Kingdom Of Prussia,

(including Hanover, Lauenburg, He e- Ca el, He e Hom- burg, Na au, and Frankfort-on-the- Por. En.s.m 1869. Main.) Saxony, IMG:content-0363.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0364.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0365.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0366.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0367.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0368.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0369.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0370.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0371.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0372.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0373.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0374.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0375.png:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-0376.png:[ocr errors] CASTLE OF RHEINSTEIN, (He e-Darmstadt.). feudal castle of Rheinstein, on the summit of a rugged and almost inacce ible rock, near Bingen. The Rhine's chief affluents, with the exception of the Moselle and the Meuse, are on the E. bank; of these the Neckar and the Main rise in the Suabian Alps; the Lahn, the Ruhr, and the Lippe in the hills of W. Germany. The Weser is formed by the juncture, at Münden, of the Werra and Fulda, which rise in the Rhöngebirge ; its course is N. by W. till the juncture of the Allar, at which point it turns N.E., and falls into the German Ocean abt. 40 m. below Bremen. The Elbe rises on the N. side of the plateau of Bohemia, which, after receiving the Moldau and the Eger, it leaves at Schandau, and enters the great N.W. plain of G. , which it traverses to the German Ocean; its chief affluents from the S. are the Mulda and Saale from the Erzgebirge, and its principal N. tributary is the Havel. The Oder rises on the N. side of the Car path i an range, near its W. termination, and after a general N.N. W. course, and receiving many affluents, falls through the Great Haffe into the Baltic Sea. Besides these rivers, which of themselves constitute a most extensive water-system, there are numerous lakes connected with the rivers; such as the lakes of S. Bavaria, and the many sheets of water lying on the low plain of N. Germany between the Oder and the Elbe. - Clim., dc. The climate of G. is far le variable than the nature of its mountain system, and the range of latitudes in which it lies, would lead us to suppose. The vegetation of G. resembles, in its general character, that of the N. of France, -all the grains and fruits of the temperate zone having a flourishing development. In the S. river-valleys the vine flourishes, and walnuts, chestnuts, and plums grow abundantly; but the severity of the winter often checks the growth of garden-shrubs and flowering-plants. The extreme cold of the winter, although it only lasts, in all its violence, in ordinary winters, for a few days, is rendered often very destructive from the continuance of a le , but still considerable cold, which often lasts uninterruptedly for months. A few degrees below the freezing point is the temperature, which frequently lasts for months together in the winter season. The prevailing winds are the W. and N.W.- Min . and Manuf. The industrial economy characterizing the German nationality will be found in the articles applying to its several constituent States. - Inhab . The great majority of the inhabitants of G. belong to the Teutonic race; exceptions, however, are found in Saxony, which contains 51,895 people of Vendic origin, and in the Pru ian prov. of Posen, which numbers a population of 825,000 of Slavonic extraction. Religion . As a rule, the Protestants are most numerous in the N. German States, and the Roman Catholics in those of the S. In Bavaria, but one-third of the inhabitants belong to the Reformed Church; on the other hand there is not a single Roman Catholic in the little principality of Schaumburg-Lippe, and but 30 members of the same confe ion in the grand-duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.- Education . In point of intel.. lectual culture G. ranks high. School instruction is obligatory on the whole people, and much is done by the government for the promotion both of primary and of secondary education. There are no exact statistics, however, of the educational establishments, or of the expenditure incurred in connection with them. G. has 20 universities, of which 9 are in Pru ia, 3 in Bavaria, 2 in Baden, and 1 each in Würtemberg, He e, Saxony, Saxe-Weimar, Mecklenburg, and Alsace-Lorraine. Sometimes the academies of Münster and Braunsberg are accounted among the German universities. Army . By the constitution of 1871 the Pru ian obligation to serve in the army is extended to the whole empire, and the whole of the land forces of the empire forms a united army, in war and peace, under the orders of the Emperor. The king of Bavaria, however, has reserved to himself the privilege of superintending the general administration of that portion of the German army raised within his dominions. Every German capable of bearing arms has to be in the standing army for 7 years, as a rule, from the finished 20th till the commencing 28th year of his age. Of the 7 years, 3 must be spent in active service, and the remaining 4 in the army of reserves; after which he forms part of the first cla of the landwehr for 5 years, and of the second cla till his 39th year. Collaterally with the army there has existed, since 1875, the land strum , to which all men liable to service belong, from the ages of 17 to 21 and 39 to 45, if they are neither in the line, the reserve, the landwehr, nor the marine. The lands turm is only called to arms in the event of a hostile invasion of the imperial territory being threatened or effected. In time of war the active and reserve army consists of 1,950,000 men and officers. By adding to this force all those who have been trained in military duties the army can be increased to 3,000,000 men. The peace strength of the army was fixed by the army law of 1893 at 479,229 men for the 5 years ending March 31, 1899.