without the approval of the archbishops of Cologne and Trier and the count Palatine. He fell at Göllheim in personal conflict with 1298-1308. Albert I., of Austria, son of Rudolf I. who had been elected king by the opposing party. Alliance with Philip the Fair, king of France, against the Pope. Albert tried in vain to recover Holland as a vacant fief of the empire. Alliance of the three ecclesiastical electors and the count Palatine against the king, who was victorious (1301), and reduced the princes to obedience (siege of the castle of Bingen). Unsuccessful wars with Bohemia, and with Frederic and Diezmann of Meissen, who defeated the imperial army under the burggrave of Nuremberg at Lucka, not far from Altenburg (1307). Albert was murdered by his nephew John (Parricida) between the Aar and Reuss, near the Hapsburg. His widow Elizabeth and his daughter Agnes took terrible vengeance for this murder. Through the influence of the archbishop of Trier the princes elected as king his brother 1308-1313. Henry VII., count of Lützelnburg or Luxemburg, a half-Frenchman. 1309. The Swiss Cantons received from Henry VII. docJune 3. umentary confirmation of their immediate feudal relation to the empire. Origin of the Swiss Confederacy. Of the inhabitants of the cantons, those dwelling in Schwyz seem to have been, for the most part, free peasants; while in Uri and Unterwalden the majority were in a condition of servitude, as regarded either their persons or their estates. The most extensive landowners were monasteries (e. g. the Frauenmünster in Zürich), and nobles residing out of the country, like the counts of Lenzburg and those of Hapsburg. After the extinction of the former (1172), at any rate since the thirteenth century, the counts of Hapsburg exercised, under various legal titles as landgraves or advocates, full jurisdiction and presided in the assemblies. Under the imperfectly developed administration of that time, the holder of these privileges was considered the actual ruler of the country. As early as the first half of the thirteenth century the cantons had resisted the efforts of the Hapsburgers to develop their stewardship into an actual sovereignty over them; indeed they had even attempted in part to withdraw themselves from the stewardship of the Hapsburgers. In 1231 Henry, regent for his father Frederic II. in Germany (p. 224), granted the people of Uri a charter which removed them from under the protection of the Hapsburgers and replaced them under that of the empire. In 1240 Frederic II. gave the people of Schwyz a charter which promised them an immediate tenure from the empire. After the middle of the thirteenth century, the Hapsburgers were nevertheless still in possession of their office of steward or advocate (Vogt) for the cantons. Rudolf I. seems to have recognized the charter of Uri, but not that of Schwyz. Immediately upon his death, on Aug. 1, 1291, the cantons Uri, Schwyz, and Nidwalden (which was afterwards united with the towns of Obwalden under the name Unterwalden) concluded a perpetual league. Although intended only to insure the maintenance of existing conditions, this league is to be regarded as the beginning of the Confederacy. By making shrewd use of the confusion that followed in Germany, but not without many changes of fortune (after the battle of Göllheim (p. 245) the cantons were obliged to recognize the supremacy of the Hapsburgers), the confederates in 1309 attained the object for which their ancestors had striven. The Swiss narrative, to which the popular poetry has added many ornaments, and which condenses the facts of the gradual acquirement of an immediate relation to the empire into a short space of time, and exaggerates their effects, can no longer be regarded as historical in view of the results of modern investigation. It is first found in chronicles which were written between two and three hundred years after the events, and is often contradicted by the documents.2 Neither the Oath on the Rütli (1307, Werner Stauffacher, Walther Fürst, Arnold Melchthal), nor the expulsion of the bailiffs on the 1st of January 1308, is historically authenticated. The Swiss confederacy was not formed by the exertions of three or of thirty individuals, but was the result of many historical events which united in powerfully assisting the energetic and enduring efforts of the inhabitants of the cantons to free themselves from all foreign supremacy. As regards the story of Tell, it is now established that neither the shooting of the apple from the head of his son, nor the murder of the bailiff Gessler in the hollow way at Küssnacht can be in any way regarded as an historical event. It has been proved that among the Küssnacht bailiffs of that time there was no Gessler. The legend of the shooting of the apple occurs five times outside of the cantons, agreeing almost to the wording of the answer