The Prussian school writes German history as if it were the development of a single idea, the evolution of a movement which, beginning in the Middle Ages, goes on down to the unification of Germany achieved by Bismarck, and, starting from the first German Emperor, Charlemagne, comes to a head in the Kings of Prussia, the present emperors. According to this theory, the Hohenzollern Empire is not a new creation, but a new phase of a primeval sovereignty. After the division of Charlemagne’s heritage, the first reconstruction of his empire was the work of the Ottonian dynasty—a work carried on by the Henries and brought to its zenith by the Hohenstaufen. For three and a half centuries of almost ceaseless fighting, Germany was supreme in Europe, and ruled almost a third of the ancient Roman Empire. Frederick Barbarossa, the most popular of these old Cæsars, reigned over Germany, Italy, and the Kingdom of Arles, before perishing in an attempt to add to his titles that of King of Jerusalem. The Germany of the past, say the Prussian historians, is to be revived in the Germany of the future. They are compelled to explain, however, the long decline that, like an arctic night, followed this brilliant epoch. Nothing could be easier. They show us the Germans absorbed from the Middle Ages in the pursuit of a spiritual and religious ideal, solely engaged in rescuing freedom of thought and freedom to interpret the Scriptures from the tyranny of the Church. The noble aim pursued by the Lutheran Reformation could not be realized without internal struggles that drained Germany of her sap for many a long year, while the Imperial sceptre came near to falling from the enfeebled grasp of the Hapsburgs. The fact that the first nation of Europe was devoting all its efforts to solving the religious problem and to establishing its spiritual control on the ruins of Roman superstition, enabled other nations—Spain, France, and England—to fight during that period for the temporal mastery of the world. The Prussian school would have us believe that in this way the Germans were cheated of their destiny. They could not at the same time follow the noblest of all ideals and fulfil their duty as a civilizing force. Without the Reformation, which nevertheless gives them an inestimable claim to the gratitude of the human race, their dominion would now extend from the Straits of Dover to the Bosphorus and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. It would also include vast colonies, for the German mariners would not have let themselves be forestalled by others in the exploration and conquest of the New World.