Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (99 page)

A major factor in the League’s success was its firm basis in imperial law, which had encouraged regional collaboration to uphold the public peace since the twelfth century. This became more complicated as the League expanded to include members across the Rhineland and central and south-east Germany, notably during the suppression of the peasants in 1524–6. By then, however, the League was already being rendered redundant by the parallel development of institutions created through imperial reform (see
pp. 402–12
). These appeared more attractive, partly thanks to their broader constitutional basis and closer relationship to the emperor, but also because they were more clearly organized hierarchically along status lines. The north German princes had already refused to join the League because, like Württemberg, they did not want to share power so evenly with the cities. The League’s court dealt with an average of five cases annually, whereas the number of cases brought by Swabians to the Reichskammergericht rose from 20 in 1500 to between 30 and 40 after 1515, prompting the League to subordinate its own judiciary to the new imperial court.
²⁹
Finally, the Habsburgs realized that imperial institutions were more useful, because they offered a way to engage with all imperial Estates, whereas the League’s members remained primarily concerned with their own region and, for instance, refused to back Maximilian I in his war with Venice in 1508. Whereas the Empire was eternal, the League was time-limited, requiring periodic negotiations to renew it. Habsburg-Bavarian tension further eroded cohesion and the last charter was allowed to expire on 2 February 1534.

Confessional Leagues

Confessional tension was a further factor undermining the Swabian League and a new element in imperial politics. Confession appeared to offer an alternative to regionalism as a way of uniting different status groups across a much wider area. The Schmalkaldic League emerged in 1531 from a northern group of Lutheran imperial Estates led by Saxony, and a southern group organized by Hessen.
³⁰
The Protestant Union (1608), Catholic League (1609) and Heilbronn League (1633) also demonstrated confession’s ability to foster solidarity across social and geographical distance. All four organizations included electors, princes, counts and cities from across the Empire (
Map 19
).

Apart from their confessional character, all resembled the Swabian League in combining traditional mutual aid and internal peace with the more formalized structures emerging from imperial reform, including written charters, governing councils balanced by plenary congresses, and the quota system to distribute burdens. The alliances, like the Empire, thus possessed mechanisms to mobilize forces when required, rather than permanent armies. They also copied the new regional framework of the Kreise. The Schmalkaldic and Catholic leagues had northern and southern ‘directories’, while a further south-western directory was briefly added to the Catholic League in 1615–17. The Protestant Union had a more geographically restricted membership consisting mainly of western and central German territories. Its successor, the Heilbronn League, was formed by Sweden to coordinate its German allies during the Thirty Years War and expressly used the Kreis structure to group the smaller Protestant and occupied territories of Swabia, Franconia, the Upper and the Electoral Rhine. Negotiations failed to include the larger principalities from the two Saxon Kreise. The Heilbronn League convened only two congresses and collapsed soon after Sweden’s defeat to the Habsburgs at Nördlingen in 1634. Although also weak, the Protestant Union nonetheless held 25 plenary congresses across its 13-year existence, matching the activity of its Schmalkaldic predecessor. The Catholic League also met frequently, both during its first incarnation from 1609 to 1617, and again once it was revived with imperial permission between 1619 and 1634. All four mobilized substantial armed forces, especially the Schmalkalders, who fought Charles V in 1546–7, and the Catholic League, which backed Ferdinand II during the Thirty Years War.

Yet it is going too far to claim that any of these organizations possessed ‘true state-like qualities’.
³¹
None added to the range of institutional forms already pioneered by the Swabian League and imperial reform. All struggled to legitimate themselves, since appeals to confession could – and did – contradict loyalty to the emperor. The Schmalkalders already suffered severe internal tensions, because not all of them were willing to accept the more radical Protestant resistance theories (see
pp. 109–10
). Their comprehensive defeat in 1547 rendered purely confessional arguments doubly suspect thereafter. The Protestant Union laboured to present itself instead as a temporary auxiliary to the formal imperial institutions which it claimed had broken down, arguments that its own leadership undermined through their part in disrupting the Reichstag and imperial courts. Individual members fought the Habsburgs during the Thirty Years War, but the Union dissolved itself rather than break openly with the emperor. The Catholic League faced similar problems and was pushed into dissolving itself by Emperor Matthias in 1617. Its revival two years later owed much to the skills of its founder, Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria, who presented his organization merely as an auxiliary to official efforts at restoring peace on the emperor’s terms. Maximilian delayed military operations until he received mandates authorizing action against the emperor’s enemies.
³²

Concern over legitimacy deterred many potential members. The Schmalkaldic League had only recruited 23 imperial Estates by 1535, while the Union peaked at around 30 members, or barely half of all Protestant territories. Only three of the larger principalities joined the Heilbronn League, restricting its membership to the weaker counts and cities. The Catholic League was essentially a Bavarian-led alliance of the imperial church lands, with a few associated counts and cities. The Union and Catholic League were primarily vehicles for the interests of the rival Palatine and Bavarian branches of the Wittelsbachs. Apart from the Heilbronn League, which was formed in wartime, the other alliances were split between a majority who saw membership as insurance should sectarianism descend into violence, and a conspiratorial minority who secretly relished the prospect of confrontation. Like the Swabian League, all found it difficult to hold their leadership to account, especially as princes used personal meetings to hatch plans outside the formal framework of councils and congresses.

