in military affairs, a treaty made between the inhabitants or garrison of a place besieged besieged and the besiegers, for the delivering up the place on certain conditions. The most honourable and ordinary terms of capitulation are, To march out at the breach with arms and baggage, drums beating, colours flying, a match lighted at both ends, and some pieces of cannon, waggons and convoys for their baggage, and for their sick and wounded.

the German polity, a contract which the emperor makes with the electors, in the name of all the princes and states in the empire, before he is declared emperor, and which he ratifies before he is raised to that sovereign dignity. The principal points which the emperor undertakes to observe are,

1. To defend the church and empire. 2. To observe the fundamental laws of the empire. 3. To maintain and preserve the rights, privileges, and immunities of the electors, princes, and other states of the empire, specified in the capitulation. These articles and capitulations are presented to the emperor by the electors only, without the concurrence of the other states, who have complained from time to time of such proceedings; and in the time of the Westphalian treaty, in 1648, it was proposed to deliberate in the following diet, upon a way of making a perpetual capitulation; but the electors have always found means of eluding the execution of this article. In order, however, to give some satisfaction to their adversaries, they have inserted in the capitulations of the emperors, and in that of Francis I., in particular, a promise to use all their influence to bring the affair of a perpetual capitulation to a conclusion. Some German authors own, that this capitulation limits the emperor's power; but maintain that it does not weaken his sovereignty: though the most part maintain that he is not absolute, because he receives the empire under conditions, which sets bounds to an absolute authority.