1024-1138.


Under Henry III. the second prince of this line, the German empire had
its greatest extent. It comprised Germany, Italy, Burgundy and Lorraine.
Poland, and other parts of the Sclavonian territories, were subject to
it. Denmark and Hungary acknowledged themselves its vassals.

The emperors affected to consider all kingdoms as forming a royal
republic, of which the emperor was chief. For their right to this
splendid prerogative, they always found advocates in their own
dominions: they reckon, among these, the illustrious Leibniz. Out of
Germany, nothing of the claim, beyond precedence in rank, has ever been
allowed. This, no sovereign in Europe has contested with the emperors:
it is observable, that, as the French monarchs insisted on the
Carlovingian extraction of Hugh Capet, they affected to consider Henry
the Fowler the first prince of the Saxon dynasty, and all his successors
in the empire as usurpers. Lewis XIV. expresses himself in this manner
in some memoirs recently attributed to him.







III. 2.

_State of German Literature during the Franconian Dynasty._