Part 67

"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, book 1, chapter 3._

{205}

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1493-1519. The Imperial reign of Maximilian. Formation of the Circle of Austria. The Aulic Council.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1493-1519.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1496-1499. The Swabian War with the Swiss Confederacy and the Graubunden, or Grey Leagues (Grisons). Practical independence of both acquired.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1396-1499.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1496-1526. Extraordinary aggrandizement of the House of Austria by its marriages. The Heritage of Charles V. His cession of the German inheritance to Ferdinand. The division of the House into Spanish and German branches. Acquisition of Hungary and Bohemia.

In 1496, Philip the Fair, son of Maximilian, Archduke and Emperor, by his marriage with Mary of Burgundy, "espoused the Infanta of Spain, daughter of Ferdinand [of Aragon] and Isabella of Castile. They had two sons, Charles and Ferdinand, the former of whom, known in history by the name of Charles V., inherited the Low Countries in right of his father, Philip (1506). On the death of Ferdinand, his maternal grandfather (1516), he became heir to the whole Spanish succession, which comprehended the kingdoms of Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, together with Spanish America. To these vast possessions were added his patrimonial dominions in Austria, which were transmitted to him by his paternal grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian I. About the same time (1519), the Imperial dignity was conferred on this prince by the electors [see GERMANY: A. D. 1519]; so that Europe had not seen, since the time of Charlemagne, a monarchy so powerful as that of Charles V. This Emperor concluded a treaty with his brother Ferdinand; by which he ceded to him all his hereditary possessions in Germany. The two brothers thus became the founders of the two principal branches of the House of Austria, viz., that of Spain, which began with Charles V. (called Charles I. of Spain), and ended with Charles II. (1700); and that of Germany, of which Ferdinand I. was the ancestor, and which became extinct in the male line in the Emperor Charles VI. (1740). These two branches, closely allied to each other, acted in concert for the advancement of their reciprocal interests; moreover they gained each their own separate advantages by the marriage connexions which they formed. Ferdinand I. of the German line married Anne (1521), sister of Louis King of Hungary and Bohemia, who having been slain by the Turks at the battle of Mohacs (1526), these two kingdoms devolved to Ferdinand of the House of Austria. Finally, the marriage which Charles V. contracted with the Infant Isabella, daughter of Emmanuel, King of Portugal, procured Philip II. of Spain, the son of that marriage, the whole Portuguese monarchy, to which he succeeded on the death of Henry, called the Cardinal (1580). So vast an aggrandisement of power alarmed the Sovereigns of Europe."

_C. W. Koch, The Revolutions of Europe, period 6._

ALSO IN: _W. Coxe, History of the House of Austria, chapters 25 and 27 (volume 1)._

_W. Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles V., book 1._

See, also, SPAIN: A. D. 1496-1517.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1519. Death of Maximilian. Election of Charles V., "Emperor of the Romans."

See GERMANY: A. D. 1519.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1519-1555. The imperial reign of Charles V. The objects of his policy. His conflict with the Reformation and with France.

"Charles V. did not receive from nature all the gifts nor all the charms she can bestow, nor did experience give him every talent; but he was equal to the part he had to play in the world. He was sufficiently great to keep his many-jewelled diadem. … His ambition was cold and wise. The scope of his ideas, which are not quite easy to divine, was vast enough to control a state composed of divers and distant portions, so as to make it always very difficult to amalgamate his armies, and to supply them with food, or to procure money. Indeed its very existence would have been exposed to permanent danger from powerful coalitions, had Francis I. known how to place its most vulnerable points under a united pressure from the armies of France, of England, of Venice, and of the Ottoman Empire. Charles V. attained his first object when he prevented the French monarch from taking possession of the inheritance of the house of Anjou, at Naples, and of that of the Viscontis at Milan. He was more successful in stopping the march of Solyman into Austria than in checking the spread of the Reformation in Germany. … Charles V. had four objects very much at heart: he wished to be the master in Italy, to check the progress of the Ottoman power in the west of Europe, to conquer the King of France, and to govern the Germanic body by dividing it, and by making the Reformation a religious pretext for oppressing the political defenders of that belief. In three out of four of these objects he succeeded. Germany alone was not conquered: if she was beaten in battle, neither any political triumph nor any religious results ensued. In Germany, Charles V. began his work too late, and acted too slowly; he undertook to subdue it at a time when the abettors of the Reformation had grown strong, when he himself was growing weaker. … Like many other brilliant careers, the career of Charles V. was more successful and more striking at the commencement and the middle than at the end, of its course. At Madrid, at Cambrai, at Nice, he made his rival bow down his head. At Crespy he again forced him to obey his will, but as he had completely made up his mind to have peace, Charles dictated it, in some manner, to his own detriment. {206} At Passau he had to yield to the terms of his enemy—of an enemy whom Charles V. encountered in his old age, and when his powers had decayed. Although it may be said that the extent and the power of the sovereignty which Charles V. left to his successor at his death were not diminished, still his armies were weakened, his finances were exhausted, and the country was weary of the tyranny of the imperial lieutenants. The supremacy of the empire in Germany, for which he had struggled so much, was as little established at the end as at the beginning of his reign; religious unity was solemnly destroyed by the 'Recess' of Augsburg. But that which marks the position of Charles V. as the representative man of his epoch, and as the founder of the policy of modern times, is that, wherever he was victorious, the effect of his success was to crush the last efforts of the spirit of the middle ages, and of the independence of nations. In Italy, in Spain, in Germany, and in the Low Countries, his triumphs were so much gain to the cause of absolute monarchy and so much loss to the liberty derived from the old state of society. Whatever was the character of liberty in the middle ages—whether it were contested or incomplete, or a mockery—it played a greater part than in the four succeeding centuries. Charles V. was assuredly one of those who contributed the most to found and consolidate the political system of modern governments. His history has an aspect of grandeur. Had Francis I. been as sagacious in the closet as he was bold in the field, by a vigorous alliance with England, with Protestant Germany, and with some of the republics of Italy, he might perhaps have balanced and controlled the power of Charles V. But the French monarch did not possess the foresight and the solid understanding necessary to pursue such a policy with success. His rival, therefore, occupies the first place in the historical picture of the epoch. Charles V. had the sentiment of his position and of the part he had to play."

_J. Van Praet, Essays on the Political History of the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries, pages 190-194._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1519 to 1152-1561, and FRANCE: A. D. 1520-1523, to 1547-1559.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1525-1527. Successful Contest for the Hungarian and Bohemian Crowns.