Germany in the Later Middle Ages

My intention in this work is not to treat the history of Germany so much in its imperial as in its national aspect, and that intention will be carried out as rigorously as possible by the exclusion of all imperial questions which do not touch German life and nationality, such as all minute investigations into the imperial policy in Italy, and the antagonism outside of Germany between the imperial and papal ideas. This plan I have attempted hitherto to pursue, even at periods at which the personal history of the popes and emperors was most closely interwoven; and it ought not to be less easy to do so in periods like that to which we are coming, in which the Italian campaigns of the emperors became few and far between, and their influence upon the papacy was being quickly reduced to a shadow of what it had been. 

But, in general, I am not one of those who think that all the interest of a national history necessarily centres about the personal adventures of its rulers. To a certain extent it is so, but simply because the ancient writers to whom we are indebted for nearly all the details of the events of these ages have so treated history, possessing, indeed, by force of circumstances, so limited a field of view that they were obliged, if they would record anything at all, to record the actions mainly of kings and princes. But, true as this is, it is a truth which it is easy to exaggerate; for even the most courtly of historians, the most devoted of biographers preserves some particulars showing the real under- current of national history, and besides the biographers we have large quantities of legal and other documents which are of far wider than mere antiquarian interest. 

From a comparison of such remains it is possible to get a notion of national life and development, separated from the mere adventures of kings, and from the noise and tumult of wars, and the minute investigations of births, deaths, and marriages. Well, in pursuance of some such idea, we have, in the preceding volume, read the history of Germany down to the reign of Frederick II., and the following are some of the results that we have reached, such as it is necessary to recapitulate for our guidance, and for the connection of the history of the period to which we are now come.