Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/329

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 307 Cologne.^^" II. The college of princes and prelates purged them- selves of" a promiscuous multitude : they reduced to four repre- sentative votes the long series of independent counts, and excluded the nobles or equestrian order, sixty thousand of whom, as in the Polish diets, had appeared on horseback in the field of election. III. The pride of birth and dominion, of the sword and the mitre, wisely adopted the commons as the third branch of the legislature, and, in the progress of society, they were introduced about the same aera into the national assemblies of France, England, and Germany. The Hanseatic league commanded the trade and navigation of the north ; the confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and intercourse of the inland country ; the influence of the cities has been adequate to their wealth and j)olicy, and their negative still invalidates the acts of the two superior colleges of electors and princes. ^'^^ It is in the fourteenth century that we may view, in the strongest weakness liffht, the state and contrast of the Roman empire of Germany, of the German, emperor which no longer held, except on the borders of the Rhine and chariesiv. . AD 1347- Danube, a single province of Trajan or Constantine. Their un-ms worthy successors were the counts of Hapsburg, of Nassau, of I^uxemburg, and of Schwartzenburg ; the emperor Henry the Seventh procured for his son the crown of Bohemia, and his grandson Charles the Fourth was born among a people strange 1'' [The electoral college '• is mentioned A.D. 1152, and in somewhat clearer terms in 1198, as a distinct body ; but without anything to show who composed it. First in A.D. 1263 does a letter of Pope Urban IV. say that by immemorial custom the right of choosing the Roman king belonged to seven persons, the seven who had just divided their votes on Richard of Cornwall and Alphonso of Castile. " The three archbishops represented the German church ; the four lay electors should have been the four great dukes of Saxony, Franconia, Bavaria, and Swabia. But the duchies of Franconia (or East Francia) and Swabia were extinct, their place being taken by the Palatinate of the Rhine and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. A conflict for the seventh place between Bavaria and the king of Bohemia (who claimed it by virtue of his office of cup-bearer) was decided by the Emperor Rudolf in 1289 in favour of the king of Bohemia. (Bryce, Holy Roman Empire (ed. 7), p. 229-30.)] I-'** In the immense labyrinth o^ihejus pi/bliciim of Germany, I must either quote one writer or a thousand ; and I had rather trust to one faithful guide than tran- scribe, on credit, a multitude of names and passages. That guide is M. Pfeffel, the author of the best legal and constitutional history that I know of any country (Nouvel .br^g^ Chronologique de I'Histoire et du Droit Public d'Allemagne, Paris, 1776, 2 vols, in 4to). His learning and judgment have discerned the most interest- ing facts ; his simple brevity comprises them in a narrow space ; his chronological order distributes them under the proper dates ; and an elaborate index collects them under their respective heads. To this work, in a less perfect state. Dr. Robertson was gratefully indebted for that masterly sketch which traces even the modern changes of the Germanic body. The Corpus Historiae Germanicas of Strurius has been likewise consulted, the more usefully, as that huge compilation is fortified, in every page, with the original texts.