Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (40 page)

The developments around 1490 have largely been interpreted in national terms as the secession of Italy, Burgundy and Switzerland from the Empire, reducing it to a ‘German Reich’.
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Austria has also often been regarded at this time as distinct, either by those seeking to trace that country’s ‘origins’ or by nineteenth-century critics accusing the Habsburgs of pursuing their own interests to the detriment of alleged common ‘German’ ones. Prussia’s rise as a second German great power from the mid-eighteenth century appears to confirm this perspective. However, it would be wrong to reduce the Empire’s later history to that of ‘Reichstag Germany’: the mass of smaller principalities and imperial cities with little or no chance of a separate existence in a Europe now more obviously composed of independent national states. Rather than seeing early modernity solely as the origins of later nations, it is better to interpret it as a significant reordering of how the Empire’s different components interacted.

Imperial reform greatly strengthened the coherence of what had been the kingdom of Germany. Increasingly, this was now called ‘the Empire’, especially by outsiders who indeed viewed the Italian and Burgundian lands as separate Habsburg personal possessions. A major factor in this shift was the absence of German coronations after 1486, removing the separate significance of the German royal title since whoever was elected automatically became emperor (see
pp. 69–70
and
301–7
). The institutions created through imperial reform were primarily intended to regulate how the German kingdom was governed, not the wider Empire, since the Burgundian and Italian lords had already been excluded from the process of choosing the German king by the mid-fourteenth century. Thus, constitutional change combined with the distribution and management of Habsburg possessions to sharpen the distinctions between Germany, Italy and Burgundy.

The reforms delineated the extent of what had been the German
kingdom by identifying which imperial fiefs enjoyed the status of imperial Estate, allowing them to participate in common institutions, notably the Reichstag, whilst also requiring them to contribute men and money through now more formalized systems for distributing shared burdens. A new intermediary layer of authority was interposed from 1500 to 1512 between territories and central institutions by grouping the imperial Estates on a regional basis in ten
Kreise
(imperial circles) to improve peace-keeping, law enforcement and defence coordination (
Map 7
).
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Habsburg possessions were deliberately separated as the Austrian and Burgundian Kreise, while Bohemia (which only became a Habsburg possession in 1526) was excluded as still suspect after the Hussite insurrection. The Swiss also opted out, though still remaining within some aspects of imperial jurisdiction. The new structures were consolidated through the package of constitutional measures passed by the Reichstag meeting in Augsburg in 1555. As we have seen (
pp. 115–28
), this also adjusted the ecclesiastical structure within the former German kingdom, determining the future size and character of the imperial church and confirming which ecclesiastical territories survived as imperial Estates.

The North

These changes had their greatest impact in northern Germany, which had largely been ‘distant from the king’ since the Ottonians. Few northern territories played significant roles in late medieval imperial politics in contrast to those on the Middle and Upper Rhine and, from the fourteenth century, also Bavaria, Austria and Bohemia. Identification as imperial Estates and inclusion within the Kreis structure now integrated northern territories like Holstein, Mecklenburg and Pomerania fully within the Empire. Conversely, the exclusion of the former Teutonic lands of Prussia and Livonia from these structures placed them clearly outside the Empire.

While this clarified the northern frontiers, it did not exclude all external influence. German princes could still hold land outside the Empire, as exemplified by the Brandenburg Hohenzollerns in Prussia after 1618. Foreign rulers could also become imperial princes through the possession of imperial fiefs. Such interconnections already existed during the Middle Ages, but assumed a different character with the
Empire’s constitutional reform and the new definition of sovereignty and conceptions of Europe as composed of independent states. The Empire remained defined by fragmented sovereignty where the emperor shared power with the semi-sovereign imperial Estates, whereas sovereignty was increasingly regarded as indivisible in other European states. The anomalous position is exemplified by the way George III and Frederick William III each felt obliged to send two letters of congratulations on Francis II’s adoption of a hereditary Austrian imperial title in 1804: one in their character as sovereign monarchs of Britain and Prussia, the other in their capacity as imperial Estates in Hanover and Brandenburg.
⁷¹

Other such personal unions existed. The oldest began in 1448 when the count of Holstein secured the election of his nephew Christian of Oldenburg as Danish king, establishing a dynasty still ruling today. Christian inherited Holstein on the extinction of its counts in 1459, but Emperor Frederick III raised it to a duchy in 1474 to ensure it remained an imperial fief within the Empire. The Oldenburgs were thus imperial princes in Holstein and kings in Denmark (and Norway, linked to Denmark from 1387 to 1814). They accepted their dual status, because it brought influence in the Empire and assisted long-standing Danish ambitions to control the entire Elbe estuary. The connections affected political behaviour, since Danish policy adopted the methods customarily employed elsewhere in the Empire to achieve objections. Although force was occasionally employed, Denmark generally used its influence in imperial institutions as it tried to acquire additional imperial fiefs along the Elbe. Repeated failure did not cause it to change its tactics or disengage from the Empire.
⁷²

The duchies of Holstein and Oldenburg remained convenient accommodation for junior branches of the main Oldenburg family, but further subdivisions created rival branches by the seventeenth century that tried to escape Danish tutelage. The most important of these were the Holstein-Gottorps, who forged their own connections to Swedish and Russian royalty. Duke Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp briefly and disastrously ruled Russia as Tsar Peter III in 1762. Tensions were eased by an agreement in 1773 whereby Denmark assigned Oldenburg to the junior Holstein line (surviving there until 1918), while Russia relinquished claims to Holstein to the Danes. Such dynastic swops were no longer acceptable with the rise of more virulent nationalism during
the nineteenth century. Two wars (1848–51, 1864) eventually obliged Denmark to cede both Holstein and Schleswig to Prussia.
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Meanwhile, the former Frisian lordship of Jever (330 square kilometres) inherited from Oldenburg by Anhalt-Zerbst in 1667 passed to Russia at the death of Catherine II in 1796. Resembling a miniature version of modern-day Kaliningrad, this remained a Russian enclave until Tsar Alexander I gave it to his Oldenburg relations in 1818.

Sweden acquired western Pomerania, Bremen and other parts of northern Germany as spoils from the Thirty Years War (1618–48). Like Denmark, Sweden accepted the formal status as imperial vassal on behalf of these possessions, despite the rest of its lands constituting a sovereign kingdom. Denmark’s and Sweden’s German possessions remained imperial fiefs subject to imperial law. Both Scandinavian monarchies generally honoured their obligations to assist the Empire in later seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century wars. Sweden’s monarchy was also closely related to German princely families. Following the abdication of Queen Christina (herself half-German) in 1654, Sweden was ruled by her Zweibrücken relations until 1720, thereafter by the landgrave of Hessen-Kassel, followed between 1751 and 1818 by a branch of the Holstein-Gottorps.
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As in Denmark’s case, this succession of ‘German’ rulers did not forge a direct union, since the German possessions remained governed by relations throughout, in contrast to Hanover’s personal union with Britain between 1714 and 1837 where the succession of four Georges and a William were simultaneously electors and kings.

The East

Connections across the Empire’s eastern frontiers were also direct personal unions similar to that with Hungary under Sigismund between 1410 and 1437. Neither he nor the Habsburgs tried to integrate their other kingdoms within the Empire as the Staufers had attempted with Sicily after 1194. The Habsburgs acquired Bohemia and Hungary in 1526 after several decades of relying on their own possessions to sustain their control of the Empire. They had no incentive to include Bohemia or Hungary in the framework created since the 1490s, because this would have exposed them to interference from the other imperial Estates. Instead, they developed their own institutions to manage what
was, effectively, a parallel dynastic-territorial empire and which gave them an overwhelming superiority of resources, in turn allowing them to retain an almost unbroken grip on the imperial title over the next three centuries.

