With the year 1378 begins a period of anarchy and confusion characteristic of the decay of an old organisation, and the inevitable precursor of a new system. In that year died Gregory XI. and Charles IV., the representatives of secular and ecclesiastical authority as conceived in the Middle Ages. Of the two claimants to universal rule, the Papacy and the Empire, the former was immeasurably the stronger. It possessed a large revenue and an admirable administrative system. The Empire had neither. Its claims to rule over Christendom were no longer acknowledged. Even in Italy its suzerainty was recognised as a legal form, but in actual politics little regard was paid to it. And the German monarchy had fallen with the grandiose and unreal dignity to which it was attached. The imperial domains had been seized or squandered. The central administration and jurisdiction were hardly existent. Such authority as the king |Decline of German monarchy.| possessed rested upon the territorial powers which he held independently of his kingship. His nominal vassals—ecclesiastics, lay princes, knights and cities—enjoyed practical independence. If they quarrelled with each other, they fought the quarrel out as if they had been independent states. If the Emperor intervened, it was as a partisan rather than as an arbiter. There was no parliamentary organisation, as in England, where the interests of the various estates could find effective expression. There was no overwhelming national sentiment, such as was created by the Hundred Years’ War in France, to enable the monarchy to gain ascendency and to crush rival pretensions.
The dangers of this growing disunion were sufficiently obvious in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It seemed |Dangers to Germany.| almost inevitable that Germany would lose all semblance of a state, and that as it fell to pieces foreign powers would seize upon the fragments. In the south-east the Turks were gradually establishing themselves on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire, and threatened to advance up the valley of the Danube into the heart of southern Germany. Further north a powerful Slav kingdom was erected in Poland under the House of Jagellon, whose mission seemed to be to annihilate the progress which German influences had effected by means of the Teutonic knights. The Slav kingdom of Bohemia, which under the House of Luxemburg had become almost the capital of Germany, revolted against the rule and the religion of its kings, and the Hussite victories revealed more clearly than any other single event the rottenness and impotence of the existing system in Germany. In the north, the Union of Kalmar brought the three Scandinavian states under a single ruler, and threatened to deprive the German Hansa of the ascendency in northern waters which Lübeck and its associates had gained by their victory over Waldemar III. of Denmark. In the south, the Swiss Confederation was tending to free itself from even nominal dependence on the Empire, and there were other leagues in Swabia and on the Rhine which were not unlikely to follow its example. In the west, German weakness had already allowed France to swallow a great part of the old kingdom of Arles, and though France was for a time crippled by the war with England and by internal dissensions, a new and more pressing danger was created by the rapid growth of the Valois dukes of Burgundy, who absorbed one imperial fief after another, and at one time almost succeeded in building up a middle kingdom along the Rhine, which would have excluded Germany from all real influence on the development of western Europe.
Charles IV., the greatest ruler of the fourteenth century, had clearly grasped both the dangers of the situation and |Policy of Charles IV.| the only remedies which could be applied. Either Germany must be organised as a federation which should combine some measure of local independence with joint action for common interests, or a single family must collect such an aggregate of territories in its hands as might become the nucleus of a new territorial monarchy. Charles had kept both expedients before him. He had laid the foundations of a federal organisation by conferring corporate powers and privileges upon the electors. At the same time he had made the Luxemburg family the strongest in Germany, and had placed it in a position to do for Germany what the Capets had done for France. It is a common error to maintain that Charles IV.’s policy was a complete failure; that what he meant to be a temporary expedient proved permanent, while his ultimate aims were never achieved. It is true that a territorial monarchy was not established, and that such unity as Germany has since possessed has been federal rather than monarchical. But what really held Germany together from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century was not the federal system, but the territorial power of the house of Hapsburg. And that territorial power was, in the main, founded by Charles IV. It is as the heirs of the Luxemburg family that the Hapsburgs assumed their unique position in Germany. Charles IV. achieved more lasting results than he has been credited with, but the fruits of his policy were gathered by others than his own descendants.
