jealousy; it boycotted the honest manufacturer and merchant who did not belong to the League, and fostered luxury in the Rhenish cities, which did much to sap the sturdy character of the people.  The celebrity which many of these municipalities attained through their magnificence can be gathered from the historic buildings of Worms, Spires, Frankfort, Cologne, Augsburg, and Nuremberg.  The splendour of these edifices and the munificence of their wealthy inhabitants could only be equalled in the maritime regions of Italy.  But in the fifteenth century the power of the League began to decline.  The Russian towns, under the leadership of Novgorod the Great, commenced a crusade against the Hanse Towns’ monopoly in that country.  The general rising in England, which was one of the great warehouses, under Henry VI and Edward IV reflected upon them.  The Netherlands followed England’s example.  In the seventeenth century their existence was confined to three German towns—­Luebeck, Hamburg, and Bremen.  These no longer had the power to exercise their influence over the nation, and soon the League dropped out of existence.

The Thirty Years’ War

The protracted struggle known as the Thirty Years’ War was most prejudicial to the interests of the Rhine valley, which was overrun by the troops of the several nationalities engaged.  One phase of this most disastrous struggle—­the War of the Palatinate—­carried the rapine and slaughter to the banks of the Rhine, where, as has been said, they were long remembered.  During the reign of Ferdinand III (1637-1659) a vigorous and protracted war broke out between France and Germany, the former assisted by her ally Sweden.  Germany, seeing that unless peace were restored her ruin as a great power would be inevitable, entered into negotiations with France, and in 1648 the claims of France and Sweden were settled by the Peace of Westphalia.  This treaty is particularly notable in the present instance because it gave to the former country the footing on the Rhine already mentioned as the beginning of French encroachments.  Germany was forced to give up Alsace, on the left bank of the river.  France, by the seizure of Strassburg, confirmed by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1695, extended her boundaries to the Rhine.  At the beginning of the French Revolution Leopold II of Germany and other German monarchs agreed to support the cause of French royalty, a resolution which was disastrous to the Empire.  In 1795 Prussia, for political reasons, withdrew from the struggle, ceding to France, in the terms of the Treaty of Basel, all her possessions on the left bank of the Rhine.  In 1799 war again broke out; but in 1801 the Treaty of Luneville gave to France the whole of the left bank of the river.  Thus the historic stream became the boundary between France and Germany.  In 1806 the humiliation of the latter country was complete, for in that year a number of German princes joined the Confederation of the Rhine, thus allying themselves with France and repudiating their allegiance to the Empire.  In 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, the whole of the Lower Rhenish district was restored to Prussia, while Bavaria, a separate state, was put in possession of the greater part of the Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine.