chapter 28 (volume 2).

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1471-1487, and 1487-1526.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1477-1495. Marriage of Maximilian with Mary of Burgundy. His splendid dominion. His joyous character. His vigorous powers. His ambitions and aims.

"Maximilian, who was as active and enterprising as his father was indolent and timid, married at eighteen years of age, the only daughter of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy."

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1477

"She brought him Flanders, Franche-Comte, and all the Low Countries. Louis XI., who disputed some of those territories, and who, on the death of the duke, had seized Burgundy, Picardy, Ponthieu, and Artois, as fiefs of France, which could not be possessed by a woman, was defeated by Maximilian at Guinegaste; and Charles VIII., who renewed the same claims, was obliged to conclude a disadvantageous peace." Maximilian succeeded to the imperial throne on the death of his father in 1493.

_W. Russell, History of Modern Europe, letter 49 (volume 1)._

"Between the Alps and the Bohemian frontier, the mark Austria was first founded round and about the castles of Krems and Melk. Since then, beginning first in the valley towards Bavaria and Hungary, and coming to the House of Hapsburg, it had extended across the whole of the northern slope of the Alps until where the Slavish, Italian, and German tongues part, and over to Alsace; thus becoming an archduchy from a mark. On all sides the Archdukes had claims; on the German side to Switzerland, on the Italian to the Venetian possessions, and on the Slavish to Bohemia and Hungary. To such a pitch of greatness had Maximilian by his marriage with Maria of Burgundy brought the heritage received from Charles the Bold. True to the Netherlanders' greeting, in the inscription over their gates, 'Thou art our Duke, fight our battle for us,' war was from the first his handicraft. He adopted Charles the Bold's hostile attitude towards France; he saved the greater part of his inheritance from the schemes of Louis XI. Day and night it was his whole thought, to conquer it entirely. {204} But after Maria of Burgundy's premature death, revolution followed revolution, and his father Frederick being too old to protect himself, it came about that in the year 1488 he was ousted from Austria by the Hungarians, whilst his son was kept a prisoner in Bruges by the citizens, and they had even to fear the estrangement of the Tyrol. Yet they did not lose courage. At this very time the father denoted with the vowels, A. E. I. O. U. ('Alles Erdreich ist Oesterreich unterthan'--All the earth is subject to Austria), the extent of his hopes. In the same year, his son negotiated for a Spanish alliance. Their real strength lay in the imperial dignity of Maximilian, which they had from the German Empire. As soon as it began to bestir itself, Maximilian was set at liberty; as soon as it supported him in the persons of only a few princes of the Empire, he became lord in his Netherlands. ... Since then his plans were directed against Hungary and Burgundy. In Hungary he could gain nothing except securing the succession to his house. But never, frequently as he concluded peace, did he give up His intentions upon Burgundy. ... Now that he had allied himself with a Sforza, and had joined the Liga, now that his father was dead, and the Empire was pledged to follow him across the mountains, and now, too, that the Italian complications were threatening Charles, he took fresh hope, and in this hope he summoned a Diet at Worms. Maximilian was a prince of whom, although many portraits have been drawn, yet there is scarcely one that resembles another, so easily and entirely did he suit himself to circumstances. ... His soul is full of motion, of joy in things, and of plans. There is scarcely anything that he is not capable of doing. In his mines he is a good screener, in his armoury the best plater, capable of instructing others in new inventions. With musket in hand, he defends his best marksman, George Purkhard; with heavy cannon, which he has shown how to cast, and has placed on wheels, he comes as a rule nearest the mark. He commands seven captains in their seven several tongues; he himself chooses and mixes his food and medicines. In the open country, he feels himself happiest. ... What really distinguishes his public life is that presentiment of the future greatness of his dynasty which he has inherited of his father, and the restless striving to attain all that devolved upon him from the House of Burgundy. All his policy and all his schemes were concentrated, not upon his Empire, for the real needs of which he evinced little real care, and not immediately upon the welfare of his hereditary lands, but upon the realization of that sole idea. Of it all his letters and speeches are full. ... In March, 1495, Maximilian came to the Diet at Worms. ... At this