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48-577: The Heilbronn League was formed in the Free Imperial City of Heilbronn , on 23 April 1633, during the Thirty Years' War . Led by Sweden , it brought together various Protestant states in western and northern Germany. It was supported by Saxony and Brandenburg-Prussia , although they were not members. Established following the death of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden at Lützen , in November 1632, it

96-470: A Protestant victory, the death of Gustavus Adolphus weakened their cause overall. As Gustavus was succeeded by his six-year-old daughter Christina , chancellor Axel Oxenstierna took over direction of policy. After ensuring control of the army, his next step was replacing the previous loose alliance with a more formal structure; this was driven by a perceived need to stabilise the Swedish state and doubts over

144-495: A considerable time, even though no formal right to independence existed. These cities were typically located in small territories where the ruler was weak. They were the exception among the multitude of territorial towns and cities. Cities of both latter categories normally had representation in territorial diets , but not in the Imperial Diet. Free imperial cities were not officially admitted as individual Imperial Estates to

192-590: A few cases, such as in Cologne, the former ecclesiastical lord continued to claim the right to exercise some residual feudal privileges over the Free City, a claim that gave rise to constant litigation almost until the end of the Empire. Over time, the difference between Imperial Cities and Free Cities became increasingly blurred, so that they became collectively known as "Free Imperial Cities", or "Free and Imperial Cities", and by

240-553: A mixture of religious support for fellow Protestants, and acquiring Swedish Pomerania in order to control the lucrative Baltic trade . It was financed by France , concerned by Imperial gains on its eastern border in the Rhineland . The coalition won a series of battles against the German Catholic League , culminating in November 1632 with Lützen , in the modern German state of Saxony-Anhalt . Although generally held to be

288-533: A return to pre-1618 borders. With limited support from Saxony and Brandenburg, the coalition won a series of victories against the Catholic League . Imperial victory at Nördlingen in 1634 re-established a military balance and gave Ferdinand another chance to make peace. The League and its supporters had different priorities. To strengthen its borders in the Rhineland and the Low Countries , France supported

336-425: A say in the government of the city, were the citizens or burghers, the smaller, privileged section of the city's permanent population whose number varied according to the rule of citizenship of each city. There were exceptions, such as Nuremberg , where the patriciate ruled alone. To the common town dweller – whether he lived in a prestigious Free Imperial City like Frankfurt, Augsburg or Nuremberg, or in

384-438: A small market town such as there were hundreds throughout Germany – attaining burgher status ( Bürgerrecht ) could be his greatest aim in life. The burgher status was usually an inherited privilege renewed pro-forma in each generation of the family concerned but it could also be purchased. At times, the sale of burgher status could be a significant item of town income as fiscal records show. The Bürgerrecht

432-594: A state after the war due to its special position in divided post-war Germany. Regensburg was, apart from hosting the Imperial Diet , a most peculiar city: an officially Lutheran city that was the seat of the Catholic prince-bishopric of Regensburg, its prince-bishop and cathedral chapter. The Imperial City also housed three Imperial abbeys: St. Emmeram , Niedermünster and Obermünster . They were five immediate entities fully independent of each other existing in

480-427: Is now Switzerland with cities like Bern, Zürich and Luzern, but also cities like Ulm, Nuremberg and Hamburg in what is now Germany possessed substantial hinterlands or fiefs that comprised dozens of villages and thousands of subject peasants who did not enjoy the same rights as the urban population. At the opposite end, the authority of Cologne, Aachen, Worms, Goslar, Wetzlar, Augsburg and Regensburg barely extended beyond

528-559: The Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The three other Free Cities became constituent states of the new German Empire in 1871 and consequently were no longer fully sovereign as they lost control over defence, foreign affairs and a few other fields. They retained that status in the Weimar Republic and into Nazi Germany , although under Hitler it became purely notional. Due to Hitler's distaste for Lübeck and its liberal tradition,

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576-518: The Catholic Church , effectively undoing the settlement agreed in the 1555 Peace of Augsburg . In addition, instead of paying wages, Ferdinand allowed his armies to plunder any territories they passed through, including those of his allies. The combination led Saxony and Brandenburg-Prussia to join Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden , when he invaded the Empire in 1630. Swedish intervention was

624-557: The Imperial Diet until 1489, and even then their votes were usually considered only advisory ( votum consultativum ) compared to the benches of the electors and princes. The cities divided themselves into two groups, or benches, in the Imperial Diet, the Rhenish and the Swabian benches. These same cities were among the 85 free imperial cities listed on the Reichsmatrikel of 1521,

