Volume 1 — CHAPTER VIII.

THE IMPERIAL KINGDOMS.

♦The Kingdom of the East-Franks or of Germany.♦

The division of 887 parted off from the general mass of the Frankish dominions a distinct Kingdom of the East-Franks, the acknowledged head of the Frankish kingdoms, which, as being distinguished from its fellows as the Regnum Teutonicum, may be best spoken of as a Kingdom of Germany. ♦Merging of the Kingdom in the Empire.♦ But the lasting acquisition of the Italian and Imperial crowns by the German kings, and their later acquisition of the kingdom of Burgundy, gradually tended to obscure the notion of a distinct German kingdom. The idea of the Kingdom was merged in the idea of the Empire of which it formed a part. Later events too tended in the same direction. ♦The Emperors lose Italy and Burgundy, but keep Germany.♦ The Italian kingdom gradually fell off from any practical allegiance to its nominal king the Emperor. So did the greater part of the Burgundian kingdom. Meanwhile, though the powers of the Emperors as German kings were constantly lessening, their authority was never wholly thrown off till the present century. The Emperors in short lost their kingdoms of Italy and Burgundy, and kept their kingdom of Germany. In the fifteenth century the coronation of the Emperor at Rome had become a mere ceremony, carrying with it no real authority in Italy. In the sixteenth century the ceremony itself went out of use. ♦Charles the Fourth crowned at Arles, 1365.♦ The Burgundian coronation at Arles became irregular at a very early time, and it is last heard of in the fourteenth century. ♦1792.♦ But the election of the German kings at Frankfurt, their coronation, in earlier times at Aachen, afterwards at Frankfurt, went on regularly till the last years of the eighteenth century. ♦Endurance of the German Diet.♦ So, while the national assemblies of Italy and Burgundy can hardly be said to have been regularly held at all, while they went altogether out of use at an early time, the national assembly of Germany, in one shape or another, never ceased as long as there was any one calling himself Emperor or German King. The tendency in all three kingdoms was to split up into separate principalities and commonwealths. ♦Comparison of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy.♦ But in Germany the principalities and commonwealths always kept up some show of connexion with one another, some show of allegiance to their Imperial head. In Italy and Burgundy they parted off altogether. Some became absolutely independent; were incorporated with other kingdoms or became their distant dependencies; some were even held by the Emperors themselves in some other character, and not by virtue either of their Empire or of their local kingship. ♦The Empire identified with Germany.♦ Thus, as the Empire became more and more nearly coextensive with the German Kingdom, the distinction between the two was gradually forgotten. The small parts of the other kingdoms which kept any trace of their Imperial allegiance came to be looked on as parts of Germany. ♦The Empire becomes a Confederation.♦ In short, the Western Empire became a German kingdom; or rather it became a German Confederation with a royal head, a confederation which still kept up the forms and titles of the Empire. ♦1530.♦ As no German king received an Imperial coronation after Charles the Fifth, it might in strictness be said that the Empire came to an end at his abdication. ♦1556.♦ And in truth from that date the Empire practically became a purely German power. But, as the Imperial forms and titles still went on, the Western Empire must be looked on as surviving, in the form of a German kingdom or confederation, down to its final fall.

♦The German Kingdom represents the Empire.♦

The Kingdom of Germany then may be looked on as representing the Western Empire, as being what was left of the Western Empire after the other parts of it had fallen away. But the German kingdom itself underwent, though in a smaller degree, the same fate as the other two Imperial kingdoms. ♦Separation of parts of the Kingdom.♦ While all Italy and all Burgundy, with some very trifling exceptions, fell away from the Empire, the mass of Germany remained Imperial. Still large parts of Germany were lost to the Empire no less than Italy and Burgundy. A considerable territory on the western and south-western frontier of Germany gradually fell away. Part of this territory has grown into independent states; part has been incorporated with the French kingdom. The Swiss Confederation has grown up on lands partly German, partly Burgundian, partly Italian, but of which the oldest and greatest part belonged to the German kingdom. The Confederation of the United Provinces, represented by the modern kingdom of the Netherlands, lay wholly[12] within the old German kingdom: so did by far the greater part of the modern kingdom of Belgium. ♦Modern Austria.♦ In our own day the same tendency has been shewn in south-eastern as well as south-western Germany; several members of the ancient kingdom have fallen away to form part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. ♦Extension of Germany to the north-east.♦ But on the northern and north-eastern frontier the tendency to extension, with some fluctuations, has gone on from the beginning of the kingdom to our own day. ♦Geographical contrast of the earlier and later Empire.♦ This tendency to lose territory to the west and south, and to gain territory to the east and north, had the effect of gradually cutting off the Western Empire, as represented by the German kingdom, from any close geographical connexion with the earlier Empire of which it was the historical continuation. The Holy Roman Empire, at the time of its final fall, contained but little territory which had formed part of the Empire of Trajan. It contained nothing which had formed part of the Empire of Justinian, save some small scraps of territory in the north-eastern corner of the old Italian kingdom.

§ 1. The Kingdom of Germany.

♦Change in the geography and nomenclature of Germany.♦

In tracing out, for our present purpose, the geographical revolutions of Germany, it will be enough to look at them, as far as may be, mainly in their European aspect. Owing to the gradual way in which the various members of the Empire grew into practical sovereignty—owing to the constant division of principalities among many members of the same family—no country has undergone so many internal geographical changes as Germany has. In few countries also has the nomenclature shifted in a more singular way. ♦Ancient and modern Saxony and Bavaria.♦ To take two obvious examples, the modern kingdom of Saxony has nothing but its name in common with the Saxony which was brought under the Frankish dominion by Charles the Great. The modern kingdom of Bavaria has a considerable territory in common with the ancient Bavaria; but it has gained so much at one end and lost so much at the other that the two cannot be said to be in any practical sense the same country. ♦Uses of the name Austria.♦ The name of Austria has shifted from the eastern part of the old Francia to the German mark against the Magyar, and it has lately wandered altogether beyond the modern German frontier. ♦Burgundy.♦ The name of Burgundy has borne endless meanings, both within the Empire and beyond it. ♦Prussia.♦ Lastly, the ruling state of modern Germany, a state stretching across the whole land from east to west, strangely bears the name of the conquered and extinct Prussian race. Many of these changes affect the history of Europe as well as the history of Germany; but many of the endless changes among the smaller members of the Empire are matters of purely local interest, which belong to the historical geography of Germany only, and which claim no place in the historical geography of Europe. I shall endeavour therefore in the present section, first to trace carefully the shiftings of the German frontier as regards other powers, and then to bring out such, and such only, of the internal changes as have a bearing on the general history of Europe.

♦Extent of the Kingdom.♦

The extent of the German kingdom as it stood after the division of 887 has been roughly traced already. ♦Boundaries under the Ottos, 936-1002.♦ It will now be well to go over its frontiers somewhat more minutely, as they stood at the time of final separation between the Empire and the West-Frankish kingdom, the time of final union between the Empire and the East-Frankish kingdom. This marks the great age of the Saxon Ottos. ♦Boundary towards the West.♦ The frontier towards the Western kingdom was now fairly ascertained, and it was subject to dispute only at a few points. ♦Lotharingia.♦ It is hardly needful to insist again on the fact that all Lotharingia, in the sense of those days, taking in all the southern Netherlands except the French fief of Flanders, was now Imperial. ♦Encroachments of France.♦ It is along this line that the German border has in later times most largely fallen back. The advance of France has touched Burgundy more than Germany; but it has, first swallowed up, and afterwards partly restored, a considerable part of the German kingdom. ♦The Netherlands.♦ The Netherlands had been practically so cut off from Germany before the annexations of France in that quarter began, that they will be better spoken of in another section. ♦Lorraine and Elsass.♦ The other points at which the frontier has fluctuated on a great scale have been the border land of Lorraine—as distinguished from the Lower Lotharingia which has more to do with the history of the Netherlands—and the Swabian land of Elsass. ♦Fluctuations of Bar.♦ The Duchy of Bar, the borderland of the borderland, fluctuated more than once. ♦1473.♦ After its union with the Duchy of Lorraine, it followed the fortunes of that state. ♦The Three Bishoprics, 1552.♦ In the next century came the annexation of the three Lotharingian bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which gave France three outlying possessions within the geographical borders of the Lotharingian duchy. ♦Loss of Austrian Elsass, 1648.♦ In the next century, as the result of the Thirty Years’ War, France obtained by the Peace of Westfalia the formal cession of these conquests, and also the great advance of her frontier by the dismemberment of Elsass. The cession now made did not take in the whole of Elsass, but only the possessions and rights of the House of Austria in that country. This cession still left both Strassburg and various smaller towns and districts to the Empire; but it naturally opened the way to further French advances in a land where the frontier was so complicated and where difficulties were so easily raised as to treaty-rights. ♦Gradual annexation of Elsass, 1679-1789.♦ A series of annexations, réunions as they were called, gradually united nearly all Elsass to France. ♦Seizure of Strassburg, 1681.♦ Strassburg, as all the world knows, was seized by Lewis the Fourteenth in time of peace. ♦Seizure of Lorraine, 1678-1697.♦ During the wars with the same prince, the duchy of Lorraine was seized and restored. ♦Its final annexation. 1766.♦ In the next century it was separated from the Empire to become the life-possession of the Polish king Stanislaus, and on his death it was finally added to France just before a far greater series of French annexations began. ♦Loss of the left bank of the Rhine, 1801.♦ The wars of the French Revolution, confirmed by the Peace of Luneville, tore away from Germany and the Empire all that lay on the left bank of the Rhine. In other words, the Western Francia, the duchy of the lords of Paris, advanced itself to the utmost limits of the Gaul of Cæsar. This was the last annexation of France at the expense of the old German kingdom. ♦Dissolution of the Kingdom and Empire, 1806.♦ It was indeed the main cause of the formal dissolution of the kingdom which happened a few years later. The utter transformation of Germany within and without which now followed must be spoken of at a later stage.

♦Frontier of Germany and Burgundy.♦

The frontier of Germany and Burgundy, while they still remained distinct kingdoms, fluctuated a good deal, especially in the lands which now form Switzerland. ♦Union of Burgundy with the Empire, 1033.♦ But this frontier ceased to be of any practical importance when the Burgundian kingdom was united with the Empire. The later history of Burgundy, consisting of the gradual incorporation by France of the greater part of the kingdom, and the growth of the remnant into the western cantons of the Swiss Confederation, will be told elsewhere.