One very obvious source of weakness to Charles IV. had been his failure to control the ecclesiastical system, owing to the residence of the Popes at Avignon. |Return of the Papacy to Rome.| Charles himself had gained the German monarchy to some extent as the papal nominee; but he had found it necessary to resist papal intervention in Germany as long as that intervention was dictated by a foreign power. It was obviously Charles’s duty and interest to restore the Papacy to Rome, where alone it could exercise impartial authority. He had induced Urban V. to transfer his residence to Rome, but his hopes had been disappointed by the Pope’s speedy return to the banks of the Rhône. Once again his influence had been successful, and in 1377 Gregory XI. had left Avignon for the Eternal City. But both Pope and cardinals found Rome too turbulent to be an agreeable abode, and they were preparing for another flitting when the death of Gregory compelled the conclave to meet for a new election within the Vatican. The mob surrounded the palace and demanded the choice of a Roman Pope. The majority of the cardinals were Frenchmen, but they were divided among themselves, and they were afraid of the violence of the citizens. As a compromise, they chose a Neapolitan, the archbishop of Bari, |Election of Urban VI., 1378.| who took the name of Urban VI. So little confidence had the cardinals that their decision would please the people, that they escaped in disguise and left the news of the election to become known gradually. This fact is sufficient to prove that the election was not altogether compulsory, and as soon as the mob had shown itself acquiescent, the cardinals were unanimous in acknowledging Urban.
But this unanimity was very short-lived. Urban VI. had never been a cardinal, and was personally unknown to most of his electors. He proved to be a man of violent temper and rough manners, eager to exercise his unexpected authority, and reckless of opposition or advice. The cardinals, who had hoped for a pliant and grateful tool, found themselves confronted with a master who announced that he would begin the reform of the Church with its chief dignitaries. He silenced remonstrances by the rudest sarcasms, and declared that he would never return to Avignon. Disappointed and indignant, many of the cardinals quitted Rome for Anagni. Encouraged by the support of France and Naples, they declared that Urban’s election was invalid on account of the intimidation of the mob, and on September 20, 1378, proceeded to elect Robert of Geneva, a militant ecclesiastic who had succeeded Cardinal Albornoz as commander |Election of Clement VII.| of the papal troops in Italy. The Antipope assumed the name of Clement VII., and his election commenced a schism in the Church which lasted for forty years.
Charles IV. had watched these events in Italy with the greatest chagrin. He gave unhesitating support to Urban VI., and urged the European princes to resist the revival of French dictation in the Church. But his death on November 29 removed the one statesman who might possibly have checked the progress of the schism. His son and successor, Wenzel, pursued his father’s policy, but he was too young, and, as it proved, too incapable, to exercise the same influence. He threatened Joanna I. of Naples with the imperial ban if she did not give up the cause of Clement; and this threat was the more formidable because the Neapolitans themselves favoured their fellow-countryman Urban. But the only result was to aggravate the schism. Finding that residence on Neapolitan soil was no longer safe, Clement VII. and his |The schism in the Church, 1378-1417.| cardinals left Italy for Avignon. There Clement was secure of French support, and before long he was also recognised by the Spanish kingdoms, Castile, Aragon, and Navarre. Germany, England, and most of the northern kingdoms gave their allegiance to Urban VI., and after his death to his successors, Boniface IX. (1389-1404), Innocent VII. (1404-5), and Gregory XII., elected in 1405. Clement VII. lived till 1394, when he was succeeded by a Spaniard, Peter de Luna, who took the name of Benedict XIII.
The schism in the Church was by no means the only difficulty which Wenzel had to face. In Germany, as in |The German towns.| other countries, the feudal system, in which social and political relations depended upon the tenure of land, had been modified by the growth of towns, whose interests lay in industry rather than in agriculture, while their desire to maintain peace conflicted with the military habits and traditions of the noble landholders. In England and in France the monarchy had advanced its own interests by taking the rising towns under its patronage and by aiding the growth of municipal self-government. At one time, under Lewis the Bavarian, a similar policy had seemed possible in Germany. At the diet of Frankfort in 1344 the speaker of the town deputies had used the memorable words: civitates non possunt stare nisi cum imperio: imperii lesio earum est destructio. But Charles IV., guided by his experiences in Italy, had distrusted the towns: he had suspected them of aiming at independence rather than the strengthening of the monarchy: and in the Golden Bull he had deliberately opposed the development of the towns while he had conceded great powers to the electors. But his policy in this respect had not been altogether successful even during his own lifetime. The Hanse towns in the north had risen to the zenith of their power in 1370, and Charles had found it politic to conciliate them by a personal visit to Lübeck. In the south the Swabian League had been formed under the leadership of Ulm, had defeated the warlike Count of Würtemburg, and had compelled the old emperor to allow them the right of union, of which they had been deprived by the Golden Bull.
