never again to exist, except in part, and briefly, under Napoleon.

The tangled and attenuated thread of German history from Charlemagne's
time until now can not be unfolded here, but it makes one of the great
chronicles in human history, with its Conrads and Henrys, its
Maximilian, its Barbarossa, its Charles V., its Thirty Years' War, its
great Frederick of Prussia, its struggle with Napoleon, its rise through
Prussia under Bismarck, its war of 1870 with France, its new Empire,
different alike in structure and in reality from the one called Holy and
called Roman, and the wonderful commercial and industrial progress of
our century.

Out of Charlemagne's empire came the empire of Austria. Before his time,
the history of the Austro-Hungarian lands is one of early tribal life,
followed by conquest under the later Roman emperors, and then the
migratory movements of its own people and of other people across its
territory, between the days of Attila and the Merovingians. Its very
name (Oesterreich) indicates its origin as a frontier territory, an
outpost in the east for the great empire Charlemagne had built up. Not
until the sixteenth century did Austria become a power of first rank in
Europe. Hapsburgs had long ruled it, as they still do, and as they have
done for more than six centuries, but the greatest of all their
additions to power and dominion came through Mary of Burgundy, who,
seeking refuge from Louis XI. of France, after her father's death,
married Maximilian of Austria. Out of that marriage came, in two
generations, possession by Austria of the Netherlands, through Mary's
grandson, Charles V., Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain. For years
afterward, the Hapsburgs remained the most illustrious house in Europe.
The empire's later fortunes are a story of grim struggle with
Protestants, Frederick the Great, the Ottoman Turks, Napoleon, the