A History of Germany Part 20

The Imperial Crown in the Market --Gunther of Schwarzburg. --Karl IV.

Emperor. --His Character and Policy. --The University of Prague.

--Rienzi Tribune of Rome. --Karl's Course in Italy. --The "Golden Bull." --Its Provisions and Effect. --Coronation in Rome. --The Last Ten Years of his Reign. --His Death. --Eberhard the Greiner.

--The "Hansa" and its Victories. --Achievements of the German Order. --Wenzel becomes Emperor. --The Suabian League. --The Battle of Sempach. --Independence of Switzerland. --Defeat of the Suabian Cities. --Wenzel's Rule in Prague. --Conspiracy against him.

--Schism in the Roman Church. --Count Rupert Rival Emperor.

--Convention of Marbach. --Anarchy in Germany. --Death-Blow to the German Order. --Rupert's Death.

[Sidenote: 1347.]

Although the German princes were nearly unanimous in the determination that no member of the house of Wittelsbach (Bavaria) should again be Emperor, they were by no means willing to accept Karl of Bohemia.[B]

Ludwig's son, Ludwig of Brandenburg, made no claim to his father's crown, but he united with Saxony, Mayence and the Palatinate of the Rhine, in offering it to Edward III. of England. When the latter declined, they chose Count Ernest of Meissen, who, however, sold his claim to Karl for 10,000 silver marks. Then they took up Gunther of Schwarzburg, a gallant and popular prince, who seemed to have a good prospect of success. In this emergency Karl supported the pretensions of an adventurer, known as "the False Waldemar," to Brandenburg, against Ludwig, and thus compelled the latter to treat with him. Soon afterwards Gunther of Schwarzburg died, poisoned, it was generally believed, by a physician whom Karl had bribed, and by the end of 1348 the latter was Emperor of Germany, as Karl IV.

[B] Of the House of Luxemburg.

[Sidenote: 1348. KARL IV.]

At this time he was thirty-three years old. He had been educated in France and Italy, and was an accomplished scholar: he both spoke and wrote the Bohemian, German, French, Italian and Latin languages. He was a thorough diplomatist, resembling in this respect Rudolf of Hapsburg, from whom he differed in his love of pomp and state, and in the care he took to keep himself always well supplied with money, which he well knew how and when to use. He had first purchased the influence of the Pope by promising to disregard the declarations of the Diet of 1338 at Rense, and by relinquis.h.i.+ng all claims to Italy. Then he won the free cities to his side by offers of more extended privileges; and the German princes, for form's sake, elected him a second time, thus acknowledging the Papal authority which they had so boldly defied, ten years before.

One of Karl's first acts was to found, in Prague--the city he selected as his capital--the _first_ German University, which he endowed so liberally and organized so thoroughly that in a few years it was attended by six or seven thousand students. For several years afterwards he occupied himself in establis.h.i.+ng order throughout Germany, and meanwhile negotiated with the Pope in regard to his coronation as Roman Emperor. In spite of his complete submission to the latter, there were many difficulties to be overcome, arising out of the influence of France over the Papacy, which was still established at Avignon. Karl arrested Rienzi, "the last Tribune of Rome," and kept him for a time imprisoned in Prague; but when the latter was sent back to Rome as Senator by Pope Innocent VI., in 1354, Karl was allowed to commence his Italian journey.

He was crowned Roman Emperor on the 5th of April, 1355, by a Cardinal sent from Avignon for that purpose. In compliance with his promise to Pope Innocent, he remained in Rome only a single day.

Instead of attempting to settle the disorders which convulsed Italy, Karl turned his journey to good account by selling all the remaining Imperial rights and privileges to the republics and petty rulers, for hard cash. The poet Petrarch had looked forward to his coming as Dante had to that of his grandfather, Henry VII., but satirized him bitterly when he returned to Bohemia with his money. He left Italy ridiculed and despised, but reached Germany with greatly increased power. His next measure was to call a Diet, for the purpose of permanently settling the relation of the German princes to the Empire, and the forms to be observed in electing an Emperor. All had learned, several centuries too late to be of much service, the necessity of some established order in these matters, and they came to a final agreement at Metz, on Christmas Day, 1356.

