Intermission

Will try to write something about Cracow, or the season premiere of Damages, or both, at some point, but right now I should really be working, so instead here's a glance at what is probably my favorite political entity of all time:

At the end of the eighteenth century, the Germanies, as they were then called, were composed of an infinite number of territories, some of them fairly large, most of them minute. Their masters, who were absolute monarchs as far as their subjects were concerned, were themselves dependent on an elected emperor, the head of the Holy Roman Empire of Germany. In the past the Holy Roman Emperor, who was the virtual heir to the crown of Charlemagne, had possessed undeniable power, but since the treaty of Westphalia [ending the Thirty Years' War in 1648] his real strength had declined to the point where it was no more than a moral authority which made him, like the pope, one of the spiritual masters of Europe. This elective sovereignty had moreover become hereditary in the house of Austria, the most powerful dynasty within the Holy Roman Empire and the only one which commanded sufficient prestige to earn the votes of the great electors. [They] were nine in number (six lay: Bavaria, Bohemia, Saxony, Brandenburg, the Palatinate, Hanover; and three ecclesiastical: Maine, Cologne, Trier-Coblenz) (...)

The Holy Roman Empire had tried its best to unite the Germanies, so different from one another that the only link between them was the post conducted by the house of Turn und Taxis, in blue coaches which ran non-stop across the vast empire. The princes of Turn und Taxis, grand masters of the Posts since the early sixteenth century, earned from this privilege one of the most considerable fortunes of the period. It allowed them to indulge in ostentation far greater than monarchs with greater possessions could afford.

The electorates represented the great powers but there existed as well nearly eight hundred countries. Many only extended over a few square miles but possessed rights as deserving of respect as those of Bavaria or Saxony. The empire was divided into ten circles, and the circle of Swabia alone, for example, included ninety-seven sovereigns, four ecclasiastical princes, fourteen secular princes, twenty-three prelates, twenty-five members of the ban of nobles and thirty imperial cities. Some principalities did not possess a thousand inhabitants, but they considered that their princess, who often lived like modest country gentlemen, equalled the greatest monarchs on earth. They greeted them with remarks of the greatest respect: 'Your most serene pigs have condescended to eat my humble potatoes,' a peasant said to one of these potentates.

Having read all that, can you really blame me for hating Bismarck?