Part 235

"The emperor, in his own name, and in behalf of his family and the 'empire, ceded the full sovereignty of Upper and Lower Alsace, with the prefecture of Haguenau, or the ten towns [Haguenau, Schelestadt, Weissemburgh, Colmar, Landau, Oberenheim, Rosheim, Munster in the Val de St. Gregoire, Kaiserberg, and Turingheim], and their dependencies. But by one of those contradictions which are common in treaties, when both parties wish to preserve their respective claims, another article was introduced, binding the king of France to leave the ecclesiastics and immediate nobility of those provinces in the immediacy which they had hitherto possessed with regard to the Roman empire, and not to pretend to any sovereignty over them, but to remain content with such rights as belonged to the house of Austria. Yet this was again contradicted by a declaration, that this exception should not derogate from the supreme sovereignty before yielded to the king of France."

_W. Coxe, History of the House of Austria, chapter 59 (volume 2)._

[Image: Germany at the peace of Westphalia.]

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"Respecting the rights of sovereignty due to the princes and the relations of the states of the empire with the emperor, the Peace of Westphalia contained such regulations as must in the course of time produce a still greater relaxation of those ties, already partially loosened, which held together the empire in one entirety. ... At the Peace of Westphalia the independence of the princes was made completely legal. They received the entire right of sovereignty over their territory, together with the power of making war, concluding peace, and forming alliances among themselves, as well as with foreign powers, provided such alliances were not to the injury of the empire. But what a feeble obstacle must this clause have presented? For henceforward, if a prince of the empire, having formed an alliance with a foreign power, became hostile to the emperor, he could immediately avail himself of the pretext that it was for the benefit of the empire, the maintenance of his rights, and the liberty of Germany. And in order that the said pretext might, with some appearance of right, be made available on every occasion, foreigners established themselves as the guardians of the empire; and accordingly France and Sweden took upon themselves the responsibility of legislating as guarantees, not only for the Germanic constitution, but for everything else that was concluded in the Peace of Westphalia at Münster and Osnaburg. Added to this, in reference to the imperial cities, whose rights had hitherto never been definitively fixed, it was now declared that they should always be included under the head of the other states, and that they should command a decisive voice in the diets; thenceforth, therefore, their votes and those of the other states--the electoral and other princes--should be of equal validity."

_F. Kohlrausch, History of Germany, chapter 26._

Peace between Spain and the United Provinces was embodied in a separate treaty, but negotiated at Münster, and concluded and signed a few months earlier in the same year. The war between Spain and France went on.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1646-1648.

GERMANY: A. D. 1648. Effects of the Peace of Westphalia on the Empire. It becomes a loose confederacy and purely German.

"It may ... be said of this famous peace, as of the other so-called 'fundamental law of the Empire,' the Golden Bull, that it did no more than legalize a condition of things already in existence, but which by being legalized acquired new importance. ... While the political situation, to use a current phrase, had changed within the last two hundred years, the eyes with which men regarded it had changed still more. Never by their fiercest enemies in earlier times, not once by the Popes or Lombard republicans in the heat of their strife with the Franconian and Swabian Cæsars, had the Emperors been reproached as mere German kings, or their claim to be the lawful heirs of Rome denied. The Protestant jurists of the 16th or rather of the 17th century were the first persons who ventured to scoff at the pretended lordship of the world, and declare their Empire to be nothing more than a German monarchy, in dealing with which no superstitious reverence need prevent its subjects from making the best terms they could for themselves, and controlling a sovereign whose religious predilections made him the friend of their enemies. ... It was by these views ... that the states, or rather France and Sweden acting on their behalf, were guided in the negotiations of Osnabrück and Münster. By extorting a full recognition of the sovereignty of all the princes, Catholics and Protestants alike, in their respective territories, they bound the Emperor from any direct interference with the administration, either in particular districts or throughout the Empire. All affairs of public importance, including the rights of making war or peace, of levying contributions, raising troops, building fortresses, passing or interpreting laws, were henceforth to be left entirely in the hands of the Diet. ... Both Lutherans and Calvinists were declared free from all jurisdiction of the Pope or any Catholic prelate. Thus the last link which bound Germany to Rome was snapped, the last of the principles by virtue of which the Empire had existed was abandoned. For the Empire now contained and recognized as its members persons who formed a visible body at open war with the Holy Roman Church; and its constitution admitted schismatics to a full share in all those civil rights which, according to the doctrines of the early Middle Age, could be enjoyed by no one who was out of the communion of the Catholic Church. The Peace of Westphalia was therefore an abrogation of the sovereignty of Rome, and of the theory of Church and State with which the name of Rome was associated. And in this light was it regarded by Pope Innocent X., who commanded his legate to protest against it, and subsequently declared it void by the bull 'Zelo domus Dei.' ... The Peace of Westphalia is an era in imperial history not less clearly marked than the coronation of Otto the Great, or the death of Frederick II. As from the days of Maximilian it had borne a mixed or transitional character, well expressed by the name Romano-Germanic, so henceforth it is in everything but title purely and solely a German Empire. Properly, indeed, it was no longer an empire at all, but a Confederation, and that of the loosest sort. For it had no common treasury, no efficient common tribunals, no means of coercing a refractory member; its states were of different religions, were governed according to different forms, were administered judicially and financially without any regard to each other. ... There were 300 petty principalities between the Alps and the Baltic, each with its own laws, its own courts, ... its little armies, its separate coinage, its tolls and custom-houses on the frontier, its crowd of meddlesome and pedantic officials. ... This vicious system, which paralyzed the trade, the literature, and the political thought of Germany, had been forming itself for some time, but did not become fully established until the Peace of Westphalia, by emancipating the princes from imperial control, had made them despots in their own territories."

