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State of popular feeling

[1521

have been powerless to secure his condemnation. The whole nation, wrote a canon of Worms, was of one mind with regard to clerical immorality, from Emperor down through all classes to the last man. Nine-tenths of Germany, declared the papal Nuncio, cried "Long live Luther," and the other tenth shouted "Death to the Church." Duke George of Saxony, the staunchest of Catholics, was calling for a General Council to reform abuses, and Gattinara, Charles' shrewdest adviser, echoed the recommendation. Even Jean Glapion, the Emperor's confessor, was believed to be not averse from an accommodation with Luther, provided that he would disavow the Babylonish Captivity, and in Worms itself the papal emissaries went about in fear of assassination. The Germans, wrote Tunstall to Wolsey from Worms, were everywhere so addicted to Luther that a hundred thousand of them would lay down their lives to save him from the penalties pronounced by the Pope.

This popular enthusiasm for Luther led Napoleon to express the belief that, had Charles adopted his cause, he could have conquered Europe at the head of a united Germany. But an imperial sanction of Lutheranism would not have killed the separatist tendencies of German politics, nor was it Lutheran doctrine which had captivated the hearts of the German people. He was the hero of the hour solely because he stood for the national opposition to Rome. The circumstances in Germany in 1521 were not very dissimilar from those in England in 1529. There was an almost universal repugnance to clerical privilege and to the Roman Curia, but the section of the nation which was prepared to repudiate Catholic dogma was still insignificant; and a really national government, which regarded national unity as of more importance than the immediate triumph of any religious party, would have pursued a policy something like that of Henry VIII in his later years. It would have kept the party of doctrinal revolution in due subordination to the national movement against the abuses of a corrupt clerical caste and an Italian domination; it would have endeavoured to satisfy the popular demand for practical reform, without alienating the majority by surrendering to a sectional agitation against Catholic dogma. But both the man and the forces were wanting. Charles often dallied with the idea of a limited practical reform, and he had already slighted the Papacy by allowing Luther to be heard at the Diet of Worms after his condemnation by the Pope, as if an imperial edict were of more effect in matters of faith than a papal Bull. He could hardly, however, be Reformer in Germany and reactionary in Spain, and the necessities of his dynastic position as well as his personal feelings tied him to the Catholic cause. His frequent and prolonged periods of absence and his absorption in other affairs prevented him from bestowing upon the government of Germany that vigilant and concentrated attention which alone enabled Henry VIII to effect his aims in England;

1521]

The Reforms instituted at Worms

149

and the task of dealing with the religious, and with the no less troublesome political and social discord in Germany, was left to the Council of Regency and practically, for five years, to Ferdinand.

The composition and powers of this body were among the chief questions which came before the Diet of Worms. When the electors extorted from Charles a promise to re-establish the Reichsregiment, they had in their mind a national administration like that suggested by Berthold of Mainz; when Charles gave his pledge, he was thinking of a Council which should be, like Maximilian's, Aulic rather than national; and he imagined that he was redeeming his pledge when he proposed to the Diet the formation of a government which was to have no control over foreign affairs, and a control, limited by his own assent, over domestic administration. The Regent or head of the Council and six of its twenty members were to be nominated by the Emperor; these were to be permanent, but the other fourteen, representing the Empire, were to change every quarter. This body was to have no power over Charles' hereditary dominions, nor over the newly-won Württemberg. The Emperor, in short, was to control the national government, but the writs of the national government were not to run in the Habsburg territories. On the other hand, the Princes demanded a form of government which would have practically eliminated the imperial factor from the Empire ; the governing Council was to have the same authority whether Charles himself were present or not, it was to decide foreign as well as domestic questions, and in it the Emperor should be represented only in the same way as other Princes, namely, by a proportionate number of members chosen from his hereditary lands.

