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_. ♦Scattered territories of the House of Habsburg.♦ 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. ♦Connexion of Austria with the Empire.♦ 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.