The Duchy of Burgundy which gave its name to the Burgundian power of the fifteenth century was that one among the many lands bearing the Burgundian name which lay wholly outside the Burgundian kingdom of the Emperors. This Burgundy, the only one which has kept the name to our own time, the duchy of which Dijon is the capital, never was a fief of the Eastern Kingdom or of the Empire, after the final separation. It always acknowledged the supremacy of the kings of Laon and Paris. ♦Two lines of Dukes. 1032.♦ By these last the duchy was twice granted in fief to princes of their own house, once in the eleventh century and once in the fourteenth. ♦The Valois. 1363.♦ This last grant was the beginning of the Dukes of the House of Valois, with the growth of whose power we have now to deal. ♦Union of Flanders and Burgundy. 1369.
The county of Burgundy.♦ Philip the Hardy, the first Duke of this line, obtained, by his marriage with Margaret of Flanders, the counties of Flanders, Artois, Rhetel, and Nevers, all fiefs of the crown of France, together with the County Palatine of Burgundy as a fief of the Empire. The peculiar position of the Dukes of Burgundy of this line was at once established by this marriage. ♦Two masses of territory.♦ Duke Philip held of two lords, and his dominions lay in two distinct masses. The two Burgundies, duchy and county, and the county of Nevers, lay geographically together; Flanders and Artois lay together at a great distance; the small possession of Rhetel lay again detached between the two. Any princes who held such a territory as this could hardly fail to devote their main policy to the work of bringing about the geographical union of their scattered possessions. Nor was this all. The possession of the two Burgundies made their common sovereign a vassal at once of France and of the Empire. ♦Position of the Netherlands.♦ The possession of Flanders, Artois, and Rhetel further brought him into connexion with those border lands of the Empire and of the French kingdom where the authority of either over-lord was weakest, and which had long been tending to form themselves into a separate political system distinct from both. The results of this complicated position, as worked out, whether by the prudence of Philip the Good or by the daring of Charles the Bold, form the history of the Dukes of Burgundy of the House of Valois.

The lands which we are accustomed to group together under the name of the Netherlands or Low Countries lay chiefly within the bounds of the Empire; but the county of Flanders had always been a fief of France. ♦Fief of the Counts of Flanders within the Empire.♦ Part however of the dominions of its counts, the north-eastern corner of their dominions, the lands of Alost and Waas, were held of the Empire. ♦Zealand.♦ These lands, together with the neighbouring islands of Zealand, formed a ground of endless disputes between the Counts of Flanders and their northern neighbours the Counts of Holland. ♦County of Holland.♦ This last county gradually disentangles itself from the general mass of the Frisian lands which lie along the whole coast from the mouth of the Scheld to the mouth of the Weser. ♦Inroads of the sea. 1219, 1282.♦ And those great inroads of the sea in the thirteenth century which gave the Zuyder-Zee its present extent helped to give the country a natural boundary, and to part it off from the Frisian lands to the north-east. ♦Disputes with the free Frisians.♦ Towards the end of the thirteenth century Friesland west of the Zuyder-Zee had become part of the dominions of the Counts. ♦Independence of West Friesland. 1417-1447.
County of East Friesland. 1454.♦ The land immediately east of the gulf established its freedom, while East Friesland passed to a line of counts, under whom its fortunes parted off from those of the Netherlands. Part of its later history has been already given in the character of a more purely German state. ♦The Bishops of Utrecht.♦ Both the counts and the free Frisians had also dangerous neighbours in the Bishops of Utrecht, the great ecclesiastical princes of this region, who held a large temporal sovereignty lying apart from their city on the eastern side of the gulf. These disputes went on, as also disputes with the Dukes of Geldern, without any final settlement, almost to the time when all these lands began to be united under the Burgundian power. But before this time, the Counts of Holland had become closely connected with lands much further to the south. ♦Duchy of Brabant.♦ Among a number of states in this region, the most powerful was the Duchy of Brabant, which represented the Duchy of the Lower Lotharingia, and whose princes held the mark of Antwerp and the cities of Brussels, Löwen or Louvain, and Mechlin. ♦County of Hennegau or Hainault united with Holland. 1299.♦ To the South of them lay the county of Hennegau or Hainault. At the end of the thirteenth century, this county was joined by marriage with that of Holland. Holland and Hainault were thus detached possessions of a common prince, with Brabant lying between them. ♦Mark of Namur.♦ South of Brabant lay the small mark or county of Namur, which, without being united to Flanders, was held by a branch of the princes of that house.

