returned to Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and the diet then resumed its sittings in that free city. The first act of this body was to pass a resolution, founded on the document just quoted,—it was to this effect: "That as the imperial power and dignity is derived immediately from God; and as, by right and of old custom, the electors possess the power of election thereto; it is hereby resolved and determined, that whoever shall be elected emperor, either by the unanimous concurrence of the electors, or by the concurrence of the majority thereof, is de facto, as well as de jure, the rightful sovereign of this empire, having all the power of a sovereign, and possessing all the rights appertaining to the station; and that for their exercise, or for the validity of his title, he has no need of the sanction of the pope to his election, nor the consent of any other sovereign, temporal or spiritual, whatsoever." This resolution was despatched to Rome by the historian Albert of Strasburg; and by him was duly delivered into the hands of the pontiff. It was the first bold stroke which the papal power had received for centuries; and in so far it may be termed the precursor of the Reformation. The further history of Ludwig's reign may be briefly related. The Luxemburg conspirators, although among the parties to the electoral union at Rhens, were, notwithstanding, still actively engaged in plots against that sovereign whom they had so solemnly sworn to support. The more effectually to bring about their design, however, they entered into a league with the house of Austria. John, king of Bohemia, being at a distance, in Italy, where the emperor had left him as regent, could not appear on the scene himself: but a candidate for the empire was soon found in the person of his eldest son, Charles. After a variety of intrigues, and many hostile movements, another meeting of the electors, held at Rhens, under the auspices of Baldwin, archbishop of Treves, or rather of those princes in the interest of the Luxemburg party, solemnly deposed Ludwig, and there elected in his stead Charles, fourth emperor of Germany of that name. Ludwig, however, was not a man to suffer such an insult peacefully, or to endure injuries of this grave nature without an effort to be revenged. Accordingly he entered into a strict alliance with Edward the Third of England, then one of the most powerful princes of Europe; engaging him to hold the French king, Philip the Fair, in check, while he himself dealt with his new rival.* Fortune befriended him in his first efforts; and, strange to say, she abode with him even to the last moments of his life. He defeated Charles and the Bohemian army in the Tyrol, on which country they had fallen in the hopes of wresting it from the hands of his eldest son, who possessed it in right of his marriage with Margarita Maultasch, the last of its hereditary sovereigns; and he suppressed his pretensions, subsequently, in almost every other portion of the empire. But he could not avert the visitation of death, nor turn aside the stroke of the universal destroyer. In the fulness of his fame-having attained the highest pinnacle of glory-and in the full maturity of his years, he died, after a short illness, A. D. 1346.† He was the last emperor of Germany against whom the papal excommunication was issued. The imperial crown was offered, on his death, to various independent princes, native as well as foreign; but it was declined by all, even by the ambitious Edward, king of England. Gunther von Schwarzenberg, however, a German noble of ancient race and large possessions, accepted it; and endeavoured to make head against the Luxemburg party, led on by Charles. But he was unsuccessful in his efforts; and, being seized with a mortal illness, he expired soon after his nomination to the throne. His opponent then entered into the peaceful and undisputed possession of the empire. The inglorious reign of Charles may be best described in the following brief summary of his life and actions, by an able and accurate modern historian.‡ "Charles the IVth has been treated with more derision by his contemporaries, and consequently by later writers, than almost any prince in history; yet, he was remarkably successful in the only objects that he seriously pursued. * Hume (Hist. England, Edw. III., cap. 15), says, on the authority of Froissart (Book i. cap. 35), that Edward was created vicar of the empire: but the German historians make no mention of such a title, or such a circumstance. Vogt. "Rhein. Gesch. u. Sag." says A.D. 1349. Hallam," View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages," says A.D 1347. Hallam, ibid. vol. ii. p. 119. Deficient in personal courage, insensible of humiliation, bending without shame to the pope, to the Italians, to the electors, so poor and so little reverenced as to be arrested by a butcher at Worms, for want of paying his demand, Charles the IVth affords a proof, that a certain dexterity, and cold-blooded perseverance, may occasionally supply, in a sovereign, the want of more respectable qualities. He has been reproached with neglecting the empire. But he never deigned to trouble himself about the empire, except for his private ends. He did not neglect the kingdom of