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the reign of Charles V. that the king of Spain became an absolute prince.

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There is no question that Spain was once an elective kingdom. In treating formerly of the manners of the Gothic nations, we took notice, that during the reign of the Visigoth princes in Spain, these sovereigns were always chosen by the proceres or nobles: although at the same time this assembly of the ceres generally paid the greatest regard to the family of the last prince, or to the person whom he, upon his death-bed, had designed as his successor. This, it must be allowed, is a very near approach to hereditary succession, and through length of time commonly changes into that constitution. Accordingly, for many centuries past, there appears not the least trace of an elective monarchy in Spain; the crown devolving always of course, without any form or ceremony, on the nearest in blood to the last prince. The kings of Spain have sometimes limited the succession to certain families, ranks, and persons; of which the first instance was that of Philip III., in the year 1619, and the second, of Philip V., in 1713.

The power of the king was formerly limited by the cortes, or parliament of the kingdom. These, which formerly, especially in Castile, had great prerogatives, and were a powerful restraint upon the authority of the sovereign, were in a manner annihilated by Charles V., who deprived the nobles and the prelates of their seat in those assemblies; allowing only a convention of the deputies or agents of the towns, who have very little power, and are absolutely at the devotion of the sovereign.

The king of Spain now governs with the advice of his cabinet council, the Consejo Real, who are the secretary of state, and three or four of the principal nobility, with whom he chooses to consult upon the affairs of government. There is no body or department in the constitution which is entitled to restrain

or regulate the will of the sovereign, who is therefore an absolue prince.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

GERMANY FROM THE ABDICATION OF CHARLES V. TO THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA-Ferdinand I.-Thirty years' War -Ferdinand II.-Palatinate laid waste-Gustavus Adolphus-Ferdinand III.-Peace of Westphalia.

At the time when France was in a very flourishing situation under Henry IV., England, under Elizabeth, and Spain extremely formidable under Philip II., the empire of Germany made by no means so respectable a figure. Since the abdication of Charles V. till the reign of Leopold, it had no influence whatever in Italy. The contrary pretensions of the emperors to nominate the popes, and those of the pontiffs to con fer the imperial dignity, were insensibly fallen int oblivion. Germany was a republic of princes over whom the emperor presided, and these princes, hav ing constant interferences of interest, generally main tained a civil war, which was fomented by the thre. contending sects of religion, the Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists. Yet the political fabric of the empire amid all its disturbances, remained unshaken.

Ferdinand I. endeavoured to unite the three reli gious sects, and to effect a harmony between the princes of the empire; but the attempt was vain. Maximilian II. was less absolute than Ferdinand, and could still less bring about such a coalition and his successor Rodolph II. was yet inferior to him in the necessary talents of a sovereign. He was fonder of philosophical researches than of the cares of the empire, and spent that time with Tycho Brahé, the astronomer, which would have been more profitably employed in opposing the measures of Henry IV., a prince, who,

had he reigned but a few years longer, would, in all probability have annihilated, or at least very greatly abridged, the power of the house of Austria. The religious dissensions continued daily to increase in irulence and animosity, and at length the catholic and protestant leagues plunged Germany into a civil war of thirty years' continuance, and reduced that empire to the greatest extremity of national distress. Upon the death of Matthias, the successor of Rodolph, Ferdinand, archduke of Gratz, was elected emperor. He was a zealous catholic, and the protestants of Bohemia, who had suffered under the government of Matthias, were apprehensive of still greater restraint under Ferdinand. They determined, therefore, to be governed by a prince of their own persuasion; and they accordingly conferred the crown of Bohemia on the elector palatine, who had married the daughter of James I., king of England. This prince encountered a series of misfortunes. The emperor Ferdinand put him under the ban of the empire, engaged his smal. army at Prague, and took from him both his crowr and his electorate; he fled into Silesia, and thence successively into Holland, to England, and to France. His father-in-law James refused him the smallest assistance, contrary to the importunities of the whole English nation, and to his own personal glory, as he would thus have become the head of the protestant cause in Europe. It was evidently the interest likewise of Louis XIII. to hinder the princes of Germany from being oppressed, and to check the increasing power of the emperor. Yet the elector palatine was refused aid from that quarter also. The Emperor Ferdinand, in a diet held at Ratisbon, declared him fallen from all his estates and dignities, and bestowed his electorate on Maximilian of Bavaria.

