The immediate vassals of the Empire, in fact, were almost independent sovereigns, like the Dukes of Normandy in the France of the tenth century, or the Dukes of Burgundy in the France of the fifteenth century. They quarrelled and made war with one another like the Kings of England and France. Their own vassals, their own peasants, their own towns could only reach the Emperor through them, if anybody thought it worth while to reach him at all. [Sidenote: § 8. Prospect of order.] The prospect of reviving the German kingship which was veiled under the august title of Emperor seemed far distant at the beginning of the fifteenth century. But whilst the Empire, in its old sense, with its claims to universal dominion, was a dream, this German kingship needed but wisdom in the occupant of the throne to seize the national feeling, which was certain sooner or later to call out for a national ruler, in order to clothe itself in all the authority which was needed for the maintenance of the unity and the safety of the German people. That, when the time came, the man to grasp the opportunity was not there, was the chief amongst the causes of that unhappy tragedy of disunion which culminated in the Thirty Years' War. [Sidenote: § 9. Attempts to introduce order.] In the middle of the fifteenth century an effort was made to introduce a system of regular assemblies, under the name of a Diet, in order to stem the tide of anarchy. But it never entered into the mind of the wisest statesman living to summon any general representation of the people. In the old feudal assemblies no one had taken part who was not an immediate vassal of the Empire, and the Diet professed to be only a more regular organization of the old feudal assemblies. [Sidenote: § 10. The Diet, or general assemblies of the Empire.] From the Diet, therefore, all subjects of the territorial princes were rigorously excluded. Whatever their wishes or opinions might be, they had neither part nor lot in the counsels of the nation. There was nothing in the Diet answering to those representatives of English counties, men not great enough to assume the state of independent princes, nor small enough to be content simply to register without question the decrees of those in authority who with us did more than any other class to cement town and country, king and people together. Nor did even the less powerful of the immediate vassals take part in the meetings. Like the lesser barons of the early Plantagenet reigns, they slipped out of a position to which they seemed to have a right by the fact that they held their few square miles of land as directly from the Emperor as the Dukes of Bavaria or the Electors of Saxony held the goodly principalities over which they ruled. [Sidenote: § 11. The princes care little for the Diet.]