♦Frontier of Germany and Italy.♦

Towards Italy again the frontier was sometimes doubtful. Chiavenna, for instance, sometimes appears in the tenth and eleventh centuries as German; so do the greater districts of Trent, Aquileia, Istria, and even Verona. ♦The Marchland.♦ All these formed a marchland, part of which in the end became definitely attached to Germany and part to Italy. ♦Union of the Crowns, 961-1530. 961-1250.♦ But here again, as long as the German and Italian crowns were united, and as long as their common king kept any real authority in either kingdom, the frontier was of no great practical importance. So in later times, both before and after the dissolution of the German Kingdom, the question has practically been a question between Italy and the House of Austria rather than between Italy and Germany as such. These changes also will better come in another section.

♦Eastern and Northern frontiers.♦

The case is quite different with regard to the eastern and northern frontiers, on which the really greatest changes took place, and where Germany, as Germany, made its greatest advances. ♦Advance of the Empire.♦ Along this line the Roman Empire and the German Kingdom meant the same thing. On this side the frontier had to be marked, so far as it could be marked, against nations which had had nothing to do with the elder Empire. Here then for many ages the Roman Terminus advanced and fell back according to the accidents of a long warfare.

The whole frontier of the kingdom towards its northern and eastern neighbours was defended by a series of marks or border territories whose rulers were clothed with special powers for the defence and extension of the frontier.[13] They had to guard the realm against the Dane in the north, and against the Slave during the whole remaining length of the eastern frontier, except where, in the last years of the ninth century, the Magyar thrust himself in between the northern and southern Slaves. ♦Hungarian frontier. Mark of Austria.♦ Here the frontier, as against Hungary and Croatia, was defended by the marks of Krain or Carniola, Kärnthen or Carinthia, Austrian mark to the north of them. ♦Little change on this frontier.♦ This frontier has changed least of all. It may, without any great breach of accuracy, be said to have remained the same from the days of the Saxon Emperors till now. The part where it was at all fluctuating was along the Austrian mark, rather than along the two marks to the south of it. ♦Occasional homage of Hungary to the Emperors.♦ The Emperors claimed, and sometimes enforced, a feudal superiority over the Hungarian kings. But this kind of precarious submission does not affect geography. Hungary always remained a separate kingdom; the Imperial supremacy was something purely external, and it was always thrown off on the first opportunity.

♦Frontier towards Denmark.♦

The same may be said of Denmark. For a short time a German mark was formed north of the Eider. ♦The Danish Mark, 934-1027. Boundary of the Eider, 1027-1806.♦ But, when the Danish kingdom had grown into the Northern Empire of Cnut, the German frontier fell back here also, and the Eider remained the boundary of the Empire till its fall. ♦Occasional homage of the Danish Kings.♦ As with Hungary, so with Denmark; more than one Danish king became the man of Cæsar; but here again the precarious acknowledgement of Imperial supremacy had no effect on geography.

♦Slavonic frontier.♦

It is in the intermediate lands, along the vast frontier where the Empire marched on the northern Slavonic lands, that the real historical geography of Germany lies for some ages. ♦Fluctuation of territory.♦ Here the boundary was ever fluctuating. ♦Extent of the Slaves.♦ At the time of the division of 887, the Slaves held all east of the Elbe and a good deal to the west. How far they had during the Wandering of the Nations stepped into the place of earlier Teutonic inhabitants is a question which belongs to another field of inquiry. We must here start from the geographical fact that, at the time when the modern states of Europe began to form themselves, the Slaves were actually in possession of the great North-Eastern region of modern Germany. Their special mention will come in their special place; we must here mark that modern Germany has largely formed itself by the gradual conquest and colonization of lands which at the end of the ninth century were Slavonic. The German kingdom spread itself far to the North-East, and German settlements and German influences spread themselves far beyond the formal bounds of the German kingdom. Three special instruments worked together in bringing about this end. The Saxon Dukes came first. In after times came the great league of German cities, the famous Hansa which, like some other bodies originally commercial, became a political power, and which spread German influences over the whole of the shores of the Baltic. Along with them, from the thirteenth century onwards, worked the great military order of the Teutonic knights. Out of their conquests came the first beginnings of the Prussian state, and the extension of German rule and the German speech over much which in modern geography has become Russian. In a history of the German nation all these causes would have to be dealt with together as joint instruments towards the same end. In a purely geographical view the case is different. Some of these influences concern the formation of the actual German kingdom; others have geographically more to do with the group of powers more to the north-east, the Slavonic states of Poland and Russia, and their Lithuanian and Finnish neighbours. The growth and fall of the military orders will therefore most naturally come in another section. We have here to trace out those changes only which helped to give the German kingdom the definite geographical extent which it held for some centuries before its final fall.

♦The Saxon Mark.♦

Beginning at the north, in the lands where German, Slave, and Dane came into close contact, in Saxony beyond the Elbe, the modern Holstein, the Slaves held the western coast, and the narrow Saxon mark fenced off the German land. ♦Mark of the Billungs, 960-1106.♦ The Saxon dukes of the house of Billung formed a German mark, which took in the lands reaching from the Elbe to the strait which divides the isle of Rügen from the mainland. But this possession was altogether precarious. ♦Its fluctuations.♦ It again became a Slavonic kingdom; then it was a possession of Denmark; it cannot be looked on as definitely becoming part of the German realm till the thirteenth century. ♦Slavonic princes continue in Mecklenburg.♦ The chief state in these lands which has lasted till later times is the duchy of Mecklenburg, the rulers of which, in its two modern divisions, are the only modern princes who directly represent an old Slavonic royal house. Meanwhile a way was opened for a vast extension of German influence through the whole North, by the growth of the city of Lübeck. ♦Foundation of Lübeck, 1140-1158.♦ Twice founded, the second time by Henry the Lion Duke of Saxony, it gradually became the leading member of the great merchant League. ♦The Hanse Towns.♦ To the south of these lands come those Slavonic lands which have grown into the modern kingdom of Saxony and the central parts of the modern kingdom of Prussia. ♦Marchlands.♦ These were specially marchlands, a name which some of them have kept down to our own day. ♦Brandenburg. Lausitz. Meissen.♦ The mark of Brandenburg in its various divisions, the mark of Lausitz or Lusatia, where a Slavonic remnant still lingers, and the mark of Meissen, long preserved the memory of the times when these lands, which afterwards came to play so great a part in the internal history of Germany, were still outlying and precarious possessions of the German realm.

To the south-east lay the Bohemian lands, whose history has been somewhat different. ♦Bohemia a fief, 928.♦ The duchy, afterwards kingdom, of Bohemia, became, early in the tenth century, a fief of the German kingdom. ♦Becomes a kingdom, 1198. 1003.♦ From that time ever afterwards, save during one moment of passing Polish annexation, it remained one of its principal members, ruled, as long as the Empire lasted, by princes holding electoral rank. The boundaries of the kingdom itself have hardly varied at all. ♦Moravia. 1019.♦ The dependent marchland of Moravia to the east, the remnant of the great Moravian kingdom whose history will come more fittingly in another chapter, fluctuated for a long while between Hungarian, Polish, and Bohemian supremacy. But from the early part of the eleventh century it remained under Bohemian rule, and therefore under Imperial superiority. ♦More distant Slavonic states.♦ To the east of this nearer zone of Slavonic dependencies, lay another range of Slavonic states, some of which were gradually incorporated with the German kingdom, while others remained distinct down to modern times. ♦Pomerania.♦ Pomerania on the Baltic coast is a name which has often changed both its geographical extent and its political allegiance. The eastern part of the land now so called lay open, as will be hereafter seen, to the occupation of the Pole, and its western part to that of the Dane. ♦Native princes go on.♦ But in the end it took its place on the map in the form of two duchies, ruled, like Mecklenburg, by native princes under Imperial supremacy. ♦Polish frontier.♦ South of Pomerania, the German march bordered on the growing power of Poland, and between Poland and Hungary lay the northern Croatia or Chrobatia. The German supremacy seems sometimes to have been extended as far as the Wartha, and, in the Chrobatian land, even beyond the Vistula. ♦Occasional homage of the Polish kings.♦ But this occupation was quite momentary; Poland grew up, like Hungary, as a kingdom, some of whose dukes and kings admitted the Imperial supremacy, but which gradually became wholly independent. ♦Silesia Polish, 999.♦ The border province of Silesia, after some fluctuations between Bohemia and Poland, became definitely Polish at the end of the tenth century. ♦Bohemian, 1289-1327.♦ Afterwards it was divided into several principalities, whose dukes passed under Bohemian vassalage, and so became members of the Empire. Thus in the course of some ages, a boundary was drawn between Germany and Poland which lasted down to modern times.

♦Extension of the Empire to the east.♦

The result of this survey is to show how great, and at the same time how gradual, was the extension of the German power eastward. A Roman Empire with a long Baltic coast was something that had never been dreamed of in earlier days. If the extension of the German name was but the recovery of long lost Teutonic lands, the extension to them of the Imperial name which had become identified with Germany was at least wholly new. ♦The Slavonic lands Germanized.♦ In all the lands now annexed, save in a few exceptional districts, German annexation meant German colonization, and the assimilation of the surviving inhabitants to the speech and manners of Germany. Colonists were brought, specially from the Frisian lands, by whose means the Low-Dutch tongue was spread along the whole southern coast of the Baltic. German cities were founded. The marchlands grew into powerful German states. At last one of these marchlands, united with a German conquest still further cut off from the heart of the old German realm, has grown into a state which in our own days has become the Imperial power of Germany.

