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The Historians' History of the World 08 [Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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PROGRESS IN GERMANY
Germany had always embraced a great variety of stocks—Swabians, Bavarians, Franks, Thuringians, Saxons, Burgundians; to these must be added the Slavs of Bohemia, Germanised Slavs in Mecklenburg, in Brandenburg, and in a part of Saxony and Austria; so that no such combination as took place in France was possible. Italy presented a similar state of things. The Lombards had established themselves there, while the Greeks still possessed the exarchate and lower Italy; the Normans too established a kingdom of their own in lower Italy, and the Saracens maintained their ground for a time in Sicily. When the rule of the house of Hohenstaufen was terminated, barbarism got the upper hand throughout Germany; the country being broken up into several sovereignties, in which a forceful despotism prevailed. It was the maxim of the electoral princes to raise only weak princes to the imperial throne; they even sold the imperial dignity to foreigners. Thus the unity of the state was virtually annulled.
A number of centres of power were formed, each of which was a predatory state; the legal constitution recognised by feudalism was dissolved, and gave place to undisguised violence and plunder; and powerful princes made themselves lords of the country. After the interregnum the count of Habsburg was elected emperor, and the house of Habsburg continued to fill the imperial throne with but little interruption. These emperors were obliged to create a force of their own, as the princes would not grant them an adequate power attached to the empire. But that state of absolute anarchy was at last put an end to by associations having general aims in view. In the cities themselves we see associations of a minor order; but now confederations of cities were formed with a common interest in the suppression of predatory violence. Of this kind was the Hanseatic League in the north, the Rhenish League consisting of cities lying along the Rhine, and the Swabian League. The aim of all these confederations was resistance to the feudal lords; and even princes united with the cities, with a view to the subversion of the feudal condition and the restoration of a peaceful state of things throughout the country.
Early Cannon with Protected Mounting
What the state of society was under feudal sovereignty is evident from the notorious association formed for executing criminal justice; it was a private tribunal, which, under the name of the Vehmgericht, held secret sittings; its chief seat was the northwest of Germany. A peculiar peasant association was also formed. In Germany the peasants were bondmen; many of them took refuge in the towns, or settled down as freemen in the neighbourhood of the towns (Pfahlbürger); but in Switzerland a peasant fraternity was established. The peasants of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden were under imperial governors; for the Swiss governments were not the property of private possessors, but were official appointments of the empire. These the sovereigns of the Habsburg line wished to secure to their own house. The peasants, with club and iron-studded mace (Morgenstern), returned victorious from a contest with the haughty steel-clad nobles, armed with spear and sword, and practised in the chivalric encounters of the tournament.
INFLUENCE OF GUNPOWDER
Another invention also tended to deprive the nobility of the ascendency which they owed to their accoutrements—that of gunpowder. Humanity needed it, and it made its appearance forthwith. It was one of the chief instruments in freeing the world from the dominion of physical force and placing the various orders of society on a level. With the distinction between the weapons they used, vanished also that between lords and serfs. And before gunpowder, fortified places were no longer impregnable, so that strongholds and castles now lost their importance. We may indeed be led to lament the decay or the depreciation of the practical value of personal valour—the bravest, the noblest may be shot down by a cowardly wretch at safe distance in an obscure lurking-place; but, on the other hand, gunpowder has made a rational, considerate bravery, spiritual valour, the essential to martial success.
Early Type of Mortar
Only through this instrumentality could that superior order of valour be called forth—that valour in which the heat of personal feeling has no share; for the discharge of firearms is directed against a body of men—an abstract enemy, not individual combatants. The warrior goes to meet deadly peril calmly, sacrificing himself for the commonweal; and the valour of civilised nations is characterised by the very fact that it does not rely on the strong arm alone, but places its confidence essentially in the intelligence, the generalship, the character of its commanders, and, as was the case among the ancients, in a firm combination and unity of spirit on the part of the forces they command.
MONARCHISM IN ITALY
In Italy, as already noticed, we behold the same spectacle as in Germany—the attainment of an independent position by isolated centres of power. In that country, warfare in the hands of the condottieri became a regular business. The towns were obliged to attend to their trading concerns, and therefore employed mercenary troops, whose leaders often became feudal lords; Francis Sforza even made himself duke of Milan. In Florence, the Medici, a family of merchants, rose to power. On the other hand, the larger cities of Italy reduced under their sway several smaller ones and many feudal chiefs. A papal territory was likewise formed. There, also, a very large number of feudal lords had made themselves independent; by degrees they all became subject to the one sovereignty of the pope.
How thoroughly equitable in the view of social morality such a subjugation was, is evident from Machiavelli’s celebrated work The Prince. This book has often been thrown aside in disgust, as replete with the maxims of the most revolting tyranny; but nothing worse can be urged against it than that the writer, having the profound consciousness of the necessity for the formation of a state, has here exhibited the principles on which alone states could be founded in the circumstances of the times. The chiefs who asserted an isolated independence, and the power they arrogated, must be entirely subdued; and though we cannot reconcile with our idea of freedom the means which he proposes as the only efficient ones, and regards as perfectly justifiable—inasmuch as they involve the most reckless violence, all kinds of deception, assassination, and so forth—we must nevertheless confess that the feudal nobility, whose power was to be subdued, were assailable in no other way, since an indomitable contempt for principle and an utter depravity of morals were thoroughly engrained in them.
IN FRANCE
In France we find the converse of that which occurred in Germany and Italy. For many centuries the kings of France possessed only a very small domain, so that many of their vassals were more powerful than themselves; but it was a great advantage to the royal dignity in France that the principle of hereditary monarchy was firmly established there. The consideration it enjoyed was increased by the circumstance that the corporations and cities had their rights and privileges confirmed by the king, and that the appeals to the supreme feudal tribunal—the court of peers, consisting of twelve members enjoying that dignity—became increasingly frequent. The king’s influence was extended by his affording that protection which only the throne could give. But that which essentially secured respect for royalty, even among the powerful vassals, was the increasing personal power of the sovereign. In various ways, by inheritance, by marriage, by force of arms, etc., the kings had come into possession of many earldoms (Grafschaften) and several duchies. The dukes of Normandy had, however, become kings of England; and thus a formidable power confronted France, whose interior lay open to it by way of Normandy. Besides this there were powerful duchies still remaining; nevertheless, the king was not a mere feudal suzerain (Lehnsherr) like the German emperors, but had become a territorial possessor (Landesherr); he had a number of barons and cities under him, that were subject to his immediate jurisdiction; and Louis IX succeeded in rendering appeals to the royal tribunal common throughout his kingdom.