Confederation of Germania (Superpowers)

The Foederites Germanorum (English: Confederation of Germania) was an alliance of Germanic and Sarmatian kingdoms that existed in the wake of the Huns' forced migration from Magna Germania. Although never united in the sense of a state, the Confederation had sufficient military and financial unity to be recognized as a political entity.

From the beginning, it existed solely as a means for a group of kings to have allies that could be relied upon should Rome or one of the fabled oriental nomadic empires encroach upon the territory they had inherited from the Huns. Motives of fear and the possibility of becoming High King kept the Confederation together for a century and a half, after which a few kingdoms became powerful enough in their own rights to strike out on their own, breaking it into multiple independent kingdoms.

The remainder of the Confederation would persist for several centuries as a more coherent union of kingdoms, struggling to survive in the face of rival Germanic kingdoms and the Sarmatian Empire. Among these kingdoms were the Kingdom of Bavaria, Kingdom of Bohemia, Suebian Kingdom, Thoringian Kingdom, and Ostrogothic Kingdom. The rest of its land fell under the free cantons of minor feudal lords.

From inception to fragmentation, the Confederation nearly quadrupled in population as its kingdoms settled into organized agriculture and towns developed around the manors of feudal lords.

Government
The basic unit of the Confederation was the pagis (canton), a plot of land owned by a man of high birth. Originally, nobility of birth meant that the person descended from a chieftain who swore his allegiance to a king but these families often lost their lands to new-made lords when their appointment suited the king. Variations on the canton existed in different parts of the Confederation, from the strict delineation of land for each lord in the Kingdom of Lombardy to the loose affiliation of grazing grounds with a horse lord in the Avar Khaganate.

Some cantons were their own sovereign territory, with their lord owing fealty to no king. These lords were known as Aguste and their cantons were called Agusties, as a loan from the Latin Augustus. Those agusties that survived more than a century tended to be built on highly defensible land and to have a fortified capital with a large population.

A King was seen as above his lords in religious and military authority. The latter allowed a king to maintain his power against other kings or unfaithful lords, since it implied his right to levy an army. Similarly, the status of Kaisar Germanik (High King of the Germans) implied the authority to levy troops from all the Germanic lords, a truly great power at the height of the Confederation. A Kaisar was a king elected by the appointed priests and princes of all the kingdoms and agusties through their Concile Germanik (Assembly of the Germans). In this way, he filled the same roles as a king only across a wider range of feudal lords (in particular, receiving taxes from kings who had received taxes from lords who had received taxes from the peasantry). Therefore, a king who was elected as High King would possess extraordinary revenue during his reign, permitting more impressive public works than regular kings could afford.