This Habsburg monarchy (see
pp. 427–39
) remained closely entwined with the Empire, even if some important elements were also sovereign states. Habsburg imperial rule depended on holding these additional extensive lands as independent sources of wealth and prestige. There were also extensive economic links, such as those along the Danube: Hungary, for instance, sent 100,000 cattle annually upriver into the Empire during the sixteenth century.
⁷⁵
In the early 1520s the Reichstag hesitated to vote aid for Hungary’s King Louis II, because it regarded him as a foreign prince. This changed once Hungary passed to the Habsburgs on Louis’ death in battle in 1526 and the main objective of imperial taxation across the next 90 years was to subsidize the cost of defending the Hungarian frontier against the Ottomans. The bulk of the weaponry and other military materiel was supplied by firms based in the Empire and financed by German banks. The same is true of the troops who eventually evicted the Ottomans from Hungary between 1683 and 1699.

The imperial law code of 1532 was used in parts of Hungary until the mid-seventeenth century, but otherwise Hungary had its own legal system and did not import Austrian ones. Hungarian nobles resisted the use of Germanic titles like
Graf
for count until 1606, and very few acquired the personal status of imperial prince. However, the Habsburgs were often accompanied by Hungarians at imperial ceremonies, reminiscent of the Saracen bodyguard escorting Frederick II to Germany in 1235. Elements of imperial court ceremonial were imported into that used for Hungarian kings, while acceptance of imperial princely titles spread as the Habsburgs used their imperial prerogatives to reward loyal followers and to integrate them within a common system centred on their court in Vienna.
⁷⁶

Ferdinand I’s accession in Bohemia in 1526 was not universally popular and he faced a serious revolt in 1547. Conscious of the earlier difficulties with the Hussites, the imperial Estates refused to assist him, on the grounds that Bohemia was a separate kingdom.
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In response, he and his Habsburg successors rejected repeated calls that Bohemia should contribute to imperial taxes. The exercise of Bohemian electoral
rights remained controversial, not least because Habsburg possession after 1526 meant they could vote for themselves. Although the vote was suspended in 1648, it was readmitted 60 years later.
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Bohemia remained connected to the Empire through the arch-office associated with its electoral status. Ferdinand I initiated the practice of ensuring the family’s chosen successor was crowned Bohemian and Hungarian king to give him royal status ahead of election as king of the Romans or emperor. Joseph I’s unexpectedly early death in 1711 necessitated his younger brother Charles VI assuming the responsibility of becoming emperor. Charles’s daughter Maria Theresa ruled as queen of Bohemia and Hungary whilst consort of Emperor Francis I. Thereafter, the Bohemian and Hungarian titles were assumed by the last three emperors after their imperial coronations. Throughout, the imperial title remained important to the Habsburgs’ management of their own kingdoms, since its traditional universal associations elevated the dynasty above all components of their personal, territorial empire.

Like Hungarians, Bohemian lords were reluctant to accept imperial aristocratic titles, regarding themselves as vassals of their own king, not the emperor. As in Hungary, this crumbled in the face of the Habsburgs’ Counter-Reformation policy of restricting employment to loyal Catholics. Bohemia’s already multilingual nobility became even more cosmopolitan following the influx of Austrian, German, Italian and Burgundian families who received lands confiscated from rebels during the Thirty Years War. Restrictions on imperial prerogatives in 1654 meant that most imperial princely titles granted after that date remained purely personal, since they were not associated with land qualifying the beneficiary as an imperial Estate (see
pp. 409–14
).

The Habsburgs made serious efforts to secure election as kings of Poland in 1572, 1573 and 1586–8. Although these failed, they established dynastic ties to the Catholic branch of Sweden’s Vasa family, which ruled Poland from 1587 to 1668.
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The Habsburgs backed the royal ambitions of the Saxon elector, Friedrich August, who was elected Polish king in 1697 establishing another personal union lasting until 1763. The Saxon-Polish union did not create the common institutions that had developed to sustain the Habsburg union of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, but was nonetheless closer than those between various German principalities and the Scandinavian monarchies.