Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (79 page)

COLLECTIVE ACTION

Imperial Taxation

Wars such as that over the Spanish succession required a level of resource mobilization far in excess of anything undertaken by the medieval Empire. The overall size of European armies rose by 1,000 per cent across the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, or more than three times the rate of population growth.
⁵⁰
Contrary to the received view, the Empire responded quite effectively to this challenge. This is not obvious from the level of revenue accruing from imperial prerogatives, which remained minimal after Charles IV’s dissipation of the crown lands in the late fourteenth century and despite efforts to revive income during the early eighteenth century (
Table 9
).
⁵¹

After the initial problems with the Common Penny to fund the
Reichskammergericht, the 1507 Reichstag introduced a new tax, called the
Zieler
because it was to be paid in two annual instalments timed to coincide with the Frankfurt
Zielen
, or spring and autumn trade fairs. The imperial Estates were assigned quotas, but they were left to themselves how to find the money. Many fell into arrears, but the problem was magnified by the practice throughout the Empire’s population of recording debts long after any realistic prospect of payment. Tax rates were raised in 1720 when the salaries of judges and staff were doubled as part of a wider reform of the court’s administration. The official annual total of the Zieler was now 120,000 florins, or 25 per cent above what was required for salaries. Receipts varied between 78,000 and 139,500 florins annually from 1742 to 1770. Another reform increased the Zieler again in 1776, and within six years the tax was running a healthy surplus, while Brandenburg, which had not paid anything since 1713, resumed payments after 1790 and soon cleared its entire arrears.
⁵²

Table 9. Annual Revenue Derived from Imperial Prerogatives, c.1780

Far more money was raised on an ad hoc basis for defence using the matricular system introduced by imperial reform (see
pp. 404–6
). The system could be used to levy troops and/or their cash equivalents, which had been calculated since 1521 using a unit of account called a Roman Month (RM) based on the pay bill of the armed escort envisaged for Charles V’s coronation journey. The nominal value of an RM was reckoned initially at 128,000 florins, but it had already fallen to 68,700 florins by 1576, and to around 50,000 by the eighteenth century.
⁵³
Like the Zieler arrears, these reductions reflect flaws in how assessments were assigned. Several imperial Estates already protested in 1524 at their assessments, eventually securing revisions for the period 1545–51 that collectively reduced the official RM by 6 per cent.
Further problems crept in as some territories received temporary remissions, such as imperial cities hit by major fires. They often failed to resume paying the higher rates. Meanwhile, the Kreise developed their own registers to raise funds at the regional level. Although based on the 1521 imperial register, the Kreis rates often differed, offering further scope for unauthorized ‘self-moderation’ as individual Estates adjusted their payments to whichever rate was lowest.

These problems were in fact common in Old Europe where taxes relied on registers assigning assessments only loosely correlated with actual wealth. Once compiled, such registers were hard to revise, not least thanks to the vested interest of those who were under-assessed in resisting change. In fact, imperial political culture constrained self-moderation. Smaller Estates were particularly reluctant to challenge the Empire by unilaterally revising their quotas, and by the mid-eighteenth century many accepted that if they wanted a reduction, they would have to submit to a full investigation of their economic and financial circumstances by an imperial commission.
⁵⁴
Even combined with territories leaving the register through French annexation, like Metz, Toul and Verdun, self-moderation only accounted for 15,900 florins, or a quarter of the losses by 1600. Twice that amount disappeared through the removal of minor Estates listed in the 1521 register, which avoided payment by forgoing the status of imperial Estate and accepting mediatization by another territory, such as the town of Lemgo, absorbed into the principality of Lippe. All attempts to persuade the beneficiaries to make up the missing payments were abandoned by 1577, but at least fixing the status of imperial Estate five years later entailed firm acceptance of the assigned burdens. The remaining quarter of the losses derived from the special status of the Austrian and Burgundian Kreise, since these never remitted taxes through the imperial receiver.

In fact, maintenance of the Habsburgs’ imperial role cost their own subjects far more than their official quotas. Maximilian I spent 25 million florins across his reign, mainly to recover Milan as an escheated imperial fief in the Italian Wars. Austrian taxes provided the Habsburgs with between 500,000 and 1 million florins a year, while the Netherlands contributed a further million annually from 1507. Despite these sums, assistance from the Empire was essential and the 2 million florins voted for 1495–1518 represented an important additional source, even if only half the promised amount was actually paid.
⁵⁵
Significantly, Maximilian’s 6 million florins of debt were contracted as Habsburg liabilities, reflecting his separation of Habsburg administration from that of the rest of the Empire. Rather than seek amortization through the Reichstag, he and his successors chose to negotiate agreements with their provincial Estates, who raised taxes from Habsburg subjects to pay the creditors. While this necessitated concessions to these assemblies, including religious toleration in the later sixteenth century, it freed the emperor from exposing his own finances to Reichstag scrutiny.

