Germany at large still preserved the mediaeval name and forms of the Holy
Roman Empire. The members of this so-called Empire were, however, a
multitude of independent States; and the chief of these States, Austria,
combined with its German provinces a large territory which did not even in
name form part of the Germanic body. The motley of the Empire was made up
by governments of every degree of strength and weakness. Austria and
Prussia possessed both political traditions and resources raising them to
the rank of great European Powers; but the sovereignties of the second
order, such as Saxony and Bavaria, had neither the security of strength nor
the free energy often seen in small political communities; whilst in the
remaining petty States of Germany, some hundreds in number, all public life
had long passed out of mind in a drowsy routine of official benevolence or
oppression. In theory there still existed a united Germanic body; in
reality Germany was composed of two great monarchies in embittered rivalry
with one another, and of a multitude of independent principalities and
cities whose membership in the Empire involved little beyond a liability to
be dragged into the quarrels of their more powerful neighbours. A German
national feeling did not exist, because no combination existed uniting the
interests of all Germany. The names and forms of political union had come
down from a remote past, and formed a grotesque anachronism amid the
realities of the eighteenth century. The head of the Germanic body held
office not by hereditary right, but as the elected successor of Charlemagne
and the Roman Caesars. Since the fifteenth century the imperial dignity had
rested with the Austrian House of Hapsburg; but, with the exception of
Charles V., no sovereign of that House had commanded forces adequate to the
creation of a united German state, and the opportunity which then offered
itself was allowed to pass away. The Reformation severed Northern Germany
from the Catholic monarchy of the south. The Thirty Years' War, terminating
in the middle of the seventeenth century, secured the existence of
Protestantism on the Continent of Europe, but it secured it at the cost of