Even Maximilian’s adhesion failed to secure the lasting triumph of the Estates. So long as the old Emperor lived, nothing practical was done; but on Frederick’s death in 1493 the open-minded heir became the actual ruler of the Empire. Maximilian was young, restless, ambitious, and able. He had already embarked in those grandiose schemes of international intervention which remained the most serious political interest of the rest of his life. To these he now added his father’s care for the development and consolidation of a great Austrian State. Having however nothing of Frederick’s self-restraint, he ever gave free rein to the impulse of the moment, and was willing not only to sacrifice the Empire, to whose interests he was indifferent, but even his own Austrian lands to obtain some immediate military or diplomatic advantage in the prosecution of his more visionary ideals. Since he had become King of the Romans he had won his share of successes; but his incurable habit of keeping too many irons in the fire made it impossible for him to prevail in the long run. It was something that, despite the recent ignominy of his Bruges captivity, he was steadily increasing the influence which he wielded in the Netherlands on behalf of his young son, Philip. But he was still involved in great difficulties in that quarter, and the hostility of France, which had robbed him of his Breton wife, still excited powerful Netherlandish factions against him. A new trouble arose with Charles VIII’s expedition to Italy in 1494. The triumphant progress of the French King gave the last blow to the imagined interests of the Empire in the Peninsula. Maximilian who had at first hoped to fish on his own account in the troubled waters, became intensely eager to afford all the help he could to the Italian League which was soon formed against the French. In 1495 he formally adhered to the confederacy. But effective assistance to the Italians could only be given by Maximilian as the price of real concessions to the party of imperial reform. Though the promises made by him in his father’s lifetime sat but lightly on the reigning monarch, impulse, ambition, and immediate policy all combined to keep him in this case true to his word.
On March 26,1495, Maximilian laid his first proposition before a Diet at Worms, to which despite the urgency of the crisis the princes came slowly and negligently. He appealed strongly to the Estates to check the progress of the French in Italy. An immediate grant for the relief of Milan, a more continued subsidy that would enable him to set up a standing army for ten or twelve years, could alone save the Empire from dishonour.
It was the opportunity of the reformers, and on April 29 Elector Berthold formulated the conditions upon which the Diet would give the King efficient financial and military support. The old ideas-Public Peace, imperial Court of Justice and the rest-were once more elaborated. But Berthold’s chief anxiety was now for the appointment of a permanent imperial Council, representative directly of the Electors and the other Estates of the Empire, without whose approval no act of the King was to be regarded as valid. The only solid power Berthold wished to reserve to the King was that of supreme command in war; but no war was to be declared without the sanction of the Council. Matters of too great difficulty for the Council to determine were to be referred not to the King alone, but to the King and Electors in conjunction; and both here and on the projected Council the King counted but as a single vote. If Maximilian accepted this scheme, a Common Penny was to be levied throughout the Empire and an army established under the control of the Council.
To Maximilian Berthold’s proposals must have seemed but a demand for his abdication. But he cleverly negotiated instead of openly refusing, and finally made a counter-proposal, which practically reduced the suggested Council to a mere royal Council, whose independent action was limited to the periods of the King’s absence, and which otherwise sat at the King’s Court and depended upon the King’s pleasure. Long and wearisome negotiations followed, but a final agreement issued on August 7 showed that Berthold’s plan had essentially been abandoned in favour of Maximilian’s alternative propositions. The reformers preferred to give up their Executive Council altogether rather than allow it to be twisted into a shape which would have subordinated it to the royal prerogative! They went back on the old line of suggestions,—Public Peace, Common Penny, imperial Court of Justice, and the rest. Maximilian had already professed his acceptance of these schemes, so that on such lines agreement was not difficult. Even this mutilated plan of reform was sufficiently thorough and drastic. It makes the Diet of 1495 one of the turning-points in the constitutional history of the Empire.
The Landfriede was proclaimed without any limitation of time, and private war was forbidden to all Estates of the Empire under pain of the imperial ban. A special obligation to carry out this Public Peace was enjoined on those dwelling within twenty miles of the place of any breach of it. Were this not enough, the vindication of the peace rested with the Diet. Law was now to supersede violence, and an adequate Supreme Court was at last to be established. Frederick III had converted his traditional feudal Court (HofgericM) into an institution styled the Cameral Tribunal (Kammergericht), without in any very material way modifying its constitution. A very different Imperial Cameral Tribunal (Reichsltarnmergericht) was now set up. Its head, the Kammerrichter, was indeed the King’s nominee, but the sixteen assessors, half doctors of law, half of knightly rank, who virtually overshadowed his authority, were to be directly nominated by the Estates. The law which the new Court was to administer was the Roman Law, whose doctrines soon began to filter downwards into the lower Courts, with the result that its principles and procedure speedily exercised a profound influence on every branch of German jurisprudence. The new Court was not to follow the King, but to sit at some fixed place (at first Frankfort), which could only be changed by vote of the Estates. Its officers were to be paid not by the Emperor but by the Empire. Thus independent of the monarch and responsible to the Estates alone, they were to exercise supreme jurisdiction over all persons and in all causes, and immediate jurisdiction over all tenants-in-chief. The Diet was henceforth to meet annually, and no weighty matters were to be decided, even by the King, without the counsel and consent of the Estates. This was practically the compensation which Maximilian offered to the reformers for rejecting their plan of a permanent executive Council. Frequent parliaments might be endured; but a cabinet council, dependent upon the Estates, was, as Max saw, fatal to the continuance of his authority. A general tax called the Common Penny (Gemelne Pfennig) was to be levied throughout the Empire. This was a roughly assessed and rudely graduated property-tax, which had also some elements of an income-tax and a poll-tax. It was now established for four years, and was to be collected by the local princely or municipal authorities, but to be handed over to officials of the Empire and ultimately entrusted to seven imperial Treasurers, appointed by King and Estates and established at Frankfort. Max was authorised to take 150,000 florins from the Common Penny to defray the expenses of his Italian expedition.
In September the Estates separated. Both King and Diet were mutually satisfied, and it seemed as if brighter days were to dawn for the Empire. But dark clouds soon began to gather on every side. Maximilian was bitterly disappointed with his unfortunate Italian campaign of 1496. The German reformers soon found that it was easier to di’aw up schemes of reform than to carry out even the slightest improvement.
It was not that the Edict of Worms was wholly inoperative. The proclamation of the Landfriede was a real boon, though of course it did not change by magic a lawless into a law-abiding society. The Kammer-gericht provided justice in many cases where justice would have been impossible before. But the collection of the Common Penny proved the real difficulty. Even princes who were well disposed towards Berthold’s policy showed no eagerness to levy a tax which other men were to spend. In many districts nothing whatever was done to collect the money. The knights as a body refused all taxation, inasmuch as their service was military and not fiscal. The abbots declined to recognise the jurisdiction of a court so exclusively secular as the Kammergericht. The princes not represented at Worms repudiated altogether laws passed by an assembly in which they had taken no part.
The weak point of the new constitution was its lack of any administrative authority. Maximilian was in Italy, and his representatives ostentatiously stood aloof from any effort to enforce