_J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 19._

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GERMANY: A. D. 1648-1705. After the Peace of Westphalia. French influence in the Empire. Creation of the Ninth Elector.

After the Peace of Westphalia, the remainder of the reign of Ferdinand III. "passed in tranquillity. ... He caused his son to be elected king of the Romans, under the title of Ferdinand IV.; but the young prince, already king of Bohemia and Hungary, preceded him to the tomb, and left the question of the succession to be decided by a diet. Ferdinand III. died in 1657. ... The interregnum, and, indeed, the century which followed the death of Ferdinand, showed the alarming preponderance of the influence gained by France in the affairs of the empire, and the consequent criminality of the princes who had first invoked the assistance of that power. Her recent victories, her character as joint guarantee of the treaty of Westphalia, and the contiguity of her possessions to the states of the empire, encouraged her ministers to demand the imperial crown for the youthful Louis XIV. Still more extraordinary is the fact that four of the electors were gained, by that monarch's gold, to espouse his views. ... Fortunately for Germany and for Europe, the electors of Treves, Brandenburg, and Saxony, were too patriotic to sanction this infatuated proposal; they threatened to elect a native prince of their own authority,--a menace which caused the rest to co-operate with them; so that, after some fruitless negotiations, Leopold, son of the late emperor, king of Bohemia and of Hungary, was raised to the vacant dignity. His reign was one of great humiliation to his house and to the empire. Without talents for government, without generosity, feeble, bigoted, and pusillanimous, he was little qualified to augment the glory of the country. ... Throughout his long reign [1657-1705], he had the mortification to witness, on the part of Louis XIV., a series of the most unprovoked, wanton, and unprincipled usurpations ever recorded in history. ... Internally, the reign of Leopold affords some interesting particulars. ... Not the least is the establishment of a ninth electoral dignity in favour of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick Lunenburg, who then became (1692) the first elector of Hanover. This was the act of Leopold, in return for important aid in money and troops from two princes of that house; but it could not be effected without the concurrence of the electoral body, who long resisted it. ... The establishment of a permanent diet, attended, not by the electors in person, but by their representatives, is one of the most striking peculiarities of Leopold's reign."

_S. A. Dunham, History of the Germanic Empire, book 3, chapter 3 (volume 3)._

See, DIET, THE GERMANIC.

GERMANY: A. D. 1648-1780. The Austrian incubus.

