Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (73 page)

Tax collection methods further reinforced the hierarchy. Immediate fief-holders and magistrates were already identified in 1427 as responsible for collection, and from 1475 were allowed to recoup their expenses from their subjects. Arrangements introduced in 1507 clarified this further, requiring mediate vassals and subjects to pay to immediate ones, who in turn remitted the money to the Reichspfennigmeister. Finally, the 1543 Reichstag exempted princes from personal obligations to pay.
¹¹²

In addition to hierarchy, the Reichstag reflected the associational, corporative element in the Empire’s society by grouping the imperial Estates into three colleges, or
corpora
(bodies), of electors, princes and cities. Religious divisions added two confessional corpora of Protestants and Catholics cutting across all three status groups by the 1520s (see
pp. 128–31
). Membership was determined by the status of imperial fiefs, so that families holding more than one kind of fief might be represented more than once. Both the electoral and princely corpora were additionally subdivided into lay and spiritual ‘benches’, meaning the clergy did not meet together in a separate house, but were split hierarchically between the three ecclesiastical electors and the other church lords sitting with the princes.

Corporatism was strongest amongst the electors, whose corpus was both the smallest and oldest. Already in 1424 the seven electors agreed not to admit further members, but instead to maintain an exclusive pre-eminence over all other princes. However, they were still acutely conscious of their own internal ranking order, which had been fixed in 1356 and appeared frequently around this time in prints showing the emperor in the middle, with the three ecclesiastical electors to his right as seniors, with Mainz closest, then Cologne followed by Trier, and their four secular colleagues to his left in rank order of Bohemia, the Palatinate, Saxony and Brandenburg (see
Plate 21
). Despite their determination to exclude others, the electors had to accept changes imposed
by the Habsburgs. First, the Ernestine Wettins were punished for leading the Protestant Schmalkaldic League by having the Saxon title transferred to their Albertine relations who had backed Charles V in 1547. The Bavarian Wittelsbachs received the Palatine title under similar circumstances during the Thirty Years War in 1623, though the Palatinate was compensated by a new title ranked eighth in 1648. The Bohemian vote was simultaneously suspended to keep the number of electors to the original seven and ensure there was no possibility of a tied vote in imperial elections. Leopold I rewarded the duke of Calenberg (Hanover) with a further new, ninth title in 1692, prompting an angry response from other old princely houses like those in Hessen, Württemberg, Gotha and Brunswick, who all felt unfairly passed over.
¹¹³
The Habsburgs skilfully manipulated princely rivalries to secure not only recognition of the new Hanoverian title, but readmission of the Bohemian vote in 1708 to ensure there remained an uneven number of electors. The Palatinate recovered its original fifth title when it inherited Bavaria in 1778, while the eighth title was abandoned. Later adjustments were made as part of the readjustments accompanying the Empire’s demise around 1803–6 (
Table 6
).

Table 6. Changes in the Electoral College

*as a new secular grand duchy

The princes consistently resented electoral pre-eminence. Already in 1498, Duke Georg of Lower Bavaria successfully led his peers in obliging the electors to lower their dais at the end of the hall so that they would not sit too far above the princes. The cities were even more obviously inferior, as their envoys were always commoners who were confined to the back of the hall and were obliged to stand during parts of the proceedings whereas the others remained seated (see
Plate 26
).
¹¹⁴

Only 281 of the 402 fiefs and cities listed in the 1521 register actually participated in a Reichstag. The others were already slipping into mediate status through their unwillingness or inability to meet the associated fiscal and military burdens (
Table 7
). The reductions were greatest amongst the numerous minor ecclesiastical and secular fiefs, which were obliged to share collective votes (
Kurialstimmen
) rather than exercising full, individual votes (
Virilstimmen
). Although six prelates ‘turned Swiss’, leaving imperial politics to participate in the Swiss Confederation, including those of Einsiedeln and St Gallen, the others eventually secured two votes, one for the Swabians in 1575 and one for all the rest lumped together as ‘Rhenish’ in 1654. Their numbers remained stable, except for the few who were ‘promoted’ to prince-abbots or prince-bishops with individual votes. Two-thirds of the 143 counts listed in 1521 subsequently disappeared, with half of these through the extinction of their family and the inheritance or sale of their fief to another count. Only eight secured elevation to full prince, but around 50 new counts were created, largely through the Habsburgs
granting imperial titles to their own loyal nobles.
¹¹⁵
Most remained titular counts without representation, though several like the Kaunitz family bought or inherited counties or imperial knights’ fiefs. The Swabian and Wetterau counts were already well organized by 1500, securing votes soon after, whereas the Franconians, who were the least numerous, secured theirs in 1640, and the Westphalians were finally admitted in 1654.
¹¹⁶

Table 7. Reichstag Participation Rates, 1521

*The Bohemian vote was de facto suspended following the Hussite insurrection until the kingdom was acquired by the Habsburgs in 1526.

