules of primogeniture among male agnates. During a minority, the electoral vote and the administration of the electoral provinces are to be intrusted to the nearest male relative on the father’s side. The electors are to take rank before all other princes; they are to have the royal rights of coining money and of final jurisdiction without appeal. All confederations of subjects without the leave of their territorial lord are prohibited, and the towns are forbidden to grant their citizenship to pfahlbürger, or burghers outside the walls, or to receive fugitive serfs to the shelter of their walls and franchises.
There is one omission in the Golden Bull which is as significant and important as any of its direct provisions. The |The Papacy and the Golden Bull.| papal claims to confirm or veto an election, and to administer the Empire during a vacancy, were passed over in complete silence. The great electoral resolutions of Rense were practically but silently erected into an imperial law, and the election of future Emperors was to be treated as a private affair of the German nation. Innocent VI. did not hesitate to show his displeasure at the promulgation of such a law by a prince who was regarded as the docile creature of the Holy See. But Charles IV. showed a firmness worthy of Edward I. or of Philip the Fair. When the papal nuncio tried to levy a tenth of clerical revenues, Charles replied by demanding a reform of ecclesiastical abuses and by threatening to confiscate Church property. The Pope was forced to give way, and to abandon his opposition to the Golden Bull.
With regard to the practical results of the Golden Bull, historians are unanimous. It erected an aristocratic federation |Results of the Golden Bull.| in Germany in place of the older monarchy, and the German constitution never lost the impress which it received in the fourteenth century. The powers and privileges which the Bull conferred upon the electors were inconsistent with the exercise of efficient monarchical authority. And though the secular electors in 1356 were not, with the exception of Charles himself, very powerful princes, yet it was certain that the establishment of primogeniture and of indivisibility of territories would before long give them a territorial power proportionate to their elevated rank.
But historians have misjudged Charles IV., partly because |Motives of Charles IV.| they have fallen into the common error of confusing the results of the Golden Bull with the intentions of its author, and partly because they have paid insufficient attention to the precise circumstances of the time in which he lived. Charles was profoundly convinced—and it is difficult to maintain that he was wrong—that the mediæval Empire was at an end, and that any attempt to revive it would result in the ruin of Germany. The forces which he most dreaded were the rising cities in the north and south, and the greater territorial princes, such as the Hapsburgs and the Bavarian Wittelsbachs. Both of these were weakened by the Golden Bull—the cities by its actual provisions, and the princes by their definite exclusion from the electoral vote, and by the virtual lowering of their rank which was effected by the elevation of the electors. It is true that the electors themselves received powers and privileges which might prove the foundation of independence, but at the same time their interests were enlisted on the side of unity. The Golden Bull gave them a grander position as joint rulers of Germany than they could look forward to as mere rulers in their own provinces. Thus it might reasonably be hoped that they would resist the further progress of that disruption which had already done so much harm to Germany.
And while he provided this check upon growing disunion, Charles IV. had no desire or expectation that the state of things recognised and confirmed in the Golden Bull should be permanent. His intention was to obtain for the House of Luxemburg such an overwhelming territorial strength that he would secure to his successors a practically hereditary claim to the imperial office, and also such a predominance in the electoral college as would enable them to rule Germany through that body. By gradually adding province after province to the family domain, it might be possible in the end to build up a territorial monarchy like that which existed in England and was in process of construction in France. It is true that such a monarchy might be less imposing than the wide-reaching claims of imperial suzerainty, but it would be infinitely stronger and more advantageous to Germany. No single lifetime could be long enough to effect such a work, and Charles’s direct heirs only lasted for a single generation, and were themselves incapable of following in their father’s footsteps. But such territorial power as was afterwards gained in Germany by the Hapsburgs was, for the most part, acquired by following the lines laid down by Charles IV., and in more than one way the Hapsburgs may be regarded as the heirs of the House of Luxemburg.