"Before the Thirty Years' War the territories of the German Hapsburgs were not very considerable. The greatest part of Hungary was in the hands of the Turks; the Tyrol belonged to a collateral line; and, in the other provinces, the independence of the Nobility was much stronger than the sovereignty of the Archdukes. The Nobles were all zealous protestants, so that a monarchical power could only be created after a victory of the Catholic faith. For the first time since 1621, the crown was seen in these regions to assume a really dominant position. Efforts in this direction had been zealously carried on since 1648; the Tyrolese Estates now lost their most important privileges; and, above all, the Emperor succeeded, by the help of Polish and German troops, in driving out the Turks from Hungary, and at the same time crushing the national freedom of the Magyars with frightful bloodshed. By these victories the Monarchy gained, in the first place, a large increase of territory--which placed it nearly on a level with France. In the second place it acquired at home the power of raising as many taxes and soldiers as were necessary to increase the army to the extent of its wishes; and of distributing its officials and troops--without distinction of nation--as imperial servants, throughout its dominions. And thus it secured submission at home and disposable strength for its operations abroad. Here it stopped short. As it had no national, and, consequently, no warm and natural relation to any of its provinces--which were merely used as passive tools to promote the lofty aims of the Hapsburg family--the Government had no intention of using its power at home for the furtherance of the public good, or the building up of a generally useful Administration. The Nobility had no longer the strength to resist the demands of the Crown for men and money, but it still retained exemption from taxes, the jurisdiction and police among its own peasants, and a multitude of feudal rights, which, often enough, degraded the peasant to the condition of a serf, and everywhere bound down agriculture in the most galling bonds. Of manufactures there were little or none; trade was carried on on the system of guilds. The State officials exercised but little influence over the internal affairs of the Communes, or Provinces; and the privileged orders had full liberty to prosecute their own interests among their inferiors with inconsiderate selfishness. In this aristocracy, the Church, from its wealth and its close internal unity, assumed the first place; and its superior importance was still farther enhanced by the fact of its being the chief bond of unity between the otherwise so loosely compacted portions of the Empire. ... The Church attached the Nobility to the Government; for we must not forget that a very considerable portion of the estates of the Nobles had passed into the hands of new possessors who had received them as a reward for being good catholics. The Church, too, taught all the youth of the Empire--in all its different languages-- obedience to the House of Hapsburg, and received from the Crown, in return, exclusive control of the national education. It formed, in spite of the resistance of nationalities, a sort of public opinion in favour of the unity of the Empire; and the Crown, in return, excluded all non-catholic opinions from the schools, from literature and religion. Austria, therefore, continued to be catholic, even after 1648; and by this we mean, not only that its Princes were personally devout--or that the Catholic clergy were supported in the performance of their spiritual functions--or that the institutions of the Church were liberally supported--but also that the State directed its policy according to ecclesiastical views, made use of the Church for political purposes, and crushed every movement hostile to it in all other spheres of the national life. In Austria, therefore, it was not merely a question of theological differences, but of the deepest and most comprehensive points of distinction between the mediæval and the modern world. Austria was still, in its whole nature, a Mediæval State or Confederacy of States. The consequences of this condition were most strikingly seen in its relation to Germany. In the first place, there was a complete separation, in regard to all mental and spiritual matters, between the great body of the Empire, and its powerful Eastern member. This was the period, in which Germany was awaking to a new intellectual life in modern Europe, and laying the foundation of its modern science in every branch--in History and Statistics, Chemistry and Geology, Jurisprudence and Philosophy--and assuming by its Literature, an equal rank with other nations in national refinement and civilization. {1489} By the works of genius which this period produced Austria remained entirely uninfluenced; and it has been said, that Werther had only been made known to the Viennese in the form of fireworks in the Prater. The literary policy allowed no seed of modern culture to enter the Empire; and the Jesuit schools had rendered the soil unfit for its reception. All the progress of German civilization, at this period, was based on the principle of the independence of the mind in art and science. The education of the Jesuits, on the contrary, though unsurpassed where the object is to prepare men for a special purpose, commences by disowning individual peculiarities, and the right of a man to choose his own career. There was, at this time, no other characteristic of an Austrian than an entire estrangement from the progress of the German mind. ... The progress of the people in science and art, in politics and military strength, was only seen in the larger secular territories, which, after 1648, enjoyed their own sovereignty; and even these were checked in their movements at every step by the remnants of the Imperial Constitution. The Members of the Empire alone, in whom the decaying remains of Mediæval existence still lingered on--the Ecclesiastical Princes--the small Counts--the Imperial Knights and the Imperial Towns,--clung to the Emperor and the Imperial Diet. In these, partly from their small extent of territory, partly from the inefficiency of their institutions, neither active industry, nor public spirit, nor national pride, were to be found. In all which tended to elevate the nation, and raise its hopes for the future, they took, at this period, as little part as Austria herself. ... The Imperial constitution, therefore, was inwardly decayed, and stood in no relation to the internal growth of the nation. ... There was the same divergence between Austria and Germany with respect to their foreign interests, as we have observed in their internal relations. After the Turks had been driven from Hungary, and the Swedes from the half of' Pomerania, Germany had only two neighbours whom it was a matter of vital importance to watch,--the Poles and the French. In the South, on the contrary, it had no interests in opposition to Italy, except the protection of its frontier by the possession or the neutrality of the Alpine passes. And yet it was just towards Italy that the eyes of the House of Hapsburg had been uninterruptedly directed for centuries past. The favourite traditions of the family, and their political and ecclesiastical interest in securing the support of the Pope, and thereby that of the Clergy, constantly impelled them to consolidate and extend their dominion in that country. All other considerations yielded to this; and this is intelligible enough from an Austrian point of view; but it was not on that account less injurious to the German Empire. How strikingly was this opposition of interests displayed at the end of the glorious war of the Spanish succession, when the Emperor rejected a peace which would have restored Strasburg and Alsace to the Empire, because only Naples, and not Sicily also, was offered to Austria! How sharply defined do the same relations present themselves to our view, in the last years of the Hapsburg dynasty, at the peace of Vienna in 1738!--on which occasion the Emperor--in order at least to gain Tuscany, as a compensation for the loss of Naples,--gave up Lorraine to the French, without even consulting the Empire, which he had dragged into the war. Austria thus maintained a predominant influence in Italy; but the Empire, during the whole century after the Peace of Westphalia, did not obtain a single noteworthy advantage over France. How much more was this the case with respect to Poland, which during the whole period of the religious wars had been the most zealous ally of Spain and the Hapsburgs, and which subsequently seemed to threaten no danger to Austrian interests."