- Navy . The formation of the German navy was due to the initiative of Pru ia and dates from 1848. Rapid progre has been made in it of recent years, it now consisting of 4 first cla battleships, 5 of the second, and 4 of the third-cla 12 ships for port defence, 9 first-cla , 11 second-cla and 23 third-cla cruisers, and 23 other effective fighting ships, with 128 first-cla torpedo boats and 4 second-cla . Others of high power are being con. structed. Money . Uniformity of coinage was established in 1872, the unit of account being the mark = 28.3 cents, divided into 100 pfennige. The Thaler (about 75 cents) is the only old silver coin now remaining in circulation as legal tender.- Weights and Measures. The French metrical system was made compulsory from Jan. 1, 1872.- Com . (See ZOLLVEREIN.) ( Hist . ) For a long time known under the name of German i a, this vast country was, after the invasion of the barbarians and the destruction of the Roman empire, divided between a number of independent races, the Alemanni, Franks, Saxons, Slaves, Avari, and others. Charlemagne (q. v.) conquered these various tribes, and incorporated them in his vast empire; but on his death, in 814, all these diverse elements, forcibly brought together, soon separated, and the treaty of Verdun, signed in 843 by the sons of Louis-le-Débonnaire, gave birth to the kingdom of Germany. Separated from France and Italy after the dethronement of Charles the Fat, in 887, Germany was governed by princes of the Car loving i an dynasty. On the extinction of this family, the monarchy became elective, and the crown was conferred, in 911, on Conrad I., duke of Franc on i a. Henry the Fowler succeeded in 918, and was the head of the house of Saxony, which gave five sovereigns to Ger IMG:content-0377.png:[graphic] many, and renewed, in the person of Otho the Great, the empire of Charlemagne. Dating from this reign, the imperial crown, which had alternately been worn by the kings of France, Germany, and Italy, belonged exclusively to Germany, which now took the name of The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The Saxon dynasty added to the empire Lot haring i a, Bohemia, and Italy; and to this family succeeded that of Franc on i a, which reigned from 1024 to 1137, and added the kingdom of Arles to the po e ions of the empire, and especially signalized itself by its quarrels with the Pope. The house of Suabia next succeeded, and, of this line, Conrad III. and Frederick Barb a ro a, from 1138 to 1190, raised the imperial power to its utmost height. After them, their succe ors, a ailed by their powerful va als and the popes, and frequently deposed, fell into the lowest depths of weakne . It was at this period that the internecine struggles of the Guelphs and Ghi be lines occurred. On Conrad IV.'s death commenced the long interregnum from 1254 to 1273, which ended in delivering Germany from anarchy. Rodolph of IMG:content-0378.png:[graphic] Fig . 1150.- RODOLPH, COUNT OF HAPSBURG. Hapsburg, from 1273 to 1291, began the establishment of the authority of the imperial crown; but under his succe ors, the influence of the grand feudatories and electors of the empire sensibly increased. Their rights were publicly sanctioned by the famous Golden Bull , or charter, granted by Charles IV. in 1356. In 1438 Albert of Hapsburg was elected emperor, and became the chief of the present house of Austria Charles V., the 4th sovereign of this dynasty, was elected in 1815, and gloriously resuscitated the granden of the empire. Ferdinand, his brother, reigned after him with wisdom; and, until the reign of Ferdinand II., no change of importance occurred. Under him the Thirty Years' War began, which, lasting from 1618 to 1648, resulted in the humiliation of Germany, the supremacy of France, and the confirmation of the Luther an religion. The reigns of Leopold I., Joseph I., and Charles VI. were occupied with long wars with Louis XIV. and XV. of France; and the death of Charles, in 1740, gave rise to the War of the Austrian Succe ion, which se cured the throne to the husband of Maria The res a, Charles's daughter, and thus placed on the throne a member of the House of Lorraine, in the person of Francis I. Finally, in 1804, the empire of Germany ceased to exist, on the abdication of Francis II., who only preserved his hereditary estates, a uming the title of the emperor of Austria. Hist . of the Confederation. The first Car loving i an sovereigns of G. were hereditary monarchs; but, so early as 887, the states, or great va als of the crown, deposed their emperor, Charles le Gros, and elected another sovereign in his stead. And from that remote period the emperors of G. continued to be elected, down to the beginning of the present century. Several of the great va als of the empire had thus early attained to all but unlimited power; and it consisted of a vast aggregation of states of every different grade, from large principalities down to free cities and the estates of counts. The federal tie by which those different states were held together was exceedingly feeble. Their interests and pretensions were often conflicting and contradictory, and they were frequently at war with each other and with the emperor. There was, in consequence, a great want of security; and the need to repre the numberle disorders incident to such a state of things led, at an early period, to the formation of leagues among the smaller states, and the institution of secret tribunals. The privilege of voting in the election of emperors was restricted to a few of the most powerful va als, being confined by the Golden Bull i ued by Charles IV., in 1356, to the archbishops of Mentz, Treves, and Cologne, the duke of Saxony, the count palatine of the Rhine, the margrave of Brandenburg, and the king of Bohemia. The sovereigns of Bavaria, Hanover, and He e did not acquire a right to vote till a much later period. Most of the great offices in the empire were hereditary, and the public affairs were transacted in diets or a emblies of the great feudatories and of the representatives of the free cities. But as the diet had no independent or peculiar force to carry its decisions into effect, they were very frequently disregarded. At length, in the reign of Maximilian I., an attempt was made to introduce a more regular system of administration, and a better policy into the empire. As the political division of G. at this period was independent of the territorial sub-divisions which the changes in families produced, it lasted as long as the empire itself preserved its unity as a political body; and even after the a umption of independence by the king of Pru ia, that part of the kingdom of Pru ia which previously formed a part of the empire was still included, nominally at least, in the order to which it belonged. By their refusal to join in this arrangement of internal policy, and to become amenable to the decrees of the Aulic Chamber ( Reichs - Kam merge richt ), the Swi cantons finally severed the last tie which united them to the empire. The influence of the kings of Poland caused a similar separation between the empire and the lands belonging to the Teutonic order, on the right bank of the Vistula. At the period of the outbreak of the French revolution, in 1789, G. was divided in 10 circles, each subdivided into many States and territories, viz. -1. The Circle of Austria , belonging entirely to the house of Austria; 2. The Circle of Burgundy , also belonging to Austria; 3. The Circle of Westphalia , divided among clerical and lay princes; 4. The Circle of the Palatinate , divided between 1 lay and 3 clerical princes; 5. The Circle of the Upper Rhine , divided among a number of territorial princes and nobles, the most powerful of whom was the landgrave of He e-Ca el; 6. The Circle of Suabia , numbering as the most powerful of its many petty sovereigns, the duke of Würtemberg, and the margrave of Baden; 7. The Circle of Bavaria , in which the elector of Bavaria and the bishop of Salzburg took the lead; 8. The Circle of Franc on i a , comprising many principalities, counties, lordships, and free cities; 9. The Circle of Lower Saxony, including the duchies of Magdeburg, the two Meck len burgs, and others, and among the free cities, those of Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen; 10. The Circle of Upper Saxony , of which Pru ia formed the most powerful constituent; the Slavonic countries, which were not included in any circle, were the kingdom of Bohemia, the margraviate of Moravia, the duchy of Silesia, and the margraviates of Upper and Lower Lusatia. Besides these divisions there were numerous counties, lordships, abbeys, and free imperial towns, not belonging to any circle, but held directly of the emperor. Every circle had its diet, in which the clerical and secular princes, the prelates, the counts and barons, and the free imperial cities, formed 5 benches or colleges. Affairs of general importance to the empire at large were treated by the imperial diet, which the emperor had the power of summoning wherever he pleased; but which, since 1663, was constantly a embled at Ratisbon. In 1789, the members of the diet were as follows:-1. The college of electors: Mentz, Treves, Cologne, the Palatinate, Brandenburg, Saxony, Bavaria (since 1623), and Brunswick-Lüneburg (since 1692). 2. The college of the clerical and secular princes, bishops, margraves, counts, .; the numbers of the clerical members being 36, and of the secular lords, 63. 3. The colleges of the free imperial cities, then 54 in number. In 1791 began the memorable contest with revolutionary France, which ended in the overturn of the old Germanic constitution. The treaty of CampoFormio, the first that history records in which the Rhine was acknowledged as the frontier of France, decreed an indemnification to those princes who lost by the ce ion, and this indemnification could only be obtained by the spoliation of some others whose rights were equally indefensible, in the heart of the empire itself. On Jan. 25, 1803, a decision was come to by the plenipotentiaries a embled for the arrangement of this matter, the import of which was as follows: - The Holy Roman Empire, as that of G. was styled, remained as it was divided into circles, but which, with the total lo of the Circle of Burgundy, and of the lands on the left bank of the Rhine, were reduced to 9, whose boundaries it was proposed to regulate anew. This regulation was, however, prevented by the wars which so quickly succeeded each other. The right to sit and vote in the diet remained, as formerly, attached to territories held directly as fiefs of the empire; and the place of the convo cation of the diet remained at Ratisbon. The colleges remained also 3 in number; the first being the college of electors, who were 10 in number; one clerical, - the elector arch-chancellor; and 9 secular, Bohemia, Bavaria; Saxony, Brandenburg, Brunswick-Lüneburg, Salzburg, Würtemberg, Baden, and He e-Ca el. The electorate of Mentz had merged into that of the arch chancellor, and the Palatinate into the electorate of Bavaria; Treves and Cologne had disappeared, and 4 new electorates had been created. The second college - of princes counted 131 votes. The college of towns was composed of 6 with votes; Hamburg. Lübeck, Bremen, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. The other territories, enumerated above as not being included within the circles, remained as they were, nor did any change take place in the extent or position of the Slavonic countries. Napoleon I., who since 1799 had directed the foreign policy of the French nation, not satisfied with this reduction of the power of the empire, now conceived the idea of effecting its entire di olution. The treaty of Presburg, in 1805, which followed the battle of Austerlitz, gave him the means of carrying this project into effect, by forming a confederation of German princes, called the Confederation of the Rhine, who, uniting into a corporate body, in 1807 placed themselves under the protectorate of the HOUSE OF HOHENZOLLERN. French emperor. The wars which followed, with Pru ia in 1807, and with Austria in 1809, gave Napoleon the 1871. William I. 1888. Frederick III. 1888. William II, co.