The beginnings of a more national policy at last came from some of the princes of the second rank. Counts, knights, towns, and peasants were too poor, divided, and limited in their views, to aim at common action. But among the princes of secondary importance were men too far-seeing and politic to adopt a merely isolated attitude, while their consciousness of the limitation of their resources left them without so much as the wish of aspiring to follow from afar the example of Charles the Bold or Albert IV of Munich. To the abler German lords of this type the feudal ideal of absolute domination over their own fiefs was less satisfying in itself and moreover less probable of realisation. Theirterritories were so small, and so scattered, their resources were so meagre and so precarious, that feudal independence meant to them but a limited, localised, and stunted career, and afforded them few guarantees of protection against the aggressions of their stronger neighbours. In such men there was no strong bias of self-interest to prevent their giving rein to the wholesome sentiment of love of fatherland which still survived in German breasts. But personal pride, traditional feuds with neighbouring houses, the habit of suspicion, and a general low level of political sagacity and individual capacity made it difficult for this class as a whole to initiate any comprehensive movement. All through the weary years of Frederick’s reign projects of reform had been constantly shattered by the violence and jealousy of the greater princes and by the indifference and want of unanimity of the petty ones. A leader of ability and insight had long been wanted to dominate their sluggish natures and quicken their slow minds with worthier ideals. Such a leader was at last found in Count Berthold of Henneberg, who in 1484 became Elector of Mainz at the age of 42. He soon made himself famous for the vigour, justice, and sternness, with which he ruled his dominions, for his eloquence in council, and for the large and patriotic views which he held on all broad questions of national policy. With him the movement for effective imperial reform really begins.
Berthold of Mainz had little of the churchman about him, and his life was in nowise that of the saint; but he stands out among all the princes of his time as the one statesman who strove with great ability and consummate pertinacity to realise the ideal of a free, national and united German State. His courage, his resourcefulness, his pertinacity, and his enthusiasm carried for a time everything before them. But soon grave practical difficulties wrecked his schemes and blasted his hopes. It is even possible to imagine that his policy was vicious in principle. It was a visionary and an impossible task to make petty feudalists champions of order, law, and progress. It involved moreover an antagonism to the monarchy, which after all was the only possible centre of any effective national sentiment in that age. But whatever may be thought of Berthold’s practical insight, the whole history of Frederick III and of his successors shows clearly that the German monarchy, far from being as in England or France the true mainspring of a united national life, persistently and by deliberate policy operated as the strongest particularistic influence. After all, Germany was a nation, and Berthold strove by the only way open to him to make Germany what England and France were already becoming. It was not his fault that the method forced upon him was from the beginning an almost hopeless one.
To students of English medieval history Berthold’s position seems perfectly clear. His ambition was to provide Germany with an efficient central government; but also to secure that the exercise of this authority should be in the hands of a committee of magnates, and not under the control of the German monarch. This design has been described as an attempt at federalism; but the word suggests a more conscious partition of power between central and local authority, and a more organised and representative control of the supreme power than ever Berthold or his associates dreamed to be necessary. A more complete analogy with Berthold’s ideals is to be found in the policy of the great prelates and earls of England against the more neglectful or self-seeking kings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Clares and the Montforts, the Bohuns, Bigods, and Lancasters, the Cantilupes, the Winchelseas, and the Arundels of medieval England had no trace of properly feudal ambition. They accepted the centralised institutions of the monarchy as ultimate facts, and aspired only to keep the centralised power under their own control. The heroes of the Provisions of Oxford, the Lords Ordainers, and the Lords Appellant, while upholding the representative legislative and taxative body by frequent sessions of Parliament, sought to put the executive power which properly belonged to the Crown into the hands of a commission roughly representative of the great houses. It was a nobler ambition and a finer career for a Clare or a Bohun or a Fitzalan to take his share in controlling the central power than to strive to put a ring fence round his estates and govern them as he had long administered his Welsh Marcher lordships. Even the lord of a great Palatinate might prefer to have his share in ruling England as a whole, rather than limit his ambition to playing the part of a petty king on his own estates. An Anthony Bek was a greater man as minister of Edward I than as the mere sovereign of the lands of St Cuthbert.
Berthold and his associates were in the same position as the English baronial leaders. As Archbishop of Mainz Berthold might either be a petty prince holding sway over scattered regions of the Rhineland and of Franconia, or a great political ecclesiastic like Arundel or Wykeham or George of Amboise. The wider career appealed alike to his patriotism, his interests, and his ambition. As feudal sovereigns the Rhenish Electors stood but in the second rank of German rulers. As prelates, as councillors of their peers, as directors of the Diets, and as effective and not merely nominal Chancellors of their suzerain’s domains, they might well emulate the exploits of a Hanno or a Rainald of Dassel. Under the guidance of an aristocracy that was neither feudal nor particularist, and in which the ecclesiastical element was so strong that the dangers of hereditary influence were reduced to a minimum, a German State might have arisen as united and strong as the France of Louis XI or Francis I, while as free as Lancastrian England. Rude facts proved this ambition unworkable. Monarchy, and monarchy only, could be practically efficient as the formative element in national life. Since German monarchy refused to do its duty, German unity was destined not to be achieved. Nevertheless the attempt of Berthold is among the most interesting experiments in history, and the spectacle of the feudal potentates of Germany reversing the role of their French or Spanish compeers and striving to build up a united German nation, despite the separatist opposition of the German monarch, shows how strong were the forces that made for nationality during the transition from medieval to modern times. And it was no small indication of the practical wisdom of Berthold that he won over the whole Electoral College to his views. Less dignified princes were as a rule content to follow their lead. Only the Dukes of Bavaria held aloof, obstinately bent upon securing Bavarian interests alone. But perhaps the greatest triumph of the reformers was to be found in the temporary adhesion of the young King of the Romans to their plans.
Berthold of Mainz laid his first plan of reform before the Diet of Frankfort of 1485. He proposed a single national system of currency, a universal Landfrlede, and a Supreme Court of Justice specially charged with the carrying out of the Public Peace. After the election of Maximilian in 1486, the demand of a special grant to carry on war against the Turks gave a new opportunity for insisting on the policy which the cold and unsympathetic Emperor had done his best to shelve. But the princes now rejected the proposed tax, on the ground that the cooperation of the cities was necessary towards granting an aid, whereas no cities had been summoned to this Diet. The result was before long the final establishment of the right of the cities to form an integral part of every assembly of the German national council. The Diet of 1489 saw every imperial town summoned to its deliberations. Within a generation the city representatives had become the Third Estate of the Empire side by side with Electors and princes.
Frederick gave way both on the question of the rights of the cities and on the programme of reform. He procured his Turkish grant in return for the promise to establish the Landfriede and an imperial court of justice. But he did nothing to give effect to his general assurances; and the Estates, closely brought together by their common aim, continued to press for the carrying out of Frederick’s concessions. Their first real victory was at the Diet of Frankfort in 1489, when Maximilian, intent on getting