had
become German, and the Rhenish territory was divided between the duchies
of Upper and Lower Lorraine, the one on the Moselle and the other on the
Meuse. But, like other German states, on the weakening of the central
power they split up into numerous petty independent principalities, each
with its special history.

The Palatinate

Chief among these was the state known as the Palatinate, from the German
word Pfalz, a name given generally to any district ruled by a count
palatine. It was bounded by Prussia on the north, on the east by Baden,
and on the south by Alsace-Lorraine. We first hear of a royal official
known as the Count Palatine of the Rhine in the tenth century. Although
the office was not originally an hereditary one, it seems to have been
held by the descendants of the first count, until the continuity of the
race of Hermann was broken by the election of Conrad, stepbrother of
the German king Frederick I, as Count Palatine. From that time till much
later in German history the Palatinate of the Rhine appears to have
been gifted during their lifetime to the nephews or sons-in-law of
the reigning Emperor, and by virtue of his occupancy of the office the
holder became an Elector, or voter in the election of an Emperor. The
office was held by a large number of able and statesmanlike princes, as
Frederick I, Frederick III, the champion of Protestantism, and Frederick
V. In the seventeenth century the Palatinate was first devastated and
then claimed by France, and later was disturbed by still more harassing
religious strife. In 1777 it was united with Bavaria upon the reigning
Elector falling heir to the Electorate of that state.

A Tale of the Palatine House

Throughout the Middle Ages the nobles of Rhineland were mostly notorious
for their wild savagery and predatory habits, and thus the modern
traveller on the famous river, admiring the many picturesque castles
built on summits overlooking its banks, is prone to think of these
places as having been the homes of men who were little better than
freebooters. And in general this idea is just; yet Walter Pater's
story, Duke Karl of Rosenwald--which tells how a medieval German baron
discovered in himself a keen love of art, and sought to gather artists
round him from France and Italy--may well have been culled from a
veracious historical source. For at least a few of the German petty
princes of the Middle Ages shared the aestheticism characterizing so
many of t