All these states, though their princes held of two separate over-lords, had much in common, and were well fitted to be worked together into a single political system. They had much in common in the physical character of the country, and in the unusual number of great and flourishing cities which these countries contained. ♦Importance of the cities.♦ None of these cities indeed actually reached the position of free cities of the Empire; but their wealth, and the degree of practical independence which they possessed, forms a main feature in the history of the Low Countries. In point of language, the northern part of these states spoke various dialects of Low-Dutch, from Flemish to Frisian; in the southern lands of Hainault, Artois, and Namur, the language, though not French, was not Teutonic, but an independent Romance speech, the Walloon. ♦South-western group of states.♦ To the west of these states lay another group of small principalities connected with the former greater group in many ways, but not so closely as those which we have just gone through. ♦Bishopric of Lüttich.
Duchies of Luxemburg and Limburg.♦ The great ecclesiastical principality of Lüttich or Liège, lying in two detached parts, divided the lands of which we have been speaking from the counties, afterwards duchies, of Lüzelburg or Luxemburg and of Limburg. Of these the more distant Limburg passed in the fourteenth century to the Dukes of Brabant. ♦Luxemburg a Duchy. 1353.♦ Luxemburg is famous as having given a series of princes to the kingdom of Bohemia and to the Empire, and in their hands it rose to the rank of a duchy. ♦Geldern.♦ Lastly, to the north of Lüttich, forming a connecting link between this group of states and the more purely Frisian powers, lay the duchy of Geldern, of whose quarters the most northern portion stretched to the Zuyder Zee. These eastern states, though not so closely connected with one another as those to the west, were easily led into the same political system. ♦Middle position of all these states.♦ Without drawing any hard and fast line, we may say that all the states of this region formed, if not yet a middle state, yet a middle system, apart alike from France and the Empire, though in various ways connected with both. Mainly Imperial, mainly Teutonic, they were not wholly so. ♦French influence.♦ Besides the homage lawfully due to France from Flanders and Artois, French influence in various ways, in politics, in manners, and in language, had made great inroads in the southern Netherlands. Brabant and Hainault had practically quite as much to do with France as with the Empire. ♦Walloon language.♦ And this French influence was of course helped by the fact that a considerable region in the south was, though not of French, yet not of Teutonic speech. Altogether, with much to unite them to the great powers on either side, with much to keep them apart from either of them, with much more to unite them to one another, the states of the Netherlands might almost seem to be designed by nature to be united under a single political head. ♦Union of the Netherlands under the Dukes of Burgundy.♦ Such a head was supplied by the Dukes of Burgundy and Counts of Flanders, by whom, in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, nearly the whole of the Netherlands was united into a single power which was to be presently broken into two by the results of religious divisions.

Leaving then for the present the growth and fall of the Burgundian power in the lands more to the south, we will go on to trace the steps by which the provinces of the Low Countries were united under the Valois Dukes and their Austrian descendants. ♦Reign of Philip the Good. 1419-1467.♦ The great increase of territory in this region was made during the long reign of Philip the Good. ♦Namur. 1421-1429.♦ His first acquisition was the county of Namur, a small and outlying district, but one which, as small and outlying, would still more strongly suggest the rounding off of the scattered territory. ♦1429-1433.♦ A series of marriages and disputes next enabled Philip to make a much more important extension of his dominions. ♦1405.♦ Brabant and Limburg had passed to a younger branch of the Burgundian House. ♦1418.♦ John, Duke of Brabant, the cousin of Philip by a marriage with Jacqueline, Countess of Holland and Hainault, united those states for a moment. The disputes and confusions which followed on her marriages and divorces led to the annexation of her territories by the Duke of Burgundy, a process which was finally concluded by the formal cession of her dominions by Jacqueline. ♦Brabant and Limburg. 1430.
Holland and Hainault. 1433.♦ Meanwhile Philip had succeeded to Brabant and Limburg, and the union of Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, Zealand, and Holland, together made a dominion which took in all the greatest Netherland states, and formed a compact mass of territory. On this presently followed a great acquisition of territory which was more strictly French than the fiefs which Philip already held of the French crown in Flanders and Artois. The Treaty of Arras, by which Philip, hitherto the ally of England against France, made peace with his western overlord, gave him, under the form of mortgage, the lands on the Somme. ♦The towns on the Somme. 1435-1483.♦ The acquisition of these lands, Ponthieu, Vermandois, Amiens, and Boulogne, advanced the Burgundian frontier to a dangerous neighbourhood to Paris on this side as well as on the other. It had the further effect of keeping the small continental possessions which England still kept at Calais and Guisnes apart from the French territory. During the reigns of Philip and Charles the Bold, the continental neighbour of England was not France but Burgundy. But this great southern dominion was not lasting. The towns on the Somme, redeemed and again recovered, passed on the fall of Charles the Bold once more into French hands. ♦Recovered by France.♦ So did Artois itself, and, though Artois was won back, Amiens and the rest were not. Yet, if the towns on the Somme had stayed under the rule of the successive masters of the Low Countries, it might by this time have seemed as natural for Amiens to be Belgian as it now seems natural for Cambray and Valenciennes to be French. The Treaty of Madrid drew a definite boundary. ♦France resigns the homage of Flanders and Artois. 1526.♦ France gave up all claim to homage from Flanders and Artois, and Charles the Fifth, in his Burgundian, or rather in his Flemish, character, finally gave up all claim to the lands on the Somme.