In the compromise which followed Charles secured the decisive point. The government which was formed was too weak to weld Germany into a political whole, able to withstand the disintegrating influence of its own particularism and of the Habsburg dynastic interest; and Charles was left free to pursue throughout his reign the old imperial maxim, divide et impera. The Reichsregiment was to have independent power only during the Emperor's absence; at other times it was to sink into an advisory body, and important decisions must always have his assent. He was to nominate the president and four out of the Council's twenty-two members; but his own dominions were to be subject to its authority, the determination of religious questions was left largely in the hands of the Estates, and Charles undertook to form no leagues or alliances affecting the Empire without the Council's consent. The reconstitution of the supreme national court of justice or Reichskammergericht presented few variations from the form adopted at Constance in 1507, and the ordinance establishing it is almost word for word the same as the original proposal of Berthold of Mainz in 1495; the imperial influence was slightly increased by the provision permitting him to nominate two additional assessors to the Court, but, being paid

150

Growth of the power of the Princes

by the Empire and not by the Emperor, its members retained their independence.

A measure which ultimately proved to be of more importance than the reorganisation of these two institutions was the partition of the Habsburg inheritance. One of the most cherished projects of Ferdinand of Aragon had been the creation in northern Italy of a kingdom for the benefit of the younger of his two grandsons, which would have left Charles free to retain his Austrian lands. That scheme had failed; but the younger Ferdinand, especially when he became betrothed to the heiress of Hungary and Bohemia, could not decently remain unendowed while his brother possessed so much; and on April 28, 1521, a contract was ratified transferring to Ferdinand the five Austrian duchies, of Austria, Carinthia, Carniola, Styria, and Tyrol. This grant formed the nucleus of the present so-called Dual Monarchy; it was gradually extended by the transference to Ferdinand of all Charles V's possessions and claims in Germany, and the success with which the younger brother governed his German subjects made them regret that Ferdinand had not been elected Emperor in 1519 instead of having to wait thirty-seven years for the prize.

Soon after the conclusion of the Diet of Worms Charles left Germany, which he was not to see again until nine years later; and long before then the attempt of the central government to control the disruptive forces of political and religious separatism had hopelessly broken down. A pathetic interest attaches to the intervening struggles of the Reichsregiment as being the last efforts to create a modern German national State co-extensive with the medieval Empire, a State which would have included not only the present German Empire, but Austria and the Netherlands, and which, stretching from the shores of the Baltic to those of the Adriatic sea, and from the Straits of Dover to the Niemen or the Vistula, would have dominated modern Europe; and a good deal of angry criticism has been directed against the particularist bodies which one after another repudiated the authority of the government and brought its work to nought. But particularism had so completely permeated Germany that the very efforts at unity were themselves tainted with particularist motives; and one reason alike for the favour with which Princes like Frederick of Saxony regarded the Reichsregiment, and for its ultimate failure, was that, with its ostensible unifying purpose, the government combined aims which served the interests of Princes against those of other classes.

The great Princes of the Empire present a double aspect, varying with the point of view from which they are regarded. To Charles they were collectively an oligarchy which threatened to destroy the monarchical principle embodied in the person of the Emperor; but individually and from the point of view of their own dominions they represented a monarchical principle similar to that which gave unity and strength to

1521-2]

Difficulties of the Reichsregiment

151

France, to England, and to Spain, a territorial principle more youthful and more vigorous than the effete Kaisertum. The force of political gravitation had already modified profoundly the internal constitution of the Empire; States like Saxony, Brandenburg, and Bavaria had acquired consistency and weight, and began to exercise an attraction over the numberless molecules of the Empire which the more distant and nebulous luminary of the Kaisertum could not counteract. The petty knight, the cities and towns, found it ever more difficult to resist the encroachments of neighbouring Princes; and princely influence over municipal elections and control over municipal finance went on increasing throughout the sixteenth century, till towards its end the former autonomy of all but a select number of cities had well-nigh disappeared. It was not from the Emperor but from the Princes that knights and burgesses feared attacks on their liberties, and their danger threw them into an attitude of hostility to the Reichsregiment, a body by means of which the Princes sought to exercise in their own interests the national power. They could also appeal to the higher motive of imperial unity; the strength of individual Princes meant the weakness of the Emperor, and unity in parts might seem to be fatal to the unity of the whole.