Kreis Associations

The Swabian League’s vitality inhibited the activation of the Kreis structure in that region. The first Swabian Kreis assembly only convened in 1542, eight years after the League’s charter expired.
³³
Thereafter, Swabia became the most active and effective of all ten Kreise, because its collective institutions repeatedly proved their worth in resolving common problems in this, the most territorially fragmented of the Empire’s regions. The more inclusive character of Kreis representation made the assemblies especially useful for the Empire’s weakest territories, which lacked full votes in the Reichstag. Confessional tension periodically disrupted the Swabian Assembly, which met in separate Protestant and Catholic congresses on several occasions during the seventeenth century. These were always ‘a crisis rather than a break’, as the overall Kreis structure survived throughout and ensured the two parties still talked to each other.
³⁴

The Kreise had been assigned a wide range of functions by the imperial legislation between 1500 and 1570, establishing them as legitimate platforms for regional and cross-regional collaboration. Their assemblies convened common congresses between 1544 and 1577, but these were rendered redundant by the Reichstag’s supremacy as the ‘national’ forum; this was something that the electors actively promoted to secure their own political pre-eminence. However, the Kreis Assemblies demonstrated their utility during the Thirty Years War when they provided confessionally neutral venues for the Empire’s weaker political elements to coordinate their response to the crisis.
³⁵
Security concerns after 1648 encouraged continued efforts to base regional and cross-regional defence on the Kreis structure. This gained momentum as mutual rivalries revealed the fragility of purely princely alliances, which proved unable to outlast the temporary coincidence of interest prompting their formation. The most significant was the Rhenish Alliance of 1658–68, which was the only princely group to have a broader agenda of stabilizing the post-1648 political balance in the Empire.
³⁶
Led by Mainz, the Alliance eventually encompassed around 20 Protestant and Catholic secular and ecclesiastical princes. Yet it was fatally compromised by its association with France, a power clearly intending its sponsorship of the group as a means to disrupt Habsburg management of the Empire.

As part of the imperial constitution, the Kreise offered a framework capable of sustaining broad cross-status alliances through formal ‘associations’ agreed by two or more Kreis Assemblies, which were binding on all their members. The more inclusive representation through the assemblies reassured the weaker Estates that they had a reliable mechanism to control their more powerful neighbours. The new responsibilities assigned the Kreise by the Empire’s defence reform in 1681–2 prevented the electors from frustrating such cooperation as they had done in the late sixteenth century. In fact, Mainz emerged as the main promoter of Kreis Associations, because its electors took their responsibilities towards the Empire seriously, and saw leadership of the smaller imperial Estates as a way of sustaining their traditional status as arch-chancellors.
³⁷
Swabian-Franconian collaboration expanded after 1691 into an association with the Bavaria, Westphalian, Upper and Electoral Rhenish Kreise, thus encompassing the majority of the Empire’s weakest territories. The association greatly assisted defence coordination, but suffered from the polarization of imperial politics through Austro-Prussian rivalry. Although renewed indefinitely on 1 March 1748, the association’s stipulation that its members be allowed to remain neutral rendered it useless for Habsburg policy and it effectively ceased to exist.
³⁸

Underlying the demise of the Kreis Association was a much broader factor that rendered all princely and noble leagues redundant: the Reichstag’s permanence after 1663 gave all imperial Estates an effective forum to debate policy and assert status. Eighteenth-century princely alliances were primarily expressions of clientele politics as princes sought to advance their dynastic goals by allying with the emperor or major international partners like France, Britain or the Dutch Republic.
³⁹
The pattern only changed in the 1770s as middling princes discussed how to preserve their autonomy amidst Austro-Prussian tension. However, they no longer saw the cities, counts, prelates or knights as useful partners and, indeed, harboured designs to annex them to make their own lands more viable. This direction assumed its logical conclusion in the ultimate of all princely leagues, the Confederation of the Rhine of 16 middling princes with Napoleon in July 1806, which precipitated the Empire’s collapse a month later (see
pp. 653–4
).

CITIES

The Lombard League

Civic leagues were a response to the threats posed by lords and princes. Like aristocratic associations, they were ultimately rendered redundant by the growth of a variety of imperial institutions that proved a more attractive means to maintain their members’ identity and autonomy. Townsfolk were jealous of their freedoms, which they rarely wished to extend to their rural neighbours, whom they frequently derided as bumpkins or as servile followers of lords. The latter were also regarded as part of the rural world separate from urban sophistication, though this distinction was less pronounced in Italy than in Germany. Lords were resented for their demands for taxes and, later, soldiers and artillery. The development of effective gunpowder weaponry from the mid-fifteenth century prompted many towns to rebuild their fortifications and to store artillery and ammunition, placing them at the forefront of military developments. Even in the eighteenth century, imperial cities were expected to provide most of the imperial army’s artillery train.

For their part, lords saw towns as dangerous havens of equality, responsible for subverting their tenants and encouraging a land-flight that denuded them of workers. New ideas of knighthood partly transcended lordly and princely hierarchies from the thirteenth century to forge a common sense of themselves as noble warriors embodying true freedom in contrast to grubby towns filled with greedy merchants and wage slaves. However, lords and cities were not necessarily antagonistic. Lords were often involved in founding and promoting urban development and benefited from civic amenities. Townsfolk could see advantages in lordly protection, while the trend to more oligarchical urban government created an upper stratum whose members were often keen to acquire noble status.
⁴⁰

These ambiguities are manifest in the history of the Empire’s civic leagues, which was never a simple clash between progressive citizens and reactionary aristocrats. Lordly-civic relations were always part of a wider matrix that could see cooperation or conflict depending on circumstances. As we have seen (
pp. 519–222
), most towns experienced
internal tensions between those holding power and others seeking to supplant them. The situation in Italy was further complicated by the attempts of major cities to control their surrounding regions, and by the papal-imperial conflicts of the high Middle Ages. Many Italian burghers, including the Romans, preferred the emperor to the pope, but as we have seen (
pp. 34–6
and
512–14
), the Empire’s rulers did not view politics in class terms and their alliances with individual towns were contingent on circumstances.