Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/764

 734 CHAPTERS V— VIII. GERMANY, 1531—1555. I, MANUSCRIPTS. Tlie materials for the history of Germany during the Reformation are probably more extensivej more scattered, and more difficult of desciiption in brief than those for the history of any other country in Europe ; for whereas other States had as a rule one central government, one chancery, and one foreign office, Germany had many. There are not only the imperial archives, the domestic and foreign correspondence of Charles V and of the German Meich, but every important Prince had his own domestic •cori-espondence and his correspondence with other German Princes as well as with foreign Powers ; and thus there is no one repository of materials for German history as in London, Paris, or Simancas. Even the correspondence of Charles V is divided between Vienna, Brussels, and Simancas, while the despatches of foreign representatives at Charles V's Court and at the Imperial Diets must be sought principally in Rome, Paris, Venice, and London. Next in importance to the Emperor's correspondence are the records of the Diets, of which the most complete series is that preserved at Frankfort (cf. Jung, R., Das historische Archiv der Stadt Frankfurt am Main, Frankfort, 1896, pp. 60, 51). These relate mainly to the internal affairs of the Empire ; but the archives of the Electors and of other Princes such as the Landgrave of Hesse and the Dukes of Bavaria are important for foreign as well as for domestic history. Of these archives the chief are those of Austria at Vienna and Innsbruck, Ernestine Saxony at Weimar, Albertine Saxony at Dresden, Hesse at Marburg, Brandenburg at Berlin, the Palatinate at Heidelberg, Bavaria at Munich, Cleves at Diisseldorf, Brunswick at Wolfenbiittel, and of the spiritual electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier at their respective metropolitan cities. Scarcely inferior in interest are the archives of some of the imperial cities. The ■'Stadtarchiv' sometimes contains not merely bulky materials for municipal and local history, but chronicles relating the political and religious events of the day, and occasionally political correspondence of substantial value (cf. Jung ut supra ; the mere list of classes of documents at Frankfort occupies a hundred folio pages). The political correspondence of Strassburg, for instance, is of the highest import- ance; while the records of smaller cities often become of prime value for events of more than local importance. Those of Miihlhausen throw much light on the history of the Peasants' War in Thuringia, those of Munster are the principal source for our knowledge of the Anabaptist rising, and those of Lubeck for the ' Grafenfehde,' while it was on the records of Ulm that Ranke based his account of Charles V's negotiations in the winter of 1546-7. An indication of the contents of these national and local archives is given in C. A. H. Burkhardt's admirable Hand- und Adressbuch der deutschen Archive (2 pts, Leipzig, 1887).