_H. Von Sybel, History of the French Revolution, book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1)._

GERMANY: A. D. 1658. Election of the Emperor, Leopold I.

GERMANY: A. D. 1660-1664. Renewed war with the Turks. Victory of St. Gothard. Transylvania liberated. A twenty years truce.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1660-1664.

GERMANY: A. D. 1672-1679. The war of the Coalition against Louis XIV.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1672-1674, and 1674-1678; also NIMEGUEN, PEACE OF.

GERMANY: A. D. 1675-1678. War with Sweden. Battle of Fehrbellin.

See BRANDENBURG: A.D. 1640-1688; and SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1644-1697.

GERMANY: A. D. 1679-1681. The final absorption of Alsace and Les Trois-Evêchés by France, with boundaries widened. Bold encroachments of the French Chambers of Reannexation. The seizure of Strasburg.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1679-1681.

GERMANY: A. D. 1686. The League of Augsburg against Louis XIV.

"The Duke of Orleans, the French King's brother, had married the sister of the Elector Palatine, the last of the House of Simmern, who died in May 1685, when his next relative, the Count Palatine Philip William, Duke of Neuberg, took possession of the Electorate. The Duchess of Orleans had by her marriage contract renounced all her feudal rights to the Palatinate, but not her claims to the allodial property and the moveables of her family." These latter claims, taken in hand by Louis XIV. on behalf of his sister-in-law, were made so formidable that the new Elector appealed to the Empire for protection, "and, thus redoubled the uneasiness felt in Germany, and indeed throughout the greater part of Europe, respecting the schemes of Louis. The Prince of Orange availed himself of these suspicions to forward his plans against Louis. He artfully inflamed the general alarm, and at length succeeded in inducing the Emperor Leopold, the Kings of Spain, and Sweden, as princes of the Empire, the Electors of Saxony and Bavaria, the circles of Suabia, Franconia, Upper Saxony, and Bavaria, to enter into the celebrated League of Augsburg (July 9th 1686). The object of this league was to maintain the Treaties of Münster and Nimeguen and the Truce of Ratisbon. If any of the members of it was attacked he was to be assisted by the whole confederacy; 60,000 men were to be raised, who were to be frequently drilled, and to form a camp during some weeks of every year, and a common fund for their support was to be established at Frankfort. The League was to be in force only for three years, but might be prolonged at the expiration of that term should the public safety require it. The Elector Palatine, who was in fact the party most directly interested, acceded to the League early in September, as well as the Duke of Holstein Gottorp."

_T. H. Dyer, History of Modern Europe, book 5, chapter 5 (volume 3)._

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"To Madame's great anger France set up a claim to the Palatinate on her behalf, Louvois persuading the King and the royal family that with a few vigorous measures the Palatinate would be abandoned by the Neubourgs and annexed to France as part of Madame's dowry. This led to the devastation of the states, to which Madame [Charlotte Elizabeth, the Duchess of Orleans] so often and so bitterly alludes during the next ten years. Obliged by Louis XIV. 's policy to represent herself as desirous to recover her rights over her father's and brother's succession, in many documents which she was never even shown, Madame protested in all her private letters against France's action in the matter, and made every one at court thoroughly aware of her grief and disapproval of what the king was doing on her behalf."

_Life and Letters of Charlotte Elizabeth, Princess Palatine, chapter 2._

GERMANY: A. D. 1689-1696. The War of the League of Augsburg, or Grand Alliance, against Louis XIV.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1690 to 1695-1696.