♦Internal geography of Germany.♦

The internal geography of the German kingdom is the greatest difficulty of such a work as the present. To trace the boundaries of the kingdom as against other kingdoms is comparatively easy; but to trace out the endless shiftings, the unions and the divisions, of the countless small principalities and commonwealths which arose within the kingdom, would be a hopeless attempt. ♦Growth of the principalities.♦ Still the growth of the dukes, counts, and other princes of Germany into independent sovereigns is the great feature of German history, as the consequent wiping out of old divisions, and shifting to and fro of old names, is the special feature of German historical geography. ♦Changes in nomenclature.♦ The dying out of the old names has a historical interest, and the growth of the new powers which have supplanted them has both an historical and a political interest. ♦Origin of Prussia and Austria.♦ It is specially important to mark how the two powers which have stood at the head of Germany in modern times in no way represent any of the old divisions of the German name. They have grown out of the outlying marks planted against the Slave and the Magyar. The mark of Brandenburg, the mark against the Slave, has grown into the kingdom of Prussia, the Imperial state of Germany in its latest form. The Eastern mark, the mark against the Magyar, has grown into the archduchy which gave Germany so many kings, into the so-called Austrian ‘empire,’ into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of our own day. ♦Analogies between Brandenburg and other marchlands.♦ The growth of Brandenburg or Prussia again affords an instructive comparison with the growth of Wessex in England, of France in Gaul, and of Castile in Spain. In all these cases alike, it has been a marchland which has come to the front and has become the head of the united nation.

♦The great Duchies under the Saxon and Frankish Kings, 919-1125.♦

Starting from the division of 887, we shall find several important landmarks in the history of the German kingdom which may help us in this most difficult part of our work. Under the Saxon and Frankish kings we see the great duchies still forming the main divisions, while the kingdom is enlarged by Slavonic conquests to the east and by the definite adhesion of Lotharingia to the west. ♦Decline of the Duchies under the Swabian Kings, 1137-1254.♦ Under the Swabian kings we see the break-up of the great duchies. In the partition of Saxony the process which was everywhere silently and gradually at work was formally carried out in the greatest case of all by Imperial, and national authority. ♦End of the Gauverfassung. Growth of territorial Principalities.♦ The Gauverfassung, the immemorial system of Teutonic communities, now finally changes into a system of territorial principalities, broken only by the many free cities and the few free districts which owned no lord but the King. ♦Growth of the march powers. 1254-1512.♦ During this period too we see the beginnings of some of the powers which became chief at a later day, the powers of the eastern marchland, Brandenburg, Austria, Saxony in the later sense. The time from the so-called Interregnum to the legislation under Maximilian is marked by the further growth of these powers. ♦Growth of the House of Austria.♦ It is further marked by the beginning of that connexion of the Austrian duchy, and of the Imperial crown itself, with lands beyond the bounds of the Kingdom and the Empire which led in the end to the special and anomalous position of the House of Austria as an European power. ♦Separation of Switzerland, 1495-1648. Of the Netherlands, 1430-1648.♦ During the same period comes the practical separation of Switzerland and the Netherlands from the German kingdom. In short it was during this age that Germany in its later aspect was formed. ♦Legislation under Maximilian, 1495-1512.♦ The legislation of Maximilian’s reign, the attempts then made to bring the kingdom to a greater degree of unity, have left their mark on geography in the division of Germany into circles. ♦Division into circles, 1500-1512.♦ This division, though it was not perfectly complete, though it did not extend to every corner of the kingdom, was strictly an administrative division of the kingdom itself as such; but the mapping out of the circles, the difference of which in point of size is remarkable, was itself affected by the geographical extent of the dominions of the princes who held lands within them. ♦Thirty Years’ War, 1618-1648.♦ The seventeenth century is marked by the results of the Thirty Years’ War and of other changes. ♦Powers holding lands within and without Germany.♦ Its most important geographical result was to carry on the process which had begun with the Austrian House, the formation of powers holding lands both within and without the Empire. ♦Austria. Sweden. Union of Brandenburg and Prussia.♦ Thus, beside the union of the Hungarian kingdom with the Austrian archduchy, the King of Sweden now held lands as a prince of the Empire, and the same result was brought about in another way by the union of the Electorate of Brandenburg with the Duchy of Prussia. ♦Rivalry of Prussia and Austria.♦ This, and other accessions of territory, now made Brandenburg as distinctly the first power of northern Germany as Austria was of southern Germany, and in the eighteenth century the rivalry of these two powers becomes the chief centre, not only of German but of European politics. ♦Hannover and Great Britain, 1715.♦ The union of the Electorate of Hannover under the same sovereign with the kingdom of Great Britain further increased the number of princes ruling both within Germany and without it. ♦Dissolution of the Kingdom, 1806.♦ Lastly, the wars of the latter years of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century led to the dissolution alike of the German kingdom and of the Roman Empire. ♦The German Confederation, 1815-1866.♦ Then, after a time of confusion and foreign occupation, comes the formation of a Confederation with boundaries nearly the same as the later boundaries of the kingdom. But the Confederation now appears as something quite subordinate to its two leading members. ♦Austria and Prussia greater than the Confederation.♦ Germany, as such, no longer counts as a great European power, but Prussia and Austria, the two chief holders at once of German and of non-German lands, stand forth among the chief bearers of European rank. ♦The new Confederation and Empire, 1866-1870.♦ Lastly, the changes of our own day have given us an Imperial Germany with geographical boundaries altogether new, a Germany from which the south-eastern German lands are cut off, while the Polish and other non-German possessions of Prussia to the north-east have become an integral part of the new Empire. The task of the geographer is thereby greatly simplified. Down to the last changes, one of his greatest difficulties is to make his map show with any clearness what was the extent of the German Kingdom or Confederation, and at the same time what was the extent of the dominions of those princes who held lands both in Germany and out of it. By the last arrangements this difficulty at least is altogether taken away.

♦Germany under the Saxon and Frankish Empire.♦

If we look at the map of Germany under the Saxon and Frankish Kings, we see that the old names, marking the great divisions of the German people, still keep their predominance. ♦The great Duchies.♦ The kingdom is still made up of the four great duchies, the Eastern Francia, Saxony, Alemannia, and Bavaria, together with the great border-land of Lotharingia. These are still the great duchies, to which all smaller divisions are subordinate. ♦Eastern Francia cut off from extension.♦ Among these, the kernel of the kingdom, the Eastern Francia, is the only one whose boundaries had little or no chance of being extended or lessened at the cost of foreign powers. It had the smallest possible frontier towards the Slave. ♦Frontier position of Saxony, Bavaria, and Alemannia.♦ On the other hand, Saxony has an ever fluctuating boundary against the Slave and the Dane; Bavaria marches upon the Slave, the Magyar, and the Kingdom of Italy, while Alemannia has a shifting frontier towards both Burgundy and Italy. ♦Exposed position of Lotharingia and Burgundy.♦ Lotharingia, and Burgundy after its annexation, are the lands which lie exposed to aggression from the West. ♦Vanishing of Francia.♦ It is perhaps for this very reason that, of the four duchies which preserve the names of the four great divisions of the German nation, the Eastern Francia is the one which has most utterly vanished from the modern map and from modern memory. Another cause may have strengthened its tendency to vanish. The policy of the kings forbade that the Frankish duchy should become the abiding heritage of any princely family. ♦Its ecclesiastical Dukes.♦ The ducal title of the Eastern Francia was at two periods of its history borne by ecclesiastical princes in the persons of the Bishops of Würzburg; but it never gave its name, like Saxony and Bavaria, to any ruling house. ♦Analogy with Wessex.♦ The English student will notice the analogy by which, among all the ancient English kingdoms, Wessex, the cradle of the English monarchy, is the one whose name has most utterly vanished from modern memory.

The only way to grasp the endless shiftings and divisions of the German principalities, so as to give anything like a clear general view, will be to take the great duchies, and to point out in a general way the steps by which they split asunder, and the chief states of any historical importance which rose out of their divisions. ♦Growth of new powers in the twelfth century.♦ Most of these new powers begin to be of importance in the twelfth century, a time which is specially marked as the æra when those two states which have had most to do with the making or unmaking of modern Germany begin to find their place in history. ♦Brandenburg and Austria.♦ It is then that the two great marchlands of Brandenburg and Austria begin to take their place among the leading powers of the German kingdom. ♦The Circles.♦ And, in making this survey, it will be well to bear in mind the much later division into circles. The circles, an attempt to create administrative divisions of the kingdom as such, were, in a faint way, a return to the ancient duchies, the names of which were to some extent retained. Thus we have the two Saxon circles, Upper and Lower, and the three of Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria. All of these keep up the names of ancient duchies, and most of them keep up a stronger or fainter geographical connexion with the ancient lands whose names they bore. The other circles, the two Rhenish circles, Upper and Lower, and those of Westfalia, Austria, and Burgundy—the last name being used in a sense altogether new—arose out of changes which took place between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, some of which we shall have to notice.

♦Saxony; its three divisions, Westfalia, Angria, Eastfalia.♦

First then, the great duchy of Saxony consisted of three main divisions, Westfalia, Engern or Angria, and Eastfalia. Thuringia to the south-east, and the Frisian lands to the north-west, may be looked on as in some sort appendages to the Saxon duchy. ♦Growth of Saxony at the expense of the Slaves.♦ The duchy was also capable of any amount of extension towards the east, and the lands gradually won from the Wends on this side were all looked on as additions made to the Saxon territory. ♦Break-up of the Duchy, 1182-1191.♦ But the great Saxon duchy was broken up at the fall of Henry the Lion. ♦Duchy of Westfalia.♦ The archiepiscopal Electors of Köln received the title of Dukes of Westfalia and Engern. But in the greater part of those districts the grant remained merely nominal, though the ducal title, with a small actual Westfalian duchy, remained to the electorate till the end. From these lands the Saxon name may be looked on as having altogether passed away. ♦New use of the name Saxony.♦ The name of Saxony, as a geographical expression, clave to the Eastfalian remnant of the old duchy, and to Thuringia and the Slavonic conquests to the east. ♦The Saxon Circles.♦ In the later division of Germany these lands formed the two circles of Upper and Lower Saxony; and it was within their limits that the various states arose which have kept on the Saxon name to our own time.

From the descendants of Henry the Lion himself, and from the allodial lands which they kept, the Saxon name passed away, except so far as they became part of the Lower-Saxon circle. ♦Duchy of Brunswick.♦ They held their place as princes of the Empire, no longer as Dukes of Saxony, but as Dukes of Brunswick, a house which gave Rome one Emperor and England a dynasty of kings. ♦Its division, 1203. Lüneburg and Wolfenbüttel.♦ After some of the usual divisions, two Brunswick principalities finally took their place on the map, those of Lüneburg and Wolfenbüttel, the latter having the town of Brunswick for its capital. The Lüneburg duchy grew. ♦Lüneburg acquires the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, 1715-1719.♦ Late in the seventeenth century it was raised to the electoral rank, and early in the next century it was finally enlarged by the acquisition of the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden. ♦Electorate of Hannover or Brunswick Lüneburg, 1692.♦ Thus was formed the Electorate, and afterwards Kingdom, of Hannover, while the simple ducal title remained with the Brunswick princes of the other line.