More substantial assistance came in response to the rapid Ottoman advance through Serbia and Hungary after 1521, establishing a pattern persisting into the early seventeenth century. The Habsburgs petitioned each Reichstag for ‘emergency aid’ to cope with the immediate threat, plus ‘permanent aid’ on an extended basis to maintain frontier defences in Hungary. Like other early modern European assemblies, the Reichstag initially refused the latter, recognizing that permanent tax grants would reduce the emperor’s need to summon it again. Instead, it voted fixed grants, which could be drawn on as cash or troops until the allocated amount had been consumed. The total raised during Charles V’s reign is difficult to calculate, because individual Estates often paid after considerable delay, but overall the imperial treasury had received around 4.3 million florins by 1555 (
Table 10
).
⁵⁶

Although far above what previous emperors had received, this amount still fell far short of Charles’s burgeoning expenses. The 1544 grant provided only 3.7 per cent of the emperor’s war funding across 1543–52, with the bulk raised largely from German and Netherlands bank loans.
⁵⁷
However, the seemingly meagre amount reflected the division of labour within Habsburg governance and the Empire’s international orientation in the interests of peace. The Reichstag only assigned Charles half its 1544 grant and even this was an exceptional case, because it did not feel obliged to back what it regarded as his private war with France. Instead, most imperial aid was directed to Ferdinand, who had been tasked with repelling the Ottomans. The actual scale of assistance was far greater than the official amounts, because it was largely provided as troops were raised, equipped and maintained at the expense of the individual imperial Estates.

Ferdinand’s administrative and financial reforms doubled the revenue he could extract from Austria, Bohemia and his part of Hungary
to reach about 2.2 million florins annually by 1560, still far less than the average of 14.2 million that his brother had enjoyed from all his domains, including 6.9 million from the Burgundian lands. Ferdinand spent at least 530,000 florins on his court and administration annually, and between 540,000 and over 1 million on fortifying and defending the Hungarian frontier.
⁵⁸
His debts quintupled to 10 million florins by his death in 1564, excluding another 1.5 million of private debt. The three-way division of Habsburg lands between his sons after 1564 robbed them of any economies of scale, forcing each branch to trade concessions to their provincial Estates in return for taxes amortizing over 10.6 million florins of debts by 1615. Despite being a noted art patron, Rudolf II in fact cut court expenditure, channelling the savings into border defence. Yet despite the provincial Estates doubling their tax grants, Habsburg debts tripled to 32 million florins by 1612, by which time annual revenue had reached only 5.4 million.
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Table 10. Imperial Taxation, 1521–1613

Voted	Sum	Duration	Purpose	Actual Payment
1521	6 RMs	1521–30	Turkish Aid	Troops sent in lieu 1522–6, 1529
1530	48 RMs	1530-33	Turkish Aid	Troops sent in lieu 1532
1541	1.5 RMs	1541	Turkish Aid
1542	Common Penny	1542	Turkish Aid
1543	Common Penny	1543	Turkish Aid
1544	Common Penny	1544	1/2 for Charles, 1/2 Turkish Aid, equivalent to 12 RMs
1545	Common Penny	1545
1548-51	Cash (0.5m fl)	1548-52	Fortifications	0.35m fl paid (70%)
1551	Common Penny			0.4m fl paid (57%)
1556-7	16 RMs	1557-8		1.141m fl paid (69.1%)
1559	0.5m fl cash*	1560-62	Fortifications
1566	48 RMs	1566-9	Turkish War	2.922m fl paid (77%)
1570	12 RMs	1572-5	Fortifications	0.7m fl paid (81.2%)
1576	60 RMs	1578-82	Fortifications	3.77m fl paid (82.2%)
1582	40 RMs	1583-7	Fortifications	2.12m fl paid (85%)
1594	80 RMs	1594-7	Turkish War	16.57m fl paid (88%)
1597-8	60 RMs	1598-1602	Turkish War
1603	86 RMs	1604-6	Turkish War
1613	30 RMs	1614-18	Border Defence