Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/245

 CHAPTER XVI TRANSITION During the Middle Ages, that is to say, from the fall of the western Roman Empire to the latter part of the fifteenth century, the great states of Europe were only The Great shaping themselves. We have seen a long struggle states emerge, between England and France, and a struggle between the empire and the papacy, and the shifting of the power from one to another of the great houses within the German Empire. We have now reached a point at which four first-class powers emerge : Spain, France, Austria, and England, the German Empire being associated sometimes with Spain and sometimes with Austria. The key to half the complications which em- broiled Europe for centuries to come is to be found in the position of the house of Hapsburg, and the enormous posses- sions in the hands of one branch or other of that family. It will be well, therefore, to work this out to begin with. The Hapsburg Emperor Frederick in. is comparatively un- important ; not so his son Maximilian, who was named King of the Romans, or in other words, heir to the i. The empire, a good many years before his father's Hapsburgs. death. Maximilian himself was heir to the Hapsburg inheritance, which included claims on the Crowns of Bohemia and Hungary. He married Mary, the heiress of Burgundy; Hapsburg Mary bore him a son known as the Archduke Marriages. Philip. Philip then was heir to the Hapsburg inheritance and the Burgundian inheritance, that is to say, the Low Countries and Franche Comte. Philip married Joanna, daughter and 233