672-659: The Perpetual Imperial Diet was located, were represented by various Regensburg lawyers and officials who often represented several cities simultaneously. Instead, many cities found it more profitable to maintain agents at the Aulic Council in Vienna, where the risk of an adverse judgment posed a greater risk to city treasuries and independence. The territory of most Free Imperial Cities was generally quite small but there were exceptions. The largest territories formed in what

720-623: The 1629 Edict, but he saw a chance to recoup his losses by military means and missed the opportunity. In March, Oxenstierna invited members of the Upper Rhenish , Lower Rhenish–Westphalian , Swabian and Franconian Circles to Heilbronn . Although efforts to recruit the Hansa cities failed, the League was formed on 27 April 1633. France resumed payment of subsidies on 7 April; crucially, these were paid direct to Sweden, assuring its control. Oxenstierna

768-499: The 50 free imperial cities that took part in the Imperial Diet of 1792. They are listed according to their voting order on the Rhenish and Swabian benches. By the time of the Peace of Westphalia, the cities constituted a formal third "college" and their full vote ( votum decisivum ) was confirmed, although they failed to secure parity of representation with the two other colleges. To avoid

816-584: The Diet could vote a second and a third simplum , in which case each member's contribution was doubled or tripled. At the time, the free imperial cities were considered wealthy and the monetary contribution of Nuremberg, Ulm and Cologne for instance were as high as that of the Electors ( Mainz , Trier , Cologne , Palatinate , Saxony , Brandenburg ) and the Dukes of Württemberg and of Lorraine . The following list contains

864-618: The Duke of Württemberg ; meetings of the circle's diet were usually held at the Imperial city of Ulm . Though it was shattered into a multitude of mainly very small states, the circle had an effective government, which, in view of the eastward expansion of France , from 1694 on even maintained its own army based at the Kehl fortress. As of 1792 the Swabian Circle consisted of 88 territories, of which only

912-721: The Dutch, Swedish competitors in the Baltic, and agreed the May 1631 Treaty of Fontainebleau with Maximilian of Bavaria , Ferdinand's ally and Sweden's opponent in the Rhineland campaign of 1633–34. Sweden sought to preserve its grip on the Baltic Sea and retain Swedish Pomerania. Their German allies wanted to restore the territorial position of 1618, effectively negating gains by France and Sweden. By

960-573: The Empire was slower than that of the secular and ecclesiastical princes. In the course of the 13th and 14th centuries, some cities were promoted by the emperor to the status of Imperial Cities ( Reichsstädte ; Urbes imperiales ), essentially for fiscal reasons. Those cities, which had been founded by the German kings and emperors in the 10th through 13th centuries and had initially been administered by royal/imperial stewards ( Vögte ), gradually gained independence as their city magistrates assumed

1008-707: The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806. By 1811, all of the Imperial Cities had lost their independence – Augsburg and Nuremberg had been annexed by Bavaria , Frankfurt had become the center of the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt , a Napoleonic puppet state , and the three Hanseatic cities had been directly annexed by France as part of its effort to enforce the Continental Blockade against Britain. Hamburg and Lübeck with surrounding territories formed

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1056-622: The Reformation, and of the sixty Free Imperial Cities that remained at the Peace of Westphalia , all but the ten Alsatian cities which were annexed by France during the late 17th century continued to exist until the mediatization of 1803. The Empire had approximately 4000 towns and cities, although fewer than 400 of these had more than a thousand inhabitants around the year 1600. During the Late Middle Ages, fewer than 200 of these places ever enjoyed

1104-633: The areas west of the Rhine were annexed to France by the revolutionary armies, suppressing the independence of Imperial Cities as diverse as Cologne, Aachen, Speyer and Worms. Then, the Napoleonic Wars led to the reorganization of the Empire in 1803 (see German Mediatisation ), where all of the free cities but six – Hamburg , Bremen , Lübeck , Frankfurt, Augsburg , and Nuremberg  – lost their independence and were absorbed into neighboring territories. Under pressure from Napoleon,

1152-420: The case of Hamburg in 1708, the situation was considered sufficiently serious to warrant the dispatch of an Imperial commissioner with troops to restore order and negotiate a compromise and a new city constitution between the warring parties. The number of Imperial Cities shrank over time until the Peace of Westphalia. There were more in areas that were very fragmented politically, such as Swabia and Franconia in

1200-442: The city walls. The constitution of Free and Imperial Cities was republican in form, but in all but the smallest cities, the city government was oligarchic in nature with a governing town council composed of an elite, hereditary patrician class, the so-called town council families ( Ratsverwandte ). They were the most economically significant burgher families who had asserted themselves politically over time. Below them, with

