The obligation to summon a yearly Diet was not formally repealed, but, while legislation and supreme control of finance still remained the special functions of the assembled Estates, the executive business with which they were so incompetent to deal devolved upon a Council of Regency (Reichsregiment). This was to consist of twenty-one members. At its head was the King or a deputy appointed by the King. The further representation of the King’s interests was provided through an Austrian and a Netherlandish member of the Council. But the other eighteen Councillors were entirely outside the King’s control. Each of the six Electors had an individual voice in the Council. One of them was always to be present in person, being replaced by a colleague after three months. Each of the five absent Electors personally nominated a member of the Regency. The representation of the other Estates was divided into two categories. Certain eminent imperial vassals were singled out and granted a personal right of occasional appearance. Thus twelve princes, six spiritual and six lay, were specified as having the privilege of sitting in the Council, by two at a time. Similarly there were one representative of the prelates (abbots and other lesser dignitaries), one of the Counts and two of the Free and Imperial Towns, arranged in groups for the purpose. Besides the six Councillors chosen from this fh’st category, there were six others representing the Estates of six great circumscriptions or Circles into which Germany, excluding the electoral lands, was now for this purpose divided. No names were given to these districts, but roughly they corresponded to the later Circles of Franconia, Bavaria, Swabia, the Upper Rhine, Lower Saxony and Westphalia. The whole constitution was so arranged that the preponderance of power was altogether with the princes, and especially with the Electors. The inferior Estates were as scantily represented as was the King himself.
The establishment of the Council of Regency marks the highest moment of Berthold’s triumph. Germany had obtained her centralised institutions, her Kammergericht, her annual Diets, her national army, and her imperial taxation. She now also had an executive government as directly dependent upon the Estates as a modern English Cabinet or as the royal Councils, nominated in the English Parliament, in the days before the Wars of the Roses had destroyed Lancastrian constitutionalism. The events of the last five years had demonstrated that, without such executive authority, the reforms were unworkable. But did the circumstances and temper of the times allow such a system as this any reasonable prospects of success? Lancastrian constitutionalism had failed miserably and had but paved the way to Tudor monarchy. What chance was there of Berthold’s system prevailing under far worse conditions in Germany?
Maximilian was not likely to acquiesce in being deprived of all that made monarchy a reality. The knights with their passion for lawless freedom, the cities with their narrow outlook and strong local prejudices, might be likewise expected to have no good will towards a system in which the former had no part and the latter but a very small one. But a still greater difficulty lay in the princes, whose sectional ambitions and want of settled national policy wholly unfitted them for carrying out so delicate and difficult a task. Could a group of turbulent nobles, trained in long traditions of private warfare and personal self-seeking, provide Germany with that sound government which lands with better political prospects could only obtain from the strong hand of an individual monarch? The answer to these questions was not long in coming. In a few years the Council of Regency broke down utterly, bearing with it in its fall the strongest pillars of the new German constitution.
A final struggle between Maximilian and the Estates arose as to the meeting-place of the Council of Regency. But Max had gone too far on the way of concession to be able to succeed in enforcing his wish that the Council should follow the Court. The Estates resolved that it should meet in the first instance at Nürnberg. Full of anger and scorn the King left Augsburg, seeking the consolations of the chase in Tyrol. Berthold betook himself to Nürnberg, in order to take his turn as resident Elector on the Council of Regency. The choice of Frederick, Elector of Saxony, as the imperial deputy, made Berthold’s task as easy as was possible. But Frederick was very commonly absent from the Council. He was too great a prince to be able to devote his whole time to the reform of the Empire. Upon Berthold alone fell the burden of the new system. Yet he was broken in health and spirits, and even at best only one prince among many. It was due to him that the Council had so much as a start. No political genius could have given it a long life.
Difficulties arose almost from the beginning. Maximilian grew indignant when he discovered that there was no probability of an army being levied to fight the French, and still more wrathful when the Council entered into negotiations on its own account with Louis XII, with whom it concluded a truce without any reference whatever to Italy. This seemed, and perhaps was, treason. But Maximilian was at the same time treating with Louis, and, though for a long time he refused to ratify the compact between the French King and the Estates, he made a truce on his own behalf and finally accepted also that arranged by the Council. But a new difference of opinion at once arose as to the proclamation of the papal Jubilee of 1500 in Germany. King and Council opened separate negotiations with Cardinal Perraudi the papal Legate, and Max much resented the agreement made between Legate and Council, that the profits derived from the Jubilee in Germany should be devoted exclusively to the Turkish War. He avenged himself by allowing the Pope to proclaim the Jubilee without reservation and by quarrelling with the Legate. Meanwhile the Council was failing in the impossible task of governing Germany. The crisis came to a head in 1501 at the Diet of Nürnberg, from which Maximilian was absent. The King now broke openly with the Council, and did his best to make its position impossible. Not only did he refuse to attend its sittings, but he neglected to appoint a deputy to preside in his absence. He would not even nominate the Austrian representative. He denounced Berthold as a traitor and schemer, and strove to raise an army, after the ancient fashion, by calling upon the individual princes to supply their contingents.
In the struggle that ensued both King and reformers gave up any attempt to observe the new system. Berthold fell back upon the venerable expedient of a Union of Electors (Kurfurstenverein). He has been reproached with lack of policy in thus abandoning the infant constitution, but his action was probably the result of inevitable necessity. As he had to fight the King, he naturally chose the most practical weapon that lay to hand.
After the fashion of the Luxemburg period, an Electoral Diet was now held at Frankfort. The Elector Palatine Philip (1476-1508), nephew and successor of Frederick the Victorious, who had hitherto been at feud with the Elector of Mainz, now made terms with him and attended the meeting. Alarmed at the unity of the Electors, Maximilian ordered them to adjourn to Speyer, where he would meet them in person. But the Electors quitted Frankfort before the King’s messenger could arrive. Before separating, however, they renewed the ancient Union of the Electors, and pledged each other to act as one man in upholding the reforms of 1495 and 1500. It was afterwards believed that the Electors talked of deposing Maximilian, or at least of obtaining still more drastic reforms. This however does not seem to have been the case. It was futile to seek further changes, when the innovations already approved of could not be carried out in practice.
The Electors resolved that, if the King did not summon a Diet, they would themselves meet in November at Gelnhausen, and invite the other Estates to join them. Before this parliamentary convention of the German Estates, they resolved to lay a programme of policy that far surpassed in comprehensiveness any previous plan of reformation. This scheme provided not merely for the maintenance of the Landfriede, the restoration of the Kammergericht, and the strengthening of the Reichs-regiment. It distinguished itself from its predecessors by going beyond the interests of the princes and taking some thought of the welfare of the ordinary poor man, whom it sought to protect from the personal services, taxes, ecclesiastical Courts and other grievances weighing heavily upon him. But a body which could not carry through a simple political programme showed temerity in dealing with schemes of social reformation. Meanwhile the relations between King and princes became more and more embittered. “The King,” said a Venetian ambassador, “speaks ill of the princes, and the princes speak ill of the King.”
Maximilian had grown wiser with experience. He at last saw that to maintain a stiff attitude of resistance and to dwell upon his prerogative only served to unite his vassals against him. About this time he gradually drifted into a more temporising, but also a more dangerous,