[Sidenote: 1356.]

Then was promulgated the decree known as the "Golden Bull," which remained a law in Germany until the Empire came to an end, just 450 years afterwards. It commences with these words: "Every kingdom which is not united within itself will go to ruin: for its princes are the kindred of robbers, wherefore G.o.d removes the light of their minds from their office, they become blind leaders of the blind, and their darkened thoughts are the source of many misdeeds." The Golden Bull confirms the former custom of having seven Chief Electors--the Archbishops of Mayence, Treves and Cologne, the first of whom is Arch-Chancellor; the King of Bohemia, Arch-Cupbearer; the Count Palatine of the Rhine, Arch-Steward; the Duke of Saxony, Arch-Marshal, and the Margrave of Brandenburg, Arch-Chamberlain. The last four princes receive full authority over their territories, and there is no appeal, even to the Emperor, from their decisions. Their rule is transmitted to the eldest son; they have the right to coin money, to work mines, and to impose all taxes which formerly belonged to the Empire.

These are its princ.i.p.al features. The claims of the Pope to authority over the Emperor are not mentioned; the position of the other independent princes is left very much as it was, and the cities are prohibited from forming unions without the Imperial consent. The only effect of this so-called "Const.i.tution" was to strengthen immensely the power of the four favored princes, and to encourage all the other rulers to imitate them. It introduced a certain order, and therefore was better than the previous absence of all law upon the subject; but it held the German people in a state of practical serfdom, it perpetuated their division and consequent weakness, and it gave the spirit of the Middle Ages a longer life in Germany than in any other civilized country in the world.

The remaining events of Karl IV.'s life are of no great historical importance. In 1363 his son, Wenzel, only two years old, was crowned at Prague as king of Bohemia, and soon afterwards he was called upon by the Pope, Urban V., who found that his residence in Avignon was becoming more and more a state of captivity, to a.s.sist him in returning to Rome.

In 1365, therefore, Karl set out with a considerable force, entered Southern France, crowned himself king of Burgundy at Arles--which was a hollow and ridiculous farce--and in 1368 reached Rome, whither Pope Urban had gone in advance. Here his wife was formally crowned as Roman Empress, and he humiliated himself by walking from the Castle of St.

Angelo to St. Peter's, leading the Pope's mule by the bridle,--an act which drew upon him the contempt of the Roman people. He had few or no more privileges to sell, so he met every evidence of hostility with a proclamation of amnesty, and returned to Germany with the intention of violating his own Golden Bull, by having his son Wenzel proclaimed his successor. His departure marks the end of German interference in Italy.

[Sidenote: 1376. WENZEL ELECTED SUCCESSOR.]

For ten years longer Karl IV. continued to strengthen his family by marriage, by granting to the cities the right of union in return for their support, and by purchasing the influence of such princes as were accessible to bribes. He was so cool and calculating, and pursued his policy with so much patience and skill, that the most of his plans succeeded. His son Wenzel was elected his successor by a Diet held at Frankfort in January, 1376, each of the chief Electors receiving 100,000 florins for his vote, and this choice was confirmed by the Pope. To his second son, Sigismund, he gave Brandenburg, which he had obtained partly by intrigue and partly by purchase, and to his third son, John, the province of Lusatia, adjoining Silesia. His health had been gradually failing, and in November, 1378, he died in Prague, sixty-three years old, leaving the German Empire in a more disorderly state than he had found it. His tastes were always Bohemian rather than German: he preferred Prague to any other residence, and whatever good he intentionally did was conferred on his own immediate subjects. More than a century afterwards, the Emperor Maximilian of Hapsburg very justly said of him: "Karl IV. was a genuine father to Bohemia, but only a step-father to the rest of Germany."

