The Holy Roman Empire

The rest of the continent of Europe, with the exception of the Turkish Empire, formed what was called the Holy Roman Empire, a rule which had been founded by Charlemagne (A.D. 800), the great Frankish monarch, who had been crowned in Rome by the pope as ruler of the western world. (The name “Holy Roman Empire” was not used by Charlemagne.  We first hear of it under Otto I, the Saxon emperor, who was crowned in 962.)

[Map:  The Empire of Charlemagne]

This Holy Roman Empire included all of what is now Germany (except the eastern third of Prussia), all of what is now Bohemia, Austria (but not Hungary), and all of Italy except the part south of Naples.  There were times when part of France and all of the low countries (now Belgium and Holland) also belonged to the Empire. (The mountaineers of Switzerland won their independence from the Empire in the fourteenth century, and formed a little republic.) See map “Europe in 1540.”

[Map:  Europe in 1540]

In the Holy Roman Empire, the son of the emperor did not necessarily succeed his father as ruler.  There were seven (afterwards nine) “electors” who, at the death of the ruling monarch, met to elect his successor.  Three of these electors were archbishops, one was king of Bohemia, and the others were counts of large counties in Germany like Hanover and Brandenburg.  It frequently happened that the candidate chosen was a member of the family of the dead emperor, and there were three or four families which had many rulers chosen from among their number.  The most famous of these families was that of the Counts of Hapsburg, from whom the present emperor of Austria is descended.

[Illustration:  Louis XIV]

This Holy Roman Empire was not a strong government, as the kingdoms of England and France grew to be.  The kings of Bohemia, Saxony, and Bavaria all were subjects of the emperor, as were many powerful counts.  These men were jealous of the emperor’s power, and he did not dare govern them as strictly as the king of France ruled his nobles.

France in the 18th Century

[Illustration:  John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough]

During the 18th century, there were many wars in Europe caused by the ambition of various kings to make their domains larger and to increase their own incomes.  King Louis XIV of France had built up a very powerful kingdom.  Brave soldiers and skillful generals spread his rule over a great part of what is Belgium and Luxemburg, and annexed to the French kingdom the part of Germany between the Rhine River and the Vosges (Vozh) Mountains.  Finally, the English joined with the troops of the Holy Roman Empire to curb the further growth of the French kingdom, and at the battle of Blenheim (1704), the English Duke of Marlborough, aided by the emperor’s army, put an end to the further expansion of the French.