The Diet of Worms had in fact been a struggle between Emperor and Princes, in which neither had paid much regard to inferior classes, and the spoils were divided exclusively between the two combatants. The knightly order was denied all share in the government of the Empire; they could expect no more consideration than before in their endless disputes over territory with their more powerful neighbours, and the Reichskammergericht with its Roman law they regarded as an insufferable infringement of their own feudal franchises. The cities were not less discontented. They had been refused any representation in the Reichsregiment, subsidies had been voted without their concurrence, and they anticipated with reason fresh taxation which would fall mainly on their shoulders.

The new government was established at Nürnberg in November, 1521, and in the following February it met the Diet. The first business was to raise forces to serve against the Turks before whose advance Belgrade had just fallen; and with Charles' consent a portion of the supplies voted for the Emperor's abandoned journey to Rome was applied to this purpose. Greater difficulty was experienced in finding means to defray the expenses of the imperial council and court of justice. It was proposed to revert to the Common Penny, to tax the Jews, and to apply the annates of the German Church, which supported the Roman Curia, to the purposes of the national government. But all these suggestions were rejected in favour of a scheme which offered the threefold advantage of promoting German unity, of relieving German capitalists of some of their superfluous wealth, and of sparing the

152

Proposal to tax exports and imports

[1522 pockets of those who voted the tax. All classes had soon perceived that there could be no peace and no justice unless somebody paid for its maintenance and administration, and with one voice they began to excuse themselves from the honour of providing the funds. It was necessary, however, to select a victim, and the choice of the mercantile interest was received with acclamation by every other class in Germany. The commercial revolution which marked the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century had led, as such revolutions always do, to the rapid and disproportionate accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few who knew how to exploit it; and the consequent growth of luxury and increase of the power of mercantile magnates were a constant theme of denunciation in the mouths of less fortunate men. The canonist doctrine of usury, based on the Scriptural prohibition, still held sway in all but commercial circles, and the forestalling and regrating, against which the English statute-book is so eloquent, excited no less odium in Germany. Theologians united with lawyers in denouncing the Fuggerei of the great trading companies; Luther and Zwingli, Hutten and Erasmus were of one mind on the question. Erasmus described the merchants as the basest of all mankind, and it was partly due to this feeling that the lawless robbery of traders at the hands of roving knights went on openly without an attempt to check it; the humanist, Heinrich Bebel, even declared that the victims owed their captors a debt of gratitude because the seizure of their ill-gotten goods smoothed their path to heaven.

This moral antipathy to the evil effects of wealth, as exhibited in other people, was reinforced by the prevalent idea that money and riches were synonymous terms, and that the German nation was being steadily impoverished by the export of precious metals to pay for the imports it received from other countries, and especially English cloth and Portuguese spices. It was felt that some check must be put upon the process, and a national tax on imports and exports would, it was thought, cure this evil, satisfy at once the moral indignation of people and Princes against capitalists and their selfish desire for fiscal immunity, and provide a stable financial basis for the national executive and judicial system, for the defence of the realm against foreign foes, and for the maintenance of peace within its borders. The measure as passed by the Diet of Nürnberg in 1522 exempted all the necessaries of life, but imposed a duty of four per cent. on all other merchandise, to be paid on exports as well as on imports. Custom-houses were to be erected along the whole frontier of the Empire, which was defined for the purpose. Switzerland refused its consent and was excluded, and so were Bohemia and Prussia, the latter as being a fief of Poland, but the Netherlands were reckoned as an integral part of the Empire; and, had the project been carried out, it would have provided not only the revenues which were its immediate object, but an invaluable lever for the unification of Germany.