During the latter years of his reign, two very different movements, independent of the Imperial will, or in spite of it, had been started in Southern and Northern Germany. In Wurtemberg the cities united, and carried on a fierce war with Count Eberhard, surnamed the _Greiner_ (Whiner). The struggle lasted for more than ten years, and out of it grew various leagues of the knights for the protection of their rights against the more powerful princes. In the North of Germany, the commercial cities, headed by Lubeck, Hamburg and Bremen, formed a league, which soon became celebrated under the name of "The Hansa,"

which gradually drew the cities of the Rhine to unite with it, and, before the end of the century, developed into a great commercial, naval and military power.

[Sidenote: 1375.]

The Hanseatic League had its agencies in every commercial city, from Novgorod in Russia to Lisbon; its vessels filled the Baltic and the North Sea, and almost the entire commerce of Northern Europe was in its hands. When, in 1361, king Waldemar III. of Denmark took possession of the island of Gothland, which the cities had colonized, they fitted out a great fleet, besieged Copenhagen, finally drove Waldemar from his kingdom and forced the Danes to accept their conditions. Shortly afterwards they defeated king Hakon of Norway: their influence over Sweden was already secured, and thus they became an independent political power. Karl IV. visited Lubeck a few years before his death, in the hope of making himself head of the Hanseatic League; but the merchants were as good diplomatists as himself, and he obtained no recognition whatever. Had not the cities been so widely scattered along the coast, and each more or less jealous of the others, they might have laid the foundation of a strong North-German nation; but their bond of union was not firm enough for that.

The German Order, by this time, also possessed an independent realm, the capital of which was established at Marienburg, not far from Dantzic.

The distance of the territory it had conquered in Eastern Prussia from the rest of the Empire, and the circ.u.mstance that it had also acknowledged itself a dependency of the Papal power, enabled its Grand Masters to say, openly: "If the Empire claims authority over us, we belong to the Pope; if the Pope claims any such authority, we belong to the Emperor." In fact, although the Order had now been established for a hundred and fifty years, it had never been directly a.s.sisted by the Imperial power; yet it had changed a great tract of wilderness, inhabited by Slavonic barbarians, into a rich and prosperous land, with fifty-five cities, thousands of villages, and an entire population of more than two millions, mostly German colonists. It adopted a fixed code of laws, maintained order and security throughout its territory, encouraged science and letters, and made the scholar and minstrel as welcome at its stately court in Marienburg, as they had been at that of Frederick II. in Palermo.

[Sidenote: 1386. THE BATTLE OF SEMPACH.]

There could be no more remarkable contrast than between the weakness, selfishness and despotic tendencies of the German Emperors and Electors during the fourteenth century, and the strong and orderly development of the Hanseatic League and the German Order in the North, or of the handful of free Swiss in the South.

King Wenzel (Wenczeslas in Bohemian) was only seventeen years old when his father died, but he had been well educated and already possessed some experience in governing. In fact, Karl IV.'s anxiety to secure the succession to the throne in his own family led him to force Wenzel's mind to a premature activity, and thus ruined him for life. He had enjoyed no real childhood and youth, and he soon became hard, cynical, wilful, without morality and even without ambition. In the beginning of his reign, nevertheless, he made an earnest attempt to heal the divisions of the Roman Church, and to establish peace between Count Eberhard the Whiner and the United Cities of Suabia.

In the latter quarrel, Leopold of Austria also took part. He had been appointed Governor of several of the free cities by Wenzel, and he seized the occasion to attempt to restore the authority of the Hapsburgs over the Swiss Cantons. The latter now numbered eight, the three original cantons having been joined by Lucerne, Zurich, Glarus, Zug and Berne. They had been invited to make common cause with the Suabian cities, more than fifty of which were united in the struggle to maintain their rights; but the Swiss, although in sympathy with the cities, declined to march beyond their own territory. Leopold decided to subjugate each, separately. In 1386, with an army of 4,000 Austrian and Suabian knights, he invaded the Cantons. The Swiss collected 1,300 farmers, fishers and herdsmen, armed with halberds and battle-axes, and met Leopold at Sempach, on the 9th of July.

