To trace the fortunes, divisions, and junctions of the lesser Rhine principalities would be a work requiring a world of patience on the part of the reader as well as an amount of space which would speedily surpass the limits even of such an ample volume as the present.  The constant changes of boundary of these tiny lordships, the hazy character of the powers possessed by their rulers, the multiplicity of free townships yielding obedience to none but their own civic rulers, the brief but none the less tyrannous rule of scores of robber barons who exercised a regime of blood and iron within a radius of five miles of their castellated eyries, render the tracing of the history of the Rhine during the Middle Ages a task of almost unequalled complexity, robbed of all the romance of history by reason of the necessity for constant attention to the details of dynastic and territorial changes and the petty squabblings and dreary scufflings of savage barons with their neighbours or with the scarcely less brutal ecclesiastical dignitaries, who, joining with gusto in the general melee of land-snatching, served to swell the tumult with their loud-voiced claims for land and lordship.  Three of the Electors of Franconia, within the boundaries of which the Palatinate was included, were archbishops, and these were foremost in all dynastic and territorial bickerings.

The growth of German municipalities since the days of their founder, Henry the Fowler, was not without effect upon the Empire.  Distinctions of class were modified.  The freeman became empowered to reserve to himself the right of going to war along with his lord.  Imperial cities began to spring up; these were governed by a lieutenant of the Emperor, or by their own chief magistrate.  They achieved confederation, thus guarding themselves against imperial and feudal encroachments.  The ‘League of the Rhine’ and that of the Hanse Towns emerged as the fruit of this policy.  The latter federation consisted of about four-score cities of Germany which under their charter enjoyed a commercial monopoly.  This example succeeded so well that its promoter, Luebeck, had the satisfaction of seeing all cities between the Rhine and the Vistula thus connected.  The clergy, jealous of this municipal power, besought the Emperor to repress the magistrates who had been called into being by the people, and who were closely allied to this commercial confederation.  But the monarch advised the prelates to return to their churches lest their opulent friends became their enemies.

The Rhine Hanse Towns

The influence of the Hanseatic League of the Rhine district in the fourteenth century extended over the whole commercial radius of Germany, Prussia, Russia, the Netherlands, and Britain.  It opened up new fields of commerce, manufacture, and industry.  It paved the way for culture, it subdued the piracy which had existed in the Baltic, and it promoted a universal peace.  On the other hand, it created