The south-western frontier was thus fixed; but meanwhile the new state had advanced in other directions. ♦Luxemburg. 1443.♦ Philip’s last great acquisition was the duchy of Luxemburg. He now possessed the greater part of the Netherlands; but his dominions were still intersected by the bishoprics of Utrecht and Lüttich and the duchy of Geldern. ♦Geldern and Zutphen. 1472.♦ The duchy of Geldern and county of Zutphen were added by Charles the Bold. ♦Final annexation. 1543.♦ But they formed a precarious possession, lost and won more than once, down to their final annexation under Charles the Fifth. ♦Bishopric of Lüttich never annexed.♦ Of the two great ecclesiastical principalities by which the Burgundian possessions in the Netherlands were cut asunder, the bishopric of Lüttich, though its history is much mixed up with that of the Burgundian Dukes, and though it came largely under their influence, was never formally annexed. ♦Annexation of the bishopric of Utrecht, 1531; and Friesland, 1515.♦ But the temporal principality of the Bishop of Utrecht was secularized under Charles the Fifth. Friesland, the Friesland immediately east of the Zuyder Zee, was already reincorporated with the dominions of the prince who represented the ancient counts of Holland. ♦Dominions of Charles the Fifth.♦ The whole Netherlands were thus consolidated under the rule of Charles the Fifth. They were united with the far distant county of Burgundy, and with it they formed the Burgundian circle in the new division of the Empire. The bishopric of Lüttich, which intersected the whole southern part of the country, remained in the circle of Westfalia. ♦The seventeen provinces.♦ Seventeen provinces, each keeping much of separate being, were united under a single prince, and, since the treaty of Madrid, they were free from any pretensions on the part of foreign powers. The Netherlands formed one of the most compact and important parts of the scattered dominions of the Emperor who was also lord of Burgundy and Castile. ♦Their separation from the Empire.♦ But the final union of these lands under the direct dominion of an Emperor at once led to their practical separation from the Empire. ♦The possessions of Philip of Spain. 1555.♦ They passed, with all the remaining possessions and claims of the Burgundian House, to Philip of Spain, and they were reckoned among the crowd of distant dependencies which had come under the rule of the crowns of Castile and Aragon. In Spanish hands they acted less as a middle state than as a power which helped to hem in France on both sides. Had the great revolt of the Netherlands ended in the final liberation of the whole seventeen provinces, the middle state would have been formed in its full strength. ♦The War of Independence. 1568-1609.♦ As it was, the work of the War of Independence was imperfect. The northern provinces won their freedom in the form of a federal commonwealth. The southern provinces remained dependencies of Spain, to become the chosen fighting ground of European armies, the chosen plaything of European diplomacy.

The end of the long war of independence waged by the northern provinces was the establishment of the famous federal commonwealth of the Seven United Provinces, Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Gelderland, Over-Yssel, Friesland, and Groningen. These answered nearly to the dominions of the Counts of Holland and Bishops of Utrecht in earlier times. ♦Gelderland.♦ But besides these, part of the duchy of Geldern formed one of the United Provinces, while its southern part shared the fate of the southern provinces. But, besides the United Seven, the Confederation also kept parts of Brabant, Geldern, and Flanders as common possessions. ♦Formal independence of the Empire. 1648.♦ The power thus formed, one which so long held an European importance quite disproportioned to its geographical extent, had under Burgundian rule become practically independent of the Empire, but it was only by the Peace of Westfalia that its independence was formally acknowledged. The maritime strength of the Confederation made it more than an European power. It became a colonizing power in three parts of the world. ♦Colonies of the Netherlands.♦ In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Seven Provinces extended their dominion over many points on the continent of India and over the neighbouring island of Ceylon, over the great equatorial islands of Java, Sumatra, and the Moluccas, over many points in Guinea and southern Africa, and over part of Guiana in South America. ♦New Netherland passes to England. 1664.♦ But the great North American settlement of New Netherland passed to England, and New Amsterdam became New York. ♦No real name for the county.♦ Singularly enough, this great power never had any strict geographical name. Netherlands was too large, as it took in the whole of the Low Countries and not the emancipated provinces only. Holland was too small, as being the name of one province only, though the greatest. ♦Use of the name Dutch.♦ And, by one of the oddest cases of caprice of language, in common English usage the name of the whole Teutonic race settled down on this one small part of it, and the men of the Seven Provinces came to be exclusively spoken of as Dutch.

Meanwhile the southern provinces, the greater part of Brabant and Flanders, with Artois, Hennegau or Hainault, Namur, Limburg, Luxemburg, and the southern part of Geldern,—taking in Antwerp at one end and Cambray at the other—remained under the sovereignty of the representatives of the Burgundian Dukes. That is, they remained an outlying dependency of the Spanish monarchy. But their southern frontier was open to constant aggressions on the part of France. ♦Dunkirk held by England. 1658-1662.♦ Dunkirk indeed was for a moment held by England, as Calais and Boulogne had been in earlier times. ♦Cession of parts of Artois and of Gravelines, 1659;♦ By the Peace of the Pyrenees France obtained Arras and the greater part of Artois, leaving Saint Omer to Spain. ♦Dunkirk, 1662;♦ France also began to work her way up along the coast of Flanders, taking Gravelines by virtue of the treaty, and presently adding Dunkirk by purchase from England. ♦Philippeville, Marienburg, Thionville.♦ The treaty also added to France several points along the frontiers of Hainault, Liège, and Luxemburg, including the detached fortresses of Philippeville and Marienburg, and Thionville famous in far earlier days. During the endless wars of Lewis’ reign, the boundary fluctuated with each treaty. ♦1668.
1677.♦ Acquisitions were made by France at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, some of which were surrendered, and others gained, by the Peace of Nimwegen. ♦Boundary fixed by the Peace of Utrecht. 1713.♦ At last the boundary was finally fixed by the Peace of Utrecht in the last days of Lewis. Parts of Flanders and Hainault were finally confirmed to France, which thus kept Lille, Cambray, and Valenciennes. ♦The Spanish Netherlands pass to Austria.♦ The provinces which had hitherto been Spanish now passed to the only surviving branch of the House of Austria, that which reigned in the archduchy and supplied the hereditary candidates for the Empire. ♦Annexed by France. 1792.♦ The first wars of the French Revolution added the Austrian Netherlands to France, and with them the bishopric of Lüttich which still so oddly divided them. ♦Kingdom of Holland. 1806-1810.♦ A later stage of the days of confusion changed the Seven United Provinces, enlarged by the addition of East Friesland, into a Kingdom of Holland, one of the states which the new conqueror carved out for the benefit of his kinsfolk. ♦Holland annexed by France. 1810-1813.♦ Presently the new kingdom was incorporated with the new ‘Empire,’ along with the German lands to the north-east of it. The Corsican had at last carried out the schemes of the Valois kings, and the whole Burgundian heritage formed for a moment part of France.

At the general settlement of Europe, after the long wars with France, the restoration of the Low Countries as a middle state was a main object. ♦Kingdom of the Netherlands. 1814.♦ This was brought about by the union of the whole Netherlands into a single kingdom bearing that name. The southern boundary did not differ very greatly from that fixed by the Peace of Utrecht. ♦The boundaries.♦ As in the case of the Savoyard frontier, France kept a little more by the arrangements of 1814 than she finally kept by those of 1815. To the east, East-Friesland passed to Hannover, leaving the boundary of the new kingdom not very different from that of the two earlier powers which it represented, gaining only a small territory on the banks of the Maes. ♦Incorporation of Lüttich.♦ But the bishopric of Lüttich was incorporated with the lands which it had once parted asunder, and so ceased altogether to be German ground. ♦Grand Duchy of Luxemburg.♦ The new king, as we have already seen, entered the German confederation in his character of Grand Duke of Luxemburg, the duchy being somewhat shortened to the east in favour of Prussia. Lastly, after fifteen years of union, the new kingdom again split asunder. ♦Kingdom of Belgium. 1830-1831.♦ It was now divided into the kingdom of the Netherlands, answering to the old United Provinces, and the kingdom of Belgium, answering to the old Spanish or Austrian Netherlands. ♦Luxemburg divided.♦ But part of Limburg remained to the northern kingdom, and its sovereign also kept part of Luxemburg, as a district state, forming part of the German confederation. The western part of the duchy formed part of the kingdom of Belgium. ♦1867.♦ Later events, as has been already recorded, have severed the last tie between Germany and the Netherlands; they have wiped out the last survival of the days when the Counts of Holland and of Luxemburg were alike princes of the German kingdom.

The above may pass as a sketch of the fluctuations along the borderland in their European aspect. It is needless to go through every small shifting of frontier, or to recount in detail the history of small border principalities like Saint Pol and Bouillon. The main historical aspect of these countries is their tendency, in all ages, to form somewhat of a middle system between two greater powers on either side of them. The guaranteed neutrality of Belgium and the guaranteed neutrality of Switzerland are alike survivals or revivals—it is hard to say which they should be called—of the instinctive feeling which, in the ninth century, called the Lotharingian kingdom into being. The modern form of this thousand-year old idea was made possible through the growth of the power of the Burgundian Dukes of the House of Valois.

The real historical work of those dukes was thus done in those parts of their dominions from which they did not take their name, but which took their name from them. The history of their other dominions may be told in a few words; indeed a great part of it has been told already. ♦Schemes of Charles the Bold.♦ The schemes of Charles the Bold for uniting his scattered dominions by the conquest of the duchy of Lorraine, for extending the power thus formed to the sea-board of the royal Burgundy, for forming in short a middle kingdom stretching from the Ocean to the Mediterranean, acting as a barrier alike between France and Germany and between France and Italy, remained mere schemes. They are important only as showing how deeply the idea or the memory of a middle state was still fixed in men’s minds. The conquests of Charles in Lorraine, his purchases in Elsass, were momentary possessions which hardly touch geography. But the fall of Charles, by causing the break-up of the southern dominion of his house, helped to give greater importance to its northern dominion. While the Netherlands grew together, the Burgundies split asunder. After the fall of Charles the fate of the two Burgundies was much the same as the fate of Flanders and Artois. Both were for a while seized by France; but the county, like Artois, was afterwards recovered for a season. The duchy of Burgundy was lost for ever; the county, along with the outlying county of Charolois, remained to those who by female succession represented the Burgundian Dukes, that is to Charles the Fifth and his Spanish son. The annexation of the Burgundian county, and with it of the city of Besançon, by Lewis the Fourteenth has been recorded in an earlier section.

§ 9. The Dominions of Austria.

We now come to one among these German states which have parted off from the kingdom of Germany whose course has been widely different from the rest, and whose modern European importance stands on a widely different level. As the Lotharingian and Frisian lands parted off on the north-west of the kingdom, as a large part of the Swabian lands parted off to the south-west of the kingdom, so the Eastern Mark, the mark of Austria, parted off no less, but with widely different consequences. ♦Origin of the name Oesterreich, Austria.♦ The name of Austria, Oesterreich—Ostrich as our forefathers wrote it—is, naturally enough, a common name for the eastern part of any kingdom. ♦Other lands so called.♦ The Frankish kingdom of the Merwings had its Austria; the Italian kingdom of the Lombards had its Austria also. We are half inclined to wonder that the name was never given in our own island either to Essex or to East-Anglia. But, while the other Austrias have passed away, the Oesterreich, the Austria, the Eastern mark, of the German kingdom, its defence against the Magyar invader, has lived on to our own times. It has not only lived on, but it has become one of the chief European powers. And it has become so by a process to which it would be hard to find a parallel. ♦Special position of the Austrian power.♦ The Austrian duchy supplied Germany with so many Kings, and Rome with so many Emperors, that something of Imperial character came to cleave to the duchy itself. Its Dukes, in resigning, first, the crown of Germany, and then all connexion with Germany, have carried with them into their new position the titles and bearings of the German Cæsars. ♦Union with Hungary.♦ The power which began as a mark against the Magyar came to have a common sovereign with the Magyar kingdom; and the Austrian duchy and Magyar kingdom, each drawing with it a crowd of smaller states of endless nationalities, have figured together in the face of modern Europe as the Austrian Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. ♦The so-called ‘Empire’ of Austria.♦ It is not easy, in drawing a map, to find a place for the ‘Empire’ of Austria. The Archduchy is there, and its sovereign has not dropped his archiducal title. A crowd of kingdoms, duchies, counties, and lordships, all acknowledging the sovereignty of the same prince, are there also. But it is not easy to find the geographical place of an ‘Empire’ of Austria, as distinct from the Archduchy. Nor is it easy to understand on what principle an ‘Empire’ of Austria can be understood as taking in all the states which happen to own the Hungarian King and Austrian Archduke as their sovereign. The matter is made more difficult when we remember that the title of ‘Hereditary Emperor of Austria’ was first taken while its bearer was still King of Germany and Roman Emperor-elect. ♦Union of separate states under the Austrian House.♦ But, putting questions like these aside, the gradual union of a great number of states, German and non-German, under the common rule of the archiducal house of Austria, by whatever name we call the power so formed, is a great fact both of history and of geography. A number of states, originally independent of one another, differing in origin and language and everything that makes states differ from one another, some of them members of the former Empire, some not, have, as a matter of fact, come together to form a power which fills a large space in modern history and on the modern map. ♦Lack of national unity.♦ But it is a power which is altogether lacking in national unity. It is a power which is not coextensive with any nation, but which takes in parts of many nations. It cannot even be said that there is a dominant nation surrounded by subject nations. ♦German, Magyar, and other races.♦ The Magyar nation in its unity, and a fragment of the German nation, stand side by side on equal terms, while Italians, Roumans, and Slaves of almost every branch of the Slavonic race, are grouped around those two. ♦No strictly federal tie.♦ There is no federal tie; it is a stretch of language to apply the federal name to the present relation between the two chief powers of Hungary and Austria. Nor can any strictly federal tie be said to unite Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, and Galicia. And yet these other members of the general body are not mere subject provinces, like the dominions of Old Rome. The same prince is sovereign of a crowd of separate states, two of which stand out prominently as centres among the rest. There is neither national unity, nor federation, nor mere subjection of one land or nation to another. All this has come by the gradual union by various means of many crowns upon the same brow. ♦Anomalous nature of the Austrian power.♦ The result is an anomalous power which has nothing else exactly like it, past or present. But the very anomaly makes the growth of such a power a more curious study.

The beginnings of the Austrian state are to be found in the small Mark on the Danube, lying between Bohemia, Moravia, and the Duchy of Kärnthen or Carinthia. It appears in its first form as an appendage to Bavaria.[17] This mark Frederick Barbarossa raised into a duchy, under its first duke Henry the Second, and it was enlarged to the westward at the expense of Bavaria by the addition of the lands above the Enns. ♦Duchy of Austria, 1156.♦ Thus was formed the original Duchy of Austria, the duchy of the Dukes of the House of Babenberg. It had not long risen to ducal rank before it began to extend itself at the expense of states which had hitherto been of greater moment than itself. Itself primarily a mark against the Magyar, Austria had to the south of it the lands where the German Kingdom marched at once upon the Magyar, the Slave, and the Kingdom of Italy. ♦Duchy of Carinthia.♦ Here lay the great Duchy of Carinthia, a land where the population was mainly Slave, though on this frontier the Slavonic population had been brought into much earlier and more thorough subjection to the German Kings than the Slaves on the north-eastern frontier. ♦Duchy of Styria, 1180;♦ At the time of the foundation of the duchy of Austria, the Carinthian duchy had begun to split in pieces, and its northern part, hitherto the Upper Carinthian Mark, grew into the Duchy of Steyermark or Styria. ♦united to Austria, 1192.♦ Twelve years later, Leopold the Fifth of Austria inherited the duchy of Styria, a duchy greater than his own, by the will of its duke Ottokar. Carinthia itself went on as a separate duchy; but it now took in only a narrow territory in the south-western part of the old duchy, and that broken up by outlying possessions of the archbishops of Salzburg and other ecclesiastical lords. ♦The county of Görz.♦ To the south grew up a considerable power in the hands of the counts of Görz or Gorizia on the Italian border. ♦Ecclesiastical position of its Counts.♦ The possessions of these counts stretched, though not continuously, from Tyrol to Istria, and their influence was further enlarged by their position as advocates of the bishoprics of Trent and Brixen and of the more famous patriarchate of Aquileia. These are the lands, the marchlands of Germany towards its eastern and south-eastern neighbours, which came by gradual annexations to form the German possessions of the Austrian power. But the further growth of that power did not begin till the duchy itself had passed away to the hands of a wholly new line of princes.

