Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/196

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1 60 GERMANY BRUNSWICK.

of 1,121 thaler. The budget estimates for 1869, on the other hand, based on about the same amount of revenue and expenditure, exhibited a deficit of 1(57,000 thaler. The chief item of revenue is from customs, and next to it, from the produce of State property ; while in expenditure the army, the civil list, and the interest of the public debt cost the largest sums. The debt amounted, at the beginning of 1869, to 7,969,000 thaler, or 1,195,350/.

The area of Oldenburg embraces 2,417 square miles, with a population, according to the census of Dec. 3, 1867, of 315,622 inhabitants. Of these, 241,381 were Protestants, 72,077 Roman Catholics, and 1,527 Jews. Emigration carries off annually large numbers of the inhabitants of the Grand-duchy.

IX. BRUNSWICK.

(Herzogthuji Braunschweig.)

Reigning Sovereign and Family.

Wilhelm I., Duke of Brunswick, born April 25, 1806, the second son of Duke Friedrich "Wilhelm of Brunswick, and of Princess Marie of Baden. Undertook provisionally the Government of Brunswick in consequence of the insurrection of September 7, 1830, and subsequent flight of his brother, the reigning Duke, October 12, 1830; ascended the throne, April 25, 1831.

Brother of the Duke. — Duke Karl, born October 30, 1804, the eldest son of Duke Friedrich Wilhelm of Brunswick; succeeded his father, under the guardianship of the Prince-Regent, afterwards King George IV. of Great Britain, June 16, 1815; ascended the throne October 30, 1823. Fled the duchy on the breaking out of a riot at the city of Brunswick, September 8, 1830 ; was declared ' regierungsunf ahig,' or ' unfit to govern,' by a resolution of the German Diet, December 2, 1830.

The ducal house of Brunswick, now on the point of becoming extinct, the two only representatives of the family being unmarried and sexagenarians, was long one of the most ancient and illustrious of the Germanic Confederation. Its ancestor, Henry the Lion, possessed, in the twelfth century, the united duchies of Bavaria and Saxony, with other territories in the north of Germany ; but having refused to aid the Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa in his wars with the Pope, he was, by a decree of the Diet, deprived of the whole of his territories with the sole exception of his allodial domains, the principalities of Brunswick and Luneburg. Their pos- sessions were, on the death of Ernest the Confessor, divided between