Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/571

Rh was raised by the Electors to the Imperial throne. His accession marks an epoch in German history, for from this time until the dissolution of the empire by Napoleon in 1806, the Imperial crown was regarded as hereditary in the Hapsburg family, the Electors, although never failing to go through the formality of an election, almost always choosing one of the members of that house as king.

From the beginning of the practically uninterrupted succession upon the Imperial throne of the princes of the House of Austria, up to the close of the Middle Ages, the power and importance of the family steadily increased, until it seemed that Austria would overshadow all the other German states, and subject them to her sway; would, in a word, become Germany, just as Francia in Gaul had become France. But this, as we shall learn, never came about.

The greatest of the Hapsburg line during the mediæval period was Maximilian I. (1493–1519). His reign is in every way a noteworthy one in German history, marking, as it does, a strong tendency to centralization, and the material enhancement of the Imperial authority.