[Gutenberg 62817] • Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Empire, when it had come to a decision, was entrusted to the The circles. These circles each had their own Diet, and circles- (t was their duty, for instance, to raise money and troops when the Empire decided to go to war. Of the ten circles of the Empire, originally created, one, that of Burgundy, had been extinguished or nearly so by the conquests of Louis x1v., and those situated in the eastern portion were entirely controlled by the important states of Prussia, Saxony, and Austria. It was only in Western Germany, in the circles of Westphalia, Fran- conia, and Swabia that the organisation was fairly tried, and the result was signal failure, whenever those circles put their contingents in the field. It could hardly be otherwise, when, owing to minute subdivision and divided authority, a single company of soldiers might be raised from half a dozen different petty sovereigns, each of whom would try to throw the burden of their maintenance on his colleagues. The Holy Roman Empire, in short, like other mediasval institutions, had fallen into decay with the mediaeval systems of warfare and religion; some of its component states, such as Austria and Prussia, or in a lesser degree Bavaria, might possess a real power; but, as a whole, it was utterly inefficient to defend itself, and formed a feeble barrier between France and the kingdoms of Eastern Europe. The impotence of the Empire for offensive and defensive purposes did not, however, greatly affect the German people; the educated classes prided themselves on being superior to patriotic impulses, and on being cosmopolitan rather than German; the poorer classes thought more of the internal administration which affected them than of the attitude of the Empire to European politics. The tendency towards benevolent despotism, which di...