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Rh the empire. His speciality was an intimate acquaintance with the problem of railway rates in connexion with the general economic development of the country, and in 1884 he published a work on the subject which attracted some attention in the official world. Among those who had discovered his exceptional ability in matters of that kind was M. Vishnegradski, minister of finance, who appointed him head of the railway department in the finance ministry. In 1892 he was promoted to be minister of ways of communication, and in the following year, on the retirement of Vishnegradski, he succeeded him as minister of finance. In this important post he displayed extraordinary activity. He was an ardent disciple of Friedrich List and sought to develop home industries by means of moderate protection and the introduction of foreign capital for industrial purposes. At the same time he succeeded by drastic measures in putting a stop to the great fluctuations in the value of the paper currency and in resuming specie payments. The rapid extension of the railway system was also largely due to his energy and financial ingenuity, and he embarked on a crusade against the evils of drunkenness by organizing a government monopoly for the sale of alcohol. In the region of foreign policy he greatly contributed to the extension of Russian influence in northern China and Persia. Naturally of a combative temperament, and endowed with a persevering tenacity rare among his countrymen, he struggled for what he considered the liberation of his country from the economic bondage of foreign nations. Germany was, in his opinion, the neighbour whose aggressive tendencies had to be specially resisted. He was therefore not at all persona grata in Berlin, but the German imperial authorities learned by experience that he was an opponent to be respected, who understood thoroughly the interests of his country, and was quite capable of adopting if necessary a vigorous policy of reprisals. During his ten years’ tenure of the finance ministry he nearly doubled the revenues of the empire, but at the same time he made for himself, by his policy and his personal characteristics, a host of enemies. He was transferred, therefore, in 1903 from the influential post of finance minister to the ornamental position of president of the committee of ministers. The object was to deprive him of any real political influence, but circumstances brought about a different result. The disasters of the war with Japan, and the rising tide of revolutionary agitation, compelled the government to think of appeasing popular discontent by granting administrative reforms, and the reform projects were revised and amended by the body over which M. Witte presided. Naturally the influence of a strong man made itself felt, and the president became virtually prime minister; but, before he had advanced far in this legislative work, he was suddenly transformed into a diplomatist and sent to Portsmouth, N. H., U.S.A., in August 1905, to negotiate terms of peace with the Japanese delegates. In these negotiations he showed great energy and decision, and contributed largely to bringing about the peace. On his return to St Petersburg he had to deal, as president of the first ministry under the new constitutional régime, with a very difficult political situation (see : History); he was no longer able to obtain support, and early in 1906 he retired into private life.  WITTELSBACH, the name of an important German family, taken from the castle of Wittelsbach, which formerly stood near Aichach on the Paar in Bavaria. In 1124, Otto V., count of Scheyern (d. 1155), removed the residence of his family to Wittelsbach, and called himself by this name. Otto was descended from Luitpold, duke of Bavaria and margrave of Carinthia, who was killed in 907 fighting the Hungarians. His son, Arnulf I., called the Bad, drove back the Hungarians, and was elected duke of Bavaria in 913. Arnulf, who was a candidate for the German crown in 919, claimed to be independent, and openly defied the German king, Conrad I. In 921, however, he recognized the authority of Henry I. the Fowler, in return for the right to dispense justice, to coin money and to appoint the bishops in Bavaria. He died at Regensburg in 937, and his elder son, Eberhard, fought in vain to retain the duchy. In 938 it was given by the German king, Otto I., the Great, to Arnulf's brother,

Bertold I., with greatly reduced privileges. Arnulf's younger son, Arnulf II., continued the struggle against Otto I., and sometime before his death in 954 was made count palatine in Bavaria. This office did not become hereditary, however, and his descendants bore simply the title of counts of Scheyern until about 1116, when the emperor Henry V. recognized Count Otto V. as count palatine in Bavaria. His son, Count Otto VI., who succeeded his father in 1155, accompanied the German king, Frederick I., to Italy in 1154, where he distinguished himself by his courage, and later rendered valuable assistance to Frederick in Germany. When Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, was placed under the imperial ban in 1180, Otto's services were rewarded by the investiture of the dukedom of Bavaria at Altenburg. Since the time of Otto I. Bavaria has been ruled by the Wittelsbachs.

Otto died at Pfullendorf in 1183, and was succeeded in the duchy by his son, Louis I. (1174–1231), but the dignity of count palatine in Bavaria passed to his brother Otto, whose son Otto, succeeding in 1189, murdered the German king Philip at Bamberg on the 21st of June 1208. He was placed under the ban by the emperor, Otto IV., and was killed at Oberndorf, near Regensburg, by Henry of Kalden, marshal of the empire, in March 1209. His lands passed to his son Louis, then only nine years old, who began his rule in 1192. In 1208 he destroyed the ancestral castle of Wittelsbach, the site of which is now marked by a church and an obelisk.

At first Louis supported Otto IV. in his struggle with Frederick of Hohenstaufen (the emperor Frederick II.), but deserted his cause when Frederick invested his son, Otto, with the Palatinate of the Rhine in 1214. Louis appears to have been previously promised this succession, and to strengthen his claim married his son, Otto, to Agnes, the sister of Henry, the count palatine, who died without heirs in 1214. Louis accompanied the Crusaders to Damietta in 1221, and governed Germany as regent from 1225 until 1228, when he deserted Frederick II. at the instigation of Pope Gregory IX. He was murdered at the bridge of Kelheim on the 15th of September 1231, and the emperor was generally suspected of complicity in the deed. Louis’ son, Otto the Illustrious (1206–1253), undertook the government of the Palatinate in 1228, and became duke of Bavaria in 1231. He was attached to the Hohenstaufen by the marriage of his daughter, Elizabeth, with Conrad, son of Frederick II. in 1246. He supported Frederick in his struggle with the anti-kings, Henry Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, and William II., count of Holland, and was put under the papal ban by Pope Innocent IV., Bavaria being laid under an interdict. When King Conrad IV. went to Italy in 1251, Otto remained as his representative in Germany, until his death on the 29th of November 1253. He left two sons, Louis and Henry, who reigned jointly until 1255, when a division of the lands was made, by which Louis II. (1228–1294) received upper Bavaria and the Palatinate of the Rhine, and Henry I. (d. 1290) lower Bavaria. Louis, who soon became the most powerful prince in southern Germany, was called “the Stern,” because in a fit of jealousy he caused his first wife, Maria of Brabant, to be executed in 1256. He was the uncle and guardian of Conradin of Hohenstaufen, whom he assisted to make his journey to Italy in 1267, and accompanied as far as Verona. When Conradin was executed in 1268 Louis inherited his lands in Germany, sharing them with his brother Henry. In 1273 he was a candidate for the German crown, but was induced to support Rudolph, count of Habsburg, whose eldest daughter, Matilda, he married in this year. He was a great source of strength to the Habsburgs until his death in 1294. Lower Bavaria was ruled by the descendants of Henry I. until the death of his great-grandson, John I., in 1340, when it was again united with upper Bavaria. The sons of Louis, Rudolph I. (d. 1319) and Louis, who became German king as Louis IV. in 1314, ruled their lands in common, but after some trouble between them Rudolph abdicated in 1317.

In 1329 the most important division of the Wittelsbach lands took place. By the treaty of Pavia in this year, Louie granted the Palatinate of the Rhine and the upper Palatinate of Bavaria