Edward A. Freeman

THE IMPERIAL KINGDOMS.

?The Kingdom of the East-Franks or of Germany.?

The division of 887 parted off from the general mass of the Frankish dominions a distinct Kingdom of the East-Franks, the acknowledged head of the Frankish kingdoms, which, as being distinguished from its fellows as the Regnum Teutonicum, may be best spoken of as a Kingdom of Germany. ?Merging of the Kingdom in the Empire.? But the lasting acquisition of the Italian and Imperial crowns by the German kings, and their later acquisition of the kingdom of Burgundy, gradually tended to obscure the notion of a distinct German kingdom. The idea of the Kingdom was merged in the idea of the Empire of which it formed a part. Later events too tended in the same direction. ?The Emperors lose Italy and Burgundy, but keep Germany.? The Italian kingdom gradually fell off from any practical allegiance to its nominal king the Emperor. So did the greater part of the Burgundian kingdom. Meanwhile, though the powers of the Emperors as German kings were constantly lessening, their authority was never wholly thrown off till the present century. The Emperors in short lost their kingdoms of Italy and Burgundy, and kept their kingdom of Germany. In the fifteenth century the coronation of the Emperor at Rome had become a mere ceremony, carrying with it no real authority in Italy. In the sixteenth century the ceremony itself went out of use. ?Charles the Fourth crowned at Arles, 1365.? The Burgundian coronation at Arles became irregular at a very early time, and it is last heard of in the fourteenth century. ?1792.? But the election of the German kings at Frankfurt, their coronation, in earlier times at Aachen, afterwards at Frankfurt, went on regularly till the last years of the eighteenth century. ?Endurance of the German Diet.? So, while the national assemblies of Italy and Burgundy can hardly be said to have been regularly held at all, while they went altogether out of use at an early time, the national assembly of Germany, in one shape or another, never ceased as long as there was any one calling himself Emperor or German King. The tendency in all three kingdoms was to split up into separate principalities and commonwealths. ?Comparison of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy.? But in Germany the principalities and commonwealths always kept up some show of connexion with one another, some show of allegiance to their Imperial head. In Italy and Burgundy they parted off altogether. Some became absolutely independent; were incorporated with other kingdoms or became their distant dependencies; some were even held by the Emperors themselves in some other character, and not by virtue either of their Empire or of their local kingship. ?The Empire identified with Germany.? Thus, as the Empire became more and more nearly coextensive with the German Kingdom, the distinction between the two was gradually forgotten. The small parts of the other kingdoms which kept any trace of their Imperial allegiance came to be looked on as parts of Germany. ?The Empire becomes a Confederation.? In short, the Western Empire became a German kingdom; or rather it became a German Confederation with a royal head, a confederation which still kept up the forms and titles of the Empire. ?1530.? As no German king received an Imperial coronation after Charles the Fifth, it might in strictness be said that the Empire came to an end at his abdication. ?1556.? And in truth from that date the Empire practically became a purely German power. But, as the Imperial forms and titles still went on, the Western Empire must be looked on as surviving, in the form of a German kingdom or confederation, down to its final fall.

?The German Kingdom represents the Empire.?

The Kingdom of Germany then may be looked on as representing the Western Empire, as being what was left of the Western Empire after the other parts of it had fallen away. But the German kingdom itself underwent, though in a smaller degree, the same fate as the other two Imperial kingdoms. ?Separation of parts of the Kingdom.? While all Italy and all Burgundy, with some very trifling exceptions, fell away from the Empire, the mass of Germany remained Imperial. Still large parts of Germany were lost to the Empire no less than Italy and Burgundy. A considerable territory on the western and south-western frontier of Germany gradually fell away. Part of this territory has grown into independent states; part has been incorporated with the French kingdom. The Swiss Confederation has grown up on lands partly German, partly Burgundian, partly Italian, but of which the oldest and greatest part belonged to the German kingdom. The Confederation of the United Provinces, represented by the modern kingdom of the Netherlands, lay wholly[12] within the old German kingdom: so did by far the greater part of the modern kingdom of Belgium. ?Modern Austria.? In our own day the same tendency has been shewn in south-eastern as well as south-western Germany; several members of the ancient kingdom have fallen away to form part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. ?Extension of Germany to the north-east.? But on the northern and north-eastern frontier the tendency to extension, with some fluctuations, has gone on from the beginning of the kingdom to our own day. ?Geographical contrast of the earlier and later Empire.? This tendency to lose territory to the west and south, and to gain territory to the east and north, had the effect of gradually cutting off the Western Empire, as represented by the German kingdom, from any close geographical connexion with the earlier Empire of which it was the historical continuation. The Holy Roman Empire, at the time of its final fall, contained but little territory which had formed part of the Empire of Trajan. It contained nothing which had formed part of the Empire of Justinian, save some small scraps of territory in the north-eastern corner of the old Italian kingdom.

§ 1. The Kingdom of Germany.

?Change in the geography and nomenclature of Germany.?

In tracing out, for our present purpose, the geographical revolutions of Germany, it will be enough to look at them, as far as may be, mainly in their European aspect. Owing to the gradual way in which the various members of the Empire grew into practical sovereignty—owing to the constant division of principalities among many members of the same family—no country has undergone so many internal geographical changes as Germany has. In few countries also has the nomenclature shifted in a more singular way. ?Ancient and modern Saxony and Bavaria.? To take two obvious examples, the modern kingdom of Saxony has nothing but its name in common with the Saxony which was brought under the Frankish dominion by Charles the Great. The modern kingdom of Bavaria has a considerable territory in common with the ancient Bavaria; but it has gained so much at one end and lost so much at the other that the two cannot be said to be in any practical sense the same country. ?Uses of the name Austria.? The name of Austria has shifted from the eastern part of the old Francia to the German mark against the Magyar, and it has lately wandered altogether beyond the modern German frontier. ?Burgundy.? The name of Burgundy has borne endless meanings, both within the Empire and beyond it. ?Prussia.? Lastly, the ruling state of modern Germany, a state stretching across the whole land from east to west, strangely bears the name of the conquered and extinct Prussian race. Many of these changes affect the history of Europe as well as the history of Germany; but many of the endless changes among the smaller members of the Empire are matters of purely local interest, which belong to the historical geography of Germany only, and which claim no place in the historical geography of Europe. I shall endeavour therefore in the present section, first to trace carefully the shiftings of the German frontier as regards other powers, and then to bring out such, and such only, of the internal changes as have a bearing on the general history of Europe.

?Extent of the Kingdom.?

The extent of the German kingdom as it stood after the division of 887 has been roughly traced already. ?Boundaries under the Ottos, 936-1002.? It will now be well to go over its frontiers somewhat more minutely, as they stood at the time of final separation between the Empire and the West-Frankish kingdom, the time of final union between the Empire and the East-Frankish kingdom. This marks the great age of the Saxon Ottos. ?Boundary towards the West.? The frontier towards the Western kingdom was now fairly ascertained, and it was subject to dispute only at a few points. ?Lotharingia.? It is hardly needful to insist again on the fact that all Lotharingia, in the sense of those days, taking in all the southern Netherlands except the French fief of Flanders, was now Imperial. ?Encroachments of France.? It is along this line that the German border has in later times most largely fallen back. The advance of France has touched Burgundy more than Germany; but it has, first swallowed up, and afterwards partly restored, a considerable part of the German kingdom. ?The Netherlands.? The Netherlands had been practically so cut off from Germany before the annexations of France in that quarter began, that they will be better spoken of in another section. ?Lorraine and Elsass.? The other points at which the frontier has fluctuated on a great scale have been the border land of Lorraine—as distinguished from the Lower Lotharingia which has more to do with the history of the Netherlands—and the Swabian land of Elsass. ?Fluctuations of Bar.? The Duchy of Bar, the borderland of the borderland, fluctuated more than once. ?1473.? After its union with the Duchy of Lorraine, it followed the fortunes of that state. ?The Three Bishoprics, 1552.? In the next century came the annexation of the three Lotharingian bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which gave France three outlying possessions within the geographical borders of the Lotharingian duchy. ?Loss of Austrian Elsass, 1648.? In the next century, as the result of the Thirty Years’ War, France obtained by the Peace of Westfalia the formal cession of these conquests, and also the great advance of her frontier by the dismemberment of Elsass. The cession now made did not take in the whole of Elsass, but only the possessions and rights of the House of Austria in that country. This cession still left both Strassburg and various smaller towns and districts to the Empire; but it naturally opened the way to further French advances in a land where the frontier was so complicated and where difficulties were so easily raised as to treaty-rights. ?Gradual annexation of Elsass, 1679-1789.? A series of annexations, rÉunions as they were called, gradually united nearly all Elsass to France. ?Seizure of Strassburg, 1681.? Strassburg, as all the world knows, was seized by Lewis the Fourteenth in time of peace. ?Seizure of Lorraine, 1678-1697.? During the wars with the same prince, the duchy of Lorraine was seized and restored. ?Its final annexation. 1766.? In the next century it was separated from the Empire to become the life-possession of the Polish king Stanislaus, and on his death it was finally added to France just before a far greater series of French annexations began. ?Loss of the left bank of the Rhine, 1801.? The wars of the French Revolution, confirmed by the Peace of Luneville, tore away from Germany and the Empire all that lay on the left bank of the Rhine. In other words, the Western Francia, the duchy of the lords of Paris, advanced itself to the utmost limits of the Gaul of CÆsar. This was the last annexation of France at the expense of the old German kingdom. ?Dissolution of the Kingdom and Empire, 1806.? It was indeed the main cause of the formal dissolution of the kingdom which happened a few years later. The utter transformation of Germany within and without which now followed must be spoken of at a later stage.

?Frontier of Germany and Burgundy.?

The frontier of Germany and Burgundy, while they still remained distinct kingdoms, fluctuated a good deal, especially in the lands which now form Switzerland. ?Union of Burgundy with the Empire, 1033.? But this frontier ceased to be of any practical importance when the Burgundian kingdom was united with the Empire. The later history of Burgundy, consisting of the gradual incorporation by France of the greater part of the kingdom, and the growth of the remnant into the western cantons of the Swiss Confederation, will be told elsewhere.

?Frontier of Germany and Italy.?

Towards Italy again the frontier was sometimes doubtful. Chiavenna, for instance, sometimes appears in the tenth and eleventh centuries as German; so do the greater districts of Trent, Aquileia, Istria, and even Verona. ?The Marchland.? All these formed a marchland, part of which in the end became definitely attached to Germany and part to Italy. ?Union of the Crowns, 961-1530.
961-1250.? But here again, as long as the German and Italian crowns were united, and as long as their common king kept any real authority in either kingdom, the frontier was of no great practical importance. So in later times, both before and after the dissolution of the German Kingdom, the question has practically been a question between Italy and the House of Austria rather than between Italy and Germany as such. These changes also will better come in another section.

?Eastern and Northern frontiers.?

The case is quite different with regard to the eastern and northern frontiers, on which the really greatest changes took place, and where Germany, as Germany, made its greatest advances. ?Advance of the Empire.? Along this line the Roman Empire and the German Kingdom meant the same thing. On this side the frontier had to be marked, so far as it could be marked, against nations which had had nothing to do with the elder Empire. Here then for many ages the Roman Terminus advanced and fell back according to the accidents of a long warfare.

The whole frontier of the kingdom towards its northern and eastern neighbours was defended by a series of marks or border territories whose rulers were clothed with special powers for the defence and extension of the frontier.[13] They had to guard the realm against the Dane in the north, and against the Slave during the whole remaining length of the eastern frontier, except where, in the last years of the ninth century, the Magyar thrust himself in between the northern and southern Slaves. ?Hungarian frontier.
Mark of Austria.? Here the frontier, as against Hungary and Croatia, was defended by the marks of Krain or Carniola, KÄrnthen or Carinthia, Austrian mark to the north of them. ?Little change on this frontier.? This frontier has changed least of all. It may, without any great breach of accuracy, be said to have remained the same from the days of the Saxon Emperors till now. The part where it was at all fluctuating was along the Austrian mark, rather than along the two marks to the south of it. ?Occasional homage of Hungary to the Emperors.? The Emperors claimed, and sometimes enforced, a feudal superiority over the Hungarian kings. But this kind of precarious submission does not affect geography. Hungary always remained a separate kingdom; the Imperial supremacy was something purely external, and it was always thrown off on the first opportunity.

?Frontier towards Denmark.?

The same may be said of Denmark. For a short time a German mark was formed north of the Eider. ?The Danish Mark, 934-1027.
Boundary of the Eider, 1027-1806.? But, when the Danish kingdom had grown into the Northern Empire of Cnut, the German frontier fell back here also, and the Eider remained the boundary of the Empire till its fall. ?Occasional homage of the Danish Kings.? As with Hungary, so with Denmark; more than one Danish king became the man of CÆsar; but here again the precarious acknowledgement of Imperial supremacy had no effect on geography.

?Slavonic frontier.?

It is in the intermediate lands, along the vast frontier where the Empire marched on the northern Slavonic lands, that the real historical geography of Germany lies for some ages. ?Fluctuation of territory.? Here the boundary was ever fluctuating. ?Extent of the Slaves.? At the time of the division of 887, the Slaves held all east of the Elbe and a good deal to the west. How far they had during the Wandering of the Nations stepped into the place of earlier Teutonic inhabitants is a question which belongs to another field of inquiry. We must here start from the geographical fact that, at the time when the modern states of Europe began to form themselves, the Slaves were actually in possession of the great North-Eastern region of modern Germany. Their special mention will come in their special place; we must here mark that modern Germany has largely formed itself by the gradual conquest and colonization of lands which at the end of the ninth century were Slavonic. The German kingdom spread itself far to the North-East, and German settlements and German influences spread themselves far beyond the formal bounds of the German kingdom. Three special instruments worked together in bringing about this end. The Saxon Dukes came first. In after times came the great league of German cities, the famous Hansa which, like some other bodies originally commercial, became a political power, and which spread German influences over the whole of the shores of the Baltic. Along with them, from the thirteenth century onwards, worked the great military order of the Teutonic knights. Out of their conquests came the first beginnings of the Prussian state, and the extension of German rule and the German speech over much which in modern geography has become Russian. In a history of the German nation all these causes would have to be dealt with together as joint instruments towards the same end. In a purely geographical view the case is different. Some of these influences concern the formation of the actual German kingdom; others have geographically more to do with the group of powers more to the north-east, the Slavonic states of Poland and Russia, and their Lithuanian and Finnish neighbours. The growth and fall of the military orders will therefore most naturally come in another section. We have here to trace out those changes only which helped to give the German kingdom the definite geographical extent which it held for some centuries before its final fall.

?The Saxon Mark.?

Beginning at the north, in the lands where German, Slave, and Dane came into close contact, in Saxony beyond the Elbe, the modern Holstein, the Slaves held the western coast, and the narrow Saxon mark fenced off the German land. ?Mark of the Billungs, 960-1106.? The Saxon dukes of the house of Billung formed a German mark, which took in the lands reaching from the Elbe to the strait which divides the isle of RÜgen from the mainland. But this possession was altogether precarious. ?Its fluctuations.? It again became a Slavonic kingdom; then it was a possession of Denmark; it cannot be looked on as definitely becoming part of the German realm till the thirteenth century. ?Slavonic princes continue in Mecklenburg.? The chief state in these lands which has lasted till later times is the duchy of Mecklenburg, the rulers of which, in its two modern divisions, are the only modern princes who directly represent an old Slavonic royal house. Meanwhile a way was opened for a vast extension of German influence through the whole North, by the growth of the city of LÜbeck. ?Foundation of LÜbeck, 1140-1158.? Twice founded, the second time by Henry the Lion Duke of Saxony, it gradually became the leading member of the great merchant League. ?The Hanse Towns.? To the south of these lands come those Slavonic lands which have grown into the modern kingdom of Saxony and the central parts of the modern kingdom of Prussia. ?Marchlands.? These were specially marchlands, a name which some of them have kept down to our own day. ?Brandenburg.
Lausitz.
Meissen.? The mark of Brandenburg in its various divisions, the mark of Lausitz or Lusatia, where a Slavonic remnant still lingers, and the mark of Meissen, long preserved the memory of the times when these lands, which afterwards came to play so great a part in the internal history of Germany, were still outlying and precarious possessions of the German realm.

To the south-east lay the Bohemian lands, whose history has been somewhat different. ?Bohemia a fief, 928.? The duchy, afterwards kingdom, of Bohemia, became, early in the tenth century, a fief of the German kingdom. ?Becomes a kingdom, 1198.
1003.? From that time ever afterwards, save during one moment of passing Polish annexation, it remained one of its principal members, ruled, as long as the Empire lasted, by princes holding electoral rank. The boundaries of the kingdom itself have hardly varied at all. ?Moravia.
1019.? The dependent marchland of Moravia to the east, the remnant of the great Moravian kingdom whose history will come more fittingly in another chapter, fluctuated for a long while between Hungarian, Polish, and Bohemian supremacy. But from the early part of the eleventh century it remained under Bohemian rule, and therefore under Imperial superiority. ?More distant Slavonic states.? To the east of this nearer zone of Slavonic dependencies, lay another range of Slavonic states, some of which were gradually incorporated with the German kingdom, while others remained distinct down to modern times. ?Pomerania.? Pomerania on the Baltic coast is a name which has often changed both its geographical extent and its political allegiance. The eastern part of the land now so called lay open, as will be hereafter seen, to the occupation of the Pole, and its western part to that of the Dane. ?Native princes go on.? But in the end it took its place on the map in the form of two duchies, ruled, like Mecklenburg, by native princes under Imperial supremacy. ?Polish frontier.? South of Pomerania, the German march bordered on the growing power of Poland, and between Poland and Hungary lay the northern Croatia or Chrobatia. The German supremacy seems sometimes to have been extended as far as the Wartha, and, in the Chrobatian land, even beyond the Vistula. ?Occasional homage of the Polish kings.? But this occupation was quite momentary; Poland grew up, like Hungary, as a kingdom, some of whose dukes and kings admitted the Imperial supremacy, but which gradually became wholly independent. ?Silesia Polish, 999.? The border province of Silesia, after some fluctuations between Bohemia and Poland, became definitely Polish at the end of the tenth century. ?Bohemian, 1289-1327.? Afterwards it was divided into several principalities, whose dukes passed under Bohemian vassalage, and so became members of the Empire. Thus in the course of some ages, a boundary was drawn between Germany and Poland which lasted down to modern times.

?Extension of the Empire to the east.?

The result of this survey is to show how great, and at the same time how gradual, was the extension of the German power eastward. A Roman Empire with a long Baltic coast was something that had never been dreamed of in earlier days. If the extension of the German name was but the recovery of long lost Teutonic lands, the extension to them of the Imperial name which had become identified with Germany was at least wholly new. ?The Slavonic lands Germanized.? In all the lands now annexed, save in a few exceptional districts, German annexation meant German colonization, and the assimilation of the surviving inhabitants to the speech and manners of Germany. Colonists were brought, specially from the Frisian lands, by whose means the Low-Dutch tongue was spread along the whole southern coast of the Baltic. German cities were founded. The marchlands grew into powerful German states. At last one of these marchlands, united with a German conquest still further cut off from the heart of the old German realm, has grown into a state which in our own days has become the Imperial power of Germany.

?Internal geography of Germany.?

The internal geography of the German kingdom is the greatest difficulty of such a work as the present. To trace the boundaries of the kingdom as against other kingdoms is comparatively easy; but to trace out the endless shiftings, the unions and the divisions, of the countless small principalities and commonwealths which arose within the kingdom, would be a hopeless attempt. ?Growth of the principalities.? Still the growth of the dukes, counts, and other princes of Germany into independent sovereigns is the great feature of German history, as the consequent wiping out of old divisions, and shifting to and fro of old names, is the special feature of German historical geography. ?Changes in nomenclature.? The dying out of the old names has a historical interest, and the growth of the new powers which have supplanted them has both an historical and a political interest. ?Origin of Prussia and Austria.? It is specially important to mark how the two powers which have stood at the head of Germany in modern times in no way represent any of the old divisions of the German name. They have grown out of the outlying marks planted against the Slave and the Magyar. The mark of Brandenburg, the mark against the Slave, has grown into the kingdom of Prussia, the Imperial state of Germany in its latest form. The Eastern mark, the mark against the Magyar, has grown into the archduchy which gave Germany so many kings, into the so-called Austrian ‘empire,’ into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of our own day. ?Analogies between Brandenburg and other marchlands.? The growth of Brandenburg or Prussia again affords an instructive comparison with the growth of Wessex in England, of France in Gaul, and of Castile in Spain. In all these cases alike, it has been a marchland which has come to the front and has become the head of the united nation.

?The great Duchies under the Saxon and Frankish Kings, 919-1125.?

Starting from the division of 887, we shall find several important landmarks in the history of the German kingdom which may help us in this most difficult part of our work. Under the Saxon and Frankish kings we see the great duchies still forming the main divisions, while the kingdom is enlarged by Slavonic conquests to the east and by the definite adhesion of Lotharingia to the west. ?Decline of the Duchies under the Swabian Kings, 1137-1254.? Under the Swabian kings we see the break-up of the great duchies. In the partition of Saxony the process which was everywhere silently and gradually at work was formally carried out in the greatest case of all by Imperial, and national authority. ?End of the Gauverfassung.
Growth of territorial Principalities.? The Gauverfassung, the immemorial system of Teutonic communities, now finally changes into a system of territorial principalities, broken only by the many free cities and the few free districts which owned no lord but the King. ?Growth of the march powers. 1254-1512.? During this period too we see the beginnings of some of the powers which became chief at a later day, the powers of the eastern marchland, Brandenburg, Austria, Saxony in the later sense. The time from the so-called Interregnum to the legislation under Maximilian is marked by the further growth of these powers. ?Growth of the House of Austria.? It is further marked by the beginning of that connexion of the Austrian duchy, and of the Imperial crown itself, with lands beyond the bounds of the Kingdom and the Empire which led in the end to the special and anomalous position of the House of Austria as an European power. ?Separation of Switzerland, 1495-1648.
Of the Netherlands, 1430-1648.? During the same period comes the practical separation of Switzerland and the Netherlands from the German kingdom. In short it was during this age that Germany in its later aspect was formed. ?Legislation under Maximilian, 1495-1512.? The legislation of Maximilian’s reign, the attempts then made to bring the kingdom to a greater degree of unity, have left their mark on geography in the division of Germany into circles. ?Division into circles, 1500-1512.? This division, though it was not perfectly complete, though it did not extend to every corner of the kingdom, was strictly an administrative division of the kingdom itself as such; but the mapping out of the circles, the difference of which in point of size is remarkable, was itself affected by the geographical extent of the dominions of the princes who held lands within them. ?Thirty Years’ War, 1618-1648.? The seventeenth century is marked by the results of the Thirty Years’ War and of other changes. ?Powers holding lands within and without Germany.? Its most important geographical result was to carry on the process which had begun with the Austrian House, the formation of powers holding lands both within and without the Empire. ?Austria.
Sweden.
Union of Brandenburg and Prussia.? Thus, beside the union of the Hungarian kingdom with the Austrian archduchy, the King of Sweden now held lands as a prince of the Empire, and the same result was brought about in another way by the union of the Electorate of Brandenburg with the Duchy of Prussia. ?Rivalry of Prussia and Austria.? This, and other accessions of territory, now made Brandenburg as distinctly the first power of northern Germany as Austria was of southern Germany, and in the eighteenth century the rivalry of these two powers becomes the chief centre, not only of German but of European politics. ?Hannover and Great Britain, 1715.? The union of the Electorate of Hannover under the same sovereign with the kingdom of Great Britain further increased the number of princes ruling both within Germany and without it. ?Dissolution of the Kingdom, 1806.? Lastly, the wars of the latter years of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century led to the dissolution alike of the German kingdom and of the Roman Empire. ?The German Confederation, 1815-1866.? Then, after a time of confusion and foreign occupation, comes the formation of a Confederation with boundaries nearly the same as the later boundaries of the kingdom. But the Confederation now appears as something quite subordinate to its two leading members. ?Austria and Prussia greater than the Confederation.? Germany, as such, no longer counts as a great European power, but Prussia and Austria, the two chief holders at once of German and of non-German lands, stand forth among the chief bearers of European rank. ?The new Confederation and Empire, 1866-1870.? Lastly, the changes of our own day have given us an Imperial Germany with geographical boundaries altogether new, a Germany from which the south-eastern German lands are cut off, while the Polish and other non-German possessions of Prussia to the north-east have become an integral part of the new Empire. The task of the geographer is thereby greatly simplified. Down to the last changes, one of his greatest difficulties is to make his map show with any clearness what was the extent of the German Kingdom or Confederation, and at the same time what was the extent of the dominions of those princes who held lands both in Germany and out of it. By the last arrangements this difficulty at least is altogether taken away.

?Germany under the Saxon and Frankish Empire.?

If we look at the map of Germany under the Saxon and Frankish Kings, we see that the old names, marking the great divisions of the German people, still keep their predominance. ?The great Duchies.? The kingdom is still made up of the four great duchies, the Eastern Francia, Saxony, Alemannia, and Bavaria, together with the great border-land of Lotharingia. These are still the great duchies, to which all smaller divisions are subordinate. ?Eastern Francia cut off from extension.? Among these, the kernel of the kingdom, the Eastern Francia, is the only one whose boundaries had little or no chance of being extended or lessened at the cost of foreign powers. It had the smallest possible frontier towards the Slave. ?Frontier position of Saxony, Bavaria, and Alemannia.? On the other hand, Saxony has an ever fluctuating boundary against the Slave and the Dane; Bavaria marches upon the Slave, the Magyar, and the Kingdom of Italy, while Alemannia has a shifting frontier towards both Burgundy and Italy. ?Exposed position of Lotharingia and Burgundy.? Lotharingia, and Burgundy after its annexation, are the lands which lie exposed to aggression from the West. ?Vanishing of Francia.? It is perhaps for this very reason that, of the four duchies which preserve the names of the four great divisions of the German nation, the Eastern Francia is the one which has most utterly vanished from the modern map and from modern memory. Another cause may have strengthened its tendency to vanish. The policy of the kings forbade that the Frankish duchy should become the abiding heritage of any princely family. ?Its ecclesiastical Dukes.? The ducal title of the Eastern Francia was at two periods of its history borne by ecclesiastical princes in the persons of the Bishops of WÜrzburg; but it never gave its name, like Saxony and Bavaria, to any ruling house. ?Analogy with Wessex.? The English student will notice the analogy by which, among all the ancient English kingdoms, Wessex, the cradle of the English monarchy, is the one whose name has most utterly vanished from modern memory.

The only way to grasp the endless shiftings and divisions of the German principalities, so as to give anything like a clear general view, will be to take the great duchies, and to point out in a general way the steps by which they split asunder, and the chief states of any historical importance which rose out of their divisions. ?Growth of new powers in the twelfth century.? Most of these new powers begin to be of importance in the twelfth century, a time which is specially marked as the Æra when those two states which have had most to do with the making or unmaking of modern Germany begin to find their place in history. ?Brandenburg and Austria.? It is then that the two great marchlands of Brandenburg and Austria begin to take their place among the leading powers of the German kingdom. ?The Circles.? And, in making this survey, it will be well to bear in mind the much later division into circles. The circles, an attempt to create administrative divisions of the kingdom as such, were, in a faint way, a return to the ancient duchies, the names of which were to some extent retained. Thus we have the two Saxon circles, Upper and Lower, and the three of Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria. All of these keep up the names of ancient duchies, and most of them keep up a stronger or fainter geographical connexion with the ancient lands whose names they bore. The other circles, the two Rhenish circles, Upper and Lower, and those of Westfalia, Austria, and Burgundy—the last name being used in a sense altogether new—arose out of changes which took place between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, some of which we shall have to notice.

?Saxony; its three divisions, Westfalia, Angria, Eastfalia.?

First then, the great duchy of Saxony consisted of three main divisions, Westfalia, Engern or Angria, and Eastfalia. Thuringia to the south-east, and the Frisian lands to the north-west, may be looked on as in some sort appendages to the Saxon duchy. ?Growth of Saxony at the expense of the Slaves.? The duchy was also capable of any amount of extension towards the east, and the lands gradually won from the Wends on this side were all looked on as additions made to the Saxon territory. ?Break-up of the Duchy, 1182-1191.? But the great Saxon duchy was broken up at the fall of Henry the Lion. ?Duchy of Westfalia.? The archiepiscopal Electors of KÖln received the title of Dukes of Westfalia and Engern. But in the greater part of those districts the grant remained merely nominal, though the ducal title, with a small actual Westfalian duchy, remained to the electorate till the end. From these lands the Saxon name may be looked on as having altogether passed away. ?New use of the name Saxony.? The name of Saxony, as a geographical expression, clave to the Eastfalian remnant of the old duchy, and to Thuringia and the Slavonic conquests to the east. ?The Saxon Circles.? In the later division of Germany these lands formed the two circles of Upper and Lower Saxony; and it was within their limits that the various states arose which have kept on the Saxon name to our own time.

From the descendants of Henry the Lion himself, and from the allodial lands which they kept, the Saxon name passed away, except so far as they became part of the Lower-Saxon circle. ?Duchy of Brunswick.? They held their place as princes of the Empire, no longer as Dukes of Saxony, but as Dukes of Brunswick, a house which gave Rome one Emperor and England a dynasty of kings. ?Its division, 1203.
LÜneburg and WolfenbÜttel.? After some of the usual divisions, two Brunswick principalities finally took their place on the map, those of LÜneburg and WolfenbÜttel, the latter having the town of Brunswick for its capital. The LÜneburg duchy grew. ?LÜneburg acquires the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, 1715-1719.? Late in the seventeenth century it was raised to the electoral rank, and early in the next century it was finally enlarged by the acquisition of the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden. ?Electorate of Hannover or Brunswick LÜneburg, 1692.? Thus was formed the Electorate, and afterwards Kingdom, of Hannover, while the simple ducal title remained with the Brunswick princes of the other line.

The Saxon name itself withdrew in the end from the old Saxony to the lands conquered from the Slave. ?Bernhard duke of Saxony, 1180-1212.? On the fall of Henry the Lion, the duchy of Saxony, cut short by the grant to the archbishops of KÖln, was granted to Bernhard of Ballensted, the founder of the Ascanian House. ?Sachsen-Lauenburg.? Of the older Saxon land his house kept only for a while the small district north of the Elbe which kept the name of Sachsen-Lauenburg, and which in the end became part of the Hannover electorate. ?1423.? But it was in Thuringia and the conquered Slavonic lands to the east of Thuringia that a new Saxony arose, which kept on somewhat of the European position of the Saxon name down to modern times. This new Saxony, with Wittenberg for its capital, grew, through the addition of Thuringia and Meissen, into the Saxon Electorate which played so great a part during the three last centuries of the existence of the German kingdom. ?Divisions and unions.? But in Saxony too the usual divisions took place. Lauenburg parted off; so did the smaller duchies which still keep the Saxon name. ?1547.? The ducal and electoral dignities were divided, till the two, united under the famous Maurice, formed the Saxon electorate as it stood at the dissolution of the kingdom. It was in short a new state, one which had succeeded to the name, but which could in no other way be thought to represent, the Saxony whose conquest cost so many campaigns to Charles the Great.

Another power which arose in the marchland of Saxon and Slave, to the north of Saxony in the later sense, was the land known specially as the Mark, the groundwork of the power which has in our own day risen to the head of Germany. The North Mark of Saxony became the Mark of Brandenburg. ?Reign of Albert the Bear, 1134-1170.? In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under Albert the Bear and his house, the Mark greatly extended itself at the expense of the Slaves. ?Union with Bohemia, 1373-1415.
House of Hohenzollern, 1415.? United for a time with the kingdom of Bohemia, it passed into the house of the Burgraves of NÜrnberg, that House of Hohenzollern which has grown step by step till it has reached Imperial rank in our own day. The power thus formed presently acquired a special character by the acquisition of what may be called a German land out of Germany, a land which gave them in the end a higher title, and which by its geographical position led irresistibly to a further increase of territory. ?Union of Brandenburg and Prussia, 1611-1618.? Early in the seventeenth century the Electors of Brandenburg acquired by inheritance the Duchy of Prussia, that is merely Eastern Prussia, a fief, not of the Empire but of the crown of Poland, and which lay geographically apart from their strictly German dominions. ?Prussia independent of Poland, 1656; becomes kingdom, 1701.? The common sovereign of Brandenburg and Prussia was thus the man of two lords; but the Great Elector Frederick William became a wholly independent sovereign in his duchy, and his son Frederick took on himself the kingly title for the land which was thus freed from all homage. Both before and after the union with Prussia, the Electors of Brandenburg continued largely to increase their German dominions. ?1523-1623.? A temporary possession of the principality of JÄgerndorf in Silesia, unimportant in itself, led to great events in later times. ?Westfalian possessions of Brandenburg, 1614-1666.
1702-1744.? The acquisition, at various times in the seventeenth century, of Cleve and other outlying Westfalian lands, which were further increased in the next century, led in the same way to the modern dominion of Prussia in western Germany. ?Acquisitions in Pomerania, 1638-1648.
1713-1719.? But the most solid acquisition of Brandenburg in this age was that of Eastern Pomerania, to which the town of Stettin, with a further increase of territory, was added after the wars of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. The events of the Thirty Years’ War also increased the dominions both of Brandenburg and Saxony at the expense of the neighbouring ecclesiastical princes. ?Later acquisitions of Prussia.? The later acquisitions of the House of Hohenzollern, after the Electors of Brandenburg had taken the kingly title from their Prussian duchy, concern Prussia as an European power at least as much as they concern Brandenburg as a German power. ?German character of the Prussian Monarchy.? Yet their proper place comes in the history of Germany. Unlike the other princes who held lands within and without the German kingdom, the Kings of Prussia and Electors of Brandenburg have remained essentially German princes. Their acquisitions of territory out of Germany have all been in fact enlargements, if not of the soil of Germany, at least of the sphere of German influence. And, at last, in marked contrast to the fate of the rival House of Austria, the whole Prussian dominions have been incorporated with the new German Empire, and form the immediate dominion of its Imperial head. ?Spread of the name of Prussia.? The outward sign of this change, the outward sign of the special position of Brandenburg, as compared with Holstein or Austria, is the strange spread of the name of Prussia over the German dominions of the King of Prussia. No such spread has taken place with the name of Denmark or of Hungary.

Within Germany the greatest enlargement of the dominion of Prussia—as we may now begin to call it instead of Brandenburg—was the acquisition of by far the greater part of Schlesien or Silesia, hitherto part of the Bohemian lands, and then held by the House of Austria. This, it should be noted, was an acquisition which could hardly fail to lead to further acquisitions. ?Geographical character of the Prussian dominions.? The geographical characteristic of the Prussian dominions was the way in which they lay in detached pieces, and the enormous extent of frontier as compared with the area of the country. The kingdom itself lay detached, hemmed in and intersected by the territory of Poland. The electorate, with the Pomeranian territory, formed a somewhat more compact mass; but even this had a very large frontier compared with its area. The Westfalian possessions, the district of Cottbus, and other outlying dominions, lay quite apart. The addition of Silesia increased this characteristic yet further. ?Position of Silesia.? The newly won duchy, barely joining the electorate, ran out as a kind of peninsula between Saxony, Bohemia, and Poland. Silesia, first as a Polish and then as a Bohemian fief, had formed part of a fairly compact geographical mass; as part of the same dominion with Prussia and Brandenburg, it was an all but isolated land with an enormous frontier. ?Acquisitions from Poland, 1772-1795.? The details of the Polish acquisitions of Prussia will be best given in our survey of Poland. ?Their geographical character.? But it should be noted that each of the portions of territory which were added to Prussia by the several partitions has a geographical character of its own. ?1772.? The addition of West-Prussia—that is the geographical union of the kingdom and the electorate—was something which could not fail in the nature of things to come sooner or later. ?1793.? The second addition of South-Prussia might seem geographically needed in order to leave Silesia no longer peninsular. ?1795.? The last, and most short-lived addition of New-East-Prussia had no such geographical necessity as the other two. Still it helped to give greater compactness to the kingdom, and to lessen its frontier in comparison with its area.

Another acquisition of the House of Hohenzollern during the eighteenth century, though temporary, deserves a passing notice. ?East-Friesland, 1744.? Among its Westfalian annexations was East-Friesland. The King of Prussia thus became, during the last half of the eighteenth century, an oceanic potentate, a character which he presently lost, and which, save for a moment in the days of confusion, he obtained again only in our own day.

A large part of Saxony, both in the older and in the later sense, thus came to form part of a dominion containing both German and non-German lands, but in which the German character was in every way predominant. Other parts of Saxony in the same extended sense also came to form part of the dominions of princes who ruled both in and out of Germany, but in whom the non-German character was yet more predominant. ?Holstein:? The old Saxony beyond the Elbe, the modern Holstein, passed into the hands of the Danish Kings. ?its relation to Sleswick.? Its shifting relations towards Denmark and Germany and towards the neighbouring land of Sleswick, as having become matter of international dispute between Denmark and Germany, will be best spoken of when we come to deal with Denmark. The events of the Thirty Years’ War also made the Swedish kings for a while considerable potentates in northern Germany. ?German territories of Sweden, 1648-1815.? The Peace of Westfalia confirmed to them Western Pomerania and the town of Wismar on the Baltic, and the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden which gave them an oceanic coast. ?1720.? But these last lands were, as we have seen afterwards, ceded to Hannover, and the Pomeranian possessions of Sweden were also cut short by cession to Brandenburg. But the possession of Wismar and a part of Pomerania still gave the Swedish kings a position as German princes down to the dissolution of the Empire.

These are the chief powers which rose to historical importance within the bounds of Saxony, in the widest sense of that word. To trace every division and union which created or extinguished any of the smaller principalities, or even to mark every minute change of frontier among the greater powers, would be impossible. ?Free cities of Saxony.
The Hanse Towns.? But it must be further remembered that the Saxon circles were the seats of some of the greatest of the free cities of Germany, the leading members of the Hanseatic League. In the growth of German commerce the Rhenish lands took the lead, and, in the earliest days of the Hansa, KÖln held the first place among its cities. ?LÜbeck, Bremen, Hamburg.? The pre-eminence afterwards passed to havens nearer to the Ocean and the Baltic, where, among a crowd of others, the Imperial cities of LÜbeck and Bremen stand out foremost, and with them Hamburg, a rival which has in later times outstripped them. And at this point it may be noticed that LÜbeck and Bremen specially illustrate a law which extended to many other of the episcopal cities of Germany. ?The cities and the bishoprics.? The Bishop became a prince, and held a greater or smaller extent of territory in temporal sovereignty. But the city which contained his see remained independent of him in temporal things, and knew him only as its spiritual shepherd. Such were the archbishopric of Bremen and the bishopric of LÜbeck, principalities which, after the change of religion, passed into secular hands. Thus we have seen the archbishopric of Bremen pass, first to Sweden, and then to Hannover. But the two cities always remained independent commonwealths, owning no superior but the Emperor.

The next among the great duchies, that of Eastern Francia, Franken, or Franconia, is of much less importance in European history than that of Saxony. ?Bishops of WÜrzburg Dukes.? It gave the ducal title to the Bishops of WÜrzburg; but it cannot be said to be in any sense continued in any modern state. ?Extent of the Circle.? Its name gradually retreated, and the circle of Franken or Franconia took in only the most eastern part of the ancient duchy. ?The Rhenish Circles.? The western and northern part of the duchy, together with a good deal of territory which was strictly Lotharingian, became part of the two Rhenish circles. Thus Fulda, the greatest of German abbeys, passed away from the Frankish name. In north-eastern Francia, the Hessian principalities grew up to the north-west. Within the Franconian circle lay WÜrzburg, the see of the bishops who bore the ducal title, the other great bishopric of Bamberg, together with the free city of NÜrnberg, and various smaller principalities. ?Ecclesiastical States on the Rhine.? In the Rhenish lands, both within and without the old Francia, one chief characteristic is the predominance of the ecclesiastical principalities, Mainz, KÖln, Worms, Speyer, and Strassburg. The chief temporal power which arose in this region was the Palatinate of the Rhine, a power which, like others, went through many unions and divisions, and spread into four circles, those of Upper and Lower Rhine, Westfalia, and Bavaria. ?Bavaria.? This last district, though united with the Palatine Electorate, was, from the early part of the fourteenth century, distinguished from the Palatinate of the Rhine as the Oberpfalz or Upper Palatinate. To the south of it lay the Bavarian principalities. These, united into a single duchy, formed the power which grew into the modern kingdom. But neither this duchy nor the whole Bavarian circle at all reached to the extent of the ancient Bavaria which bordered on Italy. ?Shiftings between Bavaria and the Palatinate, 1623.
Electorate of Bavaria, 1648.? The early stages of the Thirty Years’ War gave the Rhenish Palatinate, with its electoral rights, to Bavaria; the Peace of Westfalia restored the Palatinate, leaving Bavaria as a new electorate. ?Union of the two, 1777.? Late in the eighteenth century, Bavaria itself passed to the Elector Palatine, thus forming what may be called modern Bavaria with its outlying Rhenish lands. ?Cession to Austria, 1778.? This acquisition was at the same time partly balanced by the cession to Austria of the lands east of the Inn, known as the Innviertel. ?Archbishopric of Salzburg.? The other chief state within the Bavarian circle was the great ecclesiastical principality of the archbishops of Salzburg in the extreme south-east.

The old Lotharingian divisions, as we see them in the time of the great duchies, utterly died out. ?Lower Lotharingia.? The states which arose in the Lower Lotharingia are among those which silently fell off from the German Kingdom to take a special position under the name of the Netherlands. ?Duchy of Lothringen or Lorraine.? The special duchy of Lothringen or Lorraine was held to belong to the circle of Upper Rhine. ?Elsass.? Elsass also formed part of the same circle, the circle which was specially cut short by the encroachments of France. ?Circle of Swabia.? The Swabian circle answered more nearly than most of the new divisions to the old Swabian duchy, as that duchy stood without counting the marchland of Elsass. No part of Germany was more cut up into small states than the old land of the Hohenstaufen. A crowd of principalities, secular and ecclesiastical, among them the lesser principalities of the Hohenzollern House, of free cities, and of outlying possessions of the houses of Austria made up the main part of the circle. ?Ecclesiastical towns of Swabia.? Strassburg, Augsburg, Constanz, St. Gallen, Chur, ZÜrich, are among the great bishoprics and other ecclesiastical foundations of the old Swabia. ?Part of Swabia becomes Switzerland.? But, as I shall show more fully in another section, large districts in the south-east, those which formed the Old League of High Germany, had practically fallen away from the kingdom before the new division was made, and were therefore never reckoned in any circle. ?Baden.
WÜrttemberg.? Two Swabian principalities, the mark of Baden, and WÜrttemberg, first county and then duchy, came gradually to the first place in this region. As such they still remain, preserving in some sort a divided representation of the old Swabia.

Two important parts of the old kingdom, two circles of the division of Maximilian, still remain. These are the lands which form the circles of Burgundy and Austria. These are lands which have, in earlier or later times, wholly fallen off from the German Kingdom. ?Circle of Austria.? The Austrian circle was formed of the lands in southern Germany which gradually gathered in the hands of the second Austrian dynasty, the House of Habsburg. ?Growth of the House of Austria.? Starting from the original mark on the Hungarian frontier, those lands grew, first into a great German, and then into a great European, power, and the latest changes have made even their German lands politically non-German. The growth of the Austrian House will therefore be properly dealt with in a separate section. ?Extent of its German lands.? It is enough to say here that the Austrian dominion in Germany gradually took in, besides the original duchy, the south-eastern duchies of Steiermark or Styria, KÄrnthen or Carinthia, and Krain or Carniola, with the Italian borderlands of GÖrz, Aquileia, and part of Istria. ?Tyrol.? Joined to these by a kind of geographical isthmus, like that which joins Silesia and Brandenburg, lay the western possessions of the house, the Bavarian county of Tyrol and various outlying strips and points of lands in Swabia and Elsass. ?Loss of Swabian lands.? The growth of the Confederates cut short the Swabian possessions of Austria, as the later cession to France cut short its Alsatian possessions. Still a Swabian remnant remained down to the dissolution of the Kingdom. ?Bohemia and its dependencies.? The kingdom of Bohemia, with the dependent lands of Moravia and Silesia, though held by the Archdukes of Austria and giving them electoral rank, was not included in any German circle. ?Trent and Brixen.? The Austrian circle moreover was not wholly made up of the dominions of the Austrian house; besides some smaller territories it also took in the bishoprics of Trent and Brixen on the debateable frontier of Italy and old Bavaria.

The Burgundian circle was the last and the strangest use of the Burgundian name. ?Dominion of the Valois Dukes within the Empire.? It consisted of those parts of the dominions of the Dukes of Burgundy of the House of Valois which remained to their descendants of the House of Austria at the time of the division into circles. These did not all lie strictly within the boundaries of the German kingdom. ?The Imperial Netherlands.? Within that kingdom indeed lay the Northern Netherlands, the Frisian lands of Holland, Zealand, and West-Friesland, as also Brabant and other Lotharingian lands. ?County of Burgundy.? But the circle also took in the County of Burgundy or Franche ComtÉ, part of the old kingdom of Burgundy, and lastly Flanders and Artois, lands beyond the bounds of the Empire. ?Flanders and Artois released from homage to France, 1526.? These were fiefs of France which were released from their homage to that crown by the treaty between Charles the Fifth and Francis the First of France. The Burgundian circle thus took in all the Imperial fiefs of the Valois dukes, together with a small part of their French fiefs. As all, or nearly all, of these lands altogether fell away from the German kingdom, and as those parts of them which now form the two kingdoms of the Low Countries have a certain historical being of their own, it will be well to keep their more detailed mention also for a special section.

§ 2. The Confederation and Empire of Germany.

Our survey in the last section has carried us down to the beginning of the changes which led to the break-up of the old German Kingdom. Germany is the only land in history which has changed from a kingdom to a confederation. ?Sketch of the process, 1806-1815.? The tie which bound the vassal princes to the king became so lax that it was at last thrown off altogether. In this process foreign invasion largely helped. Between the two processes of foreign war and domestic disintegration, a chaotic time followed, in which boundaries were ever shifting and new states were ever rising and falling. ?The German Bund, 1815.? In the end, nearly all the lands which had formed the old kingdom came together again, with new names and boundaries, as members of a lax Confederation. ?The new Confederation and Empire, 1866-1871.? The latest events of all have driven the former chief of the Confederation beyond its boundaries; they have joined its other members together by a much closer tie; they have raised the second member of the former Confederation to the post of perpetual chief of the new Confederation, and they have further clothed him with the Imperial title. ?The new Empire still federal.? But it must be remembered that the modern Empire of Germany is still a Federal state. Its chief bears the title of Emperor; still the relation is federal and not feudal. The lesser members of the Empire are not vassals of the Emperor, as they were in the days of the old kingdom. They are states bound to him and to one another by a tie which is purely federal. That the state whose prince holds Imperial rank far surpasses any of its other members in extent and power is an important political fact; but it does not touch the federal position of all the states of the Empire, great and small. Reuss-Schleiz is not a vassal of Prussia; it is a member of a league in which the voice of Prussia naturally goes for more than the voice of Reuss-Schleiz. ?Wars of the French Revolution, 1793-1814.? The dissolution of the German kingdom, and with it the wiping out of the last tradition of the Roman Empire, cannot be separated from the history of wars of the French Revolution which went before it, and which indeed led to it. For our purely geographical purpose, we must distinguish the changes which directly affected the German kingdom from those which affected the Austrian states, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, lands which have now a separate historic being from Germany. ?War between France and the Empire, 1793-1801.? The last war which the Empire as such waged with France was the eight years’ war which was ended by the Peace of Luneville. ?The left bank of the Rhine ceded by the Peace of Luneville, 1801.? By that peace, all Germany on the left bank on the Rhine was ceded to France. What a sacrifice this was we at once see, when we bear in mind that it took in the three metropolitan cities of KÖln, Mainz, and Trier, the royal city of Aachen, and the famous bishoprics of Worms and Speyer. ?The Reichs­deputations­haupt­schluss, 1803.? A number of princes thus lost all or part of their dominions, and it was presently agreed that they should compensate themselves within the lands which remained to the kingdom at the expense of the free cities and the ecclesiastical princes. ?End of the Ecclesiastical principalities.? The great German hierarchy of princely bishops and abbots now came to an end, with a solitary exception. ?The Prince-Primate of Regensburg.? As the ancient metropolis of Mainz had passed to France, the see of its archbishop was removed to Regensburg, where, under the title of Prince-Primate, he remained an Elector and Arch-Chancellor of the Empire. ?Salzburg a secular electorate.? Salzburg became a secular electorate. ?The Free Cities.? The other ecclesiastical states were annexed by the neighbouring princes, and of the free cities six only were left. These were the Hanseatic towns of LÜbeck, Bremen, and Hamburg, and the inland towns of Frankfurt, NÜrnberg, and Augsburg. ?New Electorates.? Besides Salzburg, three new Electorates arose, WÜrttemberg, Baden, and Hessen-Cassel. None of these new Electors ever chose any King or Emperor. ?Peace of Pressburg, 1805.
Kingdom of WÜrttemberg and Bavaria.? The next war led to the Peace of Pressburg, in which the Electors of Bavaria, WÜrttemberg, and Baden appear as allies of France, and by which those of Bavaria and WÜrttemberg are acknowledged as Kings. ?They divide the western lands of Austria.? Austria was now wholly cut off from south-western Germany. WÜrttemberg and Baden divided her Swabian possessions, while Tyrol, Trent, Brixen, together with the free city of Augsburg, fell to the lot of Bavaria. ?Grand Duchy of WÜrzburg.? Austria received Salzburg; its prince removed himself and his electorate to WÜrzburg, and a Grand Duchy of WÜrzburg was formed to compensate its Elector.

These were the last changes which took place while any shadow of the old Kingdom and Empire lasted. ?Title of ‘Emperor of Austria.’? The reigning King of Germany and Emperor-elect, Francis King of Hungary and Bohemia and Archduke of Austria, had already begun to call himself ‘Hereditary Emperor of Austria.’ In the treaty of Pressburg he is described by the strange title, unheard of before or after, of ‘Emperor of Germany and Austria,’ and the Empire itself is spoken of as a ‘Germanic Confederation.’ These formulÆ were prophetic. ?The Confederation of the Rhine, July 12, 1806.? The next year a crowd of princes renounced their allegiance, and formed themselves into the Confederation of the Rhine under the protectorate of France. ?Dissolution of the Empire, August 6, 1806.? The formal dissolution of the Empire followed at once. The succession which had gone on from Augustus ended; the work of Charles the Great was undone. Instead of the Frank ruling over Gaul, the Frenchman ruled over Germany. ?Repeated changes, 1806-1811.? A time of confusion followed, in which boundaries were constantly shifting, states were constantly rising and falling, and new portions of German ground were being constantly added to France. ?Germany in 1811-1813.? At the time of the greatest extent of French dominion, the political state of Germany was on this wise. ?Territories of Denmark and Sweden.? The dissolution of the Empire had released all its members from their allegiance, and the German possessions of the Kings of Denmark and Sweden had been incorporated with their several kingdoms. ?Losses of Prussia and Austria.? Hannover was wholly lost to its island sovereign; seized and lost again more than once by Prussia and by France, it passed at last wholly into the hands of the foreign power. Prussia had lost, not only its momentary possession of Hannover, but also everything west of the Elbe. Austria had yielded Salzburg to Bavaria, and part of her own south-western territory in Krain and KÄrnthen had passed to France under the name of the Illyrian Provinces. ?Annexations to France.? France too, beside all the lands west of the Rhine, had incorporated East Friesland, Oldenburg, part of Hannover, and the three Hanseatic cities. ?Confederation of the Rhine.? The remaining states of Germany formed the Confederation of the Rhine. The chief among these were the four Kingdoms of Bavaria, WÜrttemberg, Saxony, and Westfalia. ?Kingdoms of Saxony and Westfalia.? Saxony had become a kingdom under its own Elector presently after the dissolution of the Empire: the new-made kingdom of Westfalia had a French king in Jerome Buonaparte. ?Grand Duchy of Frankfurt.? Besides Mecklenburg, Baden—now a Grand Duchy—Berg, Nassau, Hessen, and other smaller states, there were now among its members the Grand Duchy of WÜrzburg, and also a Grand Duchy of Frankfurt, the possession of the Prince Primate, once of Mainz, afterwards of Regensburg. ?Germany wiped out.? We may say with truth that during this time Germany had ceased to exist; its very name had vanished from the map of Europe.

Prussia was a power so thoroughly German that the fate even of its non-German possessions cannot well be separated from German geography. ?The Kingdom of Prussia cut short, 1807.? The same blow which cut short the old electorate of Brandenburg no less cut short the kingdom of Prussia in its Polish acquisitions. ?Commonwealth of Danzig.? West-Prussia only was left, and even here Danzig was cut off to form a separate republic. ?Duchy of Warsaw, 1806-1814.? The other Polish territories of Prussia formed the Duchy of Warsaw, which was held by the new King of Saxony. ?Position of Silesia.? Silesia thus fell back again on its half-isolated position, all the more so as it lay between the German and the Polish possessions of the Saxon king. The territory left to Prussia was now wholly continuous, without any outlying possessions; but the length of its frontier and the strange irregularity of its shape on the map were now more striking than ever.

The liberation of Germany and the fall of Buonaparte brought with it a complete reconstruction of the German territory. ?The German Confederation, 1815.? Germany again arose, no longer as an Empire or Kingdom, but as a lax Confederation. Austria, the duchy whose princes had been so often chosen Emperors, became its presiding state. The boundaries of the new Confederation differed but slightly from those of the old Kingdom; but the internal divisions had greatly changed. ?Princes holding lands both within the Confederation and out of it.? Once more a number of princes held lands both in Germany and out of it. The so-called ‘Emperor’ of Austria, the Kings of Prussia, Denmark, and the Netherlands, became members of the Confederation for those parts of their dominions which had formerly been states of the Empire. In the like sort, the King of Great Britain and Ireland, having recovered his continental dominions, entered the Confederation by the title of King of Hannover. ?Kingdom of Hannover, 1815-1866.? This new kingdom was made up of the former electorate with some additions, including East-Friesland. ?Increase of the Prussian territory.
Dismemberment of Saxony.? In other parts the Prussian territories were largely increased. Magdeburg and Halberstadt were recovered. Swedish Pomerania was added to the rest of the ancient duchy; and, more important than this, a large part of the kingdom of Saxony, including the greater part of Lausitz and the formerly outlying-land of Cottbus, was incorporated with Prussia. This change, which made the Saxon kingdom far smaller than the old electorate, altogether put an end to the peninsular position of Silesia, even as regarded the strictly German possessions of Prussia. ?Posen.? The kingdom was at the same time rendered more compact by the recovery of part of its Polish possessions under the name of the Grand Duchy of Posen. In western Germany again Prussia now made great acquisitions. ?Rhenish and Westfalian territory.? Its old outlying Rhenish and Westfalian possessions grew into a large and tolerably compact territory, though lying isolated from the great body of the monarchy. The greater part of the territory west of the Rhine which had been ceded to France now became Prussian, including the cities of KÖln, no longer a metropolitan see, Trier, MÜnster, and Paderborn. The main part of the Prussian possessions thus consisted of two detached masses, of very unequal size, but which seemed to crave for a closer geographical union. ?NeufchÂtel.? The Principality of NeufchÂtel, which made the Prussian king a member of the Swiss Confederation, will be mentioned elsewhere.

Of the other powers which entered the Confederation for the German parts of their dominions, but which also had territories beyond the Confederation, Austria recovered Salzburg, Tyrol, Trent, and Brixen, together with the south-eastern lands which had passed to France. Thus the territory of the Confederation, like that of the old Kingdom, again reached to the Hadriatic. ?Possession of Denmark.
Holstein and Lauenburg.? Denmark entered the Confederation for Holstein, and for a new possession, that of Lauenburg, the duchy which in a manner represented ancient Saxony. ?Luxemburg.? The King of the Netherlands entered the Confederation for the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, part of which however was cut off to be added to the Rhenish possessions of Prussia. ?Sweden gives up Pomerania.? Sweden, by the cession of its last remnant of Pomerania, ceased altogether to be a German power.

There were thus five powers whose dominions lay partly within the Confederation, partly out of it. ?Prussia the greatest German Power.? In the case of one of these, that of Prussia, the division of German and non-German territory was purely formal. Prussia was practically a purely German power, and the greatest of purely German powers. ?Austria.? Her rival Austria stood higher in formal rank in the Confederation, and ruled over a much greater continuous territory; but here the distinction between German and non-German lands was really practical, as later events have shown. ?Comparison of the position of Austria and Prussia.? It has been found possible to shut out Austria from Germany. To shut out Prussia would have been to abolish Germany altogether. ?Hannover.? Hannover, though under a common sovereign with Great Britain, was so completely cut off from Great Britain, and had so little influence on British politics, that it was practically as much a purely German state before its separation from Great Britain as it was afterwards. ?Holstein and Luxemburg.? In the cases of Denmark and the Netherlands, princes the greater part of whose territories lay out of Germany held adjoining territories in Germany. Here then were materials for political questions and difficulties; and in the case of Denmark, these questions and difficulties became of the highest importance.

Among those members of the Confederation, whose territory lay wholly within Germany, the Kingdom of Bavaria stood first. Its newly acquired lands to the south were given back to Austria; but it made large acquisitions to the north-east. Modern Bavaria consists of a large mass of territory, Bavarian, Swabian, and Frankish, counting within its boundaries the famous cities of Augsburg and NÜrnberg and the great bishoprics of Bamberg and WÜrzburg. ?Her Rhenish territory.? Besides this, Bavaria recovered a considerable part of the ancient Palatinate west of the Rhine, which adds Speyer to the list of Bavarian cities. ?WÜrttemberg.
Saxony.? The other states which bore the kingly title, WÜrttemberg and the remnant of Saxony, were of much smaller extent. Saxony however kept a position in many ways out of all proportion to the narrowed extent of its geographical limits. WÜrttemberg, increased by various additions from the Swabian lands of Austria and from other smaller principalities, had, though the smallest of kingdoms, won for itself a much higher position than had been held by its former Counts and Dukes. ?Baden.? Along with them might be ranked the Grand Duchy of Baden, with its strange irregular frontier, taking in Heidelberg and Constanz. ?Hessen.? Among a crowd of smaller states stand out the two Hessian principalities, the Grand Duchy of Hessen-Darmstadt, and Hessen-Cassel, whose prince still kept the title of Elector, and the Grand Duchy of Nassau. ?Oldenburg.? The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg nearly divided the Kingdom of Hannover into two parts. ?Anhalt.? The principalities of Anhalt stretched into the Prussian territory between Halberstadt and the newly-won Saxon lands. ?Brunswick.? The Duchy of Brunswick helped to divide the two great masses of Prussian territory. ?Mecklenburg.? In the north Mecklenburg remained, as before, unequally divided between the Grand Dukes of Schwerin and Strelitz. Germany was thus thoroughly mapped out afresh. Some of the old names had vanished; some had got new meanings. The greater states, with the exception of Saxony, became greater. A crowd of insignificant principalities passed away. Another crowd of them remained, especially the smaller Saxon duchies in the land which had once been Thuringian. But, if we look to two of the most characteristic features of the old Empire, we shall find that one has passed away for ever, while the other was sadly weakened. ?No ecclesiastical principality.? No ecclesiastical principality revived in the new state of things. ?LÜttich added to Belgium.? The territory of one of the old bishoprics, that of LÜttich, formerly absorbed by France, now passed wholly away from Germany, and became part of the new kingdom of Belgium. ?The four Free Cities.? Of the free cities four did revive, but four only. The three Hanse Towns, no longer included in French departments, and Frankfurt, no longer a Grand Duchy, entered the Confederation as independent commonwealths. ?Revival of German national life.? Germany, for a while utterly crushed, had come to life again; she had again reached a certain measure of national unity, which could hardly fail to become closer.[14]

The Confederation thus formed lasted, with hardly any change that concerns geography, till the war of 1866. ?Division of Luxemburg, 1831.? The Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, which had, by the arrangements of 1815, been held by the King of the Netherlands as a member of the German Confederation, was, on the separation of Belgium and the Netherlands, cut into two parts. Part was added to Belgium; another part, though quite detached from the kingdom of the Netherlands, was held by its king as a member of the Confederation. In 1839 he also entered it for the Duchy of Limburg. ?War in Sleswick and Holstein, 1848-1851.? The internal movements which began in 1848, and the war in Sleswick and Holstein which began in the same time, led to no lasting geographical changes. In 1849 the Swabian principalities of Hohenzollern were joined to the Prussian crown. ?Cession of the Duchies to Austria and Prussia, 1864.? The last Danish war ended by the cession of Sleswick and Holstein, together with Lauenburg, to Prussia and Austria jointly, an arrangement in its own nature provisional. Austria ceded her right in Lauenburg to Prussia in the next year, and in the next year again came the Seven Weeks’ War, and the great geographical changes which followed it. ?Abolition of the Confederation.
Exclusion of Austria.
North-German Confederation.
Cession of Sleswick and Holstein to Prussia, 1866.? The German Confederation was abolished; Austria was shut out from all share in German affairs, and she ceded her joint right in Sleswick and Holstein to Prussia. ?Prussian annexations.? The Northern states of Germany became a distinct Confederation under the presidency of Prussia, whose immediate dominion was increased by the annexation of the kingdom of Hannover, the duchy of Nassau, the electorate of Hessen, and the city of Frankfurt. The States south of the Main, Bavaria, WÜrttemberg, Baden, and the southern part of Hessen-Darmstadt, remained for a while outside of the new League. ?All the Prussian lands admitted to the Confederation.? The non-German dominions of Prussia, Prussia strictly so called with the Polish duchy of Posen and the newly acquired land of Sleswick, were now incorporated with the Confederation; on the other hand, all that Austria had held within the Confederation was now shut out of it. ?Settlement of Luxemburg, 1867.? Luxemburg also was not included in the new League, and, after some disputes, it was in the next year recognized as a neutral territory under its own duke the King of the Netherlands. ?Liechtenstein.? The little principality of Liechtenstein was perhaps forgotten altogether; but, as not being included in the Confederation, nor yet incorporated with anything else, it must be looked on as becoming an absolutely independent state. ?Great geographical changes, 1866.? Thus the geographical frontiers of Germany underwent, at a single blow, changes as great as they had undergone in the wars of the French Revolution. The geography of the presiding power of the new League was no less changed.

That extraordinary extent of frontier which had hitherto been characteristic of Prussia was not wholly taken away by the new annexations, but it was greatly lessened. The kingdom, as a kingdom, is made far more compact, and the two great detached masses in which it formerly lay are now joined together. Moreover, the geographical character of Prussia becomes of much less political importance, now that her frontier marches to so great an extent on the smaller members of the League of which she is herself President. ?War with France, 1870-1871.
The German Empire.
Incorporation of the Southern states.? Next came the war with France, the first effect of which was the incorporation of the southern states of Germany with the new League, which presently took the name of an Empire, with the Prussian King as hereditary Emperor. ?Recovery of Elsass-Lothringen, 1871.? Then by the peace with France, nearly the whole of Elsass and part of Lotharingia, including the cities of Strassburg and Metz, were restored to Germany. They have, under the name of Elsass-Lothringen, become an Imperial territory, forming part of the Empire and owning the sovereignty of the Emperor, but not becoming part of the kingdom of Prussia or of any other German state. ?The Imperial title.? The assumption of the Imperial title could hardly be avoided in a confederation whose constitution was monarchic, and which numbered kings among its members. No title but Emperor could have been found to express the relation between the presiding chief and the lesser sovereigns.

Still it must be borne in mind that the new German Empire is in no sense a continuation or restoration of the Holy Roman Empire which fell sixty-four years before its creation. But it may be fairly looked on as a restoration of the old German Kingdom, the Kingdom of the East-Franks. Still, as far as geography is concerned, no change can be stranger than the change in the boundaries of Germany between the ninth century and the nineteenth. The new Empire, cut short to the north-west, south-west, and south-east, has grown somewhat to the north, and it has grown prodigiously to the north-east. ?Name of Prussia.? Its ruling state, a state which contains such illustrious cities as KÖln, Trier, and Frankfurt, is content to call itself after an extinct heathen people whose name had most likely never reached the ears of Charles the Great. ?Position of Berlin.? The capital of the new Empire, placed far away from any of the antient seats of German kingship, stands in what in his day, and long after, was a Slavonic land. ?Formation of the new Empire.? Germany, with its chief state bearing the name of Prussia, with the place of its national assemblies transferred from Frankfurt to Berlin, presents one of the strangest changes that historical geography can show us. But, strange as is the geographical change, it has come about gradually, by the natural working of historical causes. The Slavonic and Prussian lands have been Germanized, while the western parts of the old kingdom which have fallen away have mostly lost their German character. Those German lands which have formed the kernel of the Swiss Confederation have risen to a higher political state than that of any kingdom or Empire. But the German lands which still remain so strangely united to the lands of the Magyar and the southern Slave await, at however distant a time, their natural and inevitable reunion. So does a Danish population in the extreme north await, with less hope, its no less natural separation from the German body. Posen, still mainly Slavonic, remains unnaturally united to a Teutonic body, but it is not likely to gain by a transfer to any other ruler. The reconstruction of the German realm in its present shape, a shape so novel to the eye, but preserving so much of ancient life and ancient history, has been the greatest historical and geographical change of our times.

§ 3. The Kingdom of Italy.

We parted from the Italian kingdom at the moment of its separation from the Eastern and Western kingdoms of the Franks. Its history, as a kingdom, consists in little more than its reunion with the East-Frankish crown, and in the way in which the royal power gradually died out within its limits. There is but little to say as to any changes of frontier of the kingdom as such. As long as Germany, Italy, and Burgundy acknowledged a single king, any shiftings of the frontiers of his three kingdoms were of secondary importance. When the power of the Emperors in Italy had died out, the land became a system of independent commonwealths and principalities, which had hardly that degree of unity which could enable us to say that a certain territory was added to Italy or taken from it. Even if a certain territory passed from an Italian to a German or Burgundian lord, the change was rather a change in the frontier of this or that Italian state than in the frontier of Italy itself. ?Changes on the Alpine frontier.? The shiftings of frontier along the whole Alpine border have been considerable; but it is only in our own day that we can say that Italy as such has become capable of extending or lessening her borders. ?Case of Verona.? When, in 1866, Venice and Verona were added to the Italian kingdom, that was a distinct change in the frontier of Italy. We can hardly give that name to endless earlier changes on the same marchland. ?Case of Trieste, 1380.? In the fourteenth century, for instance, the town of Trieste, disputed between the patriarchs of Aquileia and the commonwealth of Venice, was acknowledged as an independent state, and it presently gave up its independence by commendation to the Duke of Austria. It is not likely that the question entered into any man’s mind whether the frontiers of the German and Italian kingdoms were affected by such a change. Whether as a free city or as an Austrian lordship, Trieste remained under the superiority, formally undoubted but practically nominal, of the common sovereign of Germany and Italy, the Roman Emperor or King. Whether the nominal allegiance of the city was due to him in his German or in his Italian character most likely no one stopped to think. ?No eastern or western frontiers.? East and west, the Italian kingdom had no frontiers; the only question which could arise was as to the relation of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia to the kingdom itself or to any of the states which arose within it. To the south lay the independent Lombard duchies, and the possessions which still remained to the Eastern Empire. ?The Norman kingdom of Sicily not an Imperial fief.? These changed in time into the Norman duchy of Apulia and kingdom of Sicily; but that kingdom, held as it was as a fief of the see of Rome, was never incorporated with the Italian kingdom of the Emperors, nor did its kings ever become the men of the Emperor. Particular Emperors in the thirteenth century, in the sixteenth, and in the eighteenth, were also kings of one or both the Sicilian kingdoms; but at no time before our own day were Sicily and southern Italy ever incorporated with a Kingdom of Italy. When we remember that it was to the southern part of the peninsula that the name of Italy was first given, we see here a curiosity of nomenclature as remarkable as the shiftings of meaning in the names of Saxony and Burgundy.

Naples and Sicily then, the Two Sicilies of later political nomenclature, lie outside our present subject. ?Venice no part of Italy.? So does the commonwealth of Venice, except so far as Venice afterwards won a large subject territory on the Italian mainland. ?Her Italian dominions.? Both these states have to do with Italy as a geographical expression, but neither the Venetian commonwealth nor the Sicilian kingdom is Italian within the meaning of the present section. They formed no part of the Carolingian dominion. ?Venice and the Sicilies part of the Eastern Empire.? They were parts of the Eastern Empire, not of the Western. They remained attached to the New Rome after an Imperial throne had again been set up in the Old. They gradually fell away from their allegiance to the Eastern Empire, but they were never incorporated with the Empire of the West. I shall deal with them here only in their relations to the Imperial Kingdom of Italy, and treat of their special history elsewhere among the states which arose out of the break-up of the Eastern Empire. Again, on the north-western march of Italy a power gradually arose, partly Italian, but for a long time mainly Burgundian, which has in the end, by a strange fate, grown into a new Italian Kingdom. ?The House of Savoy.? This is the House of Savoy. The growth of the dominions of that house, the process by which it gradually lost territory in Burgundy and gained it in Italy, form another distinct subject. ?Its special history.? It will be dealt with here only in its relations to the kingdom of Italy.

The Italian Kingdom of the Karlings, the kingdom which was reunited to Germany under Otto the Great, was, as has been already said, a continuation of the old Lombard kingdom. It consisted of that kingdom, enlarged by the Italian lands which fell off from the Eastern Empire in the eighth century; that is by the Exarchate and the adjoining Pentapolis, and the immediate territory of Rome itself. ?Austria and Neustria.? The Lombard kingdom, in the strictest sense, took in the two provinces north of the Po, in which we again find, as in other lands, an Austria to the east and a Neustria to the west. ?Æmilia.
Tuscany.? It took in Æmilia south of the Po—the district of Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, and Modena—also Tuscany, a name, which, as it no longer reaches to the Tiber, answers pretty nearly to its modern use. ?Romagna.? The Tuscan name has lived on; the Exarchate and Pentapolis, as having been the chief seat of the later Imperial power in Italy, got the name of Romania, Romandiola, or Romagna. This name also lives on; but the Lombard Neustria and Austria soon vanish from the map. Their disappearance was perhaps lucky, as one knows not what arguments might otherwise have been built on the presence of an Austria south of the Alps. ?Lombardy proper.
Venetia.? The Lombard Neustria together with Æmilia got the special name of Lombardy, while the Lombard Austria, after various shiftings of names taken from the principalities which rose and fell within it, came back in the end to its oldest name, that of Venetia. ?Mark of Ivrea.
Duchy of Friuli.? In the north-west corner Iporedia or Ivrea appears as a distinct march; but the Venetian march at the other corner, known at this stage as the duchy of Friuli, is of more importance. It takes in the county of Trent, the special march of Friuli, and the march of Istria. ?Fluctuation of boundary at the north-west corner.? This is the corner in which the German and Italian frontier has so often fluctuated. We have seen that, after the union of the Italian and German crowns, even Verona itself was sometimes counted as German ground.

Under the German kings Italy came under the same influences as the other two Imperial kingdoms. Principalities grew up; free cities grew up; but, while in Germany the principalities were the rule and the cities the exception, in Italy it was the other way. ?Growth of a system of commonwealths in Italy.? The land gradually became a system of practically independent commonwealths. Feudal princes, ecclesiastical or temporal, flourished only in the north-western and north-eastern corners of the kingdom. But, if the range of the German cities was less wide, and their career less brilliant, than those of Italy, their freedom was more lasting. ?Tyrants grow into princes.? The Italian cities gradually fell under tyrants, and the tyrants gradually grew into acknowledged princes. ?Growth of the dominion of the Popes.? The Bishops of Rome too, by a series of claims dexterously pressed at various times, contrived to form the greatest of ecclesiastical principalities, one which stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea. ?Four stages of Italian history.? The geographical history of Italy consists of four stages. In the first the kingdom fell asunder into principalities. In the second the principalities vanished before the growth of the free cities. In the third the cities were again massed into principalities, till in the fourth the principalities were at last merged in a kingdom of united Italy.

Under the Saxon and Frankish Emperors the old Lombard names of Neustria and Æmilia pass away. Several small marches lie along the Burgundian frontier, as Savona on the coast, Ivrea among the mountains to the north-west, between them Montferrat, Vasto, and Susa, whose princes, as special guardians of the passage between the two kingdoms, bore the title of Marquess in Italy. It was in this region that the feudal princes were strongest, and that the system of free cities had the smallest developement. ?The Marquesses of Montferrat, 938-1533.? The Savoyard power was already beginning to grow up in the extreme north-west corner; but at this time a greater part in strictly Italian history is played by the Marquesses of Montferrat, who for many centuries kept their position as important feudal princes quite apart from the lords of the cities. In the north-east corner of the kingdom the place of the old Austria is taken by the border principalities where the Italian, the German, and the Slave all come in contact, and which fluctuated more than once between the Italian and the German crowns. We have here the great march of Verona, beyond it that of Friuli, Trent, the marchland of the marchland, between Verona and Bavaria, and the Istrian peninsula on the Slavonic side of the Hadriatic. Between the border districts on either side lay the central land, Lombardy, in the narrower sense, the chosen home of the free cities. ?Growth of the Lombard cities.? Here, by the middle of the twelfth century, every city had practically become a separate commonwealth, owning only the most nominal superiority in the Emperor. Guelfic cities withstood the Emperor; Ghibelin cities welcomed him; but both were practically independent commonwealths. ?Wars of the Swabian Emperors.? Hence came those long wars between the Swabian Emperors and the Italian cities which form the chief feature of Italian history in the second half of the twelfth century and the first half of the thirteenth. ?Milan and Pavia.
The other Lombard cities.
Alessandria, 1168.? Round the younger and the elder capital, round Guelfic Milan and Ghibelin Pavia, gathered a crowd of famous names, Como, Bergamo, and Brescia, Lodi, Crema, and Cremona, Tortona, Piacenza, and Parma, and Alessandria, the trophy of republican and papal victory over Imperial power. ?Verona and Padua.? The Veronese march was less rich in cities of the same historical importance; but both Verona itself and Padua played a great part, as the seats first of commonwealths, then of tyrants. Further north and east, the civic element was weaker again. ?Trent.
Aquileia.? Trent gradually parted off from Italy to become an ecclesiastical principality of the German kingdom; and the Patriarchs of Aquileia grew into powerful princes at the north-eastern corner of the Hadriatic. ?The lords of Romano and Este.? Within the Veronese or Trevisan march itself, the lords of Romano and the more important marquesses of Este also demand notice. Romano gave the Trevisan march its famous tyrant Eccelino in the days of Frederick the Second, and the Marquesses of Este, kinsmen of the great Saxon dukes, came in time to rank among the chief Italian princes. ?The north-eastern march falls off from Italy.? The extreme north-eastern march so completely fell off from Italy that it will be better treated in tracing the growth of the powers of Venice and Austria.

In the more central lands of the kingdom, in the old exarchate, now known as Romagna, in the march variously called by the names of Camerino, Fermo, or Ancona, and above all in the march of Tuscany on the southern sea, the same developement of city life also took place, but somewhat later. North of the Apennines, along the Hadriatic coast, arose a crowd of small commonwealths which gradually passed into small tyrannies. ?The Tuscan commonwealths.? Tuscany, on the other hand, was parted off into a few commonwealths of illustrious name. For a while one of these ran a course which stood rather apart from the common run of Italian history. ?Pisa;
her wars with the Saracens 1005-1115.? Pisa, then one of the great maritime and commercial states of Europe, became, early in the eleventh century, a power which forestalled the crusades and won back lands from the Saracen. Though she was in every sense a city of the Italian kingdom, Pisa at this time held a position not unlike that which was afterwards held by Venice. Like her, she was a power which colonized and conquered beyond the seas, but which came only gradually to take a share in the main course of Italian affairs. ?Genoa.? Beyond the borders of Tuscany, the same position was held by Genoa on the Ligurian gulf. ?Occupation of the island of Sardinia by Pisa, and of Corsica by Genoa.? Pisa won Sardinia from the Saracen; Genoa, after long disputes with Pisa, obtained a more lasting possession of Corsica. Returning to Tuscany, three great commonwealths here grew up, which gradually divided the land between them. ?Lucca, Siena, Florence.? These were Lucca and Siena, and Florence, the last of Italian cities to rise to greatness, but the one which became in many ways the greatest among her fellows. ?Perugia.? In the centre of Italy, within the bounds of old Etruria but not within those of modern Tuscany, Perugia, both as commonwealth and as tyranny, held a high place among Italian cities. ?Rome.? Of Rome herself it is almost impossible to speak. She has much history, but she has little geography. Emperors were crowned there; Popes sometimes lived there; sometimes Rome appears once more as a single Latin city, waging war against Tusculum or some other of her earliest fellows. ?Claims of the Popes.? The claims of her Bishops to independent temporal power, founded on a succession of real or pretended Imperial and royal grants, lay still in the background; but they were ready to grow into reality as occasion served.

The next stage of Italian political geography may be dated from the death of Frederick the Second, when all practical power of an Imperial kingdom in Italy may be said to have passed away. ?Growth of tyrannies.? Presently begins the gradual change of the commonwealths into tyrannies, and the grouping together of many of them into larger states. We also see the beginning of more definite claims of temporal dominion on behalf of the Popes. ?Dominion of Spain, 1555-1701.? In the course of the three hundred years between Frederick the Second and Charles the Fifth, these processes gradually changed the face of the Italian kingdom. It became in the end a collection of principalities, broken only by the survival of a few oligarchic commonwealths and by the anomalous dominion of Venice on the mainland. Between Frederick the Second and Charles the Fifth, we may look on the Empire as practically in abeyance in Italy. The coming of an Emperor always caused a great stir for the time, but it was only for the time. ?Grant of Rudolf, 1278.? After the grant of Rudolf of Habsburg to the Popes, a distinction was drawn between Imperial and papal territory in Italy. ?Imperial and papal fiefs.? While certain princes and commonwealths still acknowledged at least the nominal superiority of the Emperor, others were now held to stand in the same relation of vassalage to the Pope.

We must now trace out the growth of the chief states which were formed by these several processes. Beginning again in the north, it must be remembered that all this while the power of Savoy was advancing in those north-western lands in which the influences which mainly ruled this period had less force than elsewhere. Montferrat too kept its old character of a feudal principality, a state whose rulers had in various ways a singular connexion with the East. ?Palaiologoi at Montferrat, 1306.? As Marquesses of Montferrat had claimed the crown of Jerusalem and had worn the crown of Thessalonica, so, as if to keep even the balance between East and West, in return a branch of the Imperial house of Palaiologos came to reign at Montferrat. To the east of these more ancient principalities, two great powers of quite different kinds grew up in the old Neustria and Austria. ?Duchy of Milan. Venice.? These were the Duchy of Milan and the land power of Venice. Milan, like most other Italian cities, came under the influence of party leaders, who grew first into tyrants and then into acknowledged sovereigns. ?The Visconti at Milan, 1310-1447.? These at Milan, after the shorter domination of the Della Torre, were the more abiding house of the Visconti. Their dominion, after various fluctuations and revolutions, was finally established when the coming of the Emperor Henry the Seventh generally strengthened the rule of the Lords of the cities throughout Italy.

At the end of the fourteenth century their informal lordship passed by a royal grant into an acknowledged duchy of the Empire. The dominion which they had gradually gained, and which was thus in a manner legalized, took in all the great cities of Lombardy, those especially which had formed the Lombard League against the Swabian Emperors. ?County of Pavia.? Pavia indeed, the ancient rival of Milan, kept a kind of separate being, and was formed into a distinct county. ?Extent of the duchy.? But the duchy granted by Wenceslaus to Gian-Galeazzo stretched far on both sides of the lake of Garda. Belluno at one end and Vercelli at the other formed part of it. It took in the mountain lands which afterwards passed to the two Alpine Confederations; it took in Parma, Piacenza, and Reggio south of the Po, and Verona and Vicenza in the old Austrian or Venetian land. Besides all this, Padua, Bologna, even Genoa and Pisa, passed at various times under the lordship of the Visconti. But this great power was not lasting. The Duchy of Milan, under various lords, native and foreign, lasted till the wars of the French Revolution; but, long before that time, it had been cut short on every side. ?Decrease on the death of Gian Galeazzo, 1402.? The death of the first Duke was followed by a separation of the duchy of Milan and the county of Pavia between his sons, and the restored duchy never rose again to its former power. ?The eastern cities won by Venice, 1406-1447.? The eastern parts, Padua, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, were gradually added to the dominion of Venice. By the middle of the fifteenth century, that republic had become the greatest power in northern Italy. ?House of Sforza, 1450-1535.
Claims of the Kings of France, 1499-1525.? In the duchy of Milan the house of Sforza succeeded that of Visconti; but the opposing claims of the Kings of France were one chief cause of the long wars which laid Italy waste in the latter years of the fifteenth century and the early years of the sixteenth. The duchy was tossed to and fro between the Emperor, the French King, and its own dukes. Meanwhile the dominion which was thus struggled for was cut short at the two ends. ?Cession to the Alpine Leagues, 1512-1513.? It was dismembered to the north in favour of the two Alpine Leagues, as will be hereafter shown more in detail. ?The Popes obtain Parma and Piacenza, 1515.
Duchy of Parma and Piacenza, 1545.? South of the Po, the Popes obtained Parma and Piacenza, which were afterwards granted as papal fiefs to form a duchy for the house of Farnese. Thus the Duchy of Milan which became in the end a possession of Charles the Fifth, and afterwards of his Spanish and Austrian successors, was but a remnant of the great dominion of the first Duke. The duchy underwent still further dismemberments in later times.

With Venice we have here to deal in her somewhat unnatural position as an Italian land power. ?War of the League of Cambray, 1508-1517.? This position she took on herself in the fifteenth century; in the sixteenth it led to the momentary overthrow and wonderful recovery of her dominion in the war of the League of Cambray. This land power of Venice stands quite distinct from the Venetian possessions east of the Hadriatic. ?Istria.? With this last her possession of the coast of the Istrian peninsula must be reckoned, rather than with her Italian dominions. Between these lay Aquileia, Trieste, and the other lands in this quarter which gradually came under the power of Austria. ?Extent of Venetian dominion.
Ravenna, 1441-1530.? The continuous Italian dominion of Venice took in Udine at one end and Bergamo at the other, besides Crema, and for a while Ravenna, as outlying possessions. Thus the Byzantine city which lay anchored off the shore of the Western Empire could for a season call the ancient seat of the Exarchate its own. ?Two parts of the Venetian territory.? But even the continuous land territory of Venice lay in two portions. Brescia and Bergamo were almost cut off from Verona and the other possessions to the east by the Lake of Garda, the bishopric of Trent to the north, and the principality of Mantua to the south.

The mention of this last state leads us back again to the commonwealths which, like Milan, changed, first into tyrannies, and then into acknowledged principalities. It is impossible to mention all of them, and some of those which played for a while the most brilliant part in Italian history had no lasting effect on Italian geography. ?Rule of the Scala at Verona, 1260-1387; of the Carrara at Padua, 1318-1405;? The rule of the house of Scala at Verona, the rule of the house of Carrara at Padua, left no lasting trace on the map. It was otherwise with the two states which bordered on the Venetian possessions to the south. ?of the Gonzaga at Mantua, 1328-1708. Marquesses, 1433; Dukes, 1530.? The house of Gonzaga held sovereign power at Mantua, first as captains, then as marquesses, then as dukes, for nearly four hundred years. ?House of Este.? Of greater fame was the power that grew up in the house of Este, the Italian branch of the house of Welf. Their position is one specially instructive, as illustrating the various tenures by which dominion was held. ?The lords of Ferrara and Modena, 1264-1288.? The marquesses of Este, feudal lords of that small principality, became, after some of the usual fluctuations, permanent lords of the cities of Ferrara and Modena. About the same time they lost their original holding of Este, which passed to Padua, and with Padua to Venice. Thus the nominal marquess of Este and real lord of Ferrara was not uncommonly spoken of as Marquess of Ferrara. In the fifteenth century these princes rose to ducal rank; but by that time the new doctrine of the temporal dominion of the Popes had made great advances. Modena, no man doubted, was a city of the Empire; but Ferrara was now held to be under the supremacy of the Pope. The Marquess Borso had thus to seek his elevation to ducal rank from two separate lords. ?Duchy of Modena, 1453.
Duchy of Ferrara, 1471.? He was created Duke of Modena and Reggio by the Emperor, and afterwards Duke of Ferrara by the Pope. This difference of holding, as we shall presently see, led to the destruction of the power of the house of Este. In the times in which we are now concerned, their dominions lay in two masses. To the west lay the duchy of Modena and Reggio; apart from it to the east lay the duchy of Ferrara. ?Loss of Rovigo, 1484.? Not long after its creation, this last duchy was cut short by the surrender of the border-district of Rovigo to Venice.

Between the two great duchies of the house of Este lay Bologna, gradually changed from Romania in one sense into Romagna in another. Like most other Italian cities, the commonwealths of the Exarchate and the Pentapolis changed into tyrannies, and their petty princes were one by one overthrown by the advancing power of the Popes. ?Bologna, Perugia, Rimini.? Every city had its dynasty; but it was only a few, like the houses of Bentevoglio at Bologna, of Baglioni at Perugia, and Malatesta at Rimini, that rose to any historical importance. One only combined historical importance with acknowledged princely rank. ?The Duchy of Urbino, 1478-1631.? The house of Montefeltro, lords of Urbino, became acknowledged dukes by papal grants. From them the duchy passed to the house of La Rovere, and it flourished under five princes of the two dynasties. ?Expansion of the papal dominions.? Gradually, by successive annexations, the papal dominions, before the middle of the sixteenth century, stretched from the Po to Tarracina. Ferrara and Urbino still remained distinct states, but states which were confessedly held as fiefs of the Holy See.

To the west, in Tuscany, the phÆnomena are somewhat different. The characteristic of this part of Italy was the grouping together of the smaller cities under the power of the larger. Nearly all the land came in the end under princely rule; but both acknowledged princely rule and the tyrannies out of which it sprang came into importance in Tuscany later than anywhere else. ?Lucca under Castruccio Castracani, 1320-1338.? Lucca had in the fourteenth century a short time of greatness under her illustrious tyrant Castruccio; but, before and after his day, she plays, as a commonwealth, only a secondary part in Italy. Still she remained a commonwealth, though latterly an oligarchic one, through all changes down to the general crash of the French Revolution. ?Pisa.? Pisa kept for a while her maritime greatness, and her rivalry with the Ligurian commonwealth of Genoa. ?Genoa.? Genoa, less famous in the earliest times, proved a far more lasting power. ?Her rule in Corsica.? She established her dominion over the coast on both sides of her, and kept her island of Corsica down to modern times. ?Sardinia ceded to Aragon, 1428.
Pisa subject to Florence, 1416.? Physical causes caused the fall of the maritime power of Pisa; Sardinia passed from her to become a kingdom of the House of Aragon, and she herself passed under the dominion of Florence. ?Greatness of Florence.? This last illustrious city, the greatest of Tuscan and even of Italian commonwealths, begins to stand forth as the foremost of republican states about the time when her forerunner Milan came under the rule of tyrants. She extended her dominion over Volterra, Arezzo, and many smaller places, till she became mistress of all northern Tuscany. ?Siena.? To the south the commonwealth of Siena also formed a large dominion. ?Rule of the Medici. 1434-1494. 1512-1527.? In Florence the rule of the Medici grew step by step into a hereditary tyranny; but it was an intermittent tyranny, one which was supported only by foreign force, and which was overturned whenever Florence had strength to act for herself. ?Alexander, Duke of Florence, 1530.? It was only after her last overthrow by the combined powers of Pope and CÆsar that she became, under Alexander, the first duke of the house of Medici, an acknowledged principality. ?Cosmo annexes Siena, 1557.
Elba, &c.? Cosmo the First, the second duke, annexed Siena, and all the territory of that commonwealth, except the lands known as Stati degli Presidi, that is the isle of Elba and some points on the coast. These became parts of the kingdom of Naples; that is, at that time, parts of the dominion of Spain. The state thus formed by Cosmo was one of the most considerable in Italy, taking in the whole of Tuscany except the territory of Lucca and the lands which became Spanish. ?Cosmo Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1567.? Its ruler presently exchanged by papal authority the title of Duke of Florence for that of Grand Duke of Tuscany.

§ 4. The Later Geography of Italy.

Under Charles the Fifth it might have seemed that both the Roman Empire and the kingdom of Italy had come to life again. A prince who wore both crowns was practically master of Italy. But though the power of the Emperor was restored, the power of the Empire was not. In truth we may look on all notion of a kingdom of Italy in the elder sense as having passed away with the coronation of Charles himself. The thing had passed away long before; after the pageant at Bologna the name was not heard for more than two centuries and a half. ?Italy a geographical expression.? Italy became truly a ‘geographical expression;’ the land consisted of a number of principalities and a few commonwealths, all nominally independent, some more or less practically so, but the more part of which were under foreign influence, and some of them were actually ruled by foreign princes. ?Changes among the Italian states.? The states of Italy were united, divided, handed over from one ruler to another, according to the fluctuations of war and diplomacy, without any regard either to the will of the inhabitants or to the authority of any central power. A practically dominant power there was during the greater part of this period; but it was not the power of even a nominal King of Italy. For a long time that dominant power was held by the House of Austria in its two branches. The supremacy of Charles in Italy passed, not to his Imperial brother, but to his Spanish son. ?Dominion of Spain, 1555-1701;? Then followed the long dominion of the Spanish branch of the Austrian house; then came the less thorough dominion of the German branch. ?of Austria, 1713-1793.? This last was a dominion strictly of the House of Austria as such, not of the Empire or of either of the Imperial kingdoms. And now that the name of Italy means merely a certain surface on the map, we must take some notice, so far as they regard Italian history, at once of Savoy at one end and of the Sicilian kingdoms at the other. From this time both of them have a more direct bearing on Italian history.

By the time of the coronation of Charles the Fifth, or at least within the generation which could remember his coronation, the greater part of Italy had been massed into a few states, which, as compared with the earlier state of things, were of considerable size. ?Monaco? A few smaller principalities and lordships still kept their place, of which one of the smallest, that of Monaco in the extreme south-west, has lived on to our own time. ?San Marino? So has the small commonwealth of San Marino, surrounded, first by the dominions of the Popes and now by the modern kingdom. But such states as these were mere survivals. ?Dominion of Venice on the mainland, 1406-1797.? In the north-east, Venice kept her power on the mainland untouched, from the recovery of her dominions after the league of Cambray down to her final fall. ?She loses her outlying Italian possessions, 1530.? By the treaty of Bologna she lost Ravenna; she lost too the towns of Brindisi and Monopoli which she had gained during the wars of Naples; but her continuous dominion, both properly Venetian and Lombard, remained. ?Duchy of Milan:
Spanish, 1540-1706;
Austrian, 1706-1796.? The duchy of Milan to the west of her was held in succession by the two branches of the House of Austria, first the Spanish and then the German. ?Advance of Savoy towards Milan.? But the duchy, as an Austrian possession, was being constantly cut short towards the west by the growing power of Savoy. For a while the Milanese and Savoyard states were conterminous only during a small part of their frontier. ?Montferrat.? The marquisate of Montferrat, as long as it remained a separate principality, lay between the southern parts of the two states. On the failure of the old line of marquesses, Montferrat was disputed between the Dukes of Savoy and Mantua. ?United to Mantua 1536, but claimed by Savoy, 1613-1631.? Adjudged to Mantua, and raised into a duchy by Imperial authority, it was still claimed, and partly conquered by, Savoy. ?Mantua forfeited to the Empire, and Montferrat joined to Savoy, 1708-1713.? At last, by one of the last exercises of Imperial authority in Italy, the duchy of Mantua itself was held to be forfeited to the Empire; that is, it became an Austrian possession. At the same time the Imperial authority confirmed Montferrat to Savoy. The Austrian dominions in Italy were thus extended to the south-east by the accession of the Mantuan territory; but the whole western frontier of the Milanese now lay open to Savoyard advance. ?First dismemberment of Milan in favour of Savoy, 1713.? The same treaties which confirmed Montferrat to Savoy and Milan to Austria also dismembered Milan in favour of Savoy. A corner of the duchy to the south-west, Alessandria and the neighbouring districts, were now given to Savoy; the Peace of Vienna further cut off Novara to the north and Tortona to the south. ?Further cessions, 1738.? The next peace, that of Aix-la-Chapelle, gave up all west of the Ticino, which river became a permanent frontier.

Among the other states, the duchy of Parma and Piacenza was, on the extinction of the house of Farnese, handed over to princes of the Spanish branch of the Bourbons. ?Ferrara confiscated to the Popes, 1598.? Modena and Ferrara remained united, till Ferrara was annexed as an escheated fief to the dominions of its spiritual overlord. ?1718.? But the house of Este still reigned over Modena with Reggio and Mirandola, while its dominions were extended to the sea by the addition of Massa and other small possessions between Lucca and Genoa. ?1771-1803.? The duchy in the end passed by female succession to the House of Austria. ?Corsica ceded to France, 1768.? Genoa and Lucca remained aristocratic commonwealths; but Genoa lost its island possession of Corsica, which passed to France. ?Extinction of the Medici, 1737.
Francis of Lorraine Grand Duke of Tuscany.? The Grand Duchy of Tuscany remained in the house of Medici, till it was assigned to Duke Francis of Lorraine, afterwards the Emperor Francis the First, and after that it remained in the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. ?Urbino annexed by the Popes, 1631.? The States of the Church, after the annexation of Ferrara, were in the next century further enlarged by the annexation of the duchy of Urbino.

Thus, except on the frontier of Piedmont and Milan, the whole time from Charles the Fifth to the French Revolution was, within the old kingdom of Italy, much less remarkable for changes in the geographical frontiers of the several states than for the way in which they are passed to and fro from one master to another. ?Kingdom of the Two Sicilies? This is yet more remarkable, if we look to the southern part of the peninsula, and to the two great islands which in modern geography we have learned to look on as attached to Italy. ?The Norman kingdom of Sicily.? The Norman kingdom which, by steps which will be told elsewhere, grew up to the south of the Imperial Kingdom of Italy, has hardly ever changed its boundaries, except by the various separations and unions of the insular and the continental kingdom. ?Benevento.? Even the outlying papal possession of Benevento after each war went back to its ecclesiastical master. But the shiftings, divisions, and reunions of the Two Sicilies and of the island of Sardinia have been endless. ?Charles of Anjou, 1265.? The Sicilian kingdom of the Norman and Swabian kings, containing both the island and the provinces on the mainland, passed unchanged to Charles of Anjou. ?Revolt of the island of Sicily, 1282.
The two kingdoms.? The revolt of the island split the kingdom into two, one insular, one continental, each of which called itself the Kingdom of Sicily, though the continental realm was more commonly known as the Kingdom of Naples. The wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries caused endless changes of dynasty in the continental kingdom, but no changes of frontier. ?Union of Aragon, Sardinia, and continental Sicily under Alfonso, 1442.? Under the famous Alfonso in the fifteenth century, Aragon, Sardinia, and the continental Sicily were three kingdoms under one sovereign, while the insular Sicily was ruled by another branch of the same house. ?Aragonese kings of the island, 1296-1442. 1458-1701.? Then continental Sicily passed to an illegitimate branch of the House of Aragon, while Sardinia and insular Sicily were held by the legitimate branch. ?Wars beginning with Charles the Eighth, 1494-1528.
Spanish, 1556-1701.? The French invasion under Charles the Eighth and the long wars that followed, the conquests, the restorations, the schemes of division, all ended in the union of both the Sicilian kingdoms, now known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, along with Sardinia, as part of the great Spanish monarchy. ?1554-1555.? A momentary separation of the insular kingdom, in order to give the husband of Mary of England royal rank while his father yet reigned, is important only as the first formal use of the title of King of Naples. ?Sardinia and Naples Austrian.
Duke of Savoy king of Sicily, 1713.? In the division of the Spanish monarchy, Sardinia and Naples fell to the lot of the Austrian House, while Sicily was given to the Duke of Savoy, who thus gained substantial kingly rank. ?Exchange of Sicily and Sardinia, 1718.? Presently the kings of the two island kingdoms made an exchange; Sardinia passed to Savoy, and the Emperor Charles the Sixth ruled, like Frederick the Second and Charles the Fifth, over both Sicilies. ?The Spanish Bourbons, 1735-1806. 1817-1860.? Lastly, the kingdom was handed over from an Austrian to a new Spanish master, the first of the line of Neapolitan Bourbons. Thus, at the end of the last century, the Two Sicilies formed a distinct and united kingdom, while Sardinia formed the outlying realm of the Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont. His kingdom was of far less value than his principality or his duchy. ?Use of the name Sardinia.? But, as Sardinia gave their common sovereign his highest title, the Sardinian name often came in common speech to be extended to the continental dominions of its king.

This period, a period of change, but of comparatively slight geographical change, was followed by a time when, in Italy as in Germany, boundaries were changed, new names were invented or forgotten names revived, when old land-marks were rooted up, and thrones were set up and cast down, with a speed which baffles the chronicler. The first strictly geographical change which was wrought in Italy by the revolutionary wars was a characteristic one. ?Cispadane Republic, 1796.? A Cispadane Republic, the first of a number of momentary commonwealths bearing names dug up from the recesses of bygone times, took in the duchy of Modena and the Papal Legations of Romagna. Without exactly following the same boundaries, it answered roughly to the old Exarchate. ?Transpadane Republic, 1797.? Then the French victories over Austria caused the Austrian duchies of Milan and Mantua to become a Transpadane Republic. ?Treaty of Campo Formio, 1797. Cisalpine Republic.? Then Venice was wiped out at Campo Formio, and her Lombard possessions were joined together with the two newly made commonwealths, to form a Cisalpine Republic. But the same treaty wrought another change which was more distinctly geographical. ?Venice surrendered to Austria.? Venice and the eastern part of her possessions on the mainland, the old Venetia, the Lombard Austria, was now handed over to the modern state which bore the latter name. This change may be looked on as distinctly cutting short the boundaries of Italy. The duchy of Milan in Austrian hands had been an outlying part of the Austrian dominions; but Venetia marches on the older territory of the Austrian house, and was thus more completely severed from Italy. The whole north of the Hadriatic coast thus became Austrian in the modern sense. One Italian commonwealth—for Venice had long counted as Italian—was thus wiped out, and handed over to a foreign king. But elsewhere, at this stage of revolutionary progress, the fashion ran in favour of the creation of local commonwealths. ?Ligurian Republic, 1797.
ParthenopÆan Republic.
Tiberine Republic, 1798-1801.? The dominions of Genoa became a Ligurian Republic; Naples became a ParthenopÆan Republic; Rome herself exchanged for a moment the memories of kings, consuls, emperors, and pontiffs to become the head of a Tiberine Republic. ?Piedmont joined to France, 1798-1800.? Piedmont was overwhelmed; the greater part was incorporated with France. Some small parts were added to the neighbouring republics, and the king of Sardinia withdrew to his island kingdom. Amid this crowd of new-fangled states and new-fangled names, ancient San Marino still lived on.

Thus far revolutionary Italy followed the example of revolutionary France, and the new states were all at least nominal commonwealths. In the next stage, when France came under the rule of a single man, above all when that single ruler took on him the Imperial title, the tide turned in favour of monarchy. In Rome and Naples it had already turned so in another way. ?Restoration of the Pope and the King of the Two Sicilies, 1801.? By help of the Czar and the Sultan, the new republics vanished, and the old rulers, Pope and King, came back again. And now France herself began to create kingdoms instead of commonwealths. ?Kingdom of Etruria, 1801-1808.? Parma was annexed to France, and its Duke was sent to rule in Tuscany by the title of King of Etruria. Presently Italy herself gave her name to a kingdom. ?Kingdom of Italy, 1805-1814.? The Cisalpine republic, further enlarged by Venice and the other territory ceded to Austria at Campo Formio, enlarged also by the Valtellina and the former bishopric of Trent at one end and by the march of Ancona at the other, became the Kingdom of Italy. ?Buonaparte king of Italy.? Its King, the first since Charles the Fifth who had worn the Italian crown, was no other than the new ruler of France, the self-styled ‘Emperor.’ But, in Buonaparte’s later distributions of Italian territory, it was not his Italian kingdom, but his French ‘empire’ whose frontiers were extended. ?Annexation of Liguria, 1805;
of Etruria, 1808.
Grand duchy of Lucca.? The Ligurian Republic was annexed; so before long was the new kingdom of Etruria; Lucca meanwhile was made into a grand duchy for the conqueror’s sister. ?Incorporation of Rome and France, 1809.? Lastly, Rome itself, with what was left of the papal dominions, was also incorporated with the French dominion. The work alike of CÆsar and of Charles was wiped out from the Eternal City. The Empire of the Gauls, which Civilis had dreamed of more than seventeen centuries before, had come at last.

The fate of the remainder of the peninsula had been already sealed before Rome became French. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies fell asunder. The Bourbon king kept his island, as the Savoyard king kept his. ?Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, 1806. 1809. Stati degli Presidi.? The continental kingdom passed, as a Kingdom of Naples, first to Joseph Buonaparte, and then to Joachim Murat. ?Benevento.? But the outlying Tuscan possessions of the Sicilian crown had already passed to France, and Benevento, the outlying papal possession in the heart of the kingdom, became a separate principality.

Thus all Italy—unless we count the island kingdoms of Sardinia and Sicily as parts of Italy—was brought under French dominion in one form or another. But of that dominion there were three varieties. ?Part incorporated with France.? The whole western part of the land, from Aosta to Tarracina—unless it is worth while to except the new Lucchese duchy—was formally incorporated with France. ?Extent of the kingdom of Italy.? The north-eastern side, from BÖzen to Ascoli, formed a Kingdom of Italy, distinct from France, but held by the same sovereign. And this Kingdom of Italy was further increased to the north by part of those Italian lands which had become Swiss and German. ?Kingdom of Naples.? Southern Italy, the Kingdom of Naples, remained in form an independent kingdom; but it was held by princes who could not be looked on as anything but the humble vassals of their mighty kinsman. Never had Italy been brought more completely under foreign dominion. ?Revival of the Italian name.? Still, in a part at least of the land, the name of Italy, and the shadow of a Kingdom of Italy, had been revived. ?Its effects.? And, as names and shadows are not without influence in human affairs, the mere existence of an Italian state, called by the Italian name, did something. The creation of a sham Italy was no unimportant step towards the creation of a real one.