Bohemia, to which he almost seemed to render Germany a province. Bohemia had long been considered as a fief of the empire, and, indeed, could pretend to an electoral vote by no other title. Charles, however, gave the States, by law, the right of choosing a king on the extinction of the royal family, which seems derogatory to the imperial prerogative. It was much more material, that, upon acquiring Brandenburg, partly by conquest, and partly by a compact of succession in 1373, he not only invested his son with it, which was conformable to usage, but annexed that electorate for ever to the kingdom of Bohemia. He constantly resided at Prague, where he founded a celebrated university, and embellished the city with buildings. This kingdom, augmented also during his reign by the acquisition of Silesia, he bequeathed to his son, Wenceslaus; for whom, by pliancy towards the electors and the court of Rome, he had procured, against all recent example, the imperial succession." It was in the reign of this sovereign that the famous imperial document known as the Golden Bull, from the bulla, or seal, attached to it, was first promulgated. This celebrated instrument "terminated the disputes which had arisen between different members of the same house, as to their right of suffrage," as electors, declaring it "inherent in certain definite territories." It also fixed the number of electors at seven, and made Frankfort the only legal place of election to the empire. The electors nominated, were, the Archbishops of Mainz, Treves, and Cologne, the King of Bohemia, the Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Markgraf of Brandenburg. Each of these princes had the rights of royalty conferred upon them ;— that is to say, they were declared equal to kings, and the punish ment of high treason was awarded to any attempts upon their persons or territories. If to these be added the facts, that this reign was signalised by many melancholy catastrophes ;-by a swarm of locusts which covered the whole face of Germany, and consumed every blade of grass, and every green thing on the land;-by a fearful famine which naturally and inevitably followed that dreadful visitation; -by several earthquakes which extensively injured, or altogether destroyed, many of the great cities of the empire ;-by the deadly plague, known as "the Black Death," which almost decimated Europe;-by a ruthless massacre of the Jews, on the old charge of poisoning the wells and producing the plague ;by swarms of fanatics and mendicant impostors,* who, worse than locusts, and more guilty even than the most wicked Jews, at once ate up the produce of the industrious, and poisoned the minds of a whole people;-by the use of gunpowder in warfare; and by the highest degree of prosperity ever before, or ever after, attained, by the Hans Towns confederacy ;—its history is sufficiently related. Charles the IVth died at Prague, A. D. 1378, unwept and unregretted by his subjects of the German empire. Local history says nothing further of Rhens, save and except that the Königstuhl was destroyed by the republican armies of the first French Revolution, at their earliest appearance on the shores of the Rhine. It has never since been re-edified, and its site is now entirely effaced. OBERLAHNSTEIN. On the opposite shore of the river to Rhens, lies the ancient town of Oberlahnstein, celebrated by Ausonius, in his poem on the Moselle, for the beauty of its site and the salubrity of its air. From this spot were dated the documents by which the Emperor Wenceslaus, the son and successor of Charles the IVth, was * The Flagellants were the most famous of these fanatics, by reason of the severity with which they inflicted the punishment of flaying on themselves and on their disciples. deposed from the imperial dignity and power, and Rupert, pfalzgraf of the Rhine, raised thereto in his stead. The act of deposition was subscribed in a small chapel at the further extremity of the town, to which the electors had retired to draw it up and sign it in due form, after a solemn debate on the Königstuhl, August 20, A.D. 1400. A German poet* has not inappropriately versified this incident, making due allowance for the usual license accorded to poetry from time immemorial. The ballad illustrates the prevailing foible, the besetting sin of that silly prince ;—and gives us no inaccurate picture of the state of high society,—the highest, indeed, in Germany,—at this period. A translation is subjoined as literal as possible, consistent with the freedom essential to the transfusion of verse from one language into another. THE EMPEROR WENCESLAUS. "What boots to me kingdom and kingly power, Much better meseems is the rich grape's shower, The Emperor Wenceslaus thus spake, While with bumper on bumper his thirst he did slake; As he banqueted bravely and fine At the king's seat † by Rhense on the Rhine. Then outspake Sir Rupert, the palatine prince : But the Bacharach grape-juice, not far from hence- Believe me, my lord, in this world's wide space This passed, as they banqueted fine, At the king's seat by Rhense on the Rhine. "Well, then," quoth the emperor, "hither a butt, And we'll judge it in plenar court." * F. G. Drimborn, in Simrock's "Rheinsagen.' + The Königstuhl, vide ante, p. 71. |