[p. 512]
Besides this, things of greater significance, the possession of lands and so on, have also been withdrawn from this formality of the Imperial Diet, and by the electoral capitulation and other fundamental laws it is determined that such objects are to be decided not by the courts of the Empire and the supreme judicial power, but by amicable settlement of the contending estates among themselves, and if this does not succeed by amicable settlement, it necessarily takes place through war.
The Jülich-Berg succession affair was so little decided by way of law that it rather occasioned a thirty years’ war. Thus in the Bavarian succession affair in more recent times it was not the courts of the Empire but cannon and politics that spoke. Even in matters concerning less powerful estates it is not the justice of the Empire that delivers the deciding judgement. It is well known that in the succession disputes of the Saxon houses concerning the lands of the extinct lines of Coburg-Eisenberg and Römhild 206 conclusa of the Aulic Council were issued and the most important points were nevertheless decided by settlements. Likewise it was seen that in the Liège affair the Imperial Cameral Court not only pronounced judgement and ordered execution and summoned several estates to it, but that these estates actually fulfilled this obligation. But hardly had the beginning been made when the most powerful estate among the executors was not content to be a mere executor of decisions of the Imperial Cameral Court, but went to work according to its own good intention and, when it did not get through that a decision be made by non-judicial means, gave up the role of executor as well.
If in such a delicate situation of a misunderstanding
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