The 4,000 knights dismounted, and advanced in close ranks, presenting a wall of steel, defended by rows of levelled spears, to the Swiss in their leathern jackets. It seemed impossible to break their solid front, or even to reach them with the Swiss weapons. Then Arnold of Winkelried stepped forth and said to his countrymen: "Dear brothers, I will open a road for you: take care of my wife and children!" He gathered together as many spears as he could grasp with both arms, and threw himself forward upon them: the Swiss sprang into the gap, and the knights began to fall on all sides from their tremendous blows. Many were smothered in the press, trampled under foot in their heavy armor: Duke Leopold and nearly 700 of his followers perished, and the rest were scattered in all directions. It was one of the most astonis.h.i.+ng victories in history. Two years afterwards the Swiss were again splendidly victorious at Nafels, and from that time they were an independent nation.

[Sidenote: 1389.]

The Suabian cities were so encouraged by these defeats of the party of the n.o.bles, that in 1388 they united in a common war against the Duke of Bavaria, Count Eberhard of Wurtemberg and the Count Palatine Rupert.

After a short but very fierce and wasting struggle, they were defeated at Doffingen and Worms, deprived of the privileges for which they had fought, and compelled to accept a truce of six years. In 1389, a Diet was held, which prohibited them from forming any further union, and thus completely re-established the power of the reigning princes. Wenzel endeavored to enforce an internal peace throughout the whole Empire, but could not succeed: what was law for the cities was not allowed to be equally law for the princes. It seems probable, from many features of the struggle, that the former designed imitating the Swiss cantons, and founding a Suabian republic, if they had been successful; but the entire governing cla.s.s of Germany, from the Emperor down to the knightly highwayman, was against them, and they must have been crushed in any case, sooner or later.

For eight or nine years after these events, Wenzel remained in Prague where his reign was distinguished only by an almost insane barbarity. He always had an executioner at his right hand, and whoever refused to submit to his orders was instantly beheaded. He kept a pack of bloodhounds, which were sometimes let loose even upon his own guests: on one occasion his wife, the Empress Elizabeth, was nearly torn to pieces by them. He ordered the confessor of the latter, a priest named John of Nepomuck, to be thrown into the Moldau river for refusing to tell him what the Empress had confessed. By this act he made John of Nepomuck the patron saint of Bohemia. Some one once wrote upon the door of his palace the words: "_Venceslaus, alter Nero_" (Wenzel, a second Nero); whereupon he wrote the line below: "_Si non fui adhuc, ero_" (If I have not been one hitherto, I will be now). When the city of Rothenberg refused to advance him 4,000 florins, he sent this message to the authorities: "The devil began to shear a hog, and spake thus, 'Great cry and little wool'!"

[Sidenote: 1398. QUARREL WITH THE POPE.]

In short, Wenzel was so little of an Emperor and so much of a brutal madman, that a conspiracy, at the head of which were his cousin Jodocus of Moravia, and Duke Albert of Austria, was formed against him. He was taken prisoner and conveyed to Austria, where he was held in close confinement until his brother Sigismund, aided by a Diet of the other German princes, procured his release. In return for this service, and probably, also, to save himself the trouble of governing, he appointed Sigismund Vicar of the Empire. In 1398 he called a Diet at Frankfort, and again endeavored, but without much success, to enforce a general peace. The schism in the Roman Church, which lasted for forty years, the rival popes in Rome and Avignon cursing and making war upon each other, had at this time become a scandal to Christendom, and the Papal authority had sunk so low that the temporal rulers now ventured to interfere. Wenzel went to Rheims, where he had an interview with Charles VI. of France, in order to settle the quarrel. It was agreed that the former should compel Bonifacius IX. in Rome, and the latter Benedict XIII. in Avignon, to abdicate, so that the Church might have an opportunity to unite on a single Pope; but neither monarch succeeded in carrying out the plan.

On the contrary, Bonifacius IX. went secretly to work to depose Wenzel.

He gained the support of the four Electors of the Rhine, who, headed by the Archbishop of Mayence, came together in 1400, proclaimed that Wenzel had forfeited his Imperial dignity, and elected the Count Palatine Rupert, a member of the house of Wittelsbach (Bavaria), in his place.

The city of Aix-la-Chapelle shut its gates upon the latter, and he was crowned in Cologne. A majority of the smaller German princes, as well as of the free cities, refused to acknowledge him; but, on the other hand, none of them made any movement in Wenzel's favor, and so there were, practically, two separate heads to the Empire.

Rupert imagined that his coronation in Rome would secure his authority in Germany. He therefore collected an army, entered into an alliance with the republic of Florence against Milan, and marched to Italy in 1401. Near Brescia he met the army of the Lombards, commanded by the Milanese general, Barbiano, and was so signally defeated that he was compelled to return to Germany. In the meantime Wenzel had come to a temporary understanding with Jodocus of Moravia and the Hapsburg Dukes of Austria, and his prospects improved as Rupert's diminished. It was not long, however, before he quarrelled with his brother Sigismund, and was imprisoned by the latter. Then ensued a state of general confusion, the cause of which is easy to understand, but the features of which it is not easy to make clear.

[Sidenote: 1405.]

A number of reigning princes and cities held a convention at Marbach in 1405, and formed a temporary union, the object of which was evidently to create a third power in the Empire. Both Rupert and Wenzel at first endeavored to break up this new league, and then, failing in the attempt, both intrigued for its support. The Archbishop of Mayence and the Margrave of Baden, who stood at its head, were secretly allied with France; the smaller princes were ambitious to gain for themselves a power equal to that of the seven Electors, and the cities hoped to recover some of their lost rights. The League of Marbach, as it is called in history, had as little unity or harmony as the Empire itself.

All Germany was given up to anarchy, and seemed on the point of falling to pieces: so much had the famous Golden Bull of Karl IV. accomplished in fifty years!

On the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Baltic, also, the march of German civilization received an almost fatal check. The two strongest neighbors of the German Order, the Poles and Lithuanians, were now united under one crown, and they defeated the army of the Order, 60,000 strong, under the walls of Wilna, in 1389. After an unsatisfactory peace of some years, hostilities were again resumed, and both sides prepared for a desperate and final struggle. Each raised an army of more than 100,000 men, among whom, on the Polish side, there were 40,000 Russians and Tartars. The decisive battle was fought at Tannenberg, in July, 1410, and the German Order, after losing 40,000 men, retreated from the field.

It was compelled to give up a portion of its territory to Poland, and pay a heavy tribute: from that day its power was broken, and the Slavonic races encroached more and more upon the Germans along the Baltic.

[Sidenote: 1410. THE ANTI-EMPEROR RUPERT.]

During this same period Holland was rapidly becoming estranged from the German Empire, and France had obtained possession of the greater part of Flanders. Luxemburg and part of Lorraine were incorporated with Burgundy, which was rising in power and importance, and had become practically independent of Germany. There was now no one to guard the ancient boundaries, and probably nothing but the war between England and France prevented the latter kingdom from greatly increasing her territory at the expense of the Empire.

Although Rupert of the Palatinate acquired but a limited authority in Southern Germany, he is generally cla.s.sed among the German Emperors, perhaps because Wenzel's power, after the year 1400, was no greater than his own. The confusion and uncertainty in regard to the Imperial dignity lasted until 1410, when Rupert determined to make war upon the Archbishop of Mayence--who had procured his election, and since the League of Marbach was his chief enemy--as the first step towards establis.h.i.+ng his authority. In the midst of his preparations he died, on the 18th of May, 1410.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE REIGN OF SIGISMUND AND THE HUSSITE WAR.

(1410--1437.)

Three Emperors in Germany and Three Popes in Rome. --Sigismund sole Emperor. --His Appearance and Character. --Religious Movements in Bohemia. --John Huss and his Doctrines. --Division of the University of Prague. --A Council of the Church called at Constance. --Grand a.s.sembly of all Nations. --Organization of the Council. --Flight and Capture of Pope John XXIII. --Treatment of Huss. --His Trial and Execution. --Jerome of Prague burned.