CHAP. VIII. Schemes of Charles the Bold. two greater powers on either side of them. The guaranteed neutrality of Belgium and the guaranteed neutrality of Switzerland are alike survivals or revivals -it is hard to say which they should be called—of the instinctive feeling which, in the ninth century, called the Lotharingian kingdom into being. The modern form of this thousand-year-old idea was made possible through the growth of the power of the Burgundian Dukes of the house of Valois. The real historical work of those dukes was thus done in those parts of their dominions from which they did not take their name, but which took their name from them. The history of their other dominions may be told in a few words; indeed a great part of it has been told already. The schemes of Charles the Bold for uniting his scattered dominions by the conquest of the duchy of Lorraine, for extending the power thus formed to the seaboard of the royal Burgundy, for forming in short a middle kingdom stretching from the Ocean to the Mediterranean, acting as a barrier alike between France and Germany and between France and Italy, remained mere schemes. They are important only as showing how deeply the idea or the memory of a middle state was still fixed in men's minds. The conquests of Charles in Lorraine, his purchases in Elsass, were momentary possessions which hardly touch geography. But the fall of Charles, by causing the break-up of the southern dominion of his house, helped to give greater importance to its northern dominion. While the Netherlands grew together, the Burgundies split asunder. After the fall of Charles the fate of the two Burgundies was much the same as the fate of Flanders and Artois. Both were for a while ORIGIN OF THE AUSTRIAN POWER. 305 VIII. seized by France; but the county, like Artois, was after- CHAP. wards recovered for a season. The duchy of Burgundy was lost for ever; the county, along with the outlying county of Charolois, remained to those who by female succession represented the Burgundian Dukes, that is to Charles the Fifth and his Spanish son. The annexation of the Burgundian county, and with it of the city of Besançon, by Lewis the Fourteenth has been recorded in an earlier section. § 9. The Power of Austria. We now come to one among these German states which have parted off from the kingdom of Germany whose course has been widely different from the rest, and whose modern European importance stands on a widely different level. As the Lotharingian and Frisian lands parted off on the north-west of the kingdom, as a large part of the Swabian lands parted off to the south-west of the kingdom, so the Eastern Mark, the mark of Austria, parted off no less, but with widely different consequences. The name of Origin of Austria, Oesterreich-Ostrich as our forefathers wrote Oesterit-is, naturally enough, a common name for the Austria. the name reich, lands eastern part of any kingdom. The Frankish kingdom Other of the Merwings had its Austria; the Italian kingdom of the Lombards had its Austria also. In both of these cases Austria, the positive name of the eastern land, is balanced by Neustria, that is Not-Austria, the negative name of the western land. In short the division comes so naturally that we are half inclined to wonder that the name was never given in our own island either to Essex or to East-Anglia. But, while the other Austrias have passed away, the Oesterreich, the Austria, the VOL. I. X VIII. Special position of the Austrian power. CHAP. Eastern mark, of the German kingdom, its defence against the Magyar invader, has lived on to our own times. It has not only lived on, but it has become one of the chief European powers. Its small beginnings, as compared with the other bearers of the name, are shown by the fact that it never had a Neustria to balance it; but out of these small beginnings it has grown to a height which has caused all other bearers of the name to be forgotten. And it has grown by a process to which it would be hard to find a parallel. The Austrian duchy supplied Germany with so many Kings, and Rome with so many Emperors, that something of Imperial character came to cleave to the duchy itself. Its Dukes, in resigning, first, the crown of Germany, and then all connexion with Germany, have carried with them into their new position the titles and bearings of the German Cæsars. The power which began as a mark against the Magyar came to have a common sovereign with Union with the Magyar kingdom; and the Austrian duchy and Magyar kingdom, each drawing with it a crowd of smaller states of endless nationalities, have figured together in the face of modern Europe as the Austrian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It is not easy, in drawing a map, to find a place for the 'Empire' of Austria. The Archduchy is there, and its 'Empire' sovereign has not dropped his archiducal title. A crowd of kingdoms, duchies, counties, and lordships, all acknowledging the sovereignty of the same prince, are there also. But it is not easy to find the geographical place of an Empire' of Austria, as distinct from the Archduchy. It is not easy to understand on what principle an Empire' of Austria can be understood as taking in all the states which happen to own the Hungarian King Hungary. The so called of Austria. 6 SPECIAL CHARACTER OF THE AUSTRIAN POWER. 6 307 CHAP. VIII. Union of states separate under the Austrian House. and Austrian Archduke as their sovereign. Nor is it made any easier, when, as would seem to be the present official use of the name, the Empire of Austria' is taken to mean all the kingdoms, duchies, &c., held by the Archduke of Austria in some other character than that of King of Hungary. The matter is made more difficult still when we remember that the title of 'Hereditary Emperor of Austria' was first taken while its bearer was still King of Germany and Roman Emperor-elect. But, putting questions like these aside, the gradual union of a great number of states, German and non-German, under the common rule of the archiducal house of Austria, by whatever name we call the power so formed, is a great fact both of history and of geography. A number of states, originally independent of one another, differing in origin and language and everything that makes states differ from one another, some of them members of the former Empire, some not, have, as a matter of fact, come together to form a power which fills a large space in modern history and on the modern map. But it is a power which is altogether lacking in national unity. It is a power which is not coex- Lack of tensive with any nation, but which takes in parts of many unity. nations. It cannot even be said that there is a dominant nation surrounded by subject nations. The The Magyar German, nation in its unity, and a fragment of the German and other nation, stand side by side on equal terms, while Italians, Roumans, and Slaves of almost every branch of the Slavonic race, are grouped around those two. There is no federal tie; it is a stretch of language to apply No strictly the federal name to the present relation between the 1 For the lands thus negatively, and only negatively, defined, I once suggested, after the analogy of Neustria, the name of Nungary. national Magyar, races. federal tie. CHAP. Anomalous nature The two chief powers of Hungary and Austria. Nor can any strictly federal tie be said to unite Croatia, Slavonia, and Transsilvania, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Trent, and Galicia, either with one another or with the Austrian archduchy. And yet these other members of the general body are not mere subject provinces, like the dominions of Old Rome. The same prince is sovereign of a crowd of separate states, two of which stand out prominently as centres among the rest. There is neither national unity, nor federation, nor mere subjection of one land or nation to another. All this has come by the gradual union by various means of many crowns upon the same brow. The result is an anomalous power which has nothing else exactly like it, past or present. Powers of the same kind have existed before. dominion of the Angevins in Brittany and Gaul, the dominion of the Burgundian Dukes which we have just been describing, have much in common with the power of the House of Austria. But these powers lasted only for two or three reigns. The great anomaly of the Austrian dominion is that it has been enabled to maintain itself, in one shape or another, for some centuries. But the very anomaly makes the growth of such a power a more curious study. The The beginnings of the Austrian state are to be found in the small Mark on the Danube, lying between Bohemia, Moravia, and the Duchy of Kärnthen or Carinthia. It appears in its first form as an appendage to Bavaria.1 This mark Frederick Barbarossa raised into a duchy, under its first duke Henry the Second, and it was enlarged to the westward at the expense of 1 See Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vii. 75. |