rmed by the Pope. The greatest part of his
income he drew from the Empire; his legates sat at the Imperial Diet,
among the ecclesiastical and temporal Electors, and could even open it
without the Emperor.

When the Emperor would not confirm the Count Palatine Frederic the
Victorious in the Electoral dignity, this temporal prince accepted the
confirmation of the Pope. The Pope endeavoured to bring every difficult
political negotiation before his court; indeed, he granted rights of
custom, he annulled the Imperial ban, and ventured by his own power to
exact tithes.

The Emperor was still considered the nominal centre of the Empire, and
the source of all power. All hastened, upon his accession, to obtain
from him the confirmation of old freedoms and privileges, and he was
the first judge and first general of the Empire, but could not raise a
single thaler of money or a single soldier without the consent of the
Diet. And what was of still greater importance, he could only obtain
taxes and soldiers from among the vassals, by the consent of their
feudal lords. Hesitatingly and sparingly did the Diet grant subsidies,
and so defective was the payment that the grant became a mere farce.

Within the Empire, Electors, princes, nobles, and Imperial cities ruled
their territories, with many gradations of sovereign rights. The
greater princes were real sovereigns, their power only restricted by
their states. Noble families, holding temporal principalities in
heritable possession, strove incessantly to enlarge their power, to put
down the smaller lords round them, and to limit the sovereign rights of
the Emperor. In the fifteenth century they had reduced the Imperial
power almost to a shadow. It was only by extending the power of his
house that the Emperor Maximilian was able to maintain himself against
them.

We may easily perceive that there were two ways of remodelling this
clumsy state edifice of the middle ages. In one case the power of the
great princes might rise so high, that the temporal influence of the
Pope and the supremacy of the Emperor would be overthrown; then Germany
would be divided into a number of individual states, whose conflicts,
wars, and destinies might for centuries throw the whole of central
Europe into weakness and confusion, and which at last, in another state
of development, might lead to new endeavours to restore unity to the
Empire. It has been the fate of Germany up to the present time to
follow t