or many
centuries after as 'The Lovers' Grave,' and here Frederick used to
loiter often, musing fondly on the dear sister who had been snatched
from him in this ruthless fashion, and dreaming of the lofty artistic
career which he had planned in vain for his beloved Rafaello.

Bishops, Barons, and Bourgeois

To trace the fortunes, divisions, and junctions of the lesser Rhine
principalities would be a work requiring a world of patience on the part
of the reader as well as an amount of space which would speedily surpass
the limits even of such an ample volume as the present. The constant
changes of boundary of these tiny lordships, the hazy character of the
powers possessed by their rulers, the multiplicity of free townships
yielding obedience to none but their own civic rulers, the brief but
none the less tyrannous rule of scores of robber barons who exercised
a regime of blood and iron within a radius of five miles of their
castellated eyries, render the tracing of the history of the Rhine
during the Middle Ages a task of almost unequalled complexity, robbed
of all the romance of history by reason of the necessity for constant
attention to the details of dynastic and territorial changes and the
petty squabblings and dreary scufflings of savage barons with their
neighbours or with the scarcely less brutal ecclesiastical dignitaries,
who, joining with gusto in the general melee of land-snatching, served
to swell the tumult with their loud-voiced claims for land and lordship.
Three of the Electors of Franconia, within the boundaries of which the
Palatinate was included, were archbishops, and these were foremost in
all dynastic and territorial bickerings.

The growth of German municipalities since the days of their founder,
Henry the Fowler, was not without effect upon the Empire. Distinctions
of class were modified. The freeman became empowered to reserve to
himself the right of going to war along with his lord. Imperial cities
began to spring up; these were governed by a lieutenant of the Emperor,
or by their own chief magistrate. They achieved confederation, thus
guarding themselves against imperial and feudal encroachments. The
'League of the Rhine' and that of the Hanse Towns emerged as the fruit
of this policy. The latter federation consisted of about four-score
cities of Germany which under their charter enjoyed a commercial
monopoly. This example succeeded so well that its promoter, Luebeck, had
the satisfaction o