Reichstag the King gained two momentous prospects. In Wurtemberg there had sprung of two lines two counts of quite opposite characters. ... With the elder, Maximilian now entered into a compact. Wurtemberg was to be raised to a dukedom--an elevation which excluded the female line from the succession--and, in the event of the stock failing, was to be a 'widow's portion' of the realm to the use of the Imperial Chamber. Now as the sole hopes of this family centred in a weakling of a boy, this arrangement held out to Maximilian and his successors the prospect of acquiring a splendid country. Yet this was the smaller of his two successes. The greater was the espousal of his children, Philip and Margaret, with the two children of Ferdinand the Catholic, Juana and Juan, which was here settled. This opened to his house still greater expectations,--it brought him at once into the most intimate alliance with the Kings of Spain. These matters might possibly, however, have been arranged elsewhere. What Maximilian really wanted in the Reichstag at Worms was the assistance of the Empire against the French with its world-renowned and much-envied soldiery. For at this time in all the wars of Europe, German auxiliaries were decisive. ... If Maximilian had united the whole of this power in his hand, neither Europe nor Asia would have been able to withstand him. But God disposed that it should rather be employed in the cause of freedom than oppression. What an Empire was that which in spite of its vast strength allowed its Emperor to be expelled from his heritage, and did not for a long time take steps to bring him back again? If we examine the constitution of the Empire, not as we should picture it to ourselves in Henry III. 's time, but as it had at length become--the legal independence of the several estates, the emptiness of the imperial dignity, the electiveness of a head, that afterwards exercised certain rights over the electors,--we are led to inquire not so much into the causes of its disintegration, for this concerns us little, as into the way in which it was held together. What welded it together, and preserved it, would (leaving tradition and the Pope out of the question) appear, before all else, to have been the rights of individuals, the unions of neighbours, and the social regulations which universally obtained. Such were those rights and privileges that not only protected the citizen, his guild, and his quarter of the town against his neighbours and more powerful men than himself, but which also endowed him with an inner independence. ... Next, the unions of neighbours. These were not only leagues of cities and peasantries, expanded from ancient fraternities--for who can tell the origin of the Hansa, or the earliest treaty between Uri and Schwyz?--into large associations, or of knights, who strengthened a really insignificant power by confederations of neighbours, but also of the princes, who were bound together by joint inheritances, mutual expectancies, and the ties of blood, which in some cases were very close. This ramification, dependent upon a supreme power and confirmed by it, bound neighbour to neighbour; and, whilst securing to each his privilege and his liberty, blended together all countries of Germany in legal bonds of union. But it is only in the social regulations that the unity was really perceivable. Only as long as the Empire was an actual reality, could the supreme power of the Electors, each with his own special rights, be maintained; only so long could dukes and princes, bishops and abbots hold their neighbours in due respect, and through court offices or hereditary services, through fiefs and the dignity of their independent position give their vassals a peculiar position to the whole. Only so long could the cities enjoying immediateness under the Empire, carefully divided into free and imperial cities, be not merely protected, but also assured of a participation in the government of the whole. Under this sanctified and traditional system of suzerainty and vassalage all were happy and contented, and bore a love to it such as is cherished towards a native town or a father's house. For some time past, the House of Austria had enjoyed the foremost position. It also had a union, and, moreover, a great faction on its side. The union was the Suabian League. Old Suabia was divided into three leagues--the league of the peasantry (the origin of Switzerland); the league of the knights in the Black Forest, on the Kocher, the Neckar, and the Danube; and the league of the cities. The peasantry were from the first hostile to Austria. The Emperor Frederick brought it to pass that the cities and knights, that had from time out of mind lived in feud, bound themselves together with several princes, and formed, under his protection, the league of the land of Suabia. But the party was scattered throughout the whole Empire."

_L. von Ranke, History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations,