Chapter VIII: The Imperial Kingdoms (2)

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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.

♦Circle of Burgundy.♦

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._

♦Germany changed from a kingdom to a confederation.♦

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.

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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.

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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.

♦Territory recovered by Austria.♦

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.

♦Kingdom of Bavaria.♦

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.

♦The new Empire a revival of the German Kingdom, but not of the Roman Empire. | Comparison of the old Kingdom and the new Empire.♦

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._

♦Small geographical importance of the kingdom as such.♦

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 Kingdom of Italy continues the Lombard kingdom.♦

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.

♦Comparison of Italy and Germany.♦

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.

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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.

♦Tuscany, Romagna, and the March of Ancona.♦

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.

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♦Second stage, c. 1250-1530.♦

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.

♦Grant of the Duchy by King Wenceslaus, 1395.♦

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.

♦Land power of Venice only.♦

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.

♦Cities of Romagna.♦

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.

♦Creation of the Tuscan cities.♦