♦The new Saxony.♦

The Saxon name itself withdrew in the end from the old Saxony to the lands conquered from the Slave. ♦Bernhard duke of Saxony, 1180-1212.♦ On the fall of Henry the Lion, the duchy of Saxony, cut short by the grant to the archbishops of Köln, was granted to Bernhard of Ballensted, the founder of the Ascanian House. ♦Sachsen-Lauenburg.♦ Of the older Saxon land his house kept only for a while the small district north of the Elbe which kept the name of Sachsen-Lauenburg, and which in the end became part of the Hannover electorate. ♦1423.♦ But it was in Thuringia and the conquered Slavonic lands to the east of Thuringia that a new Saxony arose, which kept on somewhat of the European position of the Saxon name down to modern times. This new Saxony, with Wittenberg for its capital, grew, through the addition of Thuringia and Meissen, into the Saxon Electorate which played so great a part during the three last centuries of the existence of the German kingdom. ♦Divisions and unions.♦ But in Saxony too the usual divisions took place. Lauenburg parted off; so did the smaller duchies which still keep the Saxon name. ♦1547.♦ The ducal and electoral dignities were divided, till the two, united under the famous Maurice, formed the Saxon electorate as it stood at the dissolution of the kingdom. It was in short a new state, one which had succeeded to the name, but which could in no other way be thought to represent, the Saxony whose conquest cost so many campaigns to Charles the Great.

♦The Mark of Brandenburg.♦

Another power which arose in the marchland of Saxon and Slave, to the north of Saxony in the later sense, was the land known specially as the Mark, the groundwork of the power which has in our own day risen to the head of Germany. The North Mark of Saxony became the Mark of Brandenburg. ♦Reign of Albert the Bear, 1134-1170.♦ In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under Albert the Bear and his house, the Mark greatly extended itself at the expense of the Slaves. ♦Union with Bohemia, 1373-1415. House of Hohenzollern, 1415.♦ United for a time with the kingdom of Bohemia, it passed into the house of the Burgraves of Nürnberg, that House of Hohenzollern which has grown step by step till it has reached Imperial rank in our own day. The power thus formed presently acquired a special character by the acquisition of what may be called a German land out of Germany, a land which gave them in the end a higher title, and which by its geographical position led irresistibly to a further increase of territory. ♦Union of Brandenburg and Prussia, 1611-1618.♦ Early in the seventeenth century the Electors of Brandenburg acquired by inheritance the Duchy of Prussia, that is merely Eastern Prussia, a fief, not of the Empire but of the crown of Poland, and which lay geographically apart from their strictly German dominions. ♦Prussia independent of Poland, 1656; becomes kingdom, 1701.♦ The common sovereign of Brandenburg and Prussia was thus the man of two lords; but the Great Elector Frederick William became a wholly independent sovereign in his duchy, and his son Frederick took on himself the kingly title for the land which was thus freed from all homage. Both before and after the union with Prussia, the Electors of Brandenburg continued largely to increase their German dominions. ♦1523-1623.♦ A temporary possession of the principality of Jägerndorf in Silesia, unimportant in itself, led to great events in later times. ♦Westfalian possessions of Brandenburg, 1614-1666. 1702-1744.♦ The acquisition, at various times in the seventeenth century, of Cleve and other outlying Westfalian lands, which were further increased in the next century, led in the same way to the modern dominion of Prussia in western Germany. ♦Acquisitions in Pomerania, 1638-1648. 1713-1719.♦ But the most solid acquisition of Brandenburg in this age was that of Eastern Pomerania, to which the town of Stettin, with a further increase of territory, was added after the wars of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. The events of the Thirty Years’ War also increased the dominions both of Brandenburg and Saxony at the expense of the neighbouring ecclesiastical princes. ♦Later acquisitions of Prussia.♦ The later acquisitions of the House of Hohenzollern, after the Electors of Brandenburg had taken the kingly title from their Prussian duchy, concern Prussia as an European power at least as much as they concern Brandenburg as a German power. ♦German character of the Prussian Monarchy.♦ Yet their proper place comes in the history of Germany. Unlike the other princes who held lands within and without the German kingdom, the Kings of Prussia and Electors of Brandenburg have remained essentially German princes. Their acquisitions of territory out of Germany have all been in fact enlargements, if not of the soil of Germany, at least of the sphere of German influence. And, at last, in marked contrast to the fate of the rival House of Austria, the whole Prussian dominions have been incorporated with the new German Empire, and form the immediate dominion of its Imperial head. ♦Spread of the name of Prussia.♦ The outward sign of this change, the outward sign of the special position of Brandenburg, as compared with Holstein or Austria, is the strange spread of the name of Prussia over the German dominions of the King of Prussia. No such spread has taken place with the name of Denmark or of Hungary.

♦Conquest of Silesia, 1741.♦

Within Germany the greatest enlargement of the dominion of Prussia—as we may now begin to call it instead of Brandenburg—was the acquisition of by far the greater part of Schlesien or Silesia, hitherto part of the Bohemian lands, and then held by the House of Austria. This, it should be noted, was an acquisition which could hardly fail to lead to further acquisitions. ♦Geographical character of the Prussian dominions.♦ The geographical characteristic of the Prussian dominions was the way in which they lay in detached pieces, and the enormous extent of frontier as compared with the area of the country. The kingdom itself lay detached, hemmed in and intersected by the territory of Poland. The electorate, with the Pomeranian territory, formed a somewhat more compact mass; but even this had a very large frontier compared with its area. The Westfalian possessions, the district of Cottbus, and other outlying dominions, lay quite apart. The addition of Silesia increased this characteristic yet further. ♦Position of Silesia.♦ The newly won duchy, barely joining the electorate, ran out as a kind of peninsula between Saxony, Bohemia, and Poland. Silesia, first as a Polish and then as a Bohemian fief, had formed part of a fairly compact geographical mass; as part of the same dominion with Prussia and Brandenburg, it was an all but isolated land with an enormous frontier. ♦Acquisitions from Poland, 1772-1795.♦ The details of the Polish acquisitions of Prussia will be best given in our survey of Poland. ♦Their geographical character.♦ But it should be noted that each of the portions of territory which were added to Prussia by the several partitions has a geographical character of its own. ♦1772.♦ The addition of West-Prussia—that is the geographical union of the kingdom and the electorate—was something which could not fail in the nature of things to come sooner or later. ♦1793.♦ The second addition of South-Prussia might seem geographically needed in order to leave Silesia no longer peninsular. ♦1795.♦ The last, and most short-lived addition of New-East-Prussia had no such geographical necessity as the other two. Still it helped to give greater compactness to the kingdom, and to lessen its frontier in comparison with its area.

Another acquisition of the House of Hohenzollern during the eighteenth century, though temporary, deserves a passing notice. ♦East-Friesland, 1744.♦ Among its Westfalian annexations was East-Friesland. The King of Prussia thus became, during the last half of the eighteenth century, an oceanic potentate, a character which he presently lost, and which, save for a moment in the days of confusion, he obtained again only in our own day.

♦Parts of Saxony held by foreign kings.♦

A large part of Saxony, both in the older and in the later sense, thus came to form part of a dominion containing both German and non-German lands, but in which the German character was in every way predominant. Other parts of Saxony in the same extended sense also came to form part of the dominions of princes who ruled both in and out of Germany, but in whom the non-German character was yet more predominant. ♦Holstein:♦ The old Saxony beyond the Elbe, the modern Holstein, passed into the hands of the Danish Kings. ♦its relation to Sleswick.♦ Its shifting relations towards Denmark and Germany and towards the neighbouring land of Sleswick, as having become matter of international dispute between Denmark and Germany, will be best spoken of when we come to deal with Denmark. The events of the Thirty Years’ War also made the Swedish kings for a while considerable potentates in northern Germany. ♦German territories of Sweden, 1648-1815.♦ The Peace of Westfalia confirmed to them Western Pomerania and the town of Wismar on the Baltic, and the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden which gave them an oceanic coast. ♦1720.♦ But these last lands were, as we have seen afterwards, ceded to Hannover, and the Pomeranian possessions of Sweden were also cut short by cession to Brandenburg. But the possession of Wismar and a part of Pomerania still gave the Swedish kings a position as German princes down to the dissolution of the Empire.

These are the chief powers which rose to historical importance within the bounds of Saxony, in the widest sense of that word. To trace every division and union which created or extinguished any of the smaller principalities, or even to mark every minute change of frontier among the greater powers, would be impossible. ♦Free cities of Saxony. The Hanse Towns.♦ But it must be further remembered that the Saxon circles were the seats of some of the greatest of the free cities of Germany, the leading members of the Hanseatic League. In the growth of German commerce the Rhenish lands took the lead, and, in the earliest days of the Hansa, Köln held the first place among its cities. ♦Lübeck, Bremen, Hamburg.♦ The pre-eminence afterwards passed to havens nearer to the Ocean and the Baltic, where, among a crowd of others, the Imperial cities of Lübeck and Bremen stand out foremost, and with them Hamburg, a rival which has in later times outstripped them. And at this point it may be noticed that Lübeck and Bremen specially illustrate a law which extended to many other of the episcopal cities of Germany. ♦The cities and the bishoprics.♦ The Bishop became a prince, and held a greater or smaller extent of territory in temporal sovereignty. But the city which contained his see remained independent of him in temporal things, and knew him only as its spiritual shepherd. Such were the archbishopric of Bremen and the bishopric of Lübeck, principalities which, after the change of religion, passed into secular hands. Thus we have seen the archbishopric of Bremen pass, first to Sweden, and then to Hannover. But the two cities always remained independent commonwealths, owning no superior but the Emperor.