The first change was one which brought about for a moment from one side an union which was afterwards to be brought about in a more lasting shape from the other side. This was the annexation of Austria by the kingdom of Bohemia. ♦Bohemia a kingdom, 1158.♦ That duchy had been raised to the rank of a kingdom, though of course without ceasing to be a fief of the Empire, a few years after the mark of Austria had become a duchy. The death of the last duke of Austria of the Babenberg line led to a disputed succession and a series of wars, in which the princes of Bavaria, Bohemia, and Hungary all had their share. ♦Ottokar of Bohemia annexes Austria and Styria, 1252-1262. Carinthia, 1269.♦ In the end, between marriage, conquest, and royal grant, Ottokar king of Bohemia obtained the duchies of Austria and Styria, and a few years later he further added Carinthia by the bequest of its Duke. Thus a new power was formed, by which several German states came into the power of a Slavonic king. ♦Great power of Ottokar.♦ The power of that king for a moment reached the Baltic as well as the Hadriatic; for Ottokar carried his arms into Prussia, and became the founder of Königsberg. But this great power was but momentary. Bohemia and Austria were again separated, and Austria, with its indefinite mission of extension over so many lands, including Bohemia itself, passed to a house sprung from a distant part of Germany.

We have now come to the European beginnings of the second House of Austria, the house whose name seems to have become inseparably connected with the name of Austria, though the spot from which that house drew its name has long ceased to be an Austrian possession. This is the house of the Counts of Habsburg. They took this name from their castle on the lower course of the Aar, in the north-west corner of the Aargau, in that southern Swabian land where the Old League of High Germany was presently to arise, and so greatly to extend itself at the cost of the power of Habsburg. ♦Union of Habsburg, Kyburg, and Lenzburg.♦ By an union of the lands of Habsburg with those of the Counts of Kyburg and Lenzburg, a considerable, though straggling, dominion was formed. It stretched in and out among the mountains and lakes, taking in Luzern, and forming a dangerous neighbour to the free city of Zürich. ♦Their possession in Elsass.♦ Besides these lands, the same house also held Upper Elsass with the title of Landgrave, a dominion separated from the other Swabian lands of the House by the territory of the free city of Basel. ♦Rudolf king, 1273.
His victories over Ottokar, 1276-1278.
Albert of Habsburg Duke of Austria and Styria, 1282.♦ The lord of this great Swabian dominion, the famous Rudolf, being chosen to the German crown, and having broken the power of Ottokar, bestowed the duchies of Austria and Styria on his son Albert, afterwards King. ♦Meinhard Duke of Carinthia and Count of Tyrol, 1286.♦ Carinthia at first formed part of the same grant; but it was presently granted to Meinhard Count of Görz and Tyrol. Görz passed to another branch of the house of its own Counts. Three powers were thus formed in these regions, the duchies of Austria and Styria, the duchy of Carinthia with the county of Tyrol, and the county of Görz.

Thus under Albert the possessions of the House of Habsburg were large, but widely scattered. The two newly acquired eastern duchies not only gave its princes their highest titles, but they formed a compact territory, well suited for extension northward and southward. ♦Falling off of the Swabian lands.♦ But among the outlying Swabian territories, though some parts remained to the Austrian House down to the end of the German Kingdom, the tendency was to diminish and gradually to part off altogether from Germany. In the lands south of the Rhine this happened through union with the Confederates; in the Alsatian lands it happened at a later stage through French annexation.