1248-563: The city was temporary, such as wintering noblemen, foreign merchants, princely officials, and so on. Urban conflicts in Free Imperial Cities, which sometimes amounted to class warfare, were not uncommon in the Early Modern Age, particularly in the 17th century (Lübeck, 1598–1669; Schwäbisch Hall, 1601–1604; Frankfurt, 1612–1614; Wezlar, 1612–1615; Erfurt, 1648–1664; Cologne, 1680–1685; Hamburg 1678–1693, 1702–1708). Sometimes, as in

1296-498: The course of the Middle Ages, cities gained, and sometimes – if rarely – lost, their freedom through the vicissitudes of power politics. Some favored cities gained charters by gift. Others purchased one from a prince in need of funds. Some won it by force of arms during the troubled 13th and 14th centuries and others lost their privileges during the same period by the same way. Some cities became free through

1344-507: The diminutive Free Imperial City of Isny was the equal of the Margraviate of Brandenburg . Having probably learned from experience that there was not much to gain from active, and costly, participation in the Imperial Diet's proceedings due to the lack of empathy of the princes, the cities made little use of their representation in that body. By about 1700, almost all the cities with the exception of Nuremberg, Ulm and Regensburg, where by then

1392-464: The duties of administration and justice; some prominent examples are Colmar , Haguenau , and Mulhouse in Alsace or Memmingen and Ravensburg in upper Swabia . The Free Cities ( Freie Städte ; Urbes liberae ) were those, such as Basel , Augsburg , Cologne or Strasbourg , that were initially subjected to a prince-bishop and, likewise, progressively gained independence from that lord. In

1440-569: The département of Bouches-de-l'Elbe , and Bremen the Bouches-du-Weser . When the German Confederation was established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, and Frankfurt were once again made Free Cities, this time enjoying total sovereignty as all the members of the loose Confederation. Frankfurt was annexed by Prussia in consequence of the part it took in

1488-529: The end of 1633, Ferdinand had accepted Catholicism could not be re-imposed by force. With the Lutheran states of Denmark-Norway and Hesse-Darmstadt acting as mediators, in November 1634, he agreed a preliminary draft with John George, known as the 'Pirnaer Noteln'. While subject to many corrections and revisions, this became the basis of the 1635 Peace of Prague , which dissolved the Catholic and Heilbronn leagues. Free Imperial City An imperial city held

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1536-503: The imperial civil and military tax-schedule used for more than a century to assess the contributions of all the Imperial Estates in case of a war formally declared by the Imperial Diet. The military and monetary contribution of each city is indicated in parentheses. For instance Cologne (30-322-600) means that Cologne had to provide 30 horsemen, 322 footsoldiers and 600 gulden. These numbers are equivalent to one simplum . If need be,

1584-756: The lands of the Alsace region west of the Rhine , which belonged to the Upper Rhenish Circle . The Swabian League of 1488, a predecessor organization, disbanded in the course of the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years War later in the 16th century. The directors of the Swabian Circle were the Bishop of Constance (replaced by the margrave of Baden after the 1803 Reichsdeputationshauptschluss ) and

1632-552: The late 15th century, many cities included both "Free" and "Imperial" in their name. Like the other Imperial Estates, they could wage war, make peace, and control their own trade, and they permitted little interference from outside. In the later Middle Ages, a number of Free Cities formed City Leagues ( Städtebünde ), such as the Hanseatic League or the Alsatian Décapole , to promote and defend their interests. In

1680-530: The need was devised to compensate Prussia for territorial losses under the Greater Hamburg Act , and Lübeck was annexed to Prussia in 1937. In the Federal Republic of Germany which was established after the war, Bremen and Hamburg, but not Lübeck, became constituent states , a status which they retain to the present day. Berlin , which had never been a Free City in its history, received the status of

1728-560: The possibility that they would have the casting vote in case of a tie between the Electors and the Princes, it was decided that these should decide first and consult the cities afterward. Despite this somewhat unequal status of the cities in the functioning of the Imperial Diet, their full admittance to that federal institution was crucial in clarifying their hitherto uncertain status and in legitimizing their permanent existence as full-fledged Imperial Estates. Constitutionally, if in no other way,

1776-636: The reliability of his allies. Swedish Pomerania blocked Brandenburg's own commercial ambitions in the Baltic Sea , while Saxony's ruler, Elector John George , considered Sweden as great a threat as the Imperial armies. After Lützen, John George proposed a summit of German Protestants in Dresden , to negotiate a pact of neutrality, while France suspended its subsidy payments to Sweden, and awaited developments. Advisors urged Ferdinand to take advantage of this and reverse