♦Franconia.♦

The next among the great duchies, that of Eastern Francia, Franken, or Franconia, is of much less importance in European history than that of Saxony. ♦Bishops of Würzburg Dukes.♦ It gave the ducal title to the Bishops of Würzburg; but it cannot be said to be in any sense continued in any modern state. ♦Extent of the Circle.♦ Its name gradually retreated, and the circle of Franken or Franconia took in only the most eastern part of the ancient duchy. ♦The Rhenish Circles.♦ The western and northern part of the duchy, together with a good deal of territory which was strictly Lotharingian, became part of the two Rhenish circles. Thus Fulda, the greatest of German abbeys, passed away from the Frankish name. In north-eastern Francia, the Hessian principalities grew up to the north-west. Within the Franconian circle lay Würzburg, the see of the bishops who bore the ducal title, the other great bishopric of Bamberg, together with the free city of Nürnberg, and various smaller principalities. ♦Ecclesiastical States on the Rhine.♦ In the Rhenish lands, both within and without the old Francia, one chief characteristic is the predominance of the ecclesiastical principalities, Mainz, Köln, Worms, Speyer, and Strassburg. The chief temporal power which arose in this region was the Palatinate of the Rhine, a power which, like others, went through many unions and divisions, and spread into four circles, those of Upper and Lower Rhine, Westfalia, and Bavaria. ♦Bavaria.♦ This last district, though united with the Palatine Electorate, was, from the early part of the fourteenth century, distinguished from the Palatinate of the Rhine as the Oberpfalz or Upper Palatinate. To the south of it lay the Bavarian principalities. These, united into a single duchy, formed the power which grew into the modern kingdom. But neither this duchy nor the whole Bavarian circle at all reached to the extent of the ancient Bavaria which bordered on Italy. ♦Shiftings between Bavaria and the Palatinate, 1623. Electorate of Bavaria, 1648.♦ The early stages of the Thirty Years’ War gave the Rhenish Palatinate, with its electoral rights, to Bavaria; the Peace of Westfalia restored the Palatinate, leaving Bavaria as a new electorate. ♦Union of the two, 1777.♦ Late in the eighteenth century, Bavaria itself passed to the Elector Palatine, thus forming what may be called modern Bavaria with its outlying Rhenish lands. ♦Cession to Austria, 1778.♦ This acquisition was at the same time partly balanced by the cession to Austria of the lands east of the Inn, known as the Innviertel. ♦Archbishopric of Salzburg.♦ The other chief state within the Bavarian circle was the great ecclesiastical principality of the archbishops of Salzburg in the extreme south-east.

♦Lotharingia.♦

The old Lotharingian divisions, as we see them in the time of the great duchies, utterly died out. ♦Lower Lotharingia.♦ The states which arose in the Lower Lotharingia are among those which silently fell off from the German Kingdom to take a special position under the name of the Netherlands. ♦Duchy of Lothringen or Lorraine.♦ The special duchy of Lothringen or Lorraine was held to belong to the circle of Upper Rhine. ♦Elsass.♦ Elsass also formed part of the same circle, the circle which was specially cut short by the encroachments of France. ♦Circle of Swabia.♦ The Swabian circle answered more nearly than most of the new divisions to the old Swabian duchy, as that duchy stood without counting the marchland of Elsass. No part of Germany was more cut up into small states than the old land of the Hohenstaufen. A crowd of principalities, secular and ecclesiastical, among them the lesser principalities of the Hohenzollern House, of free cities, and of outlying possessions of the houses of Austria made up the main part of the circle. ♦Ecclesiastical towns of Swabia.♦ Strassburg, Augsburg, Constanz, St. Gallen, Chur, Zürich, are among the great bishoprics and other ecclesiastical foundations of the old Swabia. ♦Part of Swabia becomes Switzerland.♦ But, as I shall show more fully in another section, large districts in the south-east, those which formed the Old League of High Germany, had practically fallen away from the kingdom before the new division was made, and were therefore never reckoned in any circle. ♦Baden. Württemberg.♦ Two Swabian principalities, the mark of Baden, and Württemberg, first county and then duchy, came gradually to the first place in this region. As such they still remain, preserving in some sort a divided representation of the old Swabia.

Two important parts of the old kingdom, two circles of the division of Maximilian, still remain. These are the lands which form the circles of Burgundy and Austria. These are lands which have, in earlier or later times, wholly fallen off from the German Kingdom. ♦Circle of Austria.♦ The Austrian circle was formed of the lands in southern Germany which gradually gathered in the hands of the second Austrian dynasty, the House of Habsburg. ♦Growth of the House of Austria.♦ Starting from the original mark on the Hungarian frontier, those lands grew, first into a great German, and then into a great European, power, and the latest changes have made even their German lands politically non-German. The growth of the Austrian House will therefore be properly dealt with in a separate section. ♦Extent of its German lands.♦ It is enough to say here that the Austrian dominion in Germany gradually took in, besides the original duchy, the south-eastern duchies of Steiermark or Styria, Kärnthen or Carinthia, and Krain or Carniola, with the Italian borderlands of Görz, Aquileia, and part of Istria. ♦Tyrol.♦ Joined to these by a kind of geographical isthmus, like that which joins Silesia and Brandenburg, lay the western possessions of the house, the Bavarian county of Tyrol and various outlying strips and points of lands in Swabia and Elsass. ♦Loss of Swabian lands.♦ The growth of the Confederates cut short the Swabian possessions of Austria, as the later cession to France cut short its Alsatian possessions. Still a Swabian remnant remained down to the dissolution of the Kingdom. ♦Bohemia and its dependencies.♦ The kingdom of Bohemia, with the dependent lands of Moravia and Silesia, though held by the Archdukes of Austria and giving them electoral rank, was not included in any German circle. ♦Trent and Brixen.♦ The Austrian circle moreover was not wholly made up of the dominions of the Austrian house; besides some smaller territories it also took in the bishoprics of Trent and Brixen on the debateable frontier of Italy and old Bavaria.

♦Circle of Burgundy.♦

The Burgundian circle was the last and the strangest use of the Burgundian name. ♦Dominion of the Valois Dukes within the Empire.♦ It consisted of those parts of the dominions of the Dukes of Burgundy of the House of Valois which remained to their descendants of the House of Austria at the time of the division into circles. These did not all lie strictly within the boundaries of the German kingdom. ♦The Imperial Netherlands.♦ Within that kingdom indeed lay the Northern Netherlands, the Frisian lands of Holland, Zealand, and West-Friesland, as also Brabant and other Lotharingian lands. ♦County of Burgundy.♦ But the circle also took in the County of Burgundy or Franche Comté, part of the old kingdom of Burgundy, and lastly Flanders and Artois, lands beyond the bounds of the Empire. ♦Flanders and Artois released from homage to France, 1526.♦ These were fiefs of France which were released from their homage to that crown by the treaty between Charles the Fifth and Francis the First of France. The Burgundian circle thus took in all the Imperial fiefs of the Valois dukes, together with a small part of their French fiefs. As all, or nearly all, of these lands altogether fell away from the German kingdom, and as those parts of them which now form the two kingdoms of the Low Countries have a certain historical being of their own, it will be well to keep their more detailed mention also for a special section.

§ 2. The Confederation and Empire of Germany.

♦Germany changed from a kingdom to a confederation.♦

Our survey in the last section has carried us down to the beginning of the changes which led to the break-up of the old German Kingdom. Germany is the only land in history which has changed from a kingdom to a confederation. ♦Sketch of the process, 1806-1815.♦ The tie which bound the vassal princes to the king became so lax that it was at last thrown off altogether. In this process foreign invasion largely helped. Between the two processes of foreign war and domestic disintegration, a chaotic time followed, in which boundaries were ever shifting and new states were ever rising and falling. ♦The German Bund, 1815.♦ In the end, nearly all the lands which had formed the old kingdom came together again, with new names and boundaries, as members of a lax Confederation. ♦The new Confederation and Empire, 1866-1871.♦ The latest events of all have driven the former chief of the Confederation beyond its boundaries; they have joined its other members together by a much closer tie; they have raised the second member of the former Confederation to the post of perpetual chief of the new Confederation, and they have further clothed him with the Imperial title. ♦The new Empire still federal.♦ But it must be remembered that the modern Empire of Germany is still a Federal state. Its chief bears the title of Emperor; still the relation is federal and not feudal. The lesser members of the Empire are not vassals of the Emperor, as they were in the days of the old kingdom. They are states bound to him and to one another by a tie which is purely federal. That the state whose prince holds Imperial rank far surpasses any of its other members in extent and power is an important political fact; but it does not touch the federal position of all the states of the Empire, great and small. Reuss-Schleiz is not a vassal of Prussia; it is a member of a league in which the voice of Prussia naturally goes for more than the voice of Reuss-Schleiz. ♦Wars of the French Revolution, 1793-1814.♦ The dissolution of the German kingdom, and with it the wiping out of the last tradition of the Roman Empire, cannot be separated from the history of wars of the French Revolution which went before it, and which indeed led to it. For our purely geographical purpose, we must distinguish the changes which directly affected the German kingdom from those which affected the Austrian states, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, lands which have now a separate historic being from Germany. ♦War between France and the Empire, 1793-1801.♦ The last war which the Empire as such waged with France was the eight years’ war which was ended by the Peace of Luneville. ♦The left bank of the Rhine ceded by the Peace of Luneville, 1801.♦ By that peace, all Germany on the left bank on the Rhine was ceded to France. What a sacrifice this was we at once see, when we bear in mind that it took in the three metropolitan cities of Köln, Mainz, and Trier, the royal city of Aachen, and the famous bishoprics of Worms and Speyer. ♦The Reichs­deputations­haupt­schluss, 1803.♦ A number of princes thus lost all or part of their dominions, and it was presently agreed that they should compensate themselves within the lands which remained to the kingdom at the expense of the free cities and the ecclesiastical princes. ♦End of the Ecclesiastical principalities.♦ The great German hierarchy of princely bishops and abbots now came to an end, with a solitary exception. ♦The Prince-Primate of Regensburg.♦ As the ancient metropolis of Mainz had passed to France, the see of its archbishop was removed to Regensburg, where, under the title of Prince-Primate, he remained an Elector and Arch-Chancellor of the Empire. ♦Salzburg a secular electorate.♦ Salzburg became a secular electorate. ♦The Free Cities.♦ The other ecclesiastical states were annexed by the neighbouring princes, and of the free cities six only were left. These were the Hanseatic towns of Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg, and the inland towns of Frankfurt, Nürnberg, and Augsburg. ♦New Electorates.♦ Besides Salzburg, three new Electorates arose, Württemberg, Baden, and Hessen-Cassel. None of these new Electors ever chose any King or Emperor. ♦Peace of Pressburg, 1805. Kingdom of Württemberg and Bavaria.♦ The next war led to the Peace of Pressburg, in which the Electors of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden appear as allies of France, and by which those of Bavaria and Württemberg are acknowledged as Kings. ♦They divide the western lands of Austria.♦ Austria was now wholly cut off from south-western Germany. Württemberg and Baden divided her Swabian possessions, while Tyrol, Trent, Brixen, together with the free city of Augsburg, fell to the lot of Bavaria. ♦Grand Duchy of Würzburg.♦ Austria received Salzburg; its prince removed himself and his electorate to Würzburg, and a Grand Duchy of Würzburg was formed to compensate its Elector.

