182 



GERMANY 



'Imperial Chamber' and the 'Aulic Council;' 

 and in his reign the empire was divided into ten 

 circles, each under its hereditary president and its 

 hereditary prince-convoker. Maximilian lived to 

 see the beginning of the Reformation, and the 

 success that attended Luther's preaching ; but the 

 firm establishment in Germany of the reformed faith, 

 and the religious dissensions by which its success 

 was attended, belong principally to the reign of his 

 grandson, Charles I., king of Spain, the son of the 

 Archduke Philip and of Joanna, the heiress of Spain, 

 who succeeded to the empire under the title of 

 Charles V. (1519-56). The management of his 

 vast possessions in Spain, Italy, and the Nether- 

 lands, and the wars with France, in which he was 

 so long implicated, diverted him from his German 

 territories, which he committed to the care of his 

 brother Ferdinand. The princes of Germany were 

 thus left to settle their religious differences among 

 themselves, and to quell, unaided by the head of 

 the state, the formidable insurrection of the peas- 

 ants (1524-25), which threatened to undermine the 

 very foundations of society, and which had fol- 

 lowed close upon the nobles' war (1522-23), 

 raised by Ulrich von Hutten and Francis von 

 Sickingen in the vain hope of securing a more 

 united Germany under the emperor. The rising of 

 the lower orders was due to the preaching of the 

 fanatic Miinzer, and other leaders of the sect of 

 Anabaptists (q.v.), which had arisen from a per- 

 verted interpretation of some of the tenets advanced 

 by Luther. Charles's determined opposition to the 

 reformers rendered all settlement of these religious 

 differences impracticable ; and although, by the 

 aid of his ally, Maurice of Saxony, he broke the 

 confederation of the Protestant princes known as 

 the League of Schmalkald, he was forced by his 

 former ally to sign the peace of Augsburg in 1555, 

 which granted tolerance to the Lutherans ; and, in 

 his disgust at the complicated relations in which he 

 was placed to both parties, he abdicated in favour 

 of his brother Ferdinand ( 1556-64 ), who put an 

 end to much of the religious dissension that had 

 hitherto distracted the empire, by granting entire 

 toleration to the Protestants. Although Ferdinand 

 was personally mild and pacific, his reign was 

 troubled by domestic and foreign aggressions the 

 different sects disturbing the peace of the empire 

 at home, while the French and the Turks assailed 

 it from abroad. 



During the next Hfty years the empire was a 

 prey to internal disquiet. Maximilian II. ( 1564- 

 76) was indeed a wise and just prince, but the 

 little he was able to effect in reconciling the 

 adherents of the different churches, and in rais- 

 ing the character of the imperial rule, was fatally 

 counteracted by the bigotry and vacillation of 

 his son and successor, Rudolf II. (1576-1612), in 

 whose reign Germany was torn by the dissensions 

 of the opposite religious factions, while each in 

 turn called in the aid of foreigners to contribute 

 towards the universal anarchy which culminated 

 in the Thirty Years' War, begun under Rudolf 's 

 brother and successor Matthias (1612-19); con- 

 tinued under Ferdinand II. (1619-37), an able, 

 but cruel and bigoted man ; and ended under 

 Ferdinand III. (1637-57), by the treaty of West- 

 phalia, in 1648. The effect of the Thirty Years' 

 War (q.v.) was to depopulate the rural districts 

 of Germany, destroy its commerce, burden the 

 people with taxes, cripple the already debilitated 

 power of the emperors, and cut up the empire into 

 a multitude of petty states, the rulers of which 

 exercised almost absolute power within their own 

 territories. Leopold I. (1658-17051, a haughty, 

 pedantic rnan, did not avail himself of the oppor- 

 tunities afforded by peace for restoring order to 

 the state, but suffered himself to be drawn into 



the coalition against France, whilst his hereditary 

 states were overrun by the Turks, and were in- 

 debted for their safety to Sobieski, king of Poland. 

 Although success often attended his arms, the 

 cunning of Louis XIV. prevented peace from bring- 

 ing the emperor any signal advantages ; and it 

 was in this reign that Strasburg was attached 

 to the French empire. The reigns of Joseph I. 

 (1705-11) and Charles VI. (1711-40), with whom 

 expired the male line of the Hapsburg dynasty, 

 were signalised by the great victories won by the 

 imperialist general, Prince Eugene, in conjunction 

 with Marlborough, over the French, in the war 

 of the Spanish succession (1702-13). But the 

 treaty of Utrecht (1713) brought no solid advan- 

 tage to the empire. The disturbed condition of 

 Spain and Saxony opened new channels for Ger- 

 man interference abroad. Germany was further dis- 

 tracted, after the death of Charles, by the dissen- 

 sions occasioned by the contested succession of his 

 daughter, Maria-Theresa, who claimed the empire 

 in virtue of the Pragmatic Sanction drawn up 

 by her father in 1713, and through her of her 

 husband, Francis I. of Lorraine, after their rival, the 

 Bavarian Elector, Charles VII., had by means of 

 Prussian aid been elected in 1742 to the imperial 

 throne. Charles, however, was obliged to cede 

 his crown after a brief occupation of three years. 

 Constant disturbances, intensified during the Seven 

 Years' War (1756-63), when Frederick the Great 

 of Prussia maintained his character of a skilful 

 general at the expense of the Austrians, made 

 the reign of Francis I. (1745-65) one of trouble 

 and disaster. Joseph II., his son (1765-90), during 

 the lifetime of Maria-Theresa, who retained her 

 authority over all the Austrian states, enjoyed 

 little beyond the title of emperor, to which he 

 had succeeded on his father's death. But when 

 he ultimately acquired his mother's vast patri- 

 mony he at once entered upon a course of reforms, 

 which were, however, premature, and unsuited 

 to the cases to which they were applied ; whilst 

 his attempts to re-establish the supremacy of the 

 imperial power in the south of Germany were 

 frustrated by Prussian influence. 



Leopold II., after a short reign of two years, 

 was succeeded in 1792 by his son Francis II., who, 

 after a series of defeats by the armies of the French 

 Republic, and the adhesion, in 1805, of many of the 

 German princes to the alliance of France, which 

 led to the subsequent formation of the Rhenish 

 Confederation under the protectorate of Napoleon, 

 resigned the German crown, and assumed the title 

 of Emperor of Austria. ( See for further details 

 AUSTRIA, NAPOLEON, FRANCE, PRUSSIA, and the 

 articles on the other German states.) From this 

 period till the Congress of Vienna of 1814-15 

 Germany was almost entirely at the mercy of 

 Napoleon, who deposed the established sovereigns, 

 and dismembered their states in favour of his 

 partisans and dependants, while he crippled the 

 trade of the country, and exhausted its resources 

 by the extortion of subsidies or contributions. 

 The second peace of Paris (1814) restored to 

 Germany all that had belonged to her in 1 792 ; 

 and, as a reconstruction of the old empire was 

 no longer possible, those states which still main- 

 tained their sovereignty combined, in 1815, to 

 form a German Confederation. Of the 300 states 

 into which the empire had once been divided 

 there now remained only 39, a number which 

 was afterwards reduced to 35 by the extinction 

 of several petty dynasties. The diet was now 

 reorganised, and appointed to hold its meetings 

 at Frankfort-on-the-Main, after having been form- 

 ally recognised by all the allied states as the 

 legislative and executive organ of the Confedera- 

 tion ; but it failed to satisfy the expectations of 