The settlement of Italy after the fall of Buonaparte was far more strictly a return to the old state of things than the contemporary settlement of Germany. Italy remained a geographical expression. Its states were, as before, independent of one another. ?No tie between the Italian states.? They were practically dependent on a foreign power: but they were in no way bound together, even by the laxest federal tie. ?The princes restored, but not the commonwealths.? The main principle of settlement was that the princes who had lost their dominions should be restored, but that the commonwealths which had been overthrown should not be restored. Only harmless San Marino was allowed to live on. Venice, Lucca, and Genoa remained possessions of princes. ?Kingdom of Lombardy and Venice.? The sovereign of Hungary and Austria, now calling himself ‘Emperor’ of his archduchy, carved out for himself an Italian kingdom which bore the name of the Kingdom of Lombardy and Venice. On the strength of this, the Austrian, like his French predecessor, took upon him to wear the Italian crown. ?Its extent.? The new kingdom consisted of the former Italian possessions of Austria, the duchies of Milan and Mantua, enlarged by the former possessions of Venice, which had become Austrian at Campoformio. The old boundary between Germany and Italy was restored. Trent, Aquileia, Trieste, were again severed from Italy. They remained possessions of the same prince as Milan and Venice, but they formed no part of his Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. On another frontier, where restoration would have had to be made to a commonwealth, the arrangements were less conservative, and the Valtellina remained part of the new kingdom. The Ticino formed, as before, the boundary towards Piedmont. ?Genoa annexed to Piedmont.? The King of Sardinia came again into possession of this last country, enlarged by the former dominions of Genoa. ?Monaco.? This gave him the whole Ligurian seaboard, except where the little principality of Monaco still went on. ?Tuscany, Parma, Modena, Lucca.? Parma, Modena, and Tuscany again became separate duchies. Lucca remained a duchy alongside of them. ?Lucca annexed to Tuscany.? The family arrangements by which these states were handed about to this and that widow do not concern geography; all that need be marked is that, by virtue of one of these compacts, Lucca was in the end added to Tuscany. That grand-duchy was further increased by the addition of the former outlying possessions of the Sicilian crown, including Elba, the island which for a moment was an Empire. ?The Papal states.? The Pope came back to all his old Italian possessions, outlying Benevento included. ?The Two Sicilies.? The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was formed again by the restoration of the Kingdom of Naples to the Bourbon king. Thus was formed the Italy of 1815, an Italy which, save in the sweeping away of its commonwealths, and the consequent extension of Sardinian and Austrian territory, differed geographically but little from the Italy of 1748. But in 1815 there were hopes which had had no being in 1748. Italy was divided on the map; but she had made up her mind to be one.

The union of Italy was at last to come from one of those corners which in earlier history we have looked on as being hardly Italian at all. It was not Milan or Florence or Rome which was to grow into the new Italy. That function was reserved for a princely house whose beginnings had been Burgundian rather than Italian, whose chief territories had long lain on the Burgundian side of the Alps, but which had gradually put on an Italian character, and which had now become the one national Italian dynasty. The Italian possessions of the Savoyard house, Piedmont, Genoa, and the island of Sardinia, now formed one of the chief Italian states, and the only one whose rule, if still despotic, was not foreign. Savoy, by ceasing to be Savoy, was to become Italy. ?Movements of 1848.? The movements of 1848 in Italy, like those in Germany, led to no lasting changes on the map: but they do so far affect geography that new states were actually founded, if only for a moment. ?Momentary commonwealths.? Rome, Venice, Milan, were actually for a while republics, and the Two Sicilies were for a while separated. In the next year all came back as before. The next lasting change on the map was that which at last restored a real Kingdom of Italy. ?Campaign of 1859.? The joint campaign of France and Sardinia won Lombardy for the Sardinian kingdom. Lombardy was now defined as that part of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom which lay west of the Mincio, except that Mantua was left out. She was left to Austria. A French scheme for an Italian confederation came to nothing. ?Union of the smaller states, 1860.? Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and Romagna voted their own annexation to Piedmont. The Two Sicilies were won by Garibaldi, and the kingly title of Sardinia was merged in that of the restored Kingdom of Italy. ?Addition of the Sicilies.? This new Italian kingdom was, by the addition of the Sicilies, extended over lands which had never been part of the elder Italian kingdom. But Venetia was still cut off; the Pope kept the lands on each side of Rome, the so-called Patrimony and the Campagna. ?Cession of Savoy and Nizza to France.? But France annexed the lands, strictly Burgundian rather than Italian, of Savoy and Nizza. The Italian kingdom was thus again called into being; but it had not yet come to perfection. Italy had ceased to be a geographical expression; but the Italian frontier still presented some geographical anomalies.

The war between Prussia and Austria gave Venetia to Italy; the war between Germany and France allowed Italy to recover Rome. ?Part of the old kingdom not yet recovered.? The two great gaps in her frontier were thus made good; but, to say nothing of the annexations made by France, a large Italian-speaking population, lying within the bounds of the old Italian kingdom, still remains outside its modern revival. Trent, Aquileia, Trieste, Istria, are still parts, not of an Italian kingdom, not of a German kingdom, confederation, or empire, but of an Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Otherwise the Italian kingdom has formed itself, and it has taken its place among the great powers of Europe. Yet the whole peninsula does not form part of the Italian kingdom. ?San Marino remains free.? Surrounded on every side by that kingdom, the commonwealth of San Marino, like Rhodes or Byzantium under the early CÆsars, still keeps its ancient freedom.

§ 5. The Kingdom of Burgundy.

The Burgundian Kingdom, which was united with those of Germany and Italy after the death of its last separate king Rudolf the Third, has had a fate unlike that of any other part of Europe. ?Dying out of the kingdom.? Its memory, as a separate state, has gradually died out. ?Chiefly annexed by France;? The greater part of its territory has been swallowed up bit by bit by a neighbouring power, and the small part which has escaped that fate has long lost all trace of its original name or its original political relations. By a long series of annexations, spreading over more than five hundred years, the greater part of the kingdom has gradually been incorporated with France. ?part Italian;
part Swiss.? Of what remains, a small corner forms part of the modern kingdom of Italy, while the rest still keeps its independence in the form of the commonwealths which make up the western cantons of Switzerland. ?Burgundy represented by Switzerland.? These cantons, in fact, are the truest modern representatives of the Burgundian kingdom. ?Neutrality of Switzerland and Belgium.? And it is on the Confederation of which they form a part, interposed as it is between France, Italy, the new German Empire, and the modern Austrian monarchy, as a central state with a guaranteed neutrality, that some trace of the old function of Burgundy, as the middle kingdom, is thrown. This function it shares with the Lotharingian lands at the other end of the Empire, which now form part of the equally neutral kingdom of Belgium, lands which, oddly enough, themselves became Burgundian in another sense.

The Burgundian Kingdom, lying between the Alps, the SaÔne and the Rhone, and the Mediterranean, might be thought to have a fair natural boundary. ?Boundaries of the kingdom.? And, while it kept any shadow of separate being, its boundaries did not greatly change. ?Fluctuation of its frontier.? They were however somewhat fluctuating on the side of the Western kingdom, being sometimes bounded by the Rhone and sometimes reaching to the line of hills to the west of it. They were also, as we have seen, somewhat fluctuating on the side of Germany. ?Chiefly Romance speaking.? At this end the kingdom took in some German-speaking districts; otherwise the language was Romance, including several dialects of the tongue of Oc.

The northern part of the kingdom, answering to the former Transjurane kingdom—the Regnum Jurense—formed two chief states, the County Palatine of Burgundy—the modern Franche ComtÉ—and the Lesser Burgundy, roughly taking in western Switzerland and northern Savoy. ?Provence.? On the Mediterranean lay the great county of Provence, with a number of smaller counties lying between it and the two northern principalities. ?The Free Cities.? But the great characteristic of the land was that, next to Italy, no part of Europe contained so many considerable cities lying near together. Many of these at different times strove more or less successfully after a republican independence, and a few have kept it to our own day.

But, though the Burgundian kingdom might be thought to have, on three sides at least, a good natural frontier, it had but little real unity. The northern part naturally clave to its connexion with the Empire much longer than the southern. ?The Burgundian Palatinate.? The County Palatine of Burgundy often passed from one dynasty to another, and it is remarkable for the number of times that it was held as a separate state by several of the great princes of Europe. ?Held by the Emperor Frederick, 1156-1189;
by Philip of France, 1315-1330.? It was held by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in right of his wife; the marriage of one of his female descendants carried it to Philip the Fifth of France. ?United with the French Duchy.? Then it became united with the French duchy of Burgundy under the dukes of the House of Valois. ?1477.
Held by the House of Austria, Charles the Fifth Count of Burgundy.? Saving a momentary French occupation after the death of Charles the Bold, it remained with them and their Austrian and Spanish representatives. Among these it had a second Imperial Count in the person of Charles the Fifth. ?Annexed to France, 1674.? But, through all these changes of dynasty, it remained an acknowledged fief of the Empire, till its annexation to France under Lewis the Fourteenth. ?Dole the capital of the county.? The capital of this county, it must be remembered, was Dole. ?BesanÇon a Free Imperial city. 1189-1651.? The ecclesiastical metropolis of BesanÇon, though surrounded by the county, remained a free city of the Empire from the days of Frederick Barbarossa to those of Ferdinand the Third. ?United to France.? It was then merged in the county, and along with the county it passed to France. ?Montbeilliard.? And it should be noticed that a small Burgundian land in this quarter, the county of Montbeilliard or MÜmpelgard, first as a separate state, then in union with the duchy of WÜrttemberg, kept its allegiance to the Empire till the wars of the French Revolution, when it was annexed to France and was never restored.

While the Burgundian Palatinate thus kept its history as an unit in European geography, the Lesser Burgundy to the south-west of it had a different history. The geography here gets somewhat confused through the fact that this Lesser Burgundy, which in the twelfth century passed under the power of the Dukes of ZÄhringen in Swabia as Rectors, took in some districts which were not parts of the Burgundian kingdom. ?The eastern part German.? The eastern part of the kingdom itself was of German speech, and its frontier towards the German duchy of Alemannia or Swabia was somewhat fluctuating. The Aar may be taken as the boundary of the kingdom, while the Lesser Burgundy, as an administrative division, stretched somewhat further to the East. ?Cities of the Lesser Burgundy.? Thus Basel, as well the foundations of the House of ZÄhringen at Bern and Freiburg, stood on strictly Burgundian ground, while the city of Luzern and the land of Unterwalden come under the head of the Lesser Burgundy, without forming part of the Burgundian kingdom. These lands long kept up their connexion with the Empire, though the Lesser Burgundy did not long remain as a separate unit. ?Dukes of ZÄhringen.
End of their house, 1218.? When the House of ZÄhringen came to an end, the country began to split up into small principalities and free cities which gradually grew into independent commonwealths. ?Break-up of the duchy.
Savoyard territory.? The counts of Savoy, of whom more presently, acquired a large territory on both sides of the Lake of Geneva. ?Bishops, Counts, and Free Cities.? Other considerable princes were the bishops of Basel, Lausanne, Geneva, and Sitten, the counts of Geneva, Kyburg, GruyÈres, and NeufchÂtel. ?The Free Lands.? Basel, Solothurn, and Bern were Imperial cities. The complicated relations between the Bishops and the city of Geneva hindered that city from having a strict right to that title. In Unterwalden and in Wallis, notwithstanding the possessions and claims of various spiritual and temporal lords, the most marked feature was the retention of the old rural independence. ?The Old League of High Germany.? Of the cities in this region, Luzern, Bern, Freiburg, Solothurn, and Basel, all gradually became members of the Old League of High Germany, the ground-work of the modern Swiss Confederation. ?Conquests of Bern and Freiburg from Savoy, 1536.? The Savoyard lands north of the lake were conquered by Bern and Freiburg in the sixteenth century, a conquest which also secured the independence of Geneva. ?The Burgundian cantons of Switzerland.? All these lands, after going through the intermediate stage of allies or subjects of some or other of the confederate cantons, have in modern times become independent cantons themselves. This process of annexation and liberation will be traced more fully when we come to the history of the Swiss Confederation.

To the south of this group of states, and partly intermingled with them, lay another group, lying partly within the Cisjurane and partly within the Transjurane kingdom, which gradually grew into a great power. ?Growth of Savoy.? These were the states which were united step by step under the Counts of Maurienne, afterwards Counts of Savoy. ?Burgundian possession of its county.? When their dominions were at their greatest extent, they held south of the Lake of Geneva, besides Maurienne and Savoy strictly so called, the districts of Aosta, Tarantaise, the Genevois, Chablais, and Faucigny, together with Vaud and Gex north of the lake. Thus grew up the power of Savoy, which has already been noticed in its purely Italian aspect, but which must receive fuller separate treatment in a section of its own.

The remainder of the Burgundian Kingdom consisted of a number of small states stretching from the southern boundary of the Burgundian county to the Mediterranean. ?Bresse and Bugey become Savoyard. Bugey, 1137-1344; Bresse, 1272-1402.? North of the Rhone lay the districts of Bresse and Bugey, which passed at various times to the House of Savoy. ?Lyons, Vienne, Orange, &c.
Provence.? Southwards on the Rhone lay a number of small states, among which the most important in history are the archbishopric, the county, and the free city of Lyons, the county or Dauphiny of Vienne and the city of Vienne, the county or principality of Orange, the city of Avignon, the county of Venaissin, the free city of Arles, the capital of the kingdom, the free city of Massalia or Marseilles, the county of Nizza or Nice, and the great county or marquisate of Provence. In this last power lay the first element of danger, especially to the republican independence of the free cities. ?Changes of dynasty.
The Angevins, 1246.? After being held by separate princes of its own, as well as by the Aragonese kings, it passed by marriage into the hands of a French prince, Charles of Anjou, the conqueror of Sicily, and also the destroyer of the second freedom of Massalia. ?Growing French connexion.? The possession of the greatest member of the kingdom by a French ruler, though it made no immediate change in the formal state of things, gave fresh strength to every tendency which tended to withdraw the Burgundian lands from their allegiance to the Empire and to bring them, first into connexion with France, and then into actual incorporation with the French kingdom.

Step by step, though by a process which was spread over many centuries, all the principalities and commonwealths of the Burgundian kingdom, save the lands which have been Swiss and the single valley which is now Italian, have come into the hands of France. The tendency shows itself early. ?Avignon first seized, 1226.
Annexation of Lyons, 1310.? Avignon was seized for a moment during the Albigensian wars; but the permanent process of French annexation began when Philip the Fair took advantage of the disputes between the archbishops and the citizens of Lyons, to join that Imperial city to his dominions. The head of all the Gauls, the seat of the Primate of all the Gauls, thus passed into the hands of the new monarchy of Paris, the first-fruits of French aggrandizement at the cost of the Middle Kingdom. ?Purchase of the Dauphiny of Vienne, 1343.? Later in the same century, the Dauphiny of Vienne was acquired by a bargain with its last independent prince. This land also passed, through the intermediate stage of an Imperial fief held by the heir-apparent of the French crown, into a mere province of France. ?The city of Vienne annexed, 1448.? But the acquisition of the Dauphiny did not carry with it that of the city of Vienne, which escaped for more than a century. ?Valence, 1446.? Between the acquisition of the Dauphiny and the acquisition of the city, the county of Valence was annexed to the Dauphiny. ?Provence, 1481.? Later in the same century followed the great annexation of Provence itself. The rule of French princes in that county for two centuries had doubtless paved the way for this annexation. And the acquisition of Provence carried with it the acquisition of the cities of Arles and Marseilles, which the counts of Provence had deprived of their freedom. By this time the whole of the land between the Rhone and the sea had been swallowed up, save one state at the extreme south-east corner of the kingdom, and a group of small states which were now quite hemmed in by French territory. ?Nizza passes to Savoy, 1388.? The first was the county of Nizza or Nice, which had passed away from Provence to Savoy before the French annexation of Provence. But by this time Savoy had become an Italian power, and Nizza was from henceforth looked on as Italian rather than Burgundian. Between Provence and the Dauphiny lay the city of Avignon, the county of Venaissin, and the principality of Orange. ?Avignon and Venaissin become Papal, 1348.
Annexed to France, 1791.? Avignon and Venaissin became papal possessions by purchase from the sovereign of Provence; and, though they were at last quite surrounded by French territory, they remained papal possessions till they were annexed in the course of the great Revolution. These outlying possessions of the Popes perhaps did somewhat towards preserving the independence of a more interesting fragment of the ancient kingdom. ?Orange.? This was the Principality of Orange, which the neighbourhood of the Pope hindered from being altogether surrounded by French territory. This little state, whose name has become so much more famous than itself, passed through several dynasties, and for a long time it was regularly seized by France in the course of every war. ?Its annexation to France, 1714-1771.? But it was as regularly restored to independence at every peace, and its final annexation did not happen till the eighteenth century. The acquisition of Orange, Avignon, and Venaissin, completed the process of French aggrandizement in the lands between the Rhone and the Var. The stages of the same process as applied to the Savoyard lands will be best told in another section.

We have thus traced the geographical history of the three Imperial kingdoms themselves. It now follows to trace in the like sort the origin and growth of certain of the modern powers of Europe which have grown out of one or more of those kingdoms. Certain parts of the German, Italian, and Burgundian kingdoms have split off from these kingdoms, so as to form new political units, distinct from any of them. Five states of no small importance in later European history have thus been formed. ?Their character as middle states.? Most of them partake more or less of the character of middle states, interposed between France and one or more of the Imperial kingdoms. ?Switzerland.? First, there is the Confederation of Switzerland, which arose by certain German districts and cities forming so close an union among themselves that their common allegiance to the Empire gradually died out. The Confederation grew into its present form by the addition to these German districts of certain Italian and Burgundian districts. ?Savoy.? Secondly, there are, or rather were, the dominions of the Dukes of Savoy, formed by the union of various Italian and Burgundian districts. This however, as a middle power, has ceased to exist; nearly all its Burgundian possessions have been joined to France, while its Italian possessions have grown into a new Italy. ?The Dukes of Burgundy.? Thirdly, there were the dominions of the Dukes of Burgundy, forming a middle power between France and Germany, and made up by the union of French and Imperial fiefs. ?Represented by the kingdoms of the Low Countries.? These are represented on the modern maps by the kingdoms of the Netherlands and Belgium, the greater part of both of which belonged to the Burgundian dukes. Of these kingdoms much the greater part had split off from the old kingdom of Germany. Certain parts were once French fiefs, but had ceased to be so. ?Recognized neutrality of Belgium, Switzerland, and once of part of Savoy.? The position of three out of these four states as middle powers, and their importance in that character, has been acknowledged even by modern diplomacy in the neutrality which is still guaranteed to Belgium and Switzerland, and which was formerly extended to certain districts of Savoy.

Of these four states, Switzerland, Savoy, and the duchy of Burgundy as represented by the two kingdoms of the Low Countries, some have been merged in other powers, and those which still remain count only among the secondary states of Europe. But a fifth power has also broken off from Germany which still ranks among the greatest in Europe. ?The Austrian dominions.? This is the power which, starting from a small German mark on the Danube, has, by the gradual union of various lands, German and non-German, grown into something distinct from Germany, first under the name of the Austrian ‘Empire’ and more latterly under that of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This power differs from the other states of which we have been just speaking, not only in its vastly greater extent, but also in its position. ?Position of the Austrian dominion as a marchland.? It is a marchland, a middle kingdom, but in a different sense from Burgundy, Switzerland, Savoy, or Belgium. ?Comparison with the western marchlands.? All these were marchlands between Christian states, between states all of which had formed part of the Carolingian Empire. All lie on the western side of the German and Italian kingdoms. Austria, on the other hand, as its name implies, arose on the eastern side of the German kingdom, as a mark against Turanian and heathen invaders. ?Austria as the march against the Magyar.? The first mission of Austria was to guard Germany against the Magyar. When the Magyar was admitted into the fellowship of Europe and Christendom—when, after a while, his realm was united under a single sovereign with Austria—the same duty was continued in another form. ?Austria and Hungary the mark of Christendom against the Turk.? The power formed by the union of Hungary and Austria was one of the chief among those which had to guard Christendom against the Turk. Its history therefore forms one of the connecting links between Eastern and Western Europe. In this chapter it will be dealt with chiefly on its Western side, with regard to its relations towards Germany and Italy. The Eastern aspect of the Austro-Hungarian power has more to do with the states which arose out of the break up of the Eastern Empire.

These states then, Switzerland, Savoy, the Duchy of Burgundy, the Netherlands, and Austria, form a proper addition to the sections given to the three Imperial kingdoms. I will now go on to deal with them in order.

§ 6. The Swiss Confederation.

I have just spoken of the Swiss Confederation as being in its origin purely German. This statement is practically correct, as all the original cantons were German in speech and feeling, and the formal style of their union was the Old League of High Germany. But in strict geographical accuracy there was, as we have seen in the last section, a small Burgundian element in the Confederation, if not from the beginning, at least from its aggrandizement in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. ?though part of it geographically Burgundian.? That is to say, part of the territory of the states which formed the old Confederation lay geographically within the kingdom of Burgundy, and a further part lay within the Lesser Burgundy of the Dukes of ZÄhringen. But, by the time when the history of the Confederation begins, the kingdom of Burgundy was pretty well forgotten, and the small German-speaking territory which it took in at its extreme north-east corner may be looked on as practically German ground. ?All the old Cantons German in speech.? A more practical division than the old boundaries of the kingdoms is the boundary of the Teutonic and Romance speech; in this sense all the cantons of the old Confederation, except part of Freiburg, are German. ?The later Romance Cantons.? The Romance cantons are those which were formed in modern times out of the allied and subject states. ?Many popular errors.? It is specially needful to bear in mind, first, that, till the last years of the thirteenth century, not even the germ of modern Switzerland had appeared on the map of Europe; secondly, that the Confederation did not formally become an independent power till the seventeenth century; lastly, that, though the Swiss name had been in common use for ages, it did not become the formal style of the Confederation till the nineteenth century. Nothing in the whole study of historical geography is more necessary than to root out the notion that there has always been a country of Switzerland, as there has always been a country of Germany, Gaul, or Italy. ?The Swiss do not represent the Helvetii.? And it is no less needful to root out the notion that the Swiss of the original cantons in any way represent the Helvetii of CÆsar. ?Summary of Swiss history.
A German League having become more united and independent than others, annexes Romance allies and subjects.? The points to be borne in mind are that the Swiss Confederation is simply one of many German Leagues, which was more lasting and became more closely united than other German Leagues—that it gradually split off from the German Kingdom—that in the course of this process, the League and its members obtained a large body of Italian and Burgundian allies and subjects—lastly, that these allies and subjects have in modern times been joined into one Federal body with the original German Confederates.

The three Swabian lands which formed the kernel of the Old League lay at the point of union of the three Imperial kingdoms, parts of all of which were to become members of the Confederation in its later form. ?First known document of union, 1291.? The first known document of confederation between the three lands dates from the last years of the thirteenth century. But that document is likely to have been rather the confirmation than the actual beginning of their union. They had for their neighbours several ecclesiastical and temporal lords, some other Imperial lands and towns, and far greater than all, the Counts of the house of Kyburg and Habsburg, who had lately grown into the more dangerous character of Dukes of Austria. ?Growth of the League.? The Confederation grew for a while by the admission of neighbouring lands and cities as members of a free German Confederation, owning no superior but the Emperor. ?Luzern, 1332.? First of all, the city of Luzern joined the League. ?ZÜrich, 1351.? Then came the Imperial city of ZÜrich, which had already begun to form a little dominion in the adjoining lands. ?Glarus and Zug, 1352.? Then came the land of Glarus and the town of Zug with its small territory. ?Bern, 1353.? And lastly came the great city of Bern, which had already won a dominion over a considerable body of detached and outlying allies and subjects. ?The Eight Ancient Cantons.? These confederate lands and towns formed the Eight Ancient Cantons. Their close alliance with each other helped the growth of each canton separately, as well as that of the League as a whole. ?Their growth.? Those cantons whose geographical position allowed them to do so, were thus able to extend their power, in the form of various shades of dominion and alliance, over the smaller lands and towns in their neighbourhood. These lesser changes and annexations cannot all be recorded here; but it must be carefully borne in mind that the process was constantly going on. ?Dominion of ZÜrich and Bern.? ZÜrich, and yet more Bern, each formed, after the manner of an ancient Greek city, what in ancient Greece would have passed for an empire. ?Conquests from Austria, 1415-1460.? In the fifteenth century, large conquests were made at the expense of the House of Austria, of which the earlier ones were made by direct Imperial sanction. The Confederation, or some or other of its members, had now extended its territory to the Rhine and the Lake of Constanz. ?Aargau, Thurgau, &c.? The lands thus won, Aargau, Thurgau, and some other districts, were held as subject territories in the hands of some or other of the Confederate states.

It is a fact to be specially noticed in the history of the Confederation, that, for nearly a hundred and thirty years, though the territory and the power of the Confederation were constantly increasing, no new states were admitted to the rank of confederate cantons. Before the next group of cantons was admitted, the general state of the Confederation and its European position had greatly changed. It had ceased to be a purely German power. ?Beginning of Italian dominions.? The first extension beyond the original German lands and those Burgundian lands which were practically German began in the direction of Italy. ?Uri obtains Val Levantina, 1441.? Uri had, by the annexation of Urseren, become the neighbour of the Duchy of Milan, and in the middle of the fifteenth century, this canton acquired some rights in the Val Levantina on the Italian side of the Alps. This was the beginning of the extension of the Confederation on Italian ground. But far more important than this was the advance of the Confederates over the Burgundian lands to the west.?First Savoyard conquest of Bern.
1475.? The war with Charles of Burgundy enabled Bern to win several detached possessions in the Savoyard lands north and east of the lake, and even on the lower course of the Rhone. ?Savoyard conquests of Freiburg and Wallis.? And, while Bern advanced, some points in the same direction were gained by her allies who are not yet members of the Confederation, by the city of Freiburg and the League of Wallis. ?Growth of Wallis.? This last confederation had grown up on the upper course of the Rhone, where the small free lands had gradually displaced the territorial lords. ?Freiburg and Solothurn become Cantons, 1481.? Soon after this came the next admission of new cantons, those of the cities of Freiburg and Solothurn, each of them bringing with it its small following of allied and subject territory. ?Basel and Schaffhausen, 1501.? Twenty years later, Basel and Schaffhausen, the latter being the only canton north of the Rhine, were admitted with their following of the like kind. ?Appenzell, 1513.? Twelve years later, Appenzell, a little land which had set itself free from the rule of the abbots of Saint Gallen, after having long been in alliance with the Confederates, was admitted to the rank of a canton. ?The Thirteen Cantons, 1513-1798.? Thus was made up the full number of Thirteen Cantons, which remained unchanged down to the wars of the French Revolution.

But the time when the Confederation was finally settled as regards the number of cantons was also a time of great extension of territory on the part both of the Confederation and of several of its members. ?GraubÜnden.? At the south-east corner of the Confederate territory, on the borders of the duchy of Milan and the county of Tyrol, the League of GraubÜnden or the Grey Leagues had gradually arisen. A number of communities, as in Wallis, had got rid of the neighbouring lords, and had formed themselves into three leagues, the Grey League proper, the Gotteshausbund, and the League of Ten Jurisdictions, which three were again united by a further federal tie. ?Their alliance with the Confederates.? At the end of the fifteenth century, the Leagues so formed entered into an alliance with the Confederates. ?1495-1567.? Then began a great accession of territory towards the south on the part both of the Confederates and of their new allies. ?Italian dominion of the Confederation, 1512;? The Confederates received a considerable territory within the duchy of Milan, including Bellinzona, Locarno, and Lugano, as the reward of services done to the House of Sforza. ?of the Grey Leagues, 1513.? The next year their new allies of the Grey Leagues also won some Italian territory, the Valtellina and the districts of Chiavenna and Bormio. ?Early Savoyard conquests of Bern, Freiburg, and Wallis, 1536.? Next came the conquest of a large part of the Savoyard lands, of all north of the Lake and a good deal to the south, by the arms of Bern, Freiburg, and Wallis. ?Vaud.? Bern and Freiburg divided Vaud in very unequal proportions. ?Lausanne.? Bern and Wallis divided Chablais on the south side of the lake, and Bern annexed the bishopric of Lausanne on the north. ?Geneva in alliance with Bern and Freiburg.? Geneva, the ally of Bern and Freiburg, with her little territory of detached scraps, was now surrounded by the dominion of her most powerful allies at Bern. ?Territory restored to Savoy, 1567.? But by a later treaty Bern and Wallis gave back to Savoy all that they had won south of the Lake, with the territory of Gex to the west of it. Geneva thus again had Savoy for a neighbour, a neighbour at whose expense she even made some conquests—Gex among them—conquests which the French ally of the free city would not allow her to keep. Later changes gave her a neighbour yet more dangerous than Savoy in the shape of France itself. ?GruyÈres divided between Bern and Freiburg, 1554.? Before these changes, Bern and Freiburg divided the county of GruyÈres between them, the last important instance of that kind of process.

The Confederation was thus fully formed, with its Thirteen Cantons and their allied states. ?Saint Gallen.
Bienne.? Of these the Abbot of Saint Gallen, the town of Saint Gallen, and the town of Biel or Bienne, were so closely allied with the Confederates as to have a place in their Diets. Besides relations of less close alliance which the Confederates had with various Alsatian cities, several other states had a connexion so close and lasting with the Confederation or with some of its members, as to form part of the same political system. ?Bischofbasel.
MÜhlhausen and Rottweil.
NeufchÂtel passes to Prussia, 1707.? Such were the Leagues of Wallis and GraubÜnden, the Bishop of Basel, the outlying town of MÜhlhausen in Elsass, and for a while that of Rottweil. Bern too, and sometimes other cantons, had relations both with the town and with the princes of NeufchÂtel, which, after passing through several dynasties, was at last inherited by the Kings of Prussia. ?Constanz.? Constanz, at the other end of the Confederate land, was refused admission as a canton, but for a while it was in alliance with some of the cantons. ?Passes to Austria, 1548.? But this connexion was severed when Constanz, instead of a free Imperial city, became a possession of Austria. ?The Confederation released from the allegiance to the Empire, 1658.? The power thus formed, a power in which a body of German Confederates was surrounded by a body of allies and subjects, German, Italian, and Burgundian, all of them originally members of the Empire, was by the Peace of Westfalia formally released from all allegiance to the Empire and its chief. ?Date of the practical separation, 1495.? Their practical separation may be dated much earlier, from the time when the Confederates refused to accept the legislation of Maximilian.

The growth of the League into an independent power was doubtless greatly promoted by its geographical position, as occupying the natural citadel of Europe. ?Its anomalous frontier.? But the piecemeal way in which it grew up was marked by the anomalous nature of its frontier on several points. On the north the Rhine would seem to be a natural boundary, but Schaffhausen beyond the Rhine formed part of the Confederation, while Constanz and other points within it did not. To the south the possession of territory on the Italian side of the Alps seems an anomaly, an anomaly which is brought out more strongly by a singularly irregular and arbitrary frontier. ?The Confederation as a middle state.? But looking on the Confederation as the middle state, arising at the point of junction of the three Imperial kingdoms, it was in a manner fitting that it should spread itself into all three.

The form which the Confederation thus took in the sixteenth century remained untouched till the wars of the French Revolution. ?Dismemberment of the Grey Leagues, 1797.? The beginning of change was when the Italian districts subject to the Grey Leagues were transferred to the newly formed Cisalpine Republic. In the next year the whole existing system was destroyed. ?Abolition of the Federal system, 1798.
The Helvetic Republic.? The Federal system was abolished; instead of the Old League of High Germany, there arose, after the new fashion of nomenclature, a Helvetic Republic, in which the word canton meant no more than department. Yet even by such a revolution as this some good was done. ?Freedom of the subject districts.? The subject districts were freed from the yoke of their masters, whether those masters were the whole Confederation or one or more of its several cantons. ?Freedom of Vaud.? Thus, above all, the Romance land of Vaud was freed from subjection to its German masters at Bern. ?Annexation of Bischofbasel and Geneva to France.? Some of the allied districts, as the bishopric of Basel and the city of Geneva, were annexed to France. But the Leagues of Wallis and GraubÜnden were incorporated with the Helvetic Republic. ?Act of Mediation, 1803.? In 1803 the Federal system was restored by Buonaparte’s Act of Mediation, which formed a Federal republic of nineteen cantons. ?The nineteen cantons.? These were the original thirteen, with the addition of Aargau, GraubÜnden, St. Gallen, Ticino, Thurgau, and Vaud, which were formed out of the formerly allied and subject lands. ?Wallis incorporated with France.? Wallis was separated from the Confederation, and became, first a nominally distinct republic, and afterwards a French department. ?NeufchÂtel.
1806.? NeufchÂtel was, in the course of Buonaparte’s wars with Prussia, detached from that power, to form a principality under his General Berthier. ?The Swiss Confederation of twenty-two cantons. 1815.? At last, in 1815, the present Swiss Confederation was established, consisting of twenty-two cantons, the number being made up by the addition of NeufchÂtel, Wallis, and Geneva. ?Bischofbasel added to Bern.? The bishopric of Basel was also again detached from France, and added to the canton of Bern, a canton differing in language and religion, and cut off by a mountain range. ?NeufchÂtel separated from Prussia, 1848.? The great constitutional changes which have been made since that time have not affected geography, unless we count the division of the city and district of Basel, Baselstadt and Baselland, into distinct half-cantons, and the surrender of all rights over NeufchÂtel by the King of Prussia. But this last was not strictly a geographical change; it was rather a change from a quasi monarchic to a purely republican government in that particular canton.

§ 7. The State of Savoy.

The growth of the power of Savoy, the border state of Burgundy and Italy, has necessarily been spoken of more than once in earlier sections; but it seems needful to give a short connected account of its progress, and to mark the way in which a power originally Burgundian gradually lost on the side of Burgundy and grew on the side of Italy, till it has in the end itself grown into a new Italy. ?Geographical position of the Savoyard lands.? The lands which have at different times passed under the rule of the House of Savoy lie continuously, though with an irregular frontier, and though divided by the great barrier of the Alps. ?Their three divisions.? They fall however into three main geographical divisions, which at one time became also political divisions, being held by different branches of the Savoyard House. ?Italian.? There are the Italian possessions of that House, which have grown into the modern Italian kingdom. ?Burgundian south of the lake.? There are the more strictly Savoyard lands south of the Lake of Geneva, and the other lands south of the Rhone after it issues from that lake, all of which have passed away under the power of France. ?Burgundian north of the lake.? And there are the lands north of the Lake and of the Rhone, part of which have also become French, while others have become part of the Swiss Confederation. Both these last lay within the kingdom of Burgundy, and stretched into both its divisions, Transjurane and Cisjurane. In no part of our story is it more necessary to avoid language which forestalls the arrangements of later times. ?Popular confusions.? A wholly false impression is given by the use of language such as commonly is used. We often hear of the princes of Savoy holding lands ‘in France’ and ‘in Switzerland. They held lands which by virtue of later changes have severally become French and Swiss; but those lands became French and Swiss only by ceasing to be Savoyard. On the other hand, to speak of them from the beginning as holding lands in Italy is perfectly accurate. The Savoyard states were a large and fluctuating assemblage of lands on both sides of the Alps, lying partly within the Italian and partly within the Burgundian kingdom. These last have shared the fate of the other fiefs of that crown.

The cradle of the Savoyard power lay in the Burgundian lands immediately bordering upon Italy and stretching on both sides of the Alps. It was to their geographical position, as holding several great mountain passes, that the Savoyard princes owed their first importance, succeeding therein in some measure to the Burgundian kings themselves.[15] The early stages of the growth of the house are very obscure; and its power does not seem to have formed itself till after the union of Burgundy with the Empire. ?Possessions of the Counts of Maurienne.? But it seems plain that, at the end of the eleventh century, the Counts of Maurienne, which was their earliest title, held rights of sovereignty in the Burgundian districts of Maurienne, Savoy strictly so called, Tarantaise, and Aosta. ?Aosta; its special position.? This last valley and city, though on the Italian side of the Alps, had hitherto been rather Burgundian than Italian.[16] Its allegiance had fluctuated several times between the two kingdoms; but, from the time that Savoy held lands in both, the question became of no practical importance. And, without entering into minute questions of tenure, it may be said that the early Savoyard possessions reached to the Lake of Geneva, and spread on both sides of the inland mouth of the Rhone. The power of the Savoyard princes in this region was largely due to their ecclesiastical position as advocates of the abbey of Saint Maurice. ?Geographical character of the Burgundian territories.? Thus their possessions had a most irregular outline, nearly surrounding the lands of Genevois and Faucigny. A state of this shape, like Prussia in a later age and on a greater scale, was, as it were, predestined to make further advances. But for some centuries those advances were made much more largely in Burgundy than in Italy. ?Their early Italian possessions.? The original Italian possessions of the House bordered on their Burgundian counties of Maurienne and Aosta, taking in Susa and Turin. ?Marquesses in Italy.? This small marchland gave its princes the sounding title of Marquesses in Italy. The endless shiftings of territory in this quarter could be dealt with only at extreme length, and they are matters of purely local concern. ?Fluctuations of dominion.? In truth, they are not always fluctuations of territory in any strict sense at all, but rather fluctuations of rights between the feudal princes, the cities, and their bishops. ?Their position in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.? In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the princes of Savoy were still hemmed in in their own corner of Italy by princes of equal or greater power, at Montferrat, at Saluzzo, at Iverea, and at Biandrate. And it must be remembered that their position as princes at once Burgundian and Italian was not peculiar to them. ?Other princes at once Italian and Burgundian.? The Dauphins of the Viennois and the Counts of Provence both held at different times territories on the Italian side of the Alps. The Italian dominions of the family remained for a long while quite secondary to its Burgundian possessions, and the latter may therefore be traced out first.

The main object of Savoyard policy in this region was necessarily the acquisition of the lands of Faucigny and the Genevois. ?First advance north of the lake.? But the final incorporation of those lands did not take place till they were still more completely hemmed in by the Savoyard dominions through the extension of the Savoyard power to the north of the Lake. ?Grant of Moudon. 1207.? This began early in the thirteenth century by a royal grant of Moudon to Count Thomas of Savoy. ?Romont the northern capital.? Romont was next won, and became the centre of the Savoyard power north of the Lake. ?Peter, Count of Savoy. 1263-1268.? Soon after, through the conquests of Peter of Savoy, who was known as the Little Charlemagne and who plays a part in English as well as in Burgundian history, these possessions grew into a large dominion, stretching along a great part of the shores of the Lake of NeufchÂtel and reaching as far north as Murten or Morat. ?1239-1268.? But it was a straggling, and in some parts fragmentary, dominion, the continuity of which was broken by the scattered possessions of the Bishops of Lausanne and other ecclesiastical and temporal lords. This extension of dominion brought Peter into close connexion with the lands and cities which were afterwards to form the Old League of High Germany. ?His relations with Bern.? Bern especially, the power to which his conquests were afterwards to be transferred, looked on him as a protector. ?Barons of Vaud. Union of Vaud with the elder branch. 1349.? This new dominion north of the Lake was, after Peter’s reign, held for a short time by a separate branch of the Savoyard princes as Barons of Vaud; but in the middle of the fourteenth century, their barony came into the direct possession of the elder branch of the house. The lands of Faucigny and the Genevois were thus altogether surrounded by the Savoyard territory. ?Faucigny held by the Dauphins of the Viennois.? Faucigny had passed to the Dauphins of the Viennois, who were the constant rivals of the Savoyard counts, down to the time of the practical transfer of their dauphiny to France. ?Savoy acquires Faucigny and Gex. 1355.? Soon after that annexation, Savoy obtained Faucigny, with Gex and some other districts beyond the Rhone, in exchange for some small Savoyard possessions within the Dauphiny. ?The Genevois. 1401.? The long struggle for the Genevois, the county of Geneva, was ended by its purchase in the beginning of the fifteenth century. This left the city of Geneva altogether surrounded by Savoyard territory, a position which before long altogether changed the relations between the Savoyard counts and the city. ?Changed relations to city of Geneva.? Hitherto, in the endless struggles between the Genevese counts, bishops, and citizens, the Savoyard counts, the enemies of the immediate enemy, had often been looked on by the citizens as friends and protectors. Now that they had become immediate neighbours of the city, they began before long to be its most dangerous enemies. ?Amadeus the Eighth, Count 1391;
Duke 1417;
Antipope 1440;
died 1451.? The acquisition of the Genevois took place in the reign of the famous Amadeus the Eighth, the first Duke of Savoy, who received that rank by grant of King Siegmund, and who was afterwards the Antipope Felix. ?Greatest extent of the dominions of Savoy in Burgundy.? In his reign the dominions of Savoy, as a power ruling on both sides of the Alps, reached their greatest extent. But the Savoyard power was still pre-eminently Burgundian, and Chambery was its capital. The continuous Burgundian dominion of the house now reached from the Alps to the SaÔne, surrounding the lake of Geneva and spreading on both sides of the lake of NeufchÂtel. ?Annexation of Nizza. 1388.? Besides this continuous Burgundian dominion, the House of Savoy had already become possessed of Nizza, by which their dominions reached to the sea. This last territory had however, though technically Burgundian, geographically more to do with the Italian possessions of the house. ?Savoy brought into the neighbourhood of France.? But this great extension of territory brought Savoy on its western side into closer connexion with the most dangerous of neighbours. Her frontier for a certain distance joined the actual kingdom of France. The rest joined the Dauphiny, which was now practically French, and the county of Provence, which was ruled by French princes and which before the end of the century became an actual French possession. ?New relations towards Bern and the Confederates.? To the North again the change in the relations between the House of Savoy and the city of Geneva led in course of time to equally changed relations towards Bern and her Confederates. ?Loss of the Burgundian dominion of Savoy.? Through the working of these two causes, all that the House of Savoy now keeps of this great Burgundian territory is the single city and valley of Aosta. After the fifteenth century, the Burgundian history of that house consists of the steps spread over more than three hundred years by which this great dominion was lost.

The real importance of the house of Savoy in Italy dates from much the same time as the great extension of its power in Burgundy. ?The largest dominions cut short in the twelfth century.? During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, partly through the growth of the cities, partly through the enmity of the Emperor Henry the Sixth, the dominions of the Savoyard princes as marquesses of Susa had been cut short, so as hardly to reach beyond their immediate Alpine valleys. ?Grants to Count Thomas. 1207.? In the beginning of the thirteenth century, when Count Thomas obtained his first royal grant north of the lake, he also obtained grants of Chieri and other places in the neighbourhood of Turin. These grants were merely nominal; but they were none the less the beginning of the Italian advance of the house. ?First homage of Saluzzo. 1216.? In the same reign Saluzzo for the first time paid a precarious homage to Savoy. ?Italian dominion of Charles of Anjou. 1259.? Later in the thirteenth century, Charles of Anjou, now Count of Provence and King of Sicily, made his way into Northern Italy also, and thus brought the house of Savoy into a dangerous neighbourhood with French princes on its Italian as well as on its Burgundian side. Through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Savoyard border went on extending itself. But the Italian possessions of the house, like its possessions north of the lake, were separated from the main body of Savoyard territory to form a fief for one of the younger branches. ?Counts of Achaia in Piedmont. 1301-1418.? This branch bore by marriage the empty title of Counts of Achaia and Morea—memories of Frank dominion within the Eastern Empire—while, as if to keep matters straight, a branch of the house of Palaiologos reigned at Montferrat. ?Advance in the fourteenth century.? During the fourteenth century, among many struggles with the marquesses of Montferrat and Saluzzo, the Angevin counts of Provence, and the lords of Milan, the Savoyard power in Italy generally increased. ?Reunion of Piedmont. 1418.? Under Amadeus the Eighth, the lands held by the princes of Achaia were united to the possessions of the head of the house. ?Acquisition of Biella, &c. 1435.? Before the end of the reign of Amadeus, the dominions of Savoy stretched as far as the Sesia, taking in Biella, Santhia and Vercelli. Counting Nizza and Aosta as Italian, which they now practically were, the Italian dominions of the House reached from the Alps of Wallis to the sea. ?Relations with Montferrat.? But they were nearly cut in two by the dominions of the Marquesses of Montferrat, from whom however the Dukes of Savoy now claimed homage. ?Claims on Saluzzo; its doubtful homage.? Saluzzo, lying between the old inheritance of Susa and the new possession of Nizza, also passed under Savoyard supremacy. But it lay open to a very dangerous French claim on the ground of a former homage done to the Viennese Dauphins. Amadeus, the first Duke of Savoy, took the title of Count of Piedmont, and afterwards that of Prince. ?Establishment of Savoy as a middle state.? His possessions were now fairly established as a middle state, Italian and Burgundian, in nearly equal proportions.

In the course of the next century and a half the Savoyard state altogether changed its character in many ways. The changes which affected all Europe, especially the great Italian wars, could not fail greatly to affect the border state of Italy and Gaul. And there is no part of our story which gives us more instructive lessons with regard to the proper limits of our subject. During this time the Savoyard power was brought under a number of influences, all of which deeply affected its history, but which did not all alike affect its geography. ?French influence and occupation.? We have a period of French influence, a period of French occupation, and more than one actual fresh settlement of the frontier. Mere influence does not concern us at all. Occupation concerns us only when it takes the form of permanent conquest. An occupation of nearly forty years comes very near to permanent conquest; still when, as in this case, it comes to an end without having effected any formal annexation, it is hardly to be looked on as actually working a change on the map. ?Occupation by France.? France occupied Piedmont for nearly as long a time as Bern occupied the lands south of the lake. Yet we look on the one occupation as simply part of the military history, while in the other we see a real, though only temporary, geographical change. ?Increased Italian character of Savoy.? But the result alike of influence, of occupation, and of actual change of boundaries, all tended the same way. They all tended to strengthen the Italian character of the House of Savoy, to cut short its Burgundian possessions, and, if not greatly to increase its Italian possessions, at least to put it in the way of greatly increasing them.

During the second half of the fifteenth century, the power of the House of Savoy greatly declined, partly through the growing influence of France, partly through the division, in the form of appanages, of the lands which had been so lately formed together into a compact state. ?The Italian wars.? Then came the Italian wars, in which the Savoyard dominions became the highway for the kings of France in their invasions of Italy. The strictly territorial changes of this period chiefly concern the marquisate of Saluzzo on the Italian side and the northern frontier on the Burgundian side. In the end these two points of controversy were merged in a single settlement. ?First loss of lands north of the lake. 1475.? The first loss of territory on the northern frontier, the first sign that the Savoyard power in Burgundy was gradually to fall back, was the loss of part of the lands north of the lake in the war between Charles of Burgundy and the Confederates. Granson on the lake of NeufchÂtel, Murten or Morat on its own lake, Aigle at the south-east end of the great lake, Échallens lying detached in the heart of Vaud, all passed away from Savoy and became for ever Confederate ground. Sixty years later, the affairs of Geneva led to the great intervention of Bern, Freiburg and Wallis, by which Savoy was for ever shorn of her possessions north of the lake. ?Loss of the lands on both sides of the lake. 1536.? For a while indeed she was cut off from the lake altogether; Chablais passed away as well as Vaud. Geneva, with her detached scraps of territory, was now wholly surrounded by her own allies. ?Reunion of the lands south of the lake. 1567.? Thirty years later, Bern restored all her conquests south of the lake, together with Gex to the west, leaving Geneva again surrounded by the dominions of Savoy. Wallis too gave up part of her share, keeping only the narrow strip on the left bank of the Rhone. ?Charles the Good. 1504-1553.
Emanuel Filibert. 1553-1580.? The loss and the recovery mark the difference between the reigns of Duke Charles the Third, called the Good, and Duke Emmanuel Filibert with the Iron Head. The difference of the two reigns is equally marked with regard to France. ?Beginning of French occupation 1536.
Its end. 1574.? Almost at the same moment as the conquests made by Bern, began that occupation, whole or partial, of Savoyard territory by the French arms which did not come wholly to an end for thirty-eight years. Savoy then appeared again as a power whose main strength lay in Italy, whose capital, instead of Burgundian Chambery, was Italian Turin. And all later changes of frontier and the changes of frontier in her more southern dominions also tended the same way to increase the Italian character of the Savoyard power, and to lessen its extent in the lands which we may distinguish as Transalpine, for the Burgundian name has now altogether passed away from them.

The first formal exchange of Burgundian for Italian ground happened under Emmanuel Filibert, shortly after the emancipation of his dominions. ?Acquisition of Tenda.? The small county of Tenda was acquired in exchange for the marquisate of Villars in Bresse. This extended the Italian frontier, without formally narrowing the Burgundian frontier; still it was a step in the direction of more important changes. ?Disputes about the homage of Saluzzo.? The first of these was caused by the endless disputes which arose out of the disputed homage of Saluzzo. ?Annexation of Saluzzo by France. 1548.? The Marquesses of Saluzzo preferred the French claimant of their homage to the Savoyard, a preference which led in the end to definite annexation by France. This was the first acquisition of Italian soil by France as such, as distinguished from the claims of French princes over Milan, Naples, and Asti. France thus threw a continuous piece of French territory into the heart of the states of Savoy. When the French occupation ceased, Saluzzo still remained to France. ?Conquest of Saluzzo. 1588.? Presently it was conquered by Duke Charles Emmanuel. ?Reign of Charles Emanuel. 1580-1630.? The reign of this prince marks the final change in the destiny of the house of Savoy. He himself had dreamed of wider conquests on the Gaulish side of the Alps than had ever presented himself to any prince of his house. He was to be Count of Provence, King of Burgundy, perhaps King of France. The real results of his reign told in exactly the opposite way. ?Bresse, &c. exchanged for Saluzzo. 1601.? By the treaty which ended his war with France, Saluzzo was ceded to Savoy in exchange for Bresse, Bugey, Valromey, and Gex. ?Loss of position beyond the Alps.? A powerful neighbour was thus shut out from a possession which cut the Savoyard states in twain; but the price at which this advantage was gained amounted to a final surrender of the old position of the Savoyard House beyond the Alps. The Rhone and not the SaÔne became the boundary, while the surrender of Gex brought France to the shores of the Lake. Geneva, her city and her scattered scraps of territory, had now, besides Bern, two other neighbours in France and Savoy. ?Attempts on Geneva. 1602-1609.? The two attempts of Charles Emmanuel to seize upon the city were fruitless. Savoy now became distinctly an Italian power, keeping indeed the lands between the Alps and the Lake, the proper Duchy of Savoy, but having her main possessions and her main interests in Italy. ?Later history of Savoy.? We may here therefore finish the history of the Transalpine possessions of the Savoyard House. ?Annexed to France. 1792-1796.? The Duchy of Savoy remained in the hands of its own Dukes till their continental dominion was swept away in the storm of the French Revolution. ?Restored. 1814-1815.? It was restored after the first fall of Buonaparte, but with a narrowed frontier, which left its capital Chambery to France. This was set right by the treaties of the next year. ?Savoy and Nizza annexed to France. 1860.? Lastly, as all the world knows, Savoy itself, including the guaranteed neutral lands on the Lake, passed, along with Nizza, to France. Savoy itself was so far favoured as to be allowed to keep its ancient name, and to form the departments of High and Low Savoy, instead of being condemned, as in the former temporary annexation, to bear the names of Leman and Mont Blanc. The Burgundian Counts who have grown into Italian Kings have thus lost the land under whose name their House grew famous. ?Aosta spared.? Aosta alone remains as the last relic of the times when the Savoyard Dukes, the greatest lords of the Middle Kingdom, still kept their place as the truest representatives of the Middle Kingdom itself.

The purely Italian history of the house now begins, a history which has been already sketched in dealing with the geography of Italy. ?Its character.? Savoy now takes part in every European struggle, and, though its position led to constant foreign occupation, some addition of territory was commonly gained at every peace. ?French occupation. 1629.? Thus, before the reign of Charles Emmanuel was over, Piedmont was again overrun by French troops. ?Annexation of part of Montferrat. 1631.
French occupation of Pinerolo. 1630-1696.? Though the Savoyard possessions in Italy were presently increased by a part of the Duchy of Montferrat, this was a poor compensation for the French occupation of Pinerolo and other points in the heart of Piedmont, which lasted till nearly the end of the century. ?Later Italian advance.? The gradual acquisition of territory at the expense of the Milanese duchy, the acquisition and exchange of the two island kingdoms, the last annexation by France, the acquisition of the Genoese seaboard, the growth of the Kingdom of Sardinia into the Kingdom of Italy, have been already told. Our present business has been with Savoy as a middle power, a character which practically passed from it with the loss of Vaud and Bresse, and all traces of which are now sunk in the higher but less interesting character of one of the great powers of Europe. From Savoy in its character of a middle power, as one of the representatives of ancient Burgundy, we naturally pass to another middle power which prolonged the existence of the Burgundian name, and on part of which, though not on a part lying within its Burgundian possessions, some trace of the ancient functions of the middle kingdom is still laid by the needs of modern European policy.

§ 8. The Duchy of Burgundy and the Low Countries.

Among all the powers which we have marked as having for their special characteristic that of being middle states, the one which came most nearly to an actual revival of the middle states of earlier days was the Duchy of Burgundy under the Valois Dukes. A great power was formed whose princes held no part of their dominions in wholly independent sovereignty. ?Their twofold vassalage.? In practical power they were the peers of their Imperial and royal neighbours; but their formal character throughout every rood of their possessions was that of vassals of one or other of those neighbours. ?Its effects.? Such a twofold vassalage naturally suggested, even more strongly than vassalage to a single lord could have done, the thought of emancipation from all vassalage, and of the gathering together of endless separate fiefs into a single kingdom. ?Schemes for a Burgundian kingdom.? The gradual acquisitions of earlier princes, especially those of Philip the Good, naturally led up to the design, avowed by his son Charles the Bold, of exchanging the title of Duke for that of King. The memories of the older Burgundian and Lotharingian kingdoms had no doubt a share in shaping the schemes of a prince who possessed so large a share of the provinces which had formed those kingdoms. The schemes of Charles, one can hardly doubt, reached to the formation of a realm like that of the first Lothar, a realm stretching from the Ocean to the Mediterranean. His actual possessions, at their greatest extent, formed a power to which Burgundy gave its name, but which was historically at least as much Lotharingian as Burgundian. ?Historical importance of the Burgundian power.? And though this actual dominion was only momentary, no power ever arose which fills a wider and more oecumenical place in history than the line of the Valois Dukes. Their power connects the earliest settlement of the European states with the latest. ?1870.? It spans a thousand years, and connects the division of Verdun with the last treaty that guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium. The growth of their power was directly influenced by memories of the early Carolingian partitions; and, even in its fall, it has itself influenced the geography and politics of Europe ever since. As a Burgundian power, it was as ephemeral as all other Burgundian powers have ever been. As a Lotharingian power, it abides still in its effects. ?History of the Low Countries.? The union of the greater part of the Low Countries under a single prince, and that a prince who was on the whole foreign to the Empire, strengthened that tendency to split off from the Empire which was already at work in some of those lands. Later events caused them to split off in two bodies instead of one. This last tendency became so strong that a modern attempt to unite them broke down, and their place in the modern polity of Europe is that of two distinct kingdoms. ?Final result of the Burgundian dominion.? The existence of those two kingdoms is the final result of the growth of the Burgundian power in the fifteenth century. ?Its effect on language.? And by leading to the separation of the northern Netherlands from the Empire, it has led to one result which could never have been reckoned on, the preservation of one branch of the Low-Dutch tongue as the acknowledged and literary speech of an independent nation. ?The Netherlands and Belgium.? Its political results were the creation, in the shape of the northern Netherlands, of a power which once held a great place in the affairs of Europe and of the world, and the slower growth, in the shape of the southern Netherlands, of a state in which modern European policy still acknowledges the character of a middle kingdom. As the neutral confederation of Switzerland represents the middle kingdom of Burgundy, so the neutral kingdom of Belgium represents the middle kingdom of Lotharingia.

The Duchy of Burgundy which gave its name to the Burgundian power of the fifteenth century was that one among the many lands bearing the Burgundian name which lay wholly outside the Burgundian kingdom of the Emperors. This Burgundy, the only one which has kept the name to our own time, the duchy of which Dijon is the capital, never was a fief of the Eastern Kingdom or of the Empire, after the final separation. It always acknowledged the supremacy of the kings of Laon and Paris. ?Two lines of Dukes. 1032.? By these last the duchy was twice granted in fief to princes of their own house, once in the eleventh century and once in the fourteenth. ?The Valois. 1363.? This last grant was the beginning of the Dukes of the House of Valois, with the growth of whose power we have now to deal. ?Union of Flanders and Burgundy. 1369.
The county of Burgundy.? Philip the Hardy, the first Duke of this line, obtained, by his marriage with Margaret of Flanders, the counties of Flanders, Artois, Rhetel, and Nevers, all fiefs of the crown of France, together with the County Palatine of Burgundy as a fief of the Empire. The peculiar position of the Dukes of Burgundy of this line was at once established by this marriage. ?Two masses of territory.? Duke Philip held of two lords, and his dominions lay in two distinct masses. The two Burgundies, duchy and county, and the county of Nevers, lay geographically together; Flanders and Artois lay together at a great distance; the small possession of Rhetel lay again detached between the two. Any princes who held such a territory as this could hardly fail to devote their main policy to the work of bringing about the geographical union of their scattered possessions. Nor was this all. The possession of the two Burgundies made their common sovereign a vassal at once of France and of the Empire. ?Position of the Netherlands.? The possession of Flanders, Artois, and Rhetel further brought him into connexion with those border lands of the Empire and of the French kingdom where the authority of either over-lord was weakest, and which had long been tending to form themselves into a separate political system distinct from both. The results of this complicated position, as worked out, whether by the prudence of Philip the Good or by the daring of Charles the Bold, form the history of the Dukes of Burgundy of the House of Valois.

The lands which we are accustomed to group together under the name of the Netherlands or Low Countries lay chiefly within the bounds of the Empire; but the county of Flanders had always been a fief of France. ?Fief of the Counts of Flanders within the Empire.? Part however of the dominions of its counts, the north-eastern corner of their dominions, the lands of Alost and Waas, were held of the Empire. ?Zealand.? These lands, together with the neighbouring islands of Zealand, formed a ground of endless disputes between the Counts of Flanders and their northern neighbours the Counts of Holland. ?County of Holland.? This last county gradually disentangles itself from the general mass of the Frisian lands which lie along the whole coast from the mouth of the Scheld to the mouth of the Weser. ?Inroads of the sea. 1219, 1282.? And those great inroads of the sea in the thirteenth century which gave the Zuyder-Zee its present extent helped to give the country a natural boundary, and to part it off from the Frisian lands to the north-east. ?Disputes with the free Frisians.? Towards the end of the thirteenth century Friesland west of the Zuyder-Zee had become part of the dominions of the Counts. ?Independence of West Friesland. 1417-1447.
County of East Friesland. 1454.? The land immediately east of the gulf established its freedom, while East Friesland passed to a line of counts, under whom its fortunes parted off from those of the Netherlands. Part of its later history has been already given in the character of a more purely German state. ?The Bishops of Utrecht.? Both the counts and the free Frisians had also dangerous neighbours in the Bishops of Utrecht, the great ecclesiastical princes of this region, who held a large temporal sovereignty lying apart from their city on the eastern side of the gulf. These disputes went on, as also disputes with the Dukes of Geldern, without any final settlement, almost to the time when all these lands began to be united under the Burgundian power. But before this time, the Counts of Holland had become closely connected with lands much further to the south. ?Duchy of Brabant.? Among a number of states in this region, the most powerful was the Duchy of Brabant, which represented the Duchy of the Lower Lotharingia, and whose princes held the mark of Antwerp and the cities of Brussels, LÖwen or Louvain, and Mechlin. ?County of Hennegau or Hainault united with Holland. 1299.? To the South of them lay the county of Hennegau or Hainault. At the end of the thirteenth century, this county was joined by marriage with that of Holland. Holland and Hainault were thus detached possessions of a common prince, with Brabant lying between them. ?Mark of Namur.? South of Brabant lay the small mark or county of Namur, which, without being united to Flanders, was held by a branch of the princes of that house.

All these states, though their princes held of two separate over-lords, had much in common, and were well fitted to be worked together into a single political system. They had much in common in the physical character of the country, and in the unusual number of great and flourishing cities which these countries contained. ?Importance of the cities.? None of these cities indeed actually reached the position of free cities of the Empire; but their wealth, and the degree of practical independence which they possessed, forms a main feature in the history of the Low Countries. In point of language, the northern part of these states spoke various dialects of Low-Dutch, from Flemish to Frisian; in the southern lands of Hainault, Artois, and Namur, the language, though not French, was not Teutonic, but an independent Romance speech, the Walloon. ?South-western group of states.? To the west of these states lay another group of small principalities connected with the former greater group in many ways, but not so closely as those which we have just gone through. ?Bishopric of LÜttich.
Duchies of Luxemburg and Limburg.? The great ecclesiastical principality of LÜttich or LiÈge, lying in two detached parts, divided the lands of which we have been speaking from the counties, afterwards duchies, of LÜzelburg or Luxemburg and of Limburg. Of these the more distant Limburg passed in the fourteenth century to the Dukes of Brabant. ?Luxemburg a Duchy. 1353.? Luxemburg is famous as having given a series of princes to the kingdom of Bohemia and to the Empire, and in their hands it rose to the rank of a duchy. ?Geldern.? Lastly, to the north of LÜttich, forming a connecting link between this group of states and the more purely Frisian powers, lay the duchy of Geldern, of whose quarters the most northern portion stretched to the Zuyder Zee. These eastern states, though not so closely connected with one another as those to the west, were easily led into the same political system. ?Middle position of all these states.? Without drawing any hard and fast line, we may say that all the states of this region formed, if not yet a middle state, yet a middle system, apart alike from France and the Empire, though in various ways connected with both. Mainly Imperial, mainly Teutonic, they were not wholly so. ?French influence.? Besides the homage lawfully due to France from Flanders and Artois, French influence in various ways, in politics, in manners, and in language, had made great inroads in the southern Netherlands. Brabant and Hainault had practically quite as much to do with France as with the Empire. ?Walloon language.? And this French influence was of course helped by the fact that a considerable region in the south was, though not of French, yet not of Teutonic speech. Altogether, with much to unite them to the great powers on either side, with much to keep them apart from either of them, with much more to unite them to one another, the states of the Netherlands might almost seem to be designed by nature to be united under a single political head. ?Union of the Netherlands under the Dukes of Burgundy.? Such a head was supplied by the Dukes of Burgundy and Counts of Flanders, by whom, in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, nearly the whole of the Netherlands was united into a single power which was to be presently broken into two by the results of religious divisions.

Leaving then for the present the growth and fall of the Burgundian power in the lands more to the south, we will go on to trace the steps by which the provinces of the Low Countries were united under the Valois Dukes and their Austrian descendants. ?Reign of Philip the Good. 1419-1467.? The great increase of territory in this region was made during the long reign of Philip the Good. ?Namur. 1421-1429.? His first acquisition was the county of Namur, a small and outlying district, but one which, as small and outlying, would still more strongly suggest the rounding off of the scattered territory. ?1429-1433.? A series of marriages and disputes next enabled Philip to make a much more important extension of his dominions. ?1405.? Brabant and Limburg had passed to a younger branch of the Burgundian House. ?1418.? John, Duke of Brabant, the cousin of Philip by a marriage with Jacqueline, Countess of Holland and Hainault, united those states for a moment. The disputes and confusions which followed on her marriages and divorces led to the annexation of her territories by the Duke of Burgundy, a process which was finally concluded by the formal cession of her dominions by Jacqueline. ?Brabant and Limburg. 1430.
Holland and Hainault. 1433.? Meanwhile Philip had succeeded to Brabant and Limburg, and the union of Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, Zealand, and Holland, together made a dominion which took in all the greatest Netherland states, and formed a compact mass of territory. On this presently followed a great acquisition of territory which was more strictly French than the fiefs which Philip already held of the French crown in Flanders and Artois. The Treaty of Arras, by which Philip, hitherto the ally of England against France, made peace with his western overlord, gave him, under the form of mortgage, the lands on the Somme. ?The towns on the Somme. 1435-1483.? The acquisition of these lands, Ponthieu, Vermandois, Amiens, and Boulogne, advanced the Burgundian frontier to a dangerous neighbourhood to Paris on this side as well as on the other. It had the further effect of keeping the small continental possessions which England still kept at Calais and Guisnes apart from the French territory. During the reigns of Philip and Charles the Bold, the continental neighbour of England was not France but Burgundy. But this great southern dominion was not lasting. The towns on the Somme, redeemed and again recovered, passed on the fall of Charles the Bold once more into French hands. ?Recovered by France.? So did Artois itself, and, though Artois was won back, Amiens and the rest were not. Yet, if the towns on the Somme had stayed under the rule of the successive masters of the Low Countries, it might by this time have seemed as natural for Amiens to be Belgian as it now seems natural for Cambray and Valenciennes to be French. The Treaty of Madrid drew a definite boundary. ?France resigns the homage of Flanders and Artois. 1526.? France gave up all claim to homage from Flanders and Artois, and Charles the Fifth, in his Burgundian, or rather in his Flemish, character, finally gave up all claim to the lands on the Somme.

The south-western frontier was thus fixed; but meanwhile the new state had advanced in other directions. ?Luxemburg. 1443.? Philip’s last great acquisition was the duchy of Luxemburg. He now possessed the greater part of the Netherlands; but his dominions were still intersected by the bishoprics of Utrecht and LÜttich and the duchy of Geldern. ?Geldern and Zutphen. 1472.? The duchy of Geldern and county of Zutphen were added by Charles the Bold. ?Final annexation. 1543.? But they formed a precarious possession, lost and won more than once, down to their final annexation under Charles the Fifth. ?Bishopric of LÜttich never annexed.? Of the two great ecclesiastical principalities by which the Burgundian possessions in the Netherlands were cut asunder, the bishopric of LÜttich, though its history is much mixed up with that of the Burgundian Dukes, and though it came largely under their influence, was never formally annexed. ?Annexation of the bishopric of Utrecht, 1531; and Friesland, 1515.? But the temporal principality of the Bishop of Utrecht was secularized under Charles the Fifth. Friesland, the Friesland immediately east of the Zuyder Zee, was already reincorporated with the dominions of the prince who represented the ancient counts of Holland. ?Dominions of Charles the Fifth.? The whole Netherlands were thus consolidated under the rule of Charles the Fifth. They were united with the far distant county of Burgundy, and with it they formed the Burgundian circle in the new division of the Empire. The bishopric of LÜttich, which intersected the whole southern part of the country, remained in the circle of Westfalia. ?The seventeen provinces.? Seventeen provinces, each keeping much of separate being, were united under a single prince, and, since the treaty of Madrid, they were free from any pretensions on the part of foreign powers. The Netherlands formed one of the most compact and important parts of the scattered dominions of the Emperor who was also lord of Burgundy and Castile. ?Their separation from the Empire.? But the final union of these lands under the direct dominion of an Emperor at once led to their practical separation from the Empire. ?The possessions of Philip of Spain. 1555.? They passed, with all the remaining possessions and claims of the Burgundian House, to Philip of Spain, and they were reckoned among the crowd of distant dependencies which had come under the rule of the crowns of Castile and Aragon. In Spanish hands they acted less as a middle state than as a power which helped to hem in France on both sides. Had the great revolt of the Netherlands ended in the final liberation of the whole seventeen provinces, the middle state would have been formed in its full strength. ?The War of Independence. 1568-1609.? As it was, the work of the War of Independence was imperfect. The northern provinces won their freedom in the form of a federal commonwealth. The southern provinces remained dependencies of Spain, to become the chosen fighting ground of European armies, the chosen plaything of European diplomacy.

The end of the long war of independence waged by the northern provinces was the establishment of the famous federal commonwealth of the Seven United Provinces, Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Gelderland, Over-Yssel, Friesland, and Groningen. These answered nearly to the dominions of the Counts of Holland and Bishops of Utrecht in earlier times. ?Gelderland.? But besides these, part of the duchy of Geldern formed one of the United Provinces, while its southern part shared the fate of the southern provinces. But, besides the United Seven, the Confederation also kept parts of Brabant, Geldern, and Flanders as common possessions. ?Formal independence of the Empire. 1648.? The power thus formed, one which so long held an European importance quite disproportioned to its geographical extent, had under Burgundian rule become practically independent of the Empire, but it was only by the Peace of Westfalia that its independence was formally acknowledged. The maritime strength of the Confederation made it more than an European power. It became a colonizing power in three parts of the world. ?Colonies of the Netherlands.? In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Seven Provinces extended their dominion over many points on the continent of India and over the neighbouring island of Ceylon, over the great equatorial islands of Java, Sumatra, and the Moluccas, over many points in Guinea and southern Africa, and over part of Guiana in South America. ?New Netherland passes to England. 1664.? But the great North American settlement of New Netherland passed to England, and New Amsterdam became New York. ?No real name for the county.? Singularly enough, this great power never had any strict geographical name. Netherlands was too large, as it took in the whole of the Low Countries and not the emancipated provinces only. Holland was too small, as being the name of one province only, though the greatest. ?Use of the name Dutch.? And, by one of the oddest cases of caprice of language, in common English usage the name of the whole Teutonic race settled down on this one small part of it, and the men of the Seven Provinces came to be exclusively spoken of as Dutch.

Meanwhile the southern provinces, the greater part of Brabant and Flanders, with Artois, Hennegau or Hainault, Namur, Limburg, Luxemburg, and the southern part of Geldern,—taking in Antwerp at one end and Cambray at the other—remained under the sovereignty of the representatives of the Burgundian Dukes. That is, they remained an outlying dependency of the Spanish monarchy. But their southern frontier was open to constant aggressions on the part of France. ?Dunkirk held by England. 1658-1662.? Dunkirk indeed was for a moment held by England, as Calais and Boulogne had been in earlier times. ?Cession of parts of Artois and of Gravelines, 1659;? By the Peace of the Pyrenees France obtained Arras and the greater part of Artois, leaving Saint Omer to Spain. ?Dunkirk, 1662;? France also began to work her way up along the coast of Flanders, taking Gravelines by virtue of the treaty, and presently adding Dunkirk by purchase from England. ?Philippeville, Marienburg, Thionville.? The treaty also added to France several points along the frontiers of Hainault, LiÈge, and Luxemburg, including the detached fortresses of Philippeville and Marienburg, and Thionville famous in far earlier days. During the endless wars of Lewis’ reign, the boundary fluctuated with each treaty. ?1668.
1677.? Acquisitions were made by France at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, some of which were surrendered, and others gained, by the Peace of Nimwegen. ?Boundary fixed by the Peace of Utrecht. 1713.? At last the boundary was finally fixed by the Peace of Utrecht in the last days of Lewis. Parts of Flanders and Hainault were finally confirmed to France, which thus kept Lille, Cambray, and Valenciennes. ?The Spanish Netherlands pass to Austria.? The provinces which had hitherto been Spanish now passed to the only surviving branch of the House of Austria, that which reigned in the archduchy and supplied the hereditary candidates for the Empire. ?Annexed by France. 1792.? The first wars of the French Revolution added the Austrian Netherlands to France, and with them the bishopric of LÜttich which still so oddly divided them. ?Kingdom of Holland. 1806-1810.? A later stage of the days of confusion changed the Seven United Provinces, enlarged by the addition of East Friesland, into a Kingdom of Holland, one of the states which the new conqueror carved out for the benefit of his kinsfolk. ?Holland annexed by France. 1810-1813.? Presently the new kingdom was incorporated with the new ‘Empire,’ along with the German lands to the north-east of it. The Corsican had at last carried out the schemes of the Valois kings, and the whole Burgundian heritage formed for a moment part of France.

At the general settlement of Europe, after the long wars with France, the restoration of the Low Countries as a middle state was a main object. ?Kingdom of the Netherlands. 1814.? This was brought about by the union of the whole Netherlands into a single kingdom bearing that name. The southern boundary did not differ very greatly from that fixed by the Peace of Utrecht. ?The boundaries.? As in the case of the Savoyard frontier, France kept a little more by the arrangements of 1814 than she finally kept by those of 1815. To the east, East-Friesland passed to Hannover, leaving the boundary of the new kingdom not very different from that of the two earlier powers which it represented, gaining only a small territory on the banks of the Maes. ?Incorporation of LÜttich.? But the bishopric of LÜttich was incorporated with the lands which it had once parted asunder, and so ceased altogether to be German ground. ?Grand Duchy of Luxemburg.? The new king, as we have already seen, entered the German confederation in his character of Grand Duke of Luxemburg, the duchy being somewhat shortened to the east in favour of Prussia. Lastly, after fifteen years of union, the new kingdom again split asunder. ?Kingdom of Belgium. 1830-1831.? It was now divided into the kingdom of the Netherlands, answering to the old United Provinces, and the kingdom of Belgium, answering to the old Spanish or Austrian Netherlands. ?Luxemburg divided.? But part of Limburg remained to the northern kingdom, and its sovereign also kept part of Luxemburg, as a district state, forming part of the German confederation. The western part of the duchy formed part of the kingdom of Belgium. ?1867.? Later events, as has been already recorded, have severed the last tie between Germany and the Netherlands; they have wiped out the last survival of the days when the Counts of Holland and of Luxemburg were alike princes of the German kingdom.

The above may pass as a sketch of the fluctuations along the borderland in their European aspect. It is needless to go through every small shifting of frontier, or to recount in detail the history of small border principalities like Saint Pol and Bouillon. The main historical aspect of these countries is their tendency, in all ages, to form somewhat of a middle system between two greater powers on either side of them. The guaranteed neutrality of Belgium and the guaranteed neutrality of Switzerland are alike survivals or revivals—it is hard to say which they should be called—of the instinctive feeling which, in the ninth century, called the Lotharingian kingdom into being. The modern form of this thousand-year old idea was made possible through the growth of the power of the Burgundian Dukes of the House of Valois.

The real historical work of those dukes was thus done in those parts of their dominions from which they did not take their name, but which took their name from them. The history of their other dominions may be told in a few words; indeed a great part of it has been told already. ?Schemes of Charles the Bold.? The schemes of Charles the Bold for uniting his scattered dominions by the conquest of the duchy of Lorraine, for extending the power thus formed to the sea-board of the royal Burgundy, for forming in short a middle kingdom stretching from the Ocean to the Mediterranean, acting as a barrier alike between France and Germany and between France and Italy, remained mere schemes. They are important only as showing how deeply the idea or the memory of a middle state was still fixed in men’s minds. The conquests of Charles in Lorraine, his purchases in Elsass, were momentary possessions which hardly touch geography. But the fall of Charles, by causing the break-up of the southern dominion of his house, helped to give greater importance to its northern dominion. While the Netherlands grew together, the Burgundies split asunder. After the fall of Charles the fate of the two Burgundies was much the same as the fate of Flanders and Artois. Both were for a while seized by France; but the county, like Artois, was afterwards recovered for a season. The duchy of Burgundy was lost for ever; the county, along with the outlying county of Charolois, remained to those who by female succession represented the Burgundian Dukes, that is to Charles the Fifth and his Spanish son. The annexation of the Burgundian county, and with it of the city of BesanÇon, by Lewis the Fourteenth has been recorded in an earlier section.

§ 9. The Dominions of Austria.

We now come to one among these German states which have parted off from the kingdom of Germany whose course has been widely different from the rest, and whose modern European importance stands on a widely different level. As the Lotharingian and Frisian lands parted off on the north-west of the kingdom, as a large part of the Swabian lands parted off to the south-west of the kingdom, so the Eastern Mark, the mark of Austria, parted off no less, but with widely different consequences. ?Origin of the name Oesterreich, Austria.? The name of Austria, Oesterreich—Ostrich as our forefathers wrote it—is, naturally enough, a common name for the eastern part of any kingdom. ?Other lands so called.? The Frankish kingdom of the Merwings had its Austria; the Italian kingdom of the Lombards had its Austria also. We are half inclined to wonder that the name was never given in our own island either to Essex or to East-Anglia. But, while the other Austrias have passed away, the Oesterreich, the Austria, the Eastern mark, of the German kingdom, its defence against the Magyar invader, has lived on to our own times. It has not only lived on, but it has become one of the chief European powers. And it has become so by a process to which it would be hard to find a parallel. ?Special position of the Austrian power.? The Austrian duchy supplied Germany with so many Kings, and Rome with so many Emperors, that something of Imperial character came to cleave to the duchy itself. Its Dukes, in resigning, first, the crown of Germany, and then all connexion with Germany, have carried with them into their new position the titles and bearings of the German CÆsars. ?Union with Hungary.? The power which began as a mark against the Magyar came to have a common sovereign with the Magyar kingdom; and the Austrian duchy and Magyar kingdom, each drawing with it a crowd of smaller states of endless nationalities, have figured together in the face of modern Europe as the Austrian Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. ?The so-called ‘Empire’ of Austria.? It is not easy, in drawing a map, to find a place for the ‘Empire’ of Austria. The Archduchy is there, and its sovereign has not dropped his archiducal title. A crowd of kingdoms, duchies, counties, and lordships, all acknowledging the sovereignty of the same prince, are there also. But it is not easy to find the geographical place of an ‘Empire’ of Austria, as distinct from the Archduchy. Nor is it easy to understand on what principle an ‘Empire’ of Austria can be understood as taking in all the states which happen to own the Hungarian King and Austrian Archduke as their sovereign. The matter is made more difficult when we remember that the title of ‘Hereditary Emperor of Austria’ was first taken while its bearer was still King of Germany and Roman Emperor-elect. ?Union of separate states under the Austrian House.? But, putting questions like these aside, the gradual union of a great number of states, German and non-German, under the common rule of the archiducal house of Austria, by whatever name we call the power so formed, is a great fact both of history and of geography. A number of states, originally independent of one another, differing in origin and language and everything that makes states differ from one another, some of them members of the former Empire, some not, have, as a matter of fact, come together to form a power which fills a large space in modern history and on the modern map. ?Lack of national unity.? But it is a power which is altogether lacking in national unity. It is a power which is not coextensive with any nation, but which takes in parts of many nations. It cannot even be said that there is a dominant nation surrounded by subject nations. ?German, Magyar, and other races.? The Magyar nation in its unity, and a fragment of the German nation, stand side by side on equal terms, while Italians, Roumans, and Slaves of almost every branch of the Slavonic race, are grouped around those two. ?No strictly federal tie.? There is no federal tie; it is a stretch of language to apply the federal name to the present relation between the two chief powers of Hungary and Austria. Nor can any strictly federal tie be said to unite Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, and Galicia. And yet these other members of the general body are not mere subject provinces, like the dominions of Old Rome. The same prince is sovereign of a crowd of separate states, two of which stand out prominently as centres among the rest. There is neither national unity, nor federation, nor mere subjection of one land or nation to another. All this has come by the gradual union by various means of many crowns upon the same brow. ?Anomalous nature of the Austrian power.? The result is an anomalous power which has nothing else exactly like it, past or present. But the very anomaly makes the growth of such a power a more curious study.