These were the last changes which took place while any shadow of the old Kingdom and Empire lasted. ♦Title of ‘Emperor of Austria.’♦ The reigning King of Germany and Emperor-elect, Francis King of Hungary and Bohemia and Archduke of Austria, had already begun to call himself ‘Hereditary Emperor of Austria.’ In the treaty of Pressburg he is described by the strange title, unheard of before or after, of ‘Emperor of Germany and Austria,’ and the Empire itself is spoken of as a ‘Germanic Confederation.’ These formulæ were prophetic. ♦The Confederation of the Rhine, July 12, 1806.♦ The next year a crowd of princes renounced their allegiance, and formed themselves into the Confederation of the Rhine under the protectorate of France. ♦Dissolution of the Empire, August 6, 1806.♦ The formal dissolution of the Empire followed at once. The succession which had gone on from Augustus ended; the work of Charles the Great was undone. Instead of the Frank ruling over Gaul, the Frenchman ruled over Germany. ♦Repeated changes, 1806-1811.♦ A time of confusion followed, in which boundaries were constantly shifting, states were constantly rising and falling, and new portions of German ground were being constantly added to France. ♦Germany in 1811-1813.♦ At the time of the greatest extent of French dominion, the political state of Germany was on this wise. ♦Territories of Denmark and Sweden.♦ The dissolution of the Empire had released all its members from their allegiance, and the German possessions of the Kings of Denmark and Sweden had been incorporated with their several kingdoms. ♦Losses of Prussia and Austria.♦ Hannover was wholly lost to its island sovereign; seized and lost again more than once by Prussia and by France, it passed at last wholly into the hands of the foreign power. Prussia had lost, not only its momentary possession of Hannover, but also everything west of the Elbe. Austria had yielded Salzburg to Bavaria, and part of her own south-western territory in Krain and Kärnthen had passed to France under the name of the Illyrian Provinces. ♦Annexations to France.♦ France too, beside all the lands west of the Rhine, had incorporated East Friesland, Oldenburg, part of Hannover, and the three Hanseatic cities. ♦Confederation of the Rhine.♦ The remaining states of Germany formed the Confederation of the Rhine. The chief among these were the four Kingdoms of Bavaria, Württemberg, Saxony, and Westfalia. ♦Kingdoms of Saxony and Westfalia.♦ Saxony had become a kingdom under its own Elector presently after the dissolution of the Empire: the new-made kingdom of Westfalia had a French king in Jerome Buonaparte. ♦Grand Duchy of Frankfurt.♦ Besides Mecklenburg, Baden—now a Grand Duchy—Berg, Nassau, Hessen, and other smaller states, there were now among its members the Grand Duchy of Würzburg, and also a Grand Duchy of Frankfurt, the possession of the Prince Primate, once of Mainz, afterwards of Regensburg. ♦Germany wiped out.♦ We may say with truth that during this time Germany had ceased to exist; its very name had vanished from the map of Europe.

Prussia was a power so thoroughly German that the fate even of its non-German possessions cannot well be separated from German geography. ♦The Kingdom of Prussia cut short, 1807.♦ The same blow which cut short the old electorate of Brandenburg no less cut short the kingdom of Prussia in its Polish acquisitions. ♦Commonwealth of Danzig.♦ West-Prussia only was left, and even here Danzig was cut off to form a separate republic. ♦Duchy of Warsaw, 1806-1814.♦ The other Polish territories of Prussia formed the Duchy of Warsaw, which was held by the new King of Saxony. ♦Position of Silesia.♦ Silesia thus fell back again on its half-isolated position, all the more so as it lay between the German and the Polish possessions of the Saxon king. The territory left to Prussia was now wholly continuous, without any outlying possessions; but the length of its frontier and the strange irregularity of its shape on the map were now more striking than ever.

The liberation of Germany and the fall of Buonaparte brought with it a complete reconstruction of the German territory. ♦The German Confederation, 1815.♦ Germany again arose, no longer as an Empire or Kingdom, but as a lax Confederation. Austria, the duchy whose princes had been so often chosen Emperors, became its presiding state. The boundaries of the new Confederation differed but slightly from those of the old Kingdom; but the internal divisions had greatly changed. ♦Princes holding lands both within the Confederation and out of it.♦ Once more a number of princes held lands both in Germany and out of it. The so-called ‘Emperor’ of Austria, the Kings of Prussia, Denmark, and the Netherlands, became members of the Confederation for those parts of their dominions which had formerly been states of the Empire. In the like sort, the King of Great Britain and Ireland, having recovered his continental dominions, entered the Confederation by the title of King of Hannover. ♦Kingdom of Hannover, 1815-1866.♦ This new kingdom was made up of the former electorate with some additions, including East-Friesland. ♦Increase of the Prussian territory. Dismemberment of Saxony.♦ In other parts the Prussian territories were largely increased. Magdeburg and Halberstadt were recovered. Swedish Pomerania was added to the rest of the ancient duchy; and, more important than this, a large part of the kingdom of Saxony, including the greater part of Lausitz and the formerly outlying-land of Cottbus, was incorporated with Prussia. This change, which made the Saxon kingdom far smaller than the old electorate, altogether put an end to the peninsular position of Silesia, even as regarded the strictly German possessions of Prussia. ♦Posen.♦ The kingdom was at the same time rendered more compact by the recovery of part of its Polish possessions under the name of the Grand Duchy of Posen. In western Germany again Prussia now made great acquisitions. ♦Rhenish and Westfalian territory.♦ Its old outlying Rhenish and Westfalian possessions grew into a large and tolerably compact territory, though lying isolated from the great body of the monarchy. The greater part of the territory west of the Rhine which had been ceded to France now became Prussian, including the cities of Köln, no longer a metropolitan see, Trier, Münster, and Paderborn. The main part of the Prussian possessions thus consisted of two detached masses, of very unequal size, but which seemed to crave for a closer geographical union. ♦Neufchâtel.♦ The Principality of Neufchâtel, which made the Prussian king a member of the Swiss Confederation, will be mentioned elsewhere.

♦Territory recovered by Austria.♦

Of the other powers which entered the Confederation for the German parts of their dominions, but which also had territories beyond the Confederation, Austria recovered Salzburg, Tyrol, Trent, and Brixen, together with the south-eastern lands which had passed to France. Thus the territory of the Confederation, like that of the old Kingdom, again reached to the Hadriatic. ♦Possession of Denmark. Holstein and Lauenburg.♦ Denmark entered the Confederation for Holstein, and for a new possession, that of Lauenburg, the duchy which in a manner represented ancient Saxony. ♦Luxemburg.♦ The King of the Netherlands entered the Confederation for the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, part of which however was cut off to be added to the Rhenish possessions of Prussia. ♦Sweden gives up Pomerania.♦ Sweden, by the cession of its last remnant of Pomerania, ceased altogether to be a German power.

There were thus five powers whose dominions lay partly within the Confederation, partly out of it. ♦Prussia the greatest German Power.♦ In the case of one of these, that of Prussia, the division of German and non-German territory was purely formal. Prussia was practically a purely German power, and the greatest of purely German powers. ♦Austria.♦ Her rival Austria stood higher in formal rank in the Confederation, and ruled over a much greater continuous territory; but here the distinction between German and non-German lands was really practical, as later events have shown. ♦Comparison of the position of Austria and Prussia.♦ It has been found possible to shut out Austria from Germany. To shut out Prussia would have been to abolish Germany altogether. ♦Hannover.♦ Hannover, though under a common sovereign with Great Britain, was so completely cut off from Great Britain, and had so little influence on British politics, that it was practically as much a purely German state before its separation from Great Britain as it was afterwards. ♦Holstein and Luxemburg.♦ In the cases of Denmark and the Netherlands, princes the greater part of whose territories lay out of Germany held adjoining territories in Germany. Here then were materials for political questions and difficulties; and in the case of Denmark, these questions and difficulties became of the highest importance.

♦Kingdom of Bavaria.♦

Among those members of the Confederation, whose territory lay wholly within Germany, the Kingdom of Bavaria stood first. Its newly acquired lands to the south were given back to Austria; but it made large acquisitions to the north-east. Modern Bavaria consists of a large mass of territory, Bavarian, Swabian, and Frankish, counting within its boundaries the famous cities of Augsburg and Nürnberg and the great bishoprics of Bamberg and Würzburg. ♦Her Rhenish territory.♦ Besides this, Bavaria recovered a considerable part of the ancient Palatinate west of the Rhine, which adds Speyer to the list of Bavarian cities. ♦Württemberg. Saxony.♦ The other states which bore the kingly title, Württemberg and the remnant of Saxony, were of much smaller extent. Saxony however kept a position in many ways out of all proportion to the narrowed extent of its geographical limits. Württemberg, increased by various additions from the Swabian lands of Austria and from other smaller principalities, had, though the smallest of kingdoms, won for itself a much higher position than had been held by its former Counts and Dukes. ♦Baden.♦ Along with them might be ranked the Grand Duchy of Baden, with its strange irregular frontier, taking in Heidelberg and Constanz. ♦Hessen.♦ Among a crowd of smaller states stand out the two Hessian principalities, the Grand Duchy of Hessen-Darmstadt, and Hessen-Cassel, whose prince still kept the title of Elector, and the Grand Duchy of Nassau. ♦Oldenburg.♦ The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg nearly divided the Kingdom of Hannover into two parts. ♦Anhalt.♦ The principalities of Anhalt stretched into the Prussian territory between Halberstadt and the newly-won Saxon lands. ♦Brunswick.♦ The Duchy of Brunswick helped to divide the two great masses of Prussian territory. ♦Mecklenburg.♦ In the north Mecklenburg remained, as before, unequally divided between the Grand Dukes of Schwerin and Strelitz. Germany was thus thoroughly mapped out afresh. Some of the old names had vanished; some had got new meanings. The greater states, with the exception of Saxony, became greater. A crowd of insignificant principalities passed away. Another crowd of them remained, especially the smaller Saxon duchies in the land which had once been Thuringian. But, if we look to two of the most characteristic features of the old Empire, we shall find that one has passed away for ever, while the other was sadly weakened. ♦No ecclesiastical principality.♦ No ecclesiastical principality revived in the new state of things. ♦Lüttich added to Belgium.♦ The territory of one of the old bishoprics, that of Lüttich, formerly absorbed by France, now passed wholly away from Germany, and became part of the new kingdom of Belgium. ♦The four Free Cities.♦ Of the free cities four did revive, but four only. The three Hanse Towns, no longer included in French departments, and Frankfurt, no longer a Grand Duchy, entered the Confederation as independent commonwealths. ♦Revival of German national life.♦ Germany, for a while utterly crushed, had come to life again; she had again reached a certain measure of national unity, which could hardly fail to become closer.[14]