It is this definite policy which gives to Charles’s territorial ambitions an interest and a dignity which are lacking to the purely selfish and aimless acquisitiveness of his |Territorial acquisitions of Charles IV.| predecessor. In 1356 John, Duke of Brabant and Limburg died, and his territories passed to his daughter and her husband Wenzel, Duke of Luxemburg, Charles’s youngest brother. The Emperor supported his brother against the rival claims of the Count of Flanders, and obtained from the duchess and the estates of Brabant an agreement that, in default of heirs, the provinces should fall to the main line of Luxemburg. In 1363 occurred a very important crisis in the family relationships of Germany through the death of Meinhard, the only son of Margaret Maultasch and of Lewis of Bavaria, the eldest son of the late Emperor (see p. [107]). Meinhard’s death left vacant both Tyrol and the duchy of Upper Bavaria. The Hapsburg claim to Tyrol, which had failed in 1335, was promptly renewed by Rudolf of Austria. Rudolf was one of the princes who were most indignant at the increased rank given to the electors by the Golden Bull, and he had shown his irritation by assuming the title of ‘archduke,’ which in the next century was permanently adopted by the House of Hapsburg. Charles IV. seized the opportunity to gain over so powerful a malcontent. He confirmed Rudolf in possession of Tyrol, and at the same time concluded with him a treaty of mutual inheritance by which, on the extinction of either House, the other was to inherit all its lands. At the time, the House of Hapsburg seemed nearer to extinction than that of Luxemburg; and, as a matter of fact, the treaty was never actually carried out. But it is not a little curious that within a century after the male line of Luxemburg had come to an end, almost all the territories which it held in 1364 had passed, in one way or another, into the hands of the Hapsburgs.
Meanwhile a struggle had broken out as to the succession in Upper Bavaria. By a treaty made in 1349 between the sons of Lewis the Bavarian, that duchy ought now to have gone to Lewis the Roman and Otto, in whose favour their elder brother Lewis had renounced the possession of Brandenburg. But the second brother, Stephen of Lower Bavaria, anticipated their claim and obtained his own recognition from the estates of Upper Bavaria. The two margraves applied for assistance to Charles IV., and promised him the succession to Brandenburg if they died without heirs. This agreement ultimately took effect in 1373, when Otto, the surviving margrave, was induced or compelled to cede Brandenburg to the Emperor, who pledged himself to the estates that the union of Brandenburg with Bohemia should be perpetual. Thus Charles acquired a second electoral vote and a very notable increase of his territorial power in northern Germany. About the same time he betrothed his second son, Sigismund, to the daughter of Lewis the Great, King of Hungary and Poland, and thus opened a prospect of adding these states to the now enormous possessions of the Luxemburg House.
These actual or prospective acquisitions could be of little permanent value unless Charles could secure to his House the continued occupation of the imperial office, and in 1374 he began to sound the electors on the subject |Election of Wenzel.| of the election of his son Wenzel, a boy of fifteen years old. But there were many difficulties in the way. The Golden Bull made no provision for an election during the lifetime of any occupant of the throne. The spirit, if not the letter, of the law was against such a thing. There were also serious objections to the election of a minor, and many princes were jealous of the predominance already gained by the Luxemburgers. Charles, however, was not very scrupulous in such a critical matter, even about the observance of his own laws. He gained over the electors, but by the old objectionable method of bribing them. He did not hesitate to appeal for papal approval, thus reviving the pretensions which the Golden Bull had practically abrogated. But his policy was successful in its immediate aim. Wenzel was elected at Frankfort on June 16, and crowned at Aachen on July 6, 1376.
The election of Wenzel as King of the Romans was the last triumph of Charles IV. His repressive attitude towards the cities had met with only partial success. The great northern Hansa had conducted a successful war against Waldemar III., one of the strongest of Danish kings, and in 1370 had forced him to conclude a humiliating treaty at Stralsund (see p. [437]). And in 1376 a new danger arose in the south. The Swabian towns were disgusted at the sacrifice |The Swabian League.| of the last imperial domains in their province to purchase electoral votes. They renewed an old league under the leadership of Ulm, and refused to recognise Wenzel’s election. At Reutlingen (May 14, 1377) the forces of the league won a complete victory over their hated enemy, the Count of Würtemburg. This was followed by a rapid extension of the confederation, and Charles was too old and too weak to attempt its suppression. In August, 1378, he authorised his son Wenzel to conclude a peace between the towns and the princes, and to concede the right of union to the former. Thus one of the provisions of the Golden Bull was abandoned during Charles’s own lifetime.