The death of Charles IV. and the accession of the feeble and self-indulgent Wenzel enabled the towns to take bolder measures. In 1381 an alliance was concluded at |Hostility of towns and nobles.| Speier between the Swabian League and the towns on the Rhine; and its object was not merely mutual defence, but ‘to scourge and punish their mutual enemies.’ The league thus formed contained seventy-two towns, and could supply a military force of ten thousand men-at-arms. And this force was by no means their only or their most effective weapon. By granting a modified form of citizenship (Pfahlbürgerthum), they annexed whole villages in their neighbourhood, thus depriving the lords at once of subjects, revenue, and territory. If the landholder tried to recover his loss, he only devastated his own property, while the offending citizens were safe within walls that until the general use of gunpowder were almost impregnable. It was no wonder that the princes resented the growth of a power which seemed likely to rival their own. But the class which was most immediately threatened by the towns was that of the knights or lesser tenants-in-chief. Their chief occupations were warfare and pillage, and the towns were resolute in putting a stop to practices which ruined their trade. Single-handed the knights were powerless against the civic forces, and they were driven to form leagues, such as the famous League of the Lion, for their own defence. There was little love lost between the knights and the princes, but class prejudices and associations tended to draw them together against a foe whom they both detested and contemned. The materials were prepared for a great war of classes in Germany.
Wenzel had neither the ability nor the experience to enable him to deal successfully with such a problem, and his attention was also occupied by family affairs in the east and by the quarrel in the Church. His only expedient was to form associations for the maintenance of the peace in which both princes and cities should be included. By this means he succeeded in postponing but not in preventing a war. The quarrel of Leopold of Hapsburg with the Swiss precipitated matters. The Swiss confederation differed from the Swabian and Rhenish leagues in that it included village communities of peasants as well as towns. When in 1385 an alliance with the Swabian League was proposed, the original forest cantons refused to take any part in the matter, and only the towns, Bern, Zürich, Zug and Luzern were parties to the compact. The battle of Sempach was won mainly by the peasants, and the Swabian towns sent no assistance. But the fall of Leopold of Hapsburg, the champion of princely interests, was hailed as a triumph by the towns, and had the natural effect of increasing their pride and pretensions. In 1387 the war which had been on the verge of outbreak since 1379 at last began. There was little that was notable in the actual hostilities, except their extent. The |The town war, 1387-9.| war was merely a simultaneous explosion of the numerous feuds which had often been waged before between a noble and a too powerful town. As long as the citizens stood on the defensive, they were successful, and the armies of the princes and knights were repulsed from their walls. Emboldened by these successes, they determined to leave their walls and to invade the territories of their old enemy, Eberhard of Würtemburg. But the German towns had no such soldiers as the peasants of the Alps, and no such geographical advantages as the Swiss had. In the open field their forces were cut to pieces by the feudal cavalry. On August 24, 1388, the united troops of the Swabian League suffered a severe defeat at Döffingen. The weakness of their position was now apparent. They could resist aggression, but they could not themselves take the offensive. The Rhenish towns were defeated with great loss at Worms, and Nürnberg, the latest and the most important recruit of the Swabian League, was reduced to submission by the Burggraf.
But the triumph of the nobles was incomplete. Though they had been victorious in the field, they were as unable as before to carry on siege operations. Their defensive strength enabled the towns to negotiate the peace of Eger (1389) |Peace of Eger, 1389.| on fairly equal terms. By this treaty all leagues and unions were to be abrogated on both sides. All future disputes between the towns and the nobles were to be settled by arbitration. For this purpose four commissioners were appointed in Swabia, Franconia, Bavaria, and the Rhenish provinces. Each commission was to consist of four nobles, four citizens, and a president to be appointed by the Emperor. It is obvious that the towns, though defeated, had not been wholly unsuccessful, and had secured a position of equality with their opponents. But the real importance of the war is the discredit which it cast upon the monarchy. Wenzel had been unable either to prevent the war or to influence its course. And the organisation created for the maintenance of the peace was a local and representative organisation, in which the central authority had little more than a nominal share.