breaking points.....................

Thus a population of twenty-one millions depended for its government on more than two thousand separate authorities.  The lesser nobility, the knights and free tenants of the Emperor formed confederations among themselves where they were thickest on the ground, or came to an understanding with the chief administrator of the surrounding province where they were few.  Yet even making allowances for such arrangements there were over three hundred potentially conflicting authorities in Germany.

 Imperial power rested ultimately not on the constitution but on force. . . .

     Empty as was the imperial title in 1618, the dynasty had not abandoned the hope of restoring to it the reality of power.  With a people as traditional as the Germans a lurking respect for the person of the Emperor was always to be found even among the most rabid exponents of the 'German Liberties'—a feeling which an intelligent Emperor could often exploit.

     'The German Liberties' was a phrase which had become popular in the sixteenth century.  It stood in theory for the constitutional rights of the individual rulers of the Empire, in fact for anything which the caprice or interest of the princes dictated, a bald truth which does not derogate from the personal sincerity with which most of them believed in their own motives.  In the smaller group of authoritarians which centered about the Emperor, the corresponding rallying cry was 'Justice'; the emphasis was on government here, on independence there.  Ultimately there must come a breaking point.

-C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War