It is worth while to place beside this the first stanza of Schiller's ballad, _Der Graf von Hapsburg_, in which the coronation feast of Rudolf is described:-- 'Zu Aachen in seiner Kaiserpracht Im alterthümlichen Saale, Sass König Rudolphs heilige Macht Beim festlichen Krönungsmahle. Die Speisen trug der Pfalzgraf des Rheins, Es schenkte der Böhme des perlenden Weins, Und alle die Wähler, die Sieben, Wie der Sterne Chor um die Sonne sich stellt, Umstanden geschäftig den Herrscher der Welt, Die Würde des Amtes zu üben.' It is a poetical licence, however (as Schiller himself admits), to bring the Bohemian there, for King Ottocar was far away at home, mortified at his own rejection, and already meditating war. [276] The electoral prince (Kurfürst) of Hessen-Cassel. His retention of the title has this advantage, that it enables the Germans readily to distinguish electoral Hesse (Kur-Hessen) from the Grand Duchy (Hessen-Darmstadt) and the landgraviate (Hessen Homburg). [Since the above was written (in 1865) this last relic of the electoral system has passed away, the Elector of Hessen having been dethroned in 1866, and his territories (to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants, whom he had worried by a long course of petty tyrannies) annexed to the Prussian kingdom, along with Hanover, Nassau, and the free city of Frankfort. Count Bismarck, as he raises his master nearer and nearer to the position of a Germanic Emperor, destroys one by one the historical memorials of that elder Empire which people had learned to associate with the Austrian house.] [277] Goethe, whose imagination was wonderfully attracted by the splendours of the old Empire, has given in the second part of _Faust_ a sort of fancy sketch of the origin of the great offices and the territorial independence of the German princes. Two lines express concisely the fiscal rights granted by the Emperor to the electors:-- 'Dann Steuer Zins und Beed, Lehn und Geleit und Zoll, Berg-, Salz- und Münz-regal euch angehören soll.' [278] This line is said to be as old as the time of Otto III. CHAPTER XV. THE EMPIRE AS AN INTERNATIONAL POWER. [Sidenote: Theory of the Roman Empire in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.]