A Short History Of Germany

A SHORT HISTORY OF GERMANY A SHORT HISTORY OF GERMANY BY ERNEST F. HENDERSON VOLUME I 9 A. B. TO 1648 A. D. NEW EDITION WITH ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1920 A. U rights reserved DEDICATED BY GHRACIOUS PERMISSION TO PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA O1ST THE OCCASION OP HIS VISIT TO AMERICA PREFACE GERMANY stands in the centre of Europe, and on her soil all the great international struggles have been f ought, the Thirty Years War, the early campaigns of the Span ish Succession War, the Seven Years War, the gigantic wars against Napoleon. It is the custom for modern edu cators to recommend the study of the history of France as a guiding thread through the intricacies of general European history but is this choice justifiable The two great, omnipresent factors of the whole mediaeval period are the Papacy and the Empire the Empire was German from the ninth to the nineteenth century, from, the days of Charlemagne until the days of Francis II., and the Empire interfered in the affairs of the Papacy and of Italy far more than did France. When we come to the period of the Reformation, surely Luther and his kind were more prominent than the French reformers, and the Emperor Charles V. had more to do with the affairs of Europe than any of the French kings. In the Thirty Years War, larger interests were at stake than in the Huguenot struggles, and the German Peace of Westphalia necessitated a recasting of the whole map of Europe. Louis XIV., it is true, gave the tone to the high society of his age, and French was almost universally spoken and written at the German courts but this influ ence was neither very deep nor very beneficial. Nor can it be denied that the French Revolution producedgreat viii PREFACE results for Europe. Yet its effects, as far as Germany was concerned, have been overrated the liberation of the serfs would probably have been accomplished without it, while constitutional government, popular representation, and trial by jury had still to wait for half a century. If we look for striking personalities and events, the reigns of Frederick the Great and of William I. were of supreme importance to Europe, and, as was not the case with Louis XIV, and Napoleon, their acquisitions were of a permanent character. All in all, it has seemed to me that I could engage in no more thankful occupation than in writing the history of Germany the more so as German treatments of the subject presuppose more knowledge than is usually to be found in the American reader, and as no other American writer has ever attempted the task. The work of Lewis, founded on an antiquated German text-book, does not fulfil the most modest demands. My warm thanks are due to Professor Sumner, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for valuable sug gestions to my brother, Mr. EL G. Henderson, for stylistic revision and to my wife for the detection of errors in the proof. The tables in Lindners Deutsche Creschichte have made it easier for me to draw up my own chronological view while Putzgers valuable school atlas has been of assistance in the matter of maps. For a complete bib liography of German history, the reader is referred to Dahlmann-Waitz, Quellenkunde and to the Jahreslericht der Gf-eschichtswissenschaft. E. F. H. WASHINGTON, D. G., February 13, 1902. PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION IT is a source of gratification that the demand for my book has steadily increased and that, afterseven separate printings, the publishers should feel warranted in bringing out a new edition with much additional matter. Behind the gratification is another feeling, one of wonder at being able in the new edition to describe a whole new era from its inception to its end. I had closed my narrative with the assumption of the imperial crown in the palace of Versailles on January 18, 1871 and although my book was completed thirty years later, I did not at that time feel that enough had transpired to warrant a single extra chapter...