The Germans invented nothing in chivalry, and borrowed nothing from the superior institutions of other countries. At the commencement of the fifteenth century the inferiority of their chivalry was plainly displayed. The German cuirassiers, with whom the Emperor Robert descended into Italy, could not cope with the condottieri of Jacopo Verme, who protected the states of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. It was found that the horses of the Germans were not so well trained as those of the Italians, and the armour of the knights was heavy and unwieldy; and thus the bigoted attachment of the Germans to ancient customs saved Italy from subjugation.[210] The cuirassiers of Germany were equally impotent against the hardy peasantry of Switzerland. [Sidenote: Its influence on imperial manners.] Though not in the public history, yet in what may be called the manners, of the empire, there was one great chivalric feature. The dignity of service was strikingly displayed. The proudest nobles were the servants of the Emperor, his butler, his falconer, his marshal, his chamberlain; and, insensibly, as every student of German history knows, the principal officers of state usurped from the other nobles the right of electing the Emperor. [Sidenote: Intolerance and cruelty of German knights.] Chivalry was chiefly known in Germany as the embodying of a ferocious spirit of religious persecution. The nation, therefore, embarked in the crusades to the Holy Land with fierceness, unchecked by chivalric gallantry, and recklessly poured out its best blood in the chace of a phantom. Prussia, and other countries at the north of Germany, were tardy in embracing Christianity; and the sword became the instrument of conversion. The Teutonic knights were particularly active in this pious work, when the Mamlouk Tartars had driven them from Palestine. In other countries, the defence of the church, and hostilities against infidels, though considered as knightly duties, were not protruded beyond other obligations: but in Germany, so prominently were they placed, that a cavalier used to hold himself bound, by his general oath of chivalry, to prepare for battle the moment of a war being declared, either against infidels or heretics.[211] The German knight differed in character from the knight of other countries, though his education was similar. The course of that education is detailed in one of the most interesting German poems, the Das Heldenbuch, or Book of Heroes. "The princes young, were taught to protect all ladies fair, Priests they bad them honour, and to the mass repair; All holy Christian lore were they taught, I plight: Hughdietrick and his noble queen caused priests to guide them right. Bechtung taught them knightly games; on the warhorse firm to sit; To leap, and to defend them; rightly the mark to hit; Cunningly to give the blow, and to throw the lance afar: Thence the victory they gain'd, in many a bloody war.