Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (82 page)

The collective structure was capable of substantial, sustained effort (
Table 13
).
⁸⁴
Although the actual Kreis contingents (
Kreistruppen
) were always lower than the totals agreed by the Reichstag, it should be remembered that the Habsburgs always subsumed their own contribution within their own army, thus accounting for another 30 per cent above the numbers supplied by the smaller territories. Many of the auxiliaries also included men serving in lieu of Kreis contingents, because many princes wanted to keep all their soldiers together in a single force to increase their weight within the grand coalitions against France. For example, such forces accounted for 28 per cent of the auxiliaries provided during the War of the Spanish Succession.

The continuous warfare saw the total number of soldiers maintained by the emperor and imperial Estates rise from 192,000 in 1683 to peak at 343,300 in 1710. The most significant and surprising aspect of this rapid militarization was the disproportionate growth amongst the smaller territories, whose total strength grew by 95 per cent to reach
170,000 men, compared to a 75 per cent increase in the Prussian army to 43,500, and a 62 per cent rise in Habsburg strength to 129,000.
⁸⁵
Thus, imperial defence imposed a heavy burden on the Empire’s weakest elements, but this simultaneously ensured their political survival. The Westphalian and Upper Saxon minor territories used the Kreis structure to organize their own contingents, enabling them after 1702 to break free from onerous arrangements imposed by Prussia, Saxony and the Palatinate, which had previously provided troops to the imperial army on their behalf. In contrast to the almost universal disbandment in 1648, the Westphalian, Upper Rhenish, Electoral Rhenish, Swabian, Franconian and Bavarian Kreise agreed in 1714 to remain armed in peacetime by maintaining contingents at one and a half times the basic quota. Perhaps more surprising still is that militarization remained contained by a highly legalistic political culture (unlike, say, China in the 1920s where warlords created their own provincial armies with little regard to the republic’s formal order). Despite their lands being the most heavily armed part of Europe, the German princes continued to submit their disputes to judicial arbitration through the imperial courts, rather than make war on their neighbours.

Table 13. Imperial Defence, 1664–1714 (annual averages)

The collective system mobilized 34,200 Kreis troops for the 1735 campaign during the War of the Polish Succession (1733–5) against France,
while at least 112,000 recruits and auxiliaries were supplied to the Habsburg army across 1733–9.
⁸⁶
The disappointing outcome of this campaign and the parallel Turkish War (1736–9) combined with political disillusionment with the Habsburgs and the disaster of Wittelsbach imperial rule between 1742 and 1745 to weaken collective defence. Most territories reduced their peacetime forces and several withdrew from military cooperation at Kreis level. This trend was compounded by the underlying shift in the Empire’s internal military balance as the combined strength of the Austrian and Prussian armies expanded from 185,000 men in 1740 to 692,700 fifty years later, compared to the combined total of all other forces that dropped by around 9,000 men to 106,000 by 1790. As we shall see (
pp. 637–48
), this growing military imbalance seriously threatened the Empire’s continued viability.

Economic Measures

The standard model of European history sees centralized monarchies as incubators of social and economic development. Royal capitals emerged as political, economic and cultural hubs, concentrating wealth and fostering dynamic innovation. Royal authority helped spread uniform systems of law, coinage, tariffs, weights and measures, helping to integrate local and regional economic activity. Localities and groups lost local protection and were compelled to innovate in order to survive within larger market networks. Monarchies reduced the ‘transaction costs’ of doing business by providing a safe environment under the rule of law.
⁸⁷
While there is certainly plenty of evidence supporting this interpretation, it does not mean that other kinds of political order were invariably inferior in fostering economic developments.

For most of the Empire’s history, its most dynamic economic regions were those of the greatest political fragmentation, like Flanders, Brabant and the Rhineland, rather than the larger territories such as those of the north and east. The reasons are complex. A major factor was that the more productive areas were clustered along the major transport route of the Rhine and its tributaries. While this concentration of wealth facilitated a dense, more complex lordly hierarchy, the resulting political diversity did not inhibit further demographic and economic growth. The proximity of different authorities could also encourage innovation and experimentation, such as the founding of luxury goods
manufacturing during the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
⁸⁸
The real test was how far the Empire could mitigate the constraining consequences of its internal structure, whilst not stifling the potentially innovative economic aspects.

Economic coordination remained conventional throughout the Middle Ages. Like other monarchs, the emperor’s main task was guaranteeing peace and justice for moral reasons, with any benefits for prosperity remaining secondary considerations. Direct intervention was restricted to what would now be termed investment incentives: privileging particular lords and communities through grants of market, mint, mining, and toll rights, all of which proved significant in promoting urban development. The number of settlements with market rights doubled to 90 across the tenth century, rising to 140 in the eleventh century and reaching 250 in the next. Politics shaped this as much as economics, since episcopal towns were the principal beneficiaries, reflecting the emperor’s reliance on the imperial church. Only 25 mints were active in the Empire before 1140, but the Staufers’ use of regalia as rewards increased this number to 250 by 1197, of which only 28 were under royal control, while 106 were held by spiritual and 81 by lay lords. The total nearly doubled again to 456 by 1270, with the balance shifting to the secular lords, who now operated 277 mints, compared to 152 spiritual and 37 royal ones. This expansion was partly in response to the growing money economy and demand for small change, but largely reflects the shift from the Staufers to the ‘little kings’ who bought support. It also underscores a point to be made in the following chapter that the Empire had a tangible impact on the lives of ordinary inhabitants.
⁸⁹
As we have seen (
pp. 369–70
), changes in vassalage from the twelfth century contributed to commercialization by opening fiefs and jurisdictions to sale and mortgages.