The Protestant party, now almost overpowered, chose Christian IV., king of Denmark, to be their chief, but his armies were successively defeated by the imperial generals. The party of the Catholics

were carrying all before them, and everything seemed to promise that Ferdinand would become absolute through the whole of Germany, and succeed in that scheme, which he seemed to meditate, of entirely abolishing the Protestant religion in the empire. But this miserable prospect, both of political and of religious thraldom, was dissolved by the great Gustavus Adolphus, who, being invited by the Protestant princes of Germany to espouse the cause of the reformed religion, was induced to assist them, not only as being himself of that persuasion, but as it was of consequence to his own kingdom of Sweden, to prevent the emperor from obtaining a firm footing upon the Baltic.

Gustavus entered Germany, and drove the imperial army out of Pomerania. He attacked the celebrated General Tilly, and entirely defeated him at Leipsic. The whole country submitted to him, from the banks of the Elbe to the Rhine. He marched triumphant through the whole of Germany, while the Emperor Ferdinand, fallen at once from all his proud pretensions, was reduced so low as to solicit the pope to publish a crusade against the Protestants. On their part all was in a train of success, and the elector palatine was on the verge of being restored to his crown and electorate, when the heroic Gustavus, in the midst of his victories, was killed in the battle of Lutzen. The elector palatine, oppressed with infirmities and misfortune, died of a broken heart. It was the son of this elector, the gallant Prince Rupert, who, together with his brother Maurice, distinguished themselves in the civil wars of England in support of the royal cause, during the reign of their uncle Charles I

After the death of Gustavus, the war, on the part of the Protestants, was carried on by the Swedish generals; and Oxenstiern, the chancellor of Sweden, succeeded his master Gustavus, as head of the Protestant interest. Cardinal Richelieu at the same time declared war against the two branches of the house of Austria, which were attacked at once by France,

Sweden, Holland, and Savoy. Under these distressing circumstances died the Emperor Ferdinand II., during the whole of whose reign the empire had been subjected to all the miseries of foreign war and of civil commotions.

The Austrian power continued still to decline un. der his son Ferdinand III. The Swedes gained a footing in the empire; and the French supported the Protestant princes with troops and with money. At length Ferdinand III., heartily tired of an unsuccessful war, concluded the peace of Westphalia in the year 1648. In virtue of this celebrated treaty, the Swedes and the French were become the legislators of Germany: the dispute between the emperor_and the princes of the empire, which had subsisted for seven hundred years, was at length decided. Germany became a great aristocracy, composed of a monarch, electors, princes, and imperial towns.

The Germans were now obliged to pay five millions of rix-dollars to the Swedes, for the aid they had received from them. The kings of Sweden became princes of the empire, and acquired Pomerania with a considerable part of the imperial territories. The king of France was made landgrave of Alsace, and the palatine family was restored to all its rights, except the upper palatinate, which remained with the elector of Bavaria. Above a hundred and forty restitutions were decreed and complied with; and, what was of the greatest importance, the religious dissensions were finally put an end to. The three religions -the Catholic, the Lutheran, and the Calvinist, were equally established. The imperial chamber was composed of twenty-four Protestant members, and twentysix Catholic, and the emperor was obliged to admit of six Protestant, even in his aulic council at Vienna.*

What is termed the peace of Westphalia consisted, in fact, of two treaties; the one made at Osnaberg, 16th August, 1648, between the Germans and Swedes; the other, in the same year (25th October,) at Munster, between the Germans and

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