Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/520

Rh 1643- 1724. princes. The cities. Ferdi- nand III. Leopold I. Louis XIV. of France. 502 not meet the expenditure it involved. The population was not only impoverished and reduced in numbers but broken in spirit. It lost confidence in itself, and for a time effected in politics, literature, art, and science little that is worthy of serious study. The princes knew well how to proﬁt by the national prostratioii. The local diets, which, as we have seen, formed a real check on petty tyranny, and kept up an intimate relation between the princes and their subjects, were nearly all destroyed. Those which remained were inj urions rather tlian beneﬁcial, since they often gave an appearance of 1:l.Wfllll]0:'S to the caprices of arbitrary sovereigns. After the Thirty Years’ War it became fashionable for the heirs of principalities to travel, and especially to spend some time at the court of France. Here they readily imbibed the ideas of Louis XIV., and in a short time every petty court in Germany was a feeble imitation of Versailles. Before the Reformation, and even for some time after it, the princes were thorough Germans in sympathies and habits; they now began to be separated by a wide gulf from their people. Instead of studying the general welfare, they cruelly wrung from exhausted states the largest possible revenue to sup- port a lavish and ridiculous expenditure. The pettiest priiiceliiig had his army, his palaces, his multitudes of household ollicers ; and most of them pampered every vulgar appetite without respect either to morality or decency. Many nobles, whose lands had been wasted during the war, ﬂocked to the little capitals to make their way by coii- temptible court services. Beneath an outward gloss of re- ﬁnement these nobles were, as a class, coarse and selﬁsh, and they made it their chief object to promote their own interests by fostering absolutist tendencies. Among the people there was no public opinion to discourage despotism; the majority accepted their lot as inevitable, and tried rather to reproduce than to restrain the vices of their rulers. Even the churches offered little opposition to the excesses of persons in authority, and in many instances the clergy, both Protestant and Catholic, acquired an uiieiiviable notoriety for their readiness to overlook or condone actions which outraged the higher sentiments of humanity. In the free imperial cities there was more inaiiliiiess of tone than elsewhere, but there was little of the generous rivalry among the different classes which had once raised them to a high level of prosperity. Most of them resigned their liberties into the hands of oligarchies, and others allowed themselves to be annexed by ambitious princes. Jlfodern Times. Ferdinand III. (1637-57) succeeded to the throne when the fortunes of his house were at a low ebb, and h_e con- tinued the Thirty Years’ War, not in the hope of i'e-estab- lishing the Catholic religion or of restoring the imperial authority, but to undo as uiucli as he could the havoc caused by his father’s recklessness. After the conclusion of peace nothing happened to make his reign memorable. 1Iis son, Leopold I. (1658-1705), was a man of narrow intellect and feeble will ; yet Germany seldom so keenly felt the need of a strong emperor, for she had during two generations to contend with a watchful and grasping rival. For more than a century it had been the policy of France to strengthen herself by fostering the internal dissensions of Germany. This was now easy, and Louis XIV. made unscrupulous use of the advantages his predecessors had helped to gain for him. Germany as a whole could not for a long time be induced to resist him. His schemes directly threatened the independence of the princes; but they were too indolent to unite against his ambition. They grudged even the contributions necessary for the maintenance of the frontier fortresses, and many of them stooped to accept the bribes he offered them on condition that they GERMANY [nisronin should remain quiet. In his war with the United Pro- vinces aiid Spain, begun in 1672, he was opposed by the emperor as ruler of Austria, and by Frederick William, the elector of Brandenburg; and in 1675 the latter gained a splendid victory at Fehrbellin over his allies, the Swedes. At the end of the war, in 1678, by the peace of I'inieguen, Louis took care that Frederick Williani was deprived of the fruits of his victory, and Austria had to resign Frciburg in Breisgau to the Frencli. Under the pretence that when France gained the Austrian lands in Alsace she also acquired a right to all places that had ever been united to them, Louis began a series of systematic robberies of Ger- man towns and territories. “ Chambers of Ileuiiion” were appointed to give an appearance of legality to these pro- ceedings, which culminated, in 1681, in the seizure of Strasburg. Germans of all states and ranks were indignant at so gross a humiliation, but even the loss of Strasburg did not suﬂiee to move the diet. The emperor himself might probably have interfered, but Louis had provided him with ample employment by stirring up against him the Ilungarians and the Turks. So complete was his hold over the majority of the princes that when the Turks, in 1683, surrounded Vienna, and appeared not unlikely to advance into the heart of Germany, they looked on indilfereiitly, and allowed the emperor to be saved by the proiiiptitnde and courage of Sobieski, king of Poland. At last, when, in 1689, on the most frivolous pretext, Louis poured into south Germany armies which were guilty of shameful outrages, a number of princes came forward and aided the emperor. This time France was sternly opposed by the league of which William III. of England was the moving spirit; and although at the end of the war he kept Stras- burg, he had to give up F reiburg, Philipsburg, Breisach, and the places he had seized because of their fornier coii- nexion with Alsaee. In the war of the Spanish succession two powerful princes, the elector of Bavaria and the eleetor of Cologne, joined Louis; but as the states of the empire or less loyally, supported the emperor and his allies. Leopold died during the progress of this war, but it was vigorously continued by his son Joseph 1. (1705-11). Charles VI. (1711-40) also went on with it; and such were the blows inflicted on France by the victories of Blenheim, Itamillies, and Malplaqnet that the war was generally expected to end in her utter disconifiture. But the conclu- sion of the treaty of Utrecht by England, in 1713, so limited the military power of Charles VI. that he was obliged to resign the claims of Austria to the Spanish throne, and to content himself with the Spanish l'etlierl:inds, Milan, Naples, and Sardinia. Ile cared so little for Germany, as distinguislied from Austria, that he allowed Louis to compel the diet to cede the imperial fortress of Landau. At a later stage in his reign he was guilty of an act of even grosser selﬁshness; for after the war of the Polish succession, in which he supported the claims of Augustus III., elector of Saxony, he yielded Lorraine to Leszczyiiski, whose claims had been defended by France, and through whom France ultimately secured this beautiful German province. .IIaving no son, Charles drew up in 1713 the pragmatic sanction, which ordained that, in the event of Pragiiia an Austrian ruler being without male heirs, his hereditary 5-"*"°t1°' lands and titles should pass to his nearest female relative. The aim of his whole policy was to secure for this mea- sure, which was proclaimed as a fundamental law in 1724-, the approval of Europe; and by promises and threats he did at last obtain the guarantee of the states of the empire and the leading European powers. Germany was nov about to be aroused from the torpor into which she had been cast by the Thirty Years’ War; but her awakening was due, not to the action of the empire, War of Spanish Sl1CC€‘S- . . . . sioii declared war against him in 1702, the other princes, more Cliarles VI.