Germany

an indefinite geographical expression. In its original sense it was applied to that portion of Europe inhabited chiefly by Germans. At present there is a tendency to restrict the term to the German Empire. This excludes Austria, one of the most intensely Germanic parts of Europe. In this later and political sense, it includes provinces peopled by Poles, Scandinavians, French, and other foreign elements. The restriction of the terms America and American to the territory and people of the United States may be mentioned as a parallel case. See German Empire; Vienna

Occupying the greater portion of central Europe, Germany is, in political respects the most unfavorably located country in the world. Nowhere protected by such natural boundaries as large rivers or high mountain-ranges, which would block the way of enemies, but easily accessible and vulnerable on all sides, Germany has been, since remotest times, the object of hostile assaults. For a period of four hundred years the German tribes were compelled to defend their independence from the Romans. Later came the horrible invasion by the Huns; the piracies by the Northmen; the frequent attacks by the Magyars, Mongols, and Turks. During the Thirty Years' War Germany served as the great battle-ground for Spanish, Swedish, Italian, and Hungarian troops, who reduced the population from seventeen to four millions and made the country an almost uninhabitable desert. In Saxony, during the two years 1631 and 1632, 943,000 persons were killed or swept away by sickness. In Wurtemberg over 500,000 lost their lives, and 8 cities, 45 towns, 65 churches, and 36,000 houses were burned. The Palatinate, having at that time a population of 500,000, suffered a loss of 457,000, and in some parts of Thuringia more than ninety per cent. of the population perished. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought the frequent raids by the French, who left the ruins of hundreds of beautiful castles on the Rhine, Moselle, and Neckar as lasting monuments of their visits. The beginning of the nineteenth century saw the onslaught of that monstrous adventurer Napoleon I, by whom Germany was humiliated as never before. The imperial mantle was torn into shreds and stamped into the dust. The German kingdoms and states were given by Napoleon as presents to his relatives and favorites, who made the German cities ring with their gay life.--Rudolph Cronau, in Mc-Clure's.