It is to be hoped that it is no longer needful to explain that the hereditary lands of the House of Habsburg or Austria had no inherent connexion with the German Kingdom and Roman Empire of which they were fiefs, beyond the fact that they were among its fiefs. They were further connected with it only by the accident that, from Rudolf onwards, many princes of that house were chosen Kings, and that, from the middle of the fifteenth century, onwards, all the Kings were chosen from that house and from the house into which it merged by female succession. It is to be hoped that there is no longer any need to explain that every Emperor was not Duke of Austria, and that every Duke of Austria was not Emperor. But it may be needful to explain that every Duke of Austria was not master of the whole dominions of the House of Austria. ♦Divisions of the Austrian dominions.♦ The divisions, the reunions, the joint reigns, which are common to the House of Austria with other German princely houses, become at once more important and more puzzling in the case of a house which gradually came to stand above all the others in European rank. The caution is specially needful in the case of the Swabian lands, as the history of the Confederates is liable to be greatly misunderstood, if every Duke of Austria who appears there is taken for the sole sovereign of the Austrian dominions. It is needless to go here through all these shiftings between princes of the same house. Through all changes the unity of the house and its possessions was maintained, even while they were parted out or held in common by different members of the house. But it is important to bear in mind that some of the Dukes of Austria who figure in the history of Switzerland were rather Landgraves of Elsass or Counts of Tyrol than Dukes of Austria in any practical sense.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be defined as a time during which the Austrian House on the whole steadily advanced in the Eastern part of its dominions and steadily fell back in the Western. But in the course of the fourteenth century an acquisition was made which, without making them absolutely continuous, brought them into something more like geographical connexion with one another. ♦Acquisition of Carinthia and Tyrol, 1335.♦ This was the acquisition of the Duchy of Carinthia and County of Tyrol, the latter of which lands lay conveniently between the Eastern and Western dominions of the house. ♦Extent of the Austrian territory.♦ These now stretched continuously from the Bohemian frontier to Istria, and they threw out, in the form of Tyrol and the Swabian lands, a scattered, but nearly continuous, territory stretching to the borders of Lorraine and the county of Burgundy. The Austrian possessions now touched the eastern gulf of the Hadriatic and came into the neighbourhood of the Dalmatian Archipelago. ♦Commendation of Trieste, 1382.♦ Somewhat later they reached the main Hadriatic itself, when the city of Trieste, hitherto disputed between the commonwealth of Venice and the patriarchs of Aquileia, commended itself to the Austrian Duke Leopold as its lord. This is the same Leopold who four years later fell at Sempach. By this time the Swabian possessions had been increased north of the Rhine, while south of the Rhine the Austrian dominion was steadily giving way. ♦Loss of Thurgau, 1460.♦ The Confederates and their several cantons advanced in every way, by purchase and conquest, till, after the loss of Thurgau, the House of Austria kept nothing south of the Rhine except the towns known as the Waldstädte.

By this time the division of the estates of the house had taken a more lasting shape. One branch reigned in Austria, another in Carinthia and Styria, a third in Tyrol and the other western lands. At this time begins the unbroken series of Austrian elections to the German and Imperial crowns. ♦Albert the Second, king, 1437-1440.♦ The first was Albert the Second, Duke of Austria. ♦Frederick the Third, king, 1440; Emperor, 1452.
Archduke of Austria, 1453.♦ Then Frederick the Third, the first Emperor of the House, united the Austrian and Carinthian duchies, and raised Austria to the unique rank of an Archduchy. ♦Siegmund, Count of Tyrol, &c., 1429-1496.♦ Meanwhile, Siegmund Count of Tyrol held the western lands, and appears as Duke of Austria in Confederate and Burgundian history. He there figures as the prince who lost Thurgau to the Confederates and who mortgaged his Alsatian lands to Charles the Bold. ♦Maximilian, King of the Romans, 1486; Archduke, 1493; Count of Tyrol, 1496; Emperor-elect, 1508.♦ In Maximilian the whole possessions of the house of Austria were united. ♦Beginning of union with lands beyond the Empire.♦ But by this time the affairs of the purely German lands which had hitherto formed the possessions of the Austrian house had begun to be mixed up with the succession to lands and kingdoms beyond the Empire, and with lands which, though technically within the Empire, had a distinct being of their own. In the course of the fifteenth century the house of Austria, hitherto simply one of the chief German princely houses, put on two special characters. ♦Succession of Austrian Kings and Emperors.♦ It became, as we have already seen, the house which exclusively supplied kings and Emperors to Germany and the Empire. And it became, by virtue of its hereditary possessions rather than of its Imperial position, one of the chief European powers. For a while the greatest of European powers, it has remained a great European power down to our own time.