Identifier: modernhistoryeur00west (find matches)
Title: Modern history; Europe
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: West, Willis Mason, 1857- (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston, Allyn and Bacon
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ers and procedure of the college of Electors and defined the members as the three Archbishops of Mainz,Cologne, and Trier, the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, 1 The Great Council of German lords was known as a Diet. To thisgathering, representatives of the free cities were admitted in the fourteenthcentury (as had been the case earlier in the French Estates General, the Eng-lish Parliament, and the Spanish Cortes). The Diet came to consist of threehouses, — the Chamber of Electors, the Chamber of Princes (the greaternobles of the second rank), and the Chamber of City Representatives. TheDiet could do nothing but pass resolutions, which nobody obeyed unless hechose to do so. The knights were not admitted, either in person or by repre-sentatives. 2 So called from its gold seal, or bulla. (This word explains the termbull, applied to papal documents.) For a brief special report on theGolden Bull, see Henderson, Short History of Germany, 159-162, or Bryce,Holy Roman Empire, 225-237.
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§ 160) GERMANY. 173 the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the Count Palatine of theRhine. 160. The Hapsburg Empire.—Finally, in 1438, after along line of Bohemian emperors, the imperial title came backto the Hapsburgs by the election of Albert, Duke of Austria.From this time to its disappearance in 1806, the title was tobelong to the house of Austria, practically as an hereditarypossession. The form of an election was always gone through,but the choice invariably fell upon the Hapsburg heir.1 The Empire after 1438 is sometimes called the Austrian Empire(cf. § 55). The phrase is not strictly correct, but it is significant. Theemperor was little more than the honorary president of a loose confeder-acy made up of a multitude of petty sovereignties; and Austria didfurnish such physical support as the imperial dignity possessed. Eromthis time until the French Revolution, with rare exceptions (like Maxi-milian), the emperors spent their entire reigns within their Austriandomains, busying the

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