which the archer gives the tyrant in Norway, in Iceland, in Denmark, in Holstein, and on the middle Rhine, and, with an altered motive, a sixth time in England. Hence it is tolerably certain that we have here to do with a common Germanic tradition. Moreover, the resemblance of the Swiss version to the elder narrative of Saxo Grammaticus (twelfth century) of the shot of Toko, the Dane, who is said to have lived in the tenth century, is so striking as to render it probable that the Swiss chroniclers had that historian before them. Whether a man of the name of Tell ever lived in Uri is a question which cannot be answered with certainty either in the affirmative or the negative. It is one, moreover, which has but little interest when 1 A. Huber: die Waldstätte Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, 1861; and Rochholz, Tell und Gessler in Sage und Geschichte, 1877. 2 The honor of having first used this fact after a true scientific fashion to disprove the tradition belongs to the Swiss historian Kopp (Urkunden zur Geschichte der eidgenössischen Bünde, 1835 and 1857; Reichsgeschichte, 1845-1858). According to the investigations of Kopp, who examined all the archives in Uri, and Rochholz (p. 257. note), the latter is almost certainly the case. it is admitted that the main features of the legend are unhistorical. It is noteworthy that Tell, even in the legend, plays no part at all in the common insurrection, after the murder of the bailiff. It was not until later, when the Swiss had actually worked out their freedom, that his deed was invented, and surrounded by the halo of popular belief, his name made a symbol of Swiss energy and love of freedom The Tell chapels and the memorial festivals are no proof that Tell was an historical personage, since the erection of the former and the estab lishment of the latter can be shown to date from a time when the tradition was already fully developed. The document concerning a public meeting of 1388, when more than a hundred people are said to have declared that they knew Tell, is evidently a later interpolation. 1310. Henry's son, John, was placed on the throne of Bohemia by the national assembly, in spite of the claims of the Hapsburgers, whereby the Lützelnburgers acquired a family power. 1310-1313. Henry's Roman expedition. He was crowned king of Italy in Pavia, and emperor in Rome (1312). 1314-1347. Ludwig of Upper Bavaria at war with 1314-1330. Frederic of Austria, son of Albert. 1315. Victory of the Swiss confederates in the pass between lake Nov. 15. Ageri and the mountain Morgarten over Leopold of Austria, Frederic's brother. The flower of the Austrian chivalry (1500 in number) slaughtered. Dec. 9. Renewal of the league between Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden at Brunnen. 1316. Recognition of the immediate dependence of the cantons upon the empire, by king Ludwig. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the people generally bought off the ever diminishing rights of the landed monasteries. Rapid growth of the league of the confederates, which was joined by one after another of the remaining districts, who thus withdrew themselves from the control of the territorial lords. At the close of the fifteenth century Austria had been entirely driven out of the lands south of the Rhine. After 1340 no imperial bailiff is mentioned in the cantons, which in consequence of the weakness of the imperial power soon became republics, so that the proclamation of the independence of Switzerland in the Peace of Westphalia (1648) was only the legal recognition of a state of things which had long existed in fact. 1322. Battle at Ampfing near Mühldorf. Frederic of Austria defeated and captured (Schweppermann; the story is probably unhistoric). 1324. Ludwig gave the mark Brandenburg, which had reverted by the extinction of the Askanian line, to his son Ludwig, whom he afterwards married with Margaret Maultasch, the heiress of Tyrol and Carinthia. 1325. Frederic set at liberty upon renouncing his claim to the throne. He surrendered himself again as prisoner, was made co-regent by Ludwig, died 1330. 1327-1330. Ludwig's Roman expedition. Crowned emperor in Rome. (Anti-pope Nicholas V.) The Electoral meeting at Rense (1338) declared every legally elected German king to be thereby constituted Roman emperor, even without papal coronation. The violent means adopted by Ludwig to increase his domestic power led, a year before his death, to the election of Charles, son of John, king of Bohemia († 1346 in the battle of Crécy). Charles was not universally recognized until after Ludwig's death. 1347-1437. Emperors of the Luxemburg - Bohemian line. 1347-1378. Charles IV. A prince with nothing knightly in his character, but wise in statecraft, and shrewd in calculation; a scholar (he studied at Paris and Bologna, spoke and wrote Bohemian, German, Latin, French, Italian). War with the Bavarian party. In opposition to Ludwig there appeared in Brandenburg the false Waldemar (1348–1350), who was assisted by Charles. The emperor's first care was his hereditary kingdom, Bohemia (whence he was styled by Maximilian I., "Bohemia's father, the Holy Roman Empire's arch-step-father"). The emperor in 1348 founded a university, after the pattern of that in Paris, at Prague, the first in Germany. The Bavarian party elected in opposition 1349. Günther of Schwarzburg, king of Germany, but he died in Jan. June of the same year (poisoned ?). Plague (Black Death) in Germany, and throughout nearly all 1353. Berne joined the Swiss confederacy which now included Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zürich, Glarus, Zug, and Berne, the so-called eight old cantons. 1354-1355. Charles's first expedition to Rome. He was crowned emperor at Rome with a humiliating ceremony. Silesia and Lower Lusatia (Niederlausitz) united with Bohemia. 1356. Golden Bull. Fundamental law of the empire. The election of the emperor was definitively intrusted to the seven electors, who had practically exercised this right for a long time; three ecclesiastics: 1. Archbishop of Mainz (arch-chancellor of Germany); 2. Archbishop of Trier (arch-chancellor of Burgundy); 3. Archbishop of Cologne (arch-chancellor of Italy); four secular: 4. King of Bohemia (arch-seneschal); 5. Count Palatine of the Rhine (arch-steward); 6. Duke of Saxon-Wittenberg (arch-marshall); 7. Margrave of Brandenburg (arch-chamberlain). Establishment of the indivisibility and inalienableness of the electoral states, which were made hereditary in the male line and received certain regalia (privilegium de non appellando, etc.). The electoral vote I went with the land. 1 So called from the gold case which contained the seal. 2 The electoral vote had been disputed between the two Saxon lines and the two lines of Wittelsbach. It was now assigned to Saxon-Wittenberg and the County Palatine, but refused to Saxon-Lauenburg and Bavaria. 1363. Austria acquired Tyrol. The heiress of Tyrol, Margaret Maultasch, who outlived her husband, the Bavarian Ludwig, elector of Brandenburg (p. 247), and her only son, Meinhard, gave her county after the latter's death to duke Rudolf of Austria. 1368. Second expedition of Charles to Italy in alliance with the Pope against the Visconti. 1373. By the treaty of Fürstenwalde, Otto the Finne (lazy), the last Bavarian margrave of Brandenburg, transferred the mark to Charles IV., in return for an annuity. Leagues of the Cities. The Hanseatic League. The union of several seaports and trading cities, between the Baltic and the Elbe, formed in the thirteenth century (between 1255 and 1262 ?), was the beginning of this league.1 Separate alliance between Lübeck and Hamburg. In the fourteenth century the league attained wide extent and great power. After this time the name Hansa (i. e. trade guild) was commonly applied to the league. Since 1350 over ninety cities extending from the mouth of the Schelde to Esthonia, besides many inland cities (e. g. Magdeburg, Berlin, Thorn), belonged to the Hansa. Object of the alliance: common defense, security of sea and land routes, settlement of disputes between members by arbitration, acquirement and maintenance of trading privileges in foreign countries. Capital of the league: Lübeck. Division of the league into three, afterwards four, quarters: 1. Prussian and Livonian; principal town, Dantzig; 2. Wendic, including also the cities of Mecklenburg, Pommerania, and the Marches ; chief town, Lübeck; 3. Saxon; chief town, Brunswick; 4. Westphalian; chief town, Cologne. Principal trading ground, all northern Europe. Principal trading stations: Novgorod, Stockholm, Wisby (in Gothland), Bergen, Bruges, London. Ships of war (Orlogschiffe). 1361. War with Waldemar IV., king of Denmark, under the conduct of the burghermaster of Lübeck, John Wittenborg, who captured and plundered Copenhagen, but was afterwards defeated before Helsingborg, and, in consequence, beheaded at Lübeck. 1367-1370. Second war with Waldemar IV. The king compelled to fly. Copenhagen, Helsingör, and other cities conquered. A glorious and advantageous peace for the Hansa, concluded at Stralsund, ended the war. The League of Rhine cities, founded about the middle of the thirteenth century (league of Worms and Mainz), to insure stricter enforcement of the public peace, comprised at various times more than seventy cities, not all upon the Rhine (e. g. Bremen, Regensburg, Nuremberg); both temporal and spiritual princes joined the league. The Swabian city league concluded in 1376, particularly as a defense against the counts of Würtemberg. Eberhard the Greiner (i. e. Quarreler), also called Rauschebart. (Ühland's ballads.) 1 Unions of German merchants in foreign countries under this name had long existed, the oldest being in London. |