The beginnings of the Austrian state are to be found in the small Mark on the Danube, lying between Bohemia, Moravia, and the Duchy of KÄrnthen or Carinthia. It appears in its first form as an appendage to Bavaria.[17] This mark Frederick Barbarossa raised into a duchy, under its first duke Henry the Second, and it was enlarged to the westward at the expense of Bavaria by the addition of the lands above the Enns. ?Duchy of Austria, 1156.? Thus was formed the original Duchy of Austria, the duchy of the Dukes of the House of Babenberg. It had not long risen to ducal rank before it began to extend itself at the expense of states which had hitherto been of greater moment than itself. Itself primarily a mark against the Magyar, Austria had to the south of it the lands where the German Kingdom marched at once upon the Magyar, the Slave, and the Kingdom of Italy. ?Duchy of Carinthia.? Here lay the great Duchy of Carinthia, a land where the population was mainly Slave, though on this frontier the Slavonic population had been brought into much earlier and more thorough subjection to the German Kings than the Slaves on the north-eastern frontier. ?Duchy of Styria, 1180;? At the time of the foundation of the duchy of Austria, the Carinthian duchy had begun to split in pieces, and its northern part, hitherto the Upper Carinthian Mark, grew into the Duchy of Steyermark or Styria. ?united to Austria, 1192.? Twelve years later, Leopold the Fifth of Austria inherited the duchy of Styria, a duchy greater than his own, by the will of its duke Ottokar. Carinthia itself went on as a separate duchy; but it now took in only a narrow territory in the south-western part of the old duchy, and that broken up by outlying possessions of the archbishops of Salzburg and other ecclesiastical lords. ?The county of GÖrz.? To the south grew up a considerable power in the hands of the counts of GÖrz or Gorizia on the Italian border. ?Ecclesiastical position of its Counts.? The possessions of these counts stretched, though not continuously, from Tyrol to Istria, and their influence was further enlarged by their position as advocates of the bishoprics of Trent and Brixen and of the more famous patriarchate of Aquileia. These are the lands, the marchlands of Germany towards its eastern and south-eastern neighbours, which came by gradual annexations to form the German possessions of the Austrian power. But the further growth of that power did not begin till the duchy itself had passed away to the hands of a wholly new line of princes.

The first change was one which brought about for a moment from one side an union which was afterwards to be brought about in a more lasting shape from the other side. This was the annexation of Austria by the kingdom of Bohemia. ?Bohemia a kingdom, 1158.? That duchy had been raised to the rank of a kingdom, though of course without ceasing to be a fief of the Empire, a few years after the mark of Austria had become a duchy. The death of the last duke of Austria of the Babenberg line led to a disputed succession and a series of wars, in which the princes of Bavaria, Bohemia, and Hungary all had their share. ?Ottokar of Bohemia annexes Austria and Styria, 1252-1262. Carinthia, 1269.? In the end, between marriage, conquest, and royal grant, Ottokar king of Bohemia obtained the duchies of Austria and Styria, and a few years later he further added Carinthia by the bequest of its Duke. Thus a new power was formed, by which several German states came into the power of a Slavonic king. ?Great power of Ottokar.? The power of that king for a moment reached the Baltic as well as the Hadriatic; for Ottokar carried his arms into Prussia, and became the founder of KÖnigsberg. But this great power was but momentary. Bohemia and Austria were again separated, and Austria, with its indefinite mission of extension over so many lands, including Bohemia itself, passed to a house sprung from a distant part of Germany.

We have now come to the European beginnings of the second House of Austria, the house whose name seems to have become inseparably connected with the name of Austria, though the spot from which that house drew its name has long ceased to be an Austrian possession. This is the house of the Counts of Habsburg. They took this name from their castle on the lower course of the Aar, in the north-west corner of the Aargau, in that southern Swabian land where the Old League of High Germany was presently to arise, and so greatly to extend itself at the cost of the power of Habsburg. ?Union of Habsburg, Kyburg, and Lenzburg.? By an union of the lands of Habsburg with those of the Counts of Kyburg and Lenzburg, a considerable, though straggling, dominion was formed. It stretched in and out among the mountains and lakes, taking in Luzern, and forming a dangerous neighbour to the free city of ZÜrich. ?Their possession in Elsass.? Besides these lands, the same house also held Upper Elsass with the title of Landgrave, a dominion separated from the other Swabian lands of the House by the territory of the free city of Basel. ?Rudolf king, 1273.
His victories over Ottokar, 1276-1278.
Albert of Habsburg Duke of Austria and Styria, 1282.? The lord of this great Swabian dominion, the famous Rudolf, being chosen to the German crown, and having broken the power of Ottokar, bestowed the duchies of Austria and Styria on his son Albert, afterwards King. ?Meinhard Duke of Carinthia and Count of Tyrol, 1286.? Carinthia at first formed part of the same grant; but it was presently granted to Meinhard Count of GÖrz and Tyrol. GÖrz passed to another branch of the house of its own Counts. Three powers were thus formed in these regions, the duchies of Austria and Styria, the duchy of Carinthia with the county of Tyrol, and the county of GÖrz.

Thus under Albert the possessions of the House of Habsburg were large, but widely scattered. The two newly acquired eastern duchies not only gave its princes their highest titles, but they formed a compact territory, well suited for extension northward and southward. ?Falling off of the Swabian lands.? But among the outlying Swabian territories, though some parts remained to the Austrian House down to the end of the German Kingdom, the tendency was to diminish and gradually to part off altogether from Germany. In the lands south of the Rhine this happened through union with the Confederates; in the Alsatian lands it happened at a later stage through French annexation.

It is to be hoped that it is no longer needful to explain that the hereditary lands of the House of Habsburg or Austria had no inherent connexion with the German Kingdom and Roman Empire of which they were fiefs, beyond the fact that they were among its fiefs. They were further connected with it only by the accident that, from Rudolf onwards, many princes of that house were chosen Kings, and that, from the middle of the fifteenth century, onwards, all the Kings were chosen from that house and from the house into which it merged by female succession. It is to be hoped that there is no longer any need to explain that every Emperor was not Duke of Austria, and that every Duke of Austria was not Emperor. But it may be needful to explain that every Duke of Austria was not master of the whole dominions of the House of Austria. ?Divisions of the Austrian dominions.? The divisions, the reunions, the joint reigns, which are common to the House of Austria with other German princely houses, become at once more important and more puzzling in the case of a house which gradually came to stand above all the others in European rank. The caution is specially needful in the case of the Swabian lands, as the history of the Confederates is liable to be greatly misunderstood, if every Duke of Austria who appears there is taken for the sole sovereign of the Austrian dominions. It is needless to go here through all these shiftings between princes of the same house. Through all changes the unity of the house and its possessions was maintained, even while they were parted out or held in common by different members of the house. But it is important to bear in mind that some of the Dukes of Austria who figure in the history of Switzerland were rather Landgraves of Elsass or Counts of Tyrol than Dukes of Austria in any practical sense.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be defined as a time during which the Austrian House on the whole steadily advanced in the Eastern part of its dominions and steadily fell back in the Western. But in the course of the fourteenth century an acquisition was made which, without making them absolutely continuous, brought them into something more like geographical connexion with one another. ?Acquisition of Carinthia and Tyrol, 1335.? This was the acquisition of the Duchy of Carinthia and County of Tyrol, the latter of which lands lay conveniently between the Eastern and Western dominions of the house. ?Extent of the Austrian territory.? These now stretched continuously from the Bohemian frontier to Istria, and they threw out, in the form of Tyrol and the Swabian lands, a scattered, but nearly continuous, territory stretching to the borders of Lorraine and the county of Burgundy. The Austrian possessions now touched the eastern gulf of the Hadriatic and came into the neighbourhood of the Dalmatian Archipelago. ?Commendation of Trieste, 1382.? Somewhat later they reached the main Hadriatic itself, when the city of Trieste, hitherto disputed between the commonwealth of Venice and the patriarchs of Aquileia, commended itself to the Austrian Duke Leopold as its lord. This is the same Leopold who four years later fell at Sempach. By this time the Swabian possessions had been increased north of the Rhine, while south of the Rhine the Austrian dominion was steadily giving way. ?Loss of Thurgau, 1460.? The Confederates and their several cantons advanced in every way, by purchase and conquest, till, after the loss of Thurgau, the House of Austria kept nothing south of the Rhine except the towns known as the WaldstÄdte.

By this time the division of the estates of the house had taken a more lasting shape. One branch reigned in Austria, another in Carinthia and Styria, a third in Tyrol and the other western lands. At this time begins the unbroken series of Austrian elections to the German and Imperial crowns. ?Albert the Second, king, 1437-1440.? The first was Albert the Second, Duke of Austria. ?Frederick the Third, king, 1440; Emperor, 1452.
Archduke of Austria, 1453.? Then Frederick the Third, the first Emperor of the House, united the Austrian and Carinthian duchies, and raised Austria to the unique rank of an Archduchy. ?Siegmund, Count of Tyrol, &c., 1429-1496.? Meanwhile, Siegmund Count of Tyrol held the western lands, and appears as Duke of Austria in Confederate and Burgundian history. He there figures as the prince who lost Thurgau to the Confederates and who mortgaged his Alsatian lands to Charles the Bold. ?Maximilian, King of the Romans, 1486; Archduke, 1493; Count of Tyrol, 1496; Emperor-elect, 1508.? In Maximilian the whole possessions of the house of Austria were united. ?Beginning of union with lands beyond the Empire.? But by this time the affairs of the purely German lands which had hitherto formed the possessions of the Austrian house had begun to be mixed up with the succession to lands and kingdoms beyond the Empire, and with lands which, though technically within the Empire, had a distinct being of their own. In the course of the fifteenth century the house of Austria, hitherto simply one of the chief German princely houses, put on two special characters. ?Succession of Austrian Kings and Emperors.? It became, as we have already seen, the house which exclusively supplied kings and Emperors to Germany and the Empire. And it became, by virtue of its hereditary possessions rather than of its Imperial position, one of the chief European powers. For a while the greatest of European powers, it has remained a great European power down to our own time.

The special feature in the history of the house of Austria from the fifteenth century onwards is its connexion—a connexion more or less broken, but still constantly recurring till in the end it becomes fully permanent—with the kingdom of Bohemia within the Empire and with the kingdom of Hungary beyond its bounds. These possessions have given the Austrian power its special character, that of a power formed by the union under one prince of several wholly distinct nations or parts of nations which have no tie beyond that union. The Austrian princes, originally purely German, equally in their Swabian and in their Austrian possessions, had already, by the extension of their power to the south, obtained some Slavonic and some Italian-speaking subjects. Still, as a power, they were purely German. ?Various acquisitions of Austria.? But in the period which begins in the fifteenth and goes on into the nineteenth century, we shall see them gradually gathering together, sometimes gaining, sometimes losing—gaining and losing by every process, warlike and peaceful, by which territory can be gained or lost—a crowd of kingdoms, duchies, and counties, scattered over all parts of Europe from Flanders to Transsilvania. But it is the acquisition of the two crowns of Bohemia and Hungary which, above all others, gave the House of Austria its special position as a middle power, a power belonging at once to the system of Western and to the system of Eastern Europe. Among the endless shiftings of the states which have been massed together under the rule of the House of Habsburg, that house has more than once been at the same moment the neighbour of the Gaul and the neighbour of the Turk; and it has sometimes found Gaul and Turk arrayed together against it. Add to all this that, though the connexion between the house of Austria and the Empire was a purely personal one, renewed in each generation by a special election, still the fact that so many kings of Hungary and archdukes of Austria were chosen Emperors one after another, caused the house itself, after the Empire was abolished, to look in the eyes of many like a continuation of the power which had come to an end. The peculiar position of the Austrian house could hardly have been obtained by a mere union of Hungary, Austria, and the other states under princes none of whom were raised to Imperial rank. Nor could it have been obtained by a series of mere dukes of Austria, even though they had been chosen Emperors from generation to generation. It was through the accidental union under one sovereign of a crowd of states which had no natural connexion with each other, and through the further accident that the Empire itself seemed to become a possession of the House, that the House of Habsburg, and its representative the House of Lorraine, have won their unique position among European powers.

The first hints, so to speak, of a coming union between the Hungarian and Bohemian kingdoms and the Austrian duchy began, as we have seen, in the days of Ottokar. A Bohemian king had then held the Austrian duchy, while a Hungarian king had for a moment occupied part of Styria. ?Relations with Hungary and Bohemia.? But the later form which the union was to take was not that of the Bohemian or the Hungarian reigning over Austria, but that of the Austrian reigning over Hungary and Bohemia. The duchy was not to be added to either of the kingdoms; but both kingdoms were in course of time to be added to the duchy. The growth of both Hungary and Bohemia as kingdoms will be spoken of elsewhere. We have now to deal only with their relations to the Austrian House. ?Rudolf, son of Albert, King of Bohemia, 1306.? For a moment, early in the fourteenth century, an Austrian prince, son of the first Austrian King of Germany, was actually acknowledged as King of Bohemia. But this connexion was only momentary. The first beginnings of anything like a more permanent connexion begin a hundred and thirty years later. ?Albert the Second, King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1438.? The second Austrian King of Germany wore both the Hungarian and the Bohemian crowns by virtue of his marriage with the daughter of the Emperor and King Siegmund. The steps towards the union of the various crowns are now beginning. ?Siegmund, King of Hungary, 1386; King of the Romans, 1414; King of Bohemia, 1419; Emperor, 1433.? Siegmund was the third King of Bohemia who had worn the crown of Germany, the second who had worn the crown of the Empire. Under his son-in-law, Hungary, Bohemia, and Austria were for a moment united with the German crown; in the next reign, as we have seen, begins the lasting connexion between Austria and the Empire. But the Hungarian and Bohemian kingdoms parted again. ?Wladislaus Postumus, Duke of Austria, 1440-1457; King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1453-1457.? One Austrian King, the son of Albert, reigned at least nominally over both kingdoms, as well as over the special Austrian duchy. But the final union did not come for another eighty years. The Turk was now threatening and conquering. At Mohacz Lewis, king of the two kingdoms, fell before the invaders. ?Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, 1519; King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1527; King of the Romans, 1531; Emperor-elect, 1556.
Permanent union of Bohemia.? His Bohemian kingdom passed to Ferdinand of Austria, and from that day to this, unless we except the momentary choice of the Winter King, the Palatine Frederick, the Bohemian crown has always stayed in the House of Austria. And for many generations it has been worn by the actual sovereign of the Austrian archduchy.

The acquisition of the crown of Hungary was of greater importance. It at once put the Austrian House into a wholly new position; it gave it its new later character of a middle state between Eastern and Western Europe. The duchy had begun as a mark against the Turanian and heathen invaders of earlier times. Those Turanian and heathen invaders had long before settled down into a Christian kingdom; they had latterly become the foremost champions of Christendom against the Turanian and Mahometan invaders who had seized the throne of the Eastern CÆsars. ?Mission against the Turk.? With the crown of Hungary, the main duty of the Hungarian crown, the defence of Christendom against the Ottoman, passed to the Archdukes and Emperors of the Austrian House. ?The Austrian kings in Hungary.? But for a long time Hungary was a most imperfect and precarious possession of its Austrian Kings. ?1526-1699.? For more than a century and a half after the election of Ferdinand, his rule and that of his successors was disputed and partial. They had from the very beginning to strive against rival kings, while the greater part of the kingdom and of the lands attached to the crown was either held by the Turk himself or by princes who acknowledged the Turk as their superior lord. These strictly Hungarian affairs, as well as the changes on the frontier towards the Turk, will be spoken of elsewhere. ?Peace of Passarowitz, 1718.? It was not till the eighteenth century that the Austrian Kings were in full possession of the whole Hungarian kingdom and all its dependencies.

Meanwhile the Austrian power had been making advances in other quarters. At the end of the fifteenth century the Austrian possessions at the north-east of the Hadriatic were greatly enlarged by the addition of the county of GÖrz, which carried with it the fallen city of Aquileia. ?New position towards Italy.? A more direct path towards Italian dominion was thus opened. The wars of the League of Cambray made no permanent addition to Austrian dominion in this quarter; but the master of Trieste and Aquileia, whose territory cut off Venice from her Istrian possessions, might already almost pass for an Italian sovereign. ?Dominions of Charles the Fifth.? Under Charles the Fifth the House of Austria became, as we have seen, possessed of a vast Italian dominion. But after him it passed away alike from the Empire and the German branch of the house, to become part of the heritage of the Austrian Kings of Spain. ?Austrian rule in Italy.? It was not, as we have already seen, till the beginning of the eighteenth century that either an Emperor or a reigning archduke again obtained any territory within the acknowledged bounds of Italy. The fluctuations of Austrian rule in Italy, from the acquisition of the Duchy of Milan down to our own day, have been already told in the Italian section. Lombardy and Venetia are now again Italian; but Austria still keeps the north-east corner of the great gulf. She still keeps GÖrz and Aquileia, Trieste and all Istria, to say nothing of the dangerous way which her frontier still stretches on Italian ground in the land of Trent and Roveredo.

These last named possessions still abide as traces of the Austrian advance in these regions, and its fluctuations there have been among the most important facts of modern history. Another series of Austrian acquisitions in the West of Europe have altogether passed away. The great Burgundian inheritance passed to the House of Austria. ?Maximilian and Philip.? But it was only for a short time, in the persons of Maximilian and Philip, that it was in any way united to the actual Austrian Archduchy. ?The Austrian Netherlands.? After Charles the Fifth the Burgundian possessions passed, like those in Italy, to the Spanish branch of the House, and, just as in Italy, it was not till the eighteenth century that actual Emperors or archdukes again reigned over a part of the Netherlands. ?Loss of Elsass.? Before this time the Alsatian dominion of Austria had passed away to France, and the remnant of her Swabian possessions passed away, as we have seen, in the days of general confusion. The changes of her territory in Germany during that period have been already spoken of. Her acquisitions in Eastern Europe will come more fully elsewhere; but a word must be given to them here. ?Loss of Silesia, 1740.
Final partition of Poland, 1772.? Looking at the House of Austria simply as a power, without reference to the German or non-German character of its dominions, the loss of Silesia may be looked on as counterbalanced by the territory gained from Poland at the first and third partitions. ?Galicia and Lodomeria.? The first partition gave the Austrian House a territory of which the greater part was originally Russian rather than Polish, and in which the old Russian names of Halicz and Vladimir were strangely softened into a Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. ?Third partition, 1795.
New-Galicia.? The third partition added Cracow and a considerable amount of strictly Polish territory. These last passed away, first to the Duchy of Warsaw, and then to the restored Kingdom of Poland. ?Annexation of Cracow, 1846.? But Galicia has been kept, and it has been increased in our day by the seizure of the republic of Cracow. These lands lie to the north of the Hungarian kingdom. Parted from them by the whole extent of that kingdom, and adjoining that kingdom at its south-west corner lie the coast lands of Austria on the Hadriatic. ?Dalmatia, 1797.? By the Peace of Campoformio, Austria took Dalmatia strictly so called, and the other Venetian possessions as far south as Budua. ?Recovered, 1814.
Ragusa, 1814.? These lands, lost in the wars with France, were won again at the Peace, with the addition of Ragusa and its territory.

This account of the gains and losses of a power which has gained and lost in so many quarters is necessary somewhat piecemeal. It may be well then to end this section with a picture of the Austrian power as it stood at several points of the history of the last century and a half, leaving the fluctuating frontier towards the Turk to be dealt with in our survey of the more strictly Eastern lands.

We will begin at a date when we come across a sovereign whose position is often strangely misunderstood, the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa—Queen in her own right of Hungary and Bohemia, Empress by the election of her husband to the Imperial Crown. ?Her hereditary dominions.? The Pragmatic Sanction of her father Charles the Sixth made her heiress of all his hereditary dominions. That is, it made her heiress, within the Empire, of the kingdom of Bohemia with its dependencies of Moravia and Silesia—of the Archduchy of Austria with the duchies, counties, and lordships of Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Tyrol, GÖrz, and Trieste—of Constanz and a few other outlying Swabian points—as also of Milan, Mantua, and the Austrian Netherlands, lands which it needs some stretch, whether of memory or of legal fiction, to look on as being then in any sense lands of the Empire. Altogether beyond the Empire, it gave her the Kingdom of Hungary with its dependent lands of Croatia, Slavonia, and Transsilvania or SiebenbÜrgen. These hereditary dominions, lessened by the loss of Silesia, increased by the addition of Galicia, she handed on to their later Kings and Archdukes. Her marriage transferred those hereditary dominions, it indirectly transferring the Empire itself, to a new family, the House of Lorraine. The husband of Maria Theresa, Francis, who had exchanged his duchy of Lorraine for that of Tuscany, was in truth the first Lotharingian Emperor. After him came three Emperors of his house, under the third of whom the succession of Augustus and Charles came to an end.

We may take another view of the Austrian territory at the moment when the French power in Germany was at its height. The Roman Empire and the German kingdom had now come to an end; but their last sovereign still, with whatever meaning, called himself Emperor of his archduchy, though without dropping his proper title of Archduke. ?New use of the name Austria.? From this time the word Austria was used, commonly but inaccurately, to take in all the possessions of the House of Austria. And, as all the possessions of the House of Austria were now geographically continuous, it became more natural to speak of them by a single name than it had been when the dominions of that house in Italy and the Netherlands lay apart from the great mass of Austrian territory. And at this moment, when the Empire had come to an end and when the German Confederation had not yet been formed, there was no distinction between German and non-German lands. The ‘Empire’ of Francis the Second or First, as it stood at the time of Buonaparte’s greatest power, had, as compared with the hereditary dominions of Maria Theresa, gone through these changes. Tyrol and the Swabian lands had passed to other German princes; Salzburg had been won and lost again. In Italy the Venetian possessions had been won and lost, and they, together with the older Italian possessions of Austria, had passed to the French kingdom of Italy. France in her own name had encroached on the Austrian dominions at two ends. She had absorbed the Austrian Netherlands at one corner, the newly won territory of Dalmatia at another. This last territory, with parts of Carinthia and Carniola, and with the Hungarian kingdom of Croatia, received, on passing to France, the name of the Illyrian Provinces. Illyrian they were in the widest and most purely geographical sense of that name. But this use of the Illyrian name was confusing and misleading, as tending to put out of sight that the true representatives of the old Illyrian race dwell to the south, not only of Carinthia and Carniola, but of Dalmatia itself. The loss of the Austrian possessions in this quarter brought back the new Austrian ‘Empire’ to the condition of the original Austrian duchy. It became a wholly inland dominion, without an inch of sea-coast anywhere.

We have already seen how Austria won back her lost Italian and Dalmatian territory, and so much of her lost German territory as was geographically continuous. ?Ragusa and Cattaro.? Released from her inland prison, provided again with a great sea-board on both sides of the Hadriatic, she now refused to Ragusa the restoration of her freedom, and filched from Montenegro her hard-won haven of Cattaro. The recovered lands formed, in the new nomenclature of the Austrian possessions, the kingdoms of Lombardy and Venice, of Illyria, and of Dalmatia. The last was an ancient title of the Hungarian crown. The Kingdom of Illyria was a continuation of the affected nomenclature which had been bestowed on the lands which formed it under their French occupation. We have already traced the driving out of the Austrian power from Lombardy and Venetia, its momentary joint possession in Sleswick, Holstein, and Lauenburg. ?Cracow, 1846.? The only other actual change of frontier has been the annexation of the inland commonwealth of Cracow, to match the annexation of the sea-faring commonwealth of Ragusa. ?Separation of Hungary, 1848.? The movement of 1848 separated Hungary for a moment from the Austrian power. ?Recovery of Hungary, 1849.? Won back, partly by Russian help, partly by the arms of her own Slavonic subjects, the Magyar kingdom remained crushed till Austria was shut out alike from Germany and from Italy. ?Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 1867.? Then arose the present system, the so called dualism, the theory of which is that the ‘Austro-Hungarian Monarchy’ consists of two states under a common sovereign. By an odd turning about of meanings, Austria, once really the Oesterreich, the Eastern land, of Germany, has become in truth the Western land, the Neustria, of the new arrangement. With the Hungarian kingdom are grouped the principality of Transsilvania and the kingdoms of Slavonia and Croatia. The Austrian state is made up of Austria itself—the archduchy with the addition of Salzburg—the duchy of Styria, the county of Tyrol, the kingdoms of Bohemia, Galicia and Lodomeria, Illyria, and Dalmatia with Ragusa and Cattaro. These last lands are not continuous. Thus two states are formed. ?Modern Austria.? In one the dominant German duchy has Slavonic lands on each side of it, and an Italian fringe on its coast. ?Modern Hungary.? In the other state, the ruling Magyar holds also among the subjects of his crown the Slave, the Rouman, and the outlying Saxon of SiebenbÜrgen. ?Herzegovina, Bosnia, and Spizza, 1878.? Add to this that the latest arrangements of all have added to the Austrian dominions, under the diplomatic phrase of ‘administration,’ the Slavonic lands of Herzegovina and Bosnia, while the kingdom of Dalmatia is increased by the harbour of Spizza. A power like this, which rests on no national basis, but which has been simply patched together during a space of six hundred years by this and that grant, this and that marriage, this and that treaty, is surely an anachronism on the face of modern Europe. Germany and Italy are nations as well as powers. Austria, changed from the Austria of Germany into the Neustria of Hungary, is simply a name without a meaning.

We have thus gone through the geographical changes of the three Imperial kingdoms, and of the states and powers which were formed by parts of those kingdoms falling away, and in some cases uniting themselves with lands beyond the Empire. They have all to some extent kept a common history down to our own time. We have now to turn to another land which parted off from the Empire in like manner, but which parted off so early as to become a wholly separate and rival land, with an altogether independent history of its own.