Royal privileges frequently contradicted each other. One charter might grant toll rights to one lord, whereas another exempted individuals or communities. Only trade-fair rights followed a more coherent development. The Frankfurt fair received special privileges in 1330, followed in 1466 by that of Leipzig, which received 15 more confirmations and extensions by 1770. The imperial charters guaranteed free trade by exempting merchants from tolls and providing special protection for themselves and their wares as they travelled to and from a fair. These competitive advantages enabled them to undercut other
markets, in turn attracting further business to Frankfurt and Leipzig. The effective establishment of the eternal public peace by 1525 enabled the Empire to deliver the promised security. The more sophisticated early modern legal culture brought additional benefits. For instance, Leipzig secured a Reichshofrat ruling against its own prince, the elector of Saxony, who was promoting a rival trade fair in Naumburg. Leipzig and Frankfurt both secured injunctions to limit the development of Brunswick as an alternative venue. The two imperial trade fairs complemented each other. Leipzig mainly served the north and east with links to the North Sea and Baltic, while Frankfurt was orientated south and west with connections to Italy and the Mediterranean. Both serviced more regionally focused networks based around subsidiary fairs in other towns, thus providing an economic network mirroring the Empire’s political structure.
⁹⁰

Territorialization provided an additional layer of economic regulation and coordination from the fourteenth century as authorities increasingly assumed the initiative within their jurisdictions and also issued privileges and exemptions. The Reformation added a heightened moral imperative, boosting existing efforts to regulate daily life through ‘police measures’ (see
pp. 534–8
). Imperial reform strengthened the Empire’s capacity to guarantee general peace and defuse socio-economic tensions. The Reichstag issued general normative legislation in the sixteenth century, providing guidelines that were adapted to local circumstances through incorporation in territorial law codes and regulations. This allowed for diversity of practice within a common system, enabling serious disputes to be resolved through the imperial courts. In this way, imperial institutions maintained a partially free market encompassing a quarter of all Europeans around 1500. Most of the population was legally free to move, though some territories imposed restrictions, notably Brandenburg-Prussia, where in the eighteenth century emigration was equated with military desertion.

Charles V’s dependency on south German and Italian bankers prompted him to oppose the anti-monopoly legislation promoted by electors and princes at the Reichstag after 1519. However, the Reichstag gradually dismantled the canon law prohibition on usury after 1530, extending 5 per cent as the ceiling for all credit arrangements in 1654. Territorial authorities and local communities frequently borrowed at higher rates, but imperial law did curb excessive charges since
creditors could not use the courts to enforce them. The 1653–4 Reichstag tackled the lack of credit following the Thirty Years War by giving all debtors a three-year moratorium whilst cutting interest arrears by three-quarters. Special arrangements were made for the devastated Palatinate, which received a ten-year moratorium. These measures protected debtors, but upheld the integrity of the capital market by rejecting calls for repudiation of all liabilities. However, the system remained conservative. Although reduced, old obligations retained their validity and continued to burden future generations – in some cases into the nineteenth century.
⁹¹

Currency regulation provides a similar picture of partial success on its own terms, but at the cost of sustaining conservative practices. The Reichstag asserted loose overall supervision of mints by making currency debasement a capital offence in 1532, and issuing the imperial currency ordinance (
Reichsmünzordnung
) in 1524 to regulate exchange rates by establishing an official relationship between the south German gold florin and the north German silver taler. The two coins became official units of account to which all territorial currencies could be related according to their precious-metal content. Politics hampered these arrangements from the start, since the northern territories felt that their currencies were undervalued. Three revisions to the ordinance failed to solve this by 1571, because territories issued coins called ‘florins’ and ‘talers’ but containing varying quantities of precious metal. Regulation was devolved in 1566 to the Kreise, which were considered to stand a better chance of managing the situation closer to the ground and to punish deviations from the rules. Maximilian II undermined collective efforts by unilaterally removing the Habsburg lands from the common framework in 1573 as part of the wider effort to insulate the dynasty’s possessions from scrutiny by the imperial Estates.
⁹²

However, the real problem was the conservative attitude to money. All levels of authority clung to the belief that wealth was finite and expressed through bullion. Yet precious metal was both a medium of exchange and an object itself, for example for use in making jewellery. The cost of minting coins could rise above their face value, encouraging their debasement through mixing in inferior-value metal. The regulations were devised before the spread of copper coins as small change in the later sixteenth century. Above all, official rates bore little relation to economic value defined through productivity. Meanwhile, the
need for reliable exchange rates grew with the development of deposit banks in Amsterdam (1609), Hamburg (1619) and Nuremberg (1621), which used ‘imaginary’ units of account to facilitate international money transfers.
⁹³