PROGRESS IN GERMANY

G1ermany had always embraced a great variety of stocks--Swabians, Bavarians, Franks, Thuringians, Saxons, Burgundians; to these must be added the Slavs of Bohemia, Germanised Slavs in Mecklenburg, in Brandenburg, and in a part of Saxony and Austria; so that no such combination as took place in France was possible. Italy presented a similar state of things. The Lombards had established themselves there, while the Greeks still possessed the exarchate and lower Italy; the Normans too established a kingdom of their own in lower Italy, and the Saracens maintained their ground for a time in Sicily. When the rule of the house of Hohenstaufen was terminated, barbarism got the upper hand throughout Germany; the country being broken up into several sovereignties, in which a forceful despotism prevailed. It was the maxim of the electoral princes to raise only weak princes to the imperial throne; they even sold the imperial dignity to foreigners. Thus the unity of the state was virtually annulled.

2A number of centres of power were formed, each of which was a predatory state; the legal constitution recognised by feudalism was dissolved, and gave place to undisguised violence and plunder; and powerful princes made themselves lords of the country. After the interregnum the count of Habsburg was elected emperor, and the house of Habsburg continued to fill the imperial throne with but little interruption. These emperors were obliged to create a force of their own, as the princes would not grant them an adequate power attached to the empire. But that state of absolute anarchy was at last put an end to by associations having general aims in view.

3In the cities themselves we see associations of a minor order; but now confederations of cities were formed with a common interest in the suppression of predatory violence. Of this kind was the Hanseatic League in the north, the Rhenish League consisting of cities lying along the Rhine, and the Swabian League. The aim of all these confederations was resistance to the feudal lords; and even princes united with the cities, with a view to the subversion of the feudal condition and the restoration of a peaceful state of things throughout the country.

4[Illustration: EARLY CANNON WITH PROTECTED MOUNTING]

5What the state of society was under feudal sovereignty is evident from the notorious association formed for executing criminal justice; it was a private tribunal, which, under the name of the _Vehmgericht_, held secret sittings; its chief seat was the northwest of Germany. A peculiar peasant association was also formed. In Germany the peasants were bondmen; many of them took refuge in the towns, or settled down as freemen in the neighbourhood of the towns (_Pfahlbürger_); but in Switzerland a peasant fraternity was established. The peasants of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden were under imperial governors; for the Swiss governments were not the property of private possessors, but were official appointments of the empire. These the sovereigns of the Habsburg line wished to secure to their own house. The peasants, with club and iron-studded mace (_Morgenstern_), returned victorious from a contest with the haughty steel-clad nobles, armed with spear and sword, and practised in the chivalric encounters of the tournament.