1824-589: The same small city. Swabian Circle The Circle of Swabia or Swabian Circle ( German : Schwäbischer Reichskreis or Schwäbischer Kreis ) was an Imperial Circle of the Holy Roman Empire established in 1500 on the territory of the former German stem-duchy of Swabia . However, it did not include the Habsburg home territories of Swabian Austria , the member states of the Swiss Confederacy nor

1872-705: The southwest, than in the North and the East where the larger and more powerful territories, such as Brandenburg and Saxony, were located, which were more prone to absorb smaller, weaker states. In the 16th and 17th century, a number of Imperial Cities were separated from the Empire due to external territorial change. Henry II of France seized the Imperial Cities connected to the Three Bishoprics of Metz , Verdun and Toul . Louis XIV seized many cities based on claims produced by his Chambers of Reunion . That way, Strasbourg and

1920-512: The status of imperial immediacy , and was subordinate only to the Holy Roman Emperor , as opposed to a territorial city or town ( Landstadt ), which was subordinate to a territorial prince  – be it an ecclesiastical lord ( prince-bishop , prince-abbot ), or a secular prince ( duke ( Herzog ), margrave , count ( Graf ), etc.). The evolution of some German cities into self-ruling constitutional entities of

1968-580: The status of Free Imperial Cities, and some of those did so only for a few decades. The Imperial military tax register ( Reichsmatrikel ) of 1521 listed eighty-five such cities, and this figure had fallen to 65 by the time of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. From the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 to 1803, their number oscillated at around 50. Unlike the Free Imperial Cities, the second category of towns and cities, now called "territorial cities", were subject to an ecclesiastical or lay lord, and while many of them enjoyed self-government to varying degrees, this

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2016-596: The ten cities of the Décapole were annexed. When the Old Swiss Confederacy gained its formal independence from the Empire in 1648, it had been de facto independent since 1499, the independence of the Imperial Cities of Basel , Bern , Lucerne , St. Gallen , Schaffhausen , Solothurn , and Zürich was formally recognized. With the rise of Revolutionary France in Europe, this trend accelerated enormously. After 1795,

2064-628: The void created by the extinction of dominant families, like the Swabian Hohenstaufen . Some voluntarily placed themselves under the protection of a territorial ruler and therefore lost their independence. A few, like Protestant Donauwörth , which in 1607 was annexed to the Catholic Duchy of Bavaria , were stripped by the Emperor of their status as a Free City – for genuine or trumped-up reasons. This rarely happened after

2112-451: Was a precarious privilege which might be curtailed or abolished according to the will of the lord. Reflecting the complex constitutional set-up of the Holy Roman Empire, a third category, composed of semi-autonomous cities that belonged to neither of those two types, is distinguished by some historians. These were cities whose size and economic strength was sufficient to sustain a substantial independence from surrounding territorial lords for

2160-505: Was appointed League Director, with an absolute veto over military affairs; he was supported by a council of ten advisors, three of whom were Swedes, the others being long-time supporters like Count Solms-Hohensolms. The members agreed to fund an army of 78,000, although in reality they provided less than a third of the money needed; the Germans agreed to continue fighting until Sweden obtained 'just compensation', while Oxenstierna promised to ensure

2208-408: Was directed by Sweden, with France providing financial support. Despite competing priorities and objectives, the League achieved considerable success, before its defeat at Nördlingen in November 1634. This provided an opportunity for Emperor Ferdinand to negotiate with his Protestant opponents. The Peace of Prague largely ended conflict between members of the Holy Roman Empire , and the League

2256-803: Was dissolved. However, fighting in Germany continued until 1648, much of it driven by foreign powers including France, Sweden, the Dutch Republic and Spain . Many German Protestants remained neutral in the early stages of the Thirty Years' War , which began in Bohemia , then expanded after 1620 into the Palatinate . This changed in 1629, when Emperor Ferdinand passed the Edict of Restitution , requiring any property transferred since 1552 to be returned to its original owners. In nearly every case, this meant from Protestant to

2304-429: Was local and not transferable to another city. The burghers were usually the lowest social group to have political power and privilege within the Holy Roman Empire. Below them was the disenfranchised urban population, maybe half of the total in many cities, the so-called "residents" ( Beisassen ) or "guests": smaller artisans, craftsmen, street venders, day laborers, servants and the poor, and those whose residence in

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