Hungary had owed a doubtful allegiance since the days of Otto I. Gregory VII had claimed it as a fief of the Holy See; Frederick wished to reduce it completely to subjection, but could not overcome the reluctance of his nobles. After Frederick II, by whom it was recovered from the Mongol hordes, no imperial claims were made for so many years that at last they became obsolete, and were confessed to be so by the Constitution of Augsburg, A.D. 1566[202].
Poland.
Under Duke Misico, Poland had submitted to Otto the Great, and continued, with occasional revolts, to obey the Empire, till the beginning of the Great Interregnum (as it is called) in 1254. Its duke was present at the election of Richard, A.D. 1258. Thereafter Primislas called himself king, in token of emancipation, and the country became independent, though some of its provinces were long afterwards reunited to the German state. Silesia, originally Polish, was attached to Bohemia by Charles IV, and so became part of the Empire; Posen and Galicia were seized by Prussia and Austria, A.D. 1772. Down to her partition in that year, the constitution of Poland remained a copy of that which had existed in the German kingdom in the twelfth century[203].
Denmark.
Lewis the Pious had received the homage of the Danish king Harold, on his baptism at Mentz, A.D. 826; Otto the Great's victories over Harold Blue Tooth made the country regularly subject, and added the march of Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire: but the boundary soon receded to the Eyder, on whose banks might be seen the inscription,—
'Eidora Romani terminus imperii.'
King Peter[204] attended at Frederick I's coronation, to do homage, and receive from the Emperor, as suzerain, his own crown. Since the Interregnum Denmark has been always free[205].
France.
Otto the Great was the last Emperor whose suzerainty the French kings had admitted; nor were Henry VI and Otto IV successful in their attempts to enforce it. Boniface VIII, in his quarrel with Philip the Fair, offered the French throne, which he had pronounced vacant, to Albert I; but the wary Hapsburg declined the dangerous prize. The precedence, however, which the Germans continued to assert, irritated Gallic pride, and led to more than one contest. Blondel denies the Empire any claim to the Roman name; and in A.D. 1648 the French envoys at Münster refused for some time to admit what no other European state disputed. Till recent times the title of the Archbishop of Treves, 'Archicancellarius per Galliam atque regnum Arelatense,' preserved the memory of an obsolete supremacy which the constant aggressions of France might seem to have reversed.
Sweden.