But the effective centralizing principle was not represented by the Emperor, for he stood for what was after all largely a sham centralism, because it was a centralism on a scale for which the Germanic world was not ripe.

Princes and margraves were destined to be bearers of the _territorial_ centralization, the only real one to which the German peoples were to attain for a long time to come.

Accordingly, just as the provincial _grand seigneur_ of France became the courtier of the King at Paris or Versailles, so the previously quasi-independent German knight or baron became the courtier or hanger-on of the prince within or near whose territory his hereditary manor was situate.
The eventful year 1525 was truly a landmark in German history in many ways--the year of one of the most accredited exploits of Doctor Faustus, the last mythical hero the progressive races have created; the year in which Martin Luther, the ex-monk, capped his repudiation of Catholicism and all its ways by marrying an ex-nun; the year of the definite victory of Charles V.the German Emperor, over Francis I.the French King, which meant the final assertion of the "Holy Roman Empire" as being a national German institution; and last, but not least, the year of the greatest and the most widespread popular movement Central Europe had yet seen, and the last of the mediaeval peasant risings on a large scale.

The movement of the eventful year did not, however, as many hoped and many feared, within any short time rise up again from its ashes, after discomfiture had overtaken it.

In 1526, it is true, the genius of Gaismayr succeeded in resuscitating it, not without prospect of ultimate success, in the Tyrol and other of the Austrian territories.