The representation of ecclesiastical princes stabilized with the effective end of their territorialization in the fifteenth century, since they neither acquired additional fiefs nor partitioned their existing ones. Changes prior to 1802 were limited to the two waves of secularizations sanctioned in 1555 and 1648. The former confirmed the mediatization of some bishoprics already under way before the Reformation, while the latter transferred eight senior ecclesiastical fiefs and their associated full votes directly to secular princes. Civic votes declined only marginally through further mediatization. Senior secular votes experienced greater volatility prior to 1582, when the Reichstag fixed the status of imperial Estates permanently with specific fiefs (
Map 9
). Henceforth, this status would not be extinguished with the end of a princely family, nor could partition create additional votes.
¹¹⁷

It remained possible to accumulate votes through acquiring other recognized fiefs, or if the emperor raised a county to a principality. Like the electors, existing princes tried to preserve corporate exclusivity by blocking new members. The emperor remained free to confer the personal status of imperial prince, raising 160 individuals to this rank between 1582 and 1806. However, the status of imperial Estate now clearly depended on possession of a qualifying fief. Of the five counts promoted to prince between 1579 and 1623, only Arenberg received a full princely vote. Thirteen of the 15 new princes created after 1623 secured full votes in 1654, but simultaneously the Reichstag obliged the emperor to agree that further admissions required consent from the princely corpus. Thereafter, only eight new princes acquired full votes, often waiting decades like Liechtenstein, which was only accepted in 1715, while 23 titular princes still sat on the counts’ benches in the late eighteenth century because their fiefs had not been upgraded to principalities.
¹¹⁸

Rigidity and Concentration of Power

One reason for this long discussion of the Empire’s status hierarchy is to show both its persistence and growing rigidity by the late eighteenth century. Another is to underscore how the formal structure did not match the territorial distribution of power. Most general discussions of the Empire confuse imperial Estates with ‘territories’, enumerating the latter according to the formal registers of Reichstag votes to suggest there were around three hundred. The formal structure was based on imperial Estates and in fact never recognized ‘territories’. The latter evolved through the accumulation of fiefs in the hands of individual princely families who gradually developed their own administrative structures cutting across the old feudal jurisdictions. However, they never abolished the formal distinctions since their status and representation rested on these, and not their ‘territory’. The actual distribution of power within the imperial church was more closely aligned to the formal structure than amongst the secular Estates, because ecclesiastical fiefs could never be permanently combined. Individual archbishops or bishops might exercise two or more votes through their possession of more than one diocese, but this always remained a purely personal union and did not fuse the fiefs together as a single territory. By contrast, the Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Welfs, Wittelsbachs, Wettins and other princely families developed permanent territories combining various levels of representation in the formal structure.

By 1792, the 8 electors held 24 princely votes, including the Habsburgs with 1 electoral vote (Bohemia) and 3 princely votes (Austria, Burgundy, Nomeny), while the kings of Denmark and Sweden each held a princely vote. The 12 old princely families like those in Hessen, Baden and Württemberg together held 25 princely votes, while the 12 new princely families had 13 (Nassau held 2). This contrasted with the more even spread across the imperial church where the three ecclesiastical electors currently also held 6 bishoprics, while the other 18 archbishops and bishops together had 24 sees with full votes. There were 99 counties, but many of these were held by electors or princes. Thus, most of the land and formal representation was concentrated with Austria and Prussia, the 6 other electors and 13 princely families holding 81 per cent of the Empire, plus all electoral and 56 of the
100 princely votes. They formed two large territories (Austria, Prussia) and around 23 medium-sized territories. Another 16.4 per cent of the Empire was split between 151 ecclesiastical and secular lords, generally lacking princely status. Even here, 3 secular new princes, 1 archbishop and 12 bishops held over half of these possessions. The remaining 2.6 per cent of the Empire was split between 51 imperial cities (of which only 45 still sent envoys to the Reichstag) and 400 families of imperial knights, who were excluded from all the Empire’s representative institutions (
Table 8
).

Table 8. Territory and Formal Status in 1792