The Confederation thus formed lasted, with hardly any change that concerns geography, till the war of 1866. ♦Division of Luxemburg, 1831.♦ The Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, which had, by the arrangements of 1815, been held by the King of the Netherlands as a member of the German Confederation, was, on the separation of Belgium and the Netherlands, cut into two parts. Part was added to Belgium; another part, though quite detached from the kingdom of the Netherlands, was held by its king as a member of the Confederation. In 1839 he also entered it for the Duchy of Limburg. ♦War in Sleswick and Holstein, 1848-1851.♦ The internal movements which began in 1848, and the war in Sleswick and Holstein which began in the same time, led to no lasting geographical changes. In 1849 the Swabian principalities of Hohenzollern were joined to the Prussian crown. ♦Cession of the Duchies to Austria and Prussia, 1864.♦ The last Danish war ended by the cession of Sleswick and Holstein, together with Lauenburg, to Prussia and Austria jointly, an arrangement in its own nature provisional. Austria ceded her right in Lauenburg to Prussia in the next year, and in the next year again came the Seven Weeks’ War, and the great geographical changes which followed it. ♦Abolition of the Confederation. Exclusion of Austria. North-German Confederation. Cession of Sleswick and Holstein to Prussia, 1866.♦ The German Confederation was abolished; Austria was shut out from all share in German affairs, and she ceded her joint right in Sleswick and Holstein to Prussia. ♦Prussian annexations.♦ The Northern states of Germany became a distinct Confederation under the presidency of Prussia, whose immediate dominion was increased by the annexation of the kingdom of Hannover, the duchy of Nassau, the electorate of Hessen, and the city of Frankfurt. The States south of the Main, Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and the southern part of Hessen-Darmstadt, remained for a while outside of the new League. ♦All the Prussian lands admitted to the Confederation.♦ The non-German dominions of Prussia, Prussia strictly so called with the Polish duchy of Posen and the newly acquired land of Sleswick, were now incorporated with the Confederation; on the other hand, all that Austria had held within the Confederation was now shut out of it. ♦Settlement of Luxemburg, 1867.♦ Luxemburg also was not included in the new League, and, after some disputes, it was in the next year recognized as a neutral territory under its own duke the King of the Netherlands. ♦Liechtenstein.♦ The little principality of Liechtenstein was perhaps forgotten altogether; but, as not being included in the Confederation, nor yet incorporated with anything else, it must be looked on as becoming an absolutely independent state. ♦Great geographical changes, 1866.♦ Thus the geographical frontiers of Germany underwent, at a single blow, changes as great as they had undergone in the wars of the French Revolution. The geography of the presiding power of the new League was no less changed.

That extraordinary extent of frontier which had hitherto been characteristic of Prussia was not wholly taken away by the new annexations, but it was greatly lessened. The kingdom, as a kingdom, is made far more compact, and the two great detached masses in which it formerly lay are now joined together. Moreover, the geographical character of Prussia becomes of much less political importance, now that her frontier marches to so great an extent on the smaller members of the League of which she is herself President. ♦War with France, 1870-1871. The German Empire. Incorporation of the Southern states.♦ Next came the war with France, the first effect of which was the incorporation of the southern states of Germany with the new League, which presently took the name of an Empire, with the Prussian King as hereditary Emperor. ♦Recovery of Elsass-Lothringen, 1871.♦ Then by the peace with France, nearly the whole of Elsass and part of Lotharingia, including the cities of Strassburg and Metz, were restored to Germany. They have, under the name of Elsass-Lothringen, become an Imperial territory, forming part of the Empire and owning the sovereignty of the Emperor, but not becoming part of the kingdom of Prussia or of any other German state. ♦The Imperial title.♦ The assumption of the Imperial title could hardly be avoided in a confederation whose constitution was monarchic, and which numbered kings among its members. No title but Emperor could have been found to express the relation between the presiding chief and the lesser sovereigns.

♦The new Empire a revival of the German Kingdom, but not of the Roman Empire. Comparison of the old Kingdom and the new Empire.♦

Still it must be borne in mind that the new German Empire is in no sense a continuation or restoration of the Holy Roman Empire which fell sixty-four years before its creation. But it may be fairly looked on as a restoration of the old German Kingdom, the Kingdom of the East-Franks. Still, as far as geography is concerned, no change can be stranger than the change in the boundaries of Germany between the ninth century and the nineteenth. The new Empire, cut short to the north-west, south-west, and south-east, has grown somewhat to the north, and it has grown prodigiously to the north-east. ♦Name of Prussia.♦ Its ruling state, a state which contains such illustrious cities as Köln, Trier, and Frankfurt, is content to call itself after an extinct heathen people whose name had most likely never reached the ears of Charles the Great. ♦Position of Berlin.♦ The capital of the new Empire, placed far away from any of the antient seats of German kingship, stands in what in his day, and long after, was a Slavonic land. ♦Formation of the new Empire.♦ Germany, with its chief state bearing the name of Prussia, with the place of its national assemblies transferred from Frankfurt to Berlin, presents one of the strangest changes that historical geography can show us. But, strange as is the geographical change, it has come about gradually, by the natural working of historical causes. The Slavonic and Prussian lands have been Germanized, while the western parts of the old kingdom which have fallen away have mostly lost their German character. Those German lands which have formed the kernel of the Swiss Confederation have risen to a higher political state than that of any kingdom or Empire. But the German lands which still remain so strangely united to the lands of the Magyar and the southern Slave await, at however distant a time, their natural and inevitable reunion. So does a Danish population in the extreme north await, with less hope, its no less natural separation from the German body. Posen, still mainly Slavonic, remains unnaturally united to a Teutonic body, but it is not likely to gain by a transfer to any other ruler. The reconstruction of the German realm in its present shape, a shape so novel to the eye, but preserving so much of ancient life and ancient history, has been the greatest historical and geographical change of our times.

§ 3. The Kingdom of Italy.

♦Small geographical importance of the kingdom as such.♦

We parted from the Italian kingdom at the moment of its separation from the Eastern and Western kingdoms of the Franks. Its history, as a kingdom, consists in little more than its reunion with the East-Frankish crown, and in the way in which the royal power gradually died out within its limits. There is but little to say as to any changes of frontier of the kingdom as such. As long as Germany, Italy, and Burgundy acknowledged a single king, any shiftings of the frontiers of his three kingdoms were of secondary importance. When the power of the Emperors in Italy had died out, the land became a system of independent commonwealths and principalities, which had hardly that degree of unity which could enable us to say that a certain territory was added to Italy or taken from it. Even if a certain territory passed from an Italian to a German or Burgundian lord, the change was rather a change in the frontier of this or that Italian state than in the frontier of Italy itself. ♦Changes on the Alpine frontier.♦ The shiftings of frontier along the whole Alpine border have been considerable; but it is only in our own day that we can say that Italy as such has become capable of extending or lessening her borders. ♦Case of Verona.♦ When, in 1866, Venice and Verona were added to the Italian kingdom, that was a distinct change in the frontier of Italy. We can hardly give that name to endless earlier changes on the same marchland. ♦Case of Trieste, 1380.♦ In the fourteenth century, for instance, the town of Trieste, disputed between the patriarchs of Aquileia and the commonwealth of Venice, was acknowledged as an independent state, and it presently gave up its independence by commendation to the Duke of Austria. It is not likely that the question entered into any man’s mind whether the frontiers of the German and Italian kingdoms were affected by such a change. Whether as a free city or as an Austrian lordship, Trieste remained under the superiority, formally undoubted but practically nominal, of the common sovereign of Germany and Italy, the Roman Emperor or King. Whether the nominal allegiance of the city was due to him in his German or in his Italian character most likely no one stopped to think. ♦No eastern or western frontiers.♦ East and west, the Italian kingdom had no frontiers; the only question which could arise was as to the relation of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia to the kingdom itself or to any of the states which arose within it. To the south lay the independent Lombard duchies, and the possessions which still remained to the Eastern Empire. ♦The Norman kingdom of Sicily not an Imperial fief.♦ These changed in time into the Norman duchy of Apulia and kingdom of Sicily; but that kingdom, held as it was as a fief of the see of Rome, was never incorporated with the Italian kingdom of the Emperors, nor did its kings ever become the men of the Emperor. Particular Emperors in the thirteenth century, in the sixteenth, and in the eighteenth, were also kings of one or both the Sicilian kingdoms; but at no time before our own day were Sicily and southern Italy ever incorporated with a Kingdom of Italy. When we remember that it was to the southern part of the peninsula that the name of Italy was first given, we see here a curiosity of nomenclature as remarkable as the shiftings of meaning in the names of Saxony and Burgundy.

