Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/671

 RISE OF ABSOLUTISM 615 universo," or, " Alles Erdreich ist Osterreich unterthan" (All earth is ours ultimately). But for the time being both the Bohemians and the Hungarians, when their boy king, Ladislas, of the House of Hapsburg, died in 1457, disre- garded the claims of Frederick III and gave a passing ex- hibition of national feeling by electing the native kings, George of Podiebrad (1458-147 1) and Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490). A more influential figure in European politics than the slow-moving Frederick was his brilliant, cultured, and knightly son, Maximilian (1493-1519). He had XT . .,., , . - . , , . , . Maximilian I already taken the government largely into his own hands during his father's last years, and had been elected King of the Romans in i486, which assured him the imperial office upon his father's death. Of his important marriage with the Burgundian heiress we shall presently speak. In 1491, by the Treaty of Pressburg, he arranged with Ladislas II, who was then King of both Bohemia and Hungary, that in case the descendants of Ladislas died out, those countries should pass to the House of Hapsburg. This actually happened in 1526, and ever since then Aus- tria, Bohemia, and Hungary have been ruled together by the Hapsburgs. During the reign of Sigismund, early in the fifteenth cen- tury, some futile efforts had been made by the German Diet to reform the imperial constitution and to secure German a standing army by regular taxation. Toward g° vernment the close of the reign of Frederick III the free imperial cities began to send representatives to the Diet. There were fre- quent meetings of this assembly under Maximilian who needed grants of money for his ambitious foreign projects. He also established a central court of justice and tried to group the various states of the Empire together in adminis- trative " circles." But these belated symptoms of common action and of a national German feeling were accompanied by the completion in the chief local principalities of the transition from feudalism to centralized administration which had been going on since the twelfth century. Such