George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

A little more than a hundred years after this hasty submissiveness of an inexperienced, imbecile, and dissolute ruler, even Red-Beard, the wise and powerful Frederic the First, acquiesced in the necessity of giving up his long and fruitless struggle; and at Venice, in the maturity of his years, surrendered to the pope.

This victory over the mightiest of the Roman emperors of the German nation could not have been won by the Roman pontiffs, unless right had in some degree been on their side.¹ In contending against the absolute power of the emperor over conscience, they were contending for that which God loves most,— for the sacred rights of our race. But the despotism which they justly snatched from the sceptre was sequestered and appropriated to their own benefit. When dominion over conscience was wrested from Caesar, the work was but half done: the pope should have laid it down at the feet of his fellow-men, and consummated the emancipation of every mind.

Was there nowhere in Christendom a selfdepend-ent people capable of claiming its birthright? In this contest between emperor and church, the old, free, rural population of Germany, a body of men as ancient as incipient civilization in central Asia, was left without protection; and each century saw more and more their numbers diminished, their rights to the soil impaired, their personal liberties endangered. They had no security against the stronger feudal nobility. They were everywhere oppressed, often