Naples and Sicily then, the Two Sicilies of later political nomenclature, lie outside our present subject. ♦Venice no part of Italy.♦ So does the commonwealth of Venice, except so far as Venice afterwards won a large subject territory on the Italian mainland. ♦Her Italian dominions.♦ Both these states have to do with Italy as a geographical expression, but neither the Venetian commonwealth nor the Sicilian kingdom is Italian within the meaning of the present section. They formed no part of the Carolingian dominion. ♦Venice and the Sicilies part of the Eastern Empire.♦ They were parts of the Eastern Empire, not of the Western. They remained attached to the New Rome after an Imperial throne had again been set up in the Old. They gradually fell away from their allegiance to the Eastern Empire, but they were never incorporated with the Empire of the West. I shall deal with them here only in their relations to the Imperial Kingdom of Italy, and treat of their special history elsewhere among the states which arose out of the break-up of the Eastern Empire. Again, on the north-western march of Italy a power gradually arose, partly Italian, but for a long time mainly Burgundian, which has in the end, by a strange fate, grown into a new Italian Kingdom. ♦The House of Savoy.♦ This is the House of Savoy. The growth of the dominions of that house, the process by which it gradually lost territory in Burgundy and gained it in Italy, form another distinct subject. ♦Its special history.♦ It will be dealt with here only in its relations to the kingdom of Italy.

♦The Kingdom of Italy continues the Lombard kingdom.♦

The Italian Kingdom of the Karlings, the kingdom which was reunited to Germany under Otto the Great, was, as has been already said, a continuation of the old Lombard kingdom. It consisted of that kingdom, enlarged by the Italian lands which fell off from the Eastern Empire in the eighth century; that is by the Exarchate and the adjoining Pentapolis, and the immediate territory of Rome itself. ♦Austria and Neustria.♦ The Lombard kingdom, in the strictest sense, took in the two provinces north of the Po, in which we again find, as in other lands, an Austria to the east and a Neustria to the west. ♦Æmilia. Tuscany.♦ It took in Æmilia south of the Po—the district of Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, and Modena—also Tuscany, a name, which, as it no longer reaches to the Tiber, answers pretty nearly to its modern use. ♦Romagna.♦ The Tuscan name has lived on; the Exarchate and Pentapolis, as having been the chief seat of the later Imperial power in Italy, got the name of Romania, Romandiola, or Romagna. This name also lives on; but the Lombard Neustria and Austria soon vanish from the map. Their disappearance was perhaps lucky, as one knows not what arguments might otherwise have been built on the presence of an Austria south of the Alps. ♦Lombardy proper. Venetia.♦ The Lombard Neustria together with Æmilia got the special name of Lombardy, while the Lombard Austria, after various shiftings of names taken from the principalities which rose and fell within it, came back in the end to its oldest name, that of Venetia. ♦Mark of Ivrea. Duchy of Friuli.♦ In the north-west corner Iporedia or Ivrea appears as a distinct march; but the Venetian march at the other corner, known at this stage as the duchy of Friuli, is of more importance. It takes in the county of Trent, the special march of Friuli, and the march of Istria. ♦Fluctuation of boundary at the north-west corner.♦ This is the corner in which the German and Italian frontier has so often fluctuated. We have seen that, after the union of the Italian and German crowns, even Verona itself was sometimes counted as German ground.

♦Comparison of Italy and Germany.♦

Under the German kings Italy came under the same influences as the other two Imperial kingdoms. Principalities grew up; free cities grew up; but, while in Germany the principalities were the rule and the cities the exception, in Italy it was the other way. ♦Growth of a system of commonwealths in Italy.♦ The land gradually became a system of practically independent commonwealths. Feudal princes, ecclesiastical or temporal, flourished only in the north-western and north-eastern corners of the kingdom. But, if the range of the German cities was less wide, and their career less brilliant, than those of Italy, their freedom was more lasting. ♦Tyrants grow into princes.♦ The Italian cities gradually fell under tyrants, and the tyrants gradually grew into acknowledged princes. ♦Growth of the dominion of the Popes.♦ The Bishops of Rome too, by a series of claims dexterously pressed at various times, contrived to form the greatest of ecclesiastical principalities, one which stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea. ♦Four stages of Italian history.♦ The geographical history of Italy consists of four stages. In the first the kingdom fell asunder into principalities. In the second the principalities vanished before the growth of the free cities. In the third the cities were again massed into principalities, till in the fourth the principalities were at last merged in a kingdom of united Italy.

Under the Saxon and Frankish Emperors the old Lombard names of Neustria and Æmilia pass away. Several small marches lie along the Burgundian frontier, as Savona on the coast, Ivrea among the mountains to the north-west, between them Montferrat, Vasto, and Susa, whose princes, as special guardians of the passage between the two kingdoms, bore the title of Marquess in Italy. It was in this region that the feudal princes were strongest, and that the system of free cities had the smallest developement. ♦The Marquesses of Montferrat, 938-1533.♦ The Savoyard power was already beginning to grow up in the extreme north-west corner; but at this time a greater part in strictly Italian history is played by the Marquesses of Montferrat, who for many centuries kept their position as important feudal princes quite apart from the lords of the cities. In the north-east corner of the kingdom the place of the old Austria is taken by the border principalities where the Italian, the German, and the Slave all come in contact, and which fluctuated more than once between the Italian and the German crowns. We have here the great march of Verona, beyond it that of Friuli, Trent, the marchland of the marchland, between Verona and Bavaria, and the Istrian peninsula on the Slavonic side of the Hadriatic. Between the border districts on either side lay the central land, Lombardy, in the narrower sense, the chosen home of the free cities. ♦Growth of the Lombard cities.♦ Here, by the middle of the twelfth century, every city had practically become a separate commonwealth, owning only the most nominal superiority in the Emperor. Guelfic cities withstood the Emperor; Ghibelin cities welcomed him; but both were practically independent commonwealths. ♦Wars of the Swabian Emperors.♦ Hence came those long wars between the Swabian Emperors and the Italian cities which form the chief feature of Italian history in the second half of the twelfth century and the first half of the thirteenth. ♦Milan and Pavia. The other Lombard cities. Alessandria, 1168.♦ Round the younger and the elder capital, round Guelfic Milan and Ghibelin Pavia, gathered a crowd of famous names, Como, Bergamo, and Brescia, Lodi, Crema, and Cremona, Tortona, Piacenza, and Parma, and Alessandria, the trophy of republican and papal victory over Imperial power. ♦Verona and Padua.♦ The Veronese march was less rich in cities of the same historical importance; but both Verona itself and Padua played a great part, as the seats first of commonwealths, then of tyrants. Further north and east, the civic element was weaker again. ♦Trent. Aquileia.♦ Trent gradually parted off from Italy to become an ecclesiastical principality of the German kingdom; and the Patriarchs of Aquileia grew into powerful princes at the north-eastern corner of the Hadriatic. ♦The lords of Romano and Este.♦ Within the Veronese or Trevisan march itself, the lords of Romano and the more important marquesses of Este also demand notice. Romano gave the Trevisan march its famous tyrant Eccelino in the days of Frederick the Second, and the Marquesses of Este, kinsmen of the great Saxon dukes, came in time to rank among the chief Italian princes. ♦The north-eastern march falls off from Italy.♦ The extreme north-eastern march so completely fell off from Italy that it will be better treated in tracing the growth of the powers of Venice and Austria.

♦Tuscany, Romagna, and the March of Ancona.♦

In the more central lands of the kingdom, in the old exarchate, now known as Romagna, in the march variously called by the names of Camerino, Fermo, or Ancona, and above all in the march of Tuscany on the southern sea, the same developement of city life also took place, but somewhat later. North of the Apennines, along the Hadriatic coast, arose a crowd of small commonwealths which gradually passed into small tyrannies. ♦The Tuscan commonwealths.♦ Tuscany, on the other hand, was parted off into a few commonwealths of illustrious name. For a while one of these ran a course which stood rather apart from the common run of Italian history. ♦Pisa; her wars with the Saracens 1005-1115.♦ Pisa, then one of the great maritime and commercial states of Europe, became, early in the eleventh century, a power which forestalled the crusades and won back lands from the Saracen. Though she was in every sense a city of the Italian kingdom, Pisa at this time held a position not unlike that which was afterwards held by Venice. Like her, she was a power which colonized and conquered beyond the seas, but which came only gradually to take a share in the main course of Italian affairs. ♦Genoa.♦ Beyond the borders of Tuscany, the same position was held by Genoa on the Ligurian gulf. ♦Occupation of the island of Sardinia by Pisa, and of Corsica by Genoa.♦ Pisa won Sardinia from the Saracen; Genoa, after long disputes with Pisa, obtained a more lasting possession of Corsica. Returning to Tuscany, three great commonwealths here grew up, which gradually divided the land between them. ♦Lucca, Siena, Florence.♦ These were Lucca and Siena, and Florence, the last of Italian cities to rise to greatness, but the one which became in many ways the greatest among her fellows. ♦Perugia.♦ In the centre of Italy, within the bounds of old Etruria but not within those of modern Tuscany, Perugia, both as commonwealth and as tyranny, held a high place among Italian cities. ♦Rome.♦ Of Rome herself it is almost impossible to speak. She has much history, but she has little geography. Emperors were crowned there; Popes sometimes lived there; sometimes Rome appears once more as a single Latin city, waging war against Tusculum or some other of her earliest fellows. ♦Claims of the Popes.♦ The claims of her Bishops to independent temporal power, founded on a succession of real or pretended Imperial and royal grants, lay still in the background; but they were ready to grow into reality as occasion served.

♦Second stage, c. 1250-1530.♦

The next stage of Italian political geography may be dated from the death of Frederick the Second, when all practical power of an Imperial kingdom in Italy may be said to have passed away. ♦Growth of tyrannies.♦ Presently begins the gradual change of the commonwealths into tyrannies, and the grouping together of many of them into larger states. We also see the beginning of more definite claims of temporal dominion on behalf of the Popes. ♦Dominion of Spain, 1555-1701.♦ In the course of the three hundred years between Frederick the Second and Charles the Fifth, these processes gradually changed the face of the Italian kingdom. It became in the end a collection of principalities, broken only by the survival of a few oligarchic commonwealths and by the anomalous dominion of Venice on the mainland. Between Frederick the Second and Charles the Fifth, we may look on the Empire as practically in abeyance in Italy. The coming of an Emperor always caused a great stir for the time, but it was only for the time. ♦Grant of Rudolf, 1278.♦ After the grant of Rudolf of Habsburg to the Popes, a distinction was drawn between Imperial and papal territory in Italy. ♦Imperial and papal fiefs.♦ While certain princes and commonwealths still acknowledged at least the nominal superiority of the Emperor, others were now held to stand in the same relation of vassalage to the Pope.