By the 14th Century, the European continent was experiencing an economic revival,
and the cities in Italy, the Low Countries, and north Germany
saw the population boom and the rise of factionalism in urban politics.
These cities would be forced to turn to leagues of commercial towns with the objective of maintaining
their autonomy. In this video, we are going to analyze how the medieval city-states developed
through the centuries and how they sought to defend themselves from the power-hungry feudals.
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Between 1300 and 1450, major cities north of the Alps experienced territorial expansion.
This started as a collective-communal enterprise, despite many factional
rivalries within these cities. The city-states usually never acquired a dependent territory,
focusing on exercising their influence over their hinterlands by commercial and industrial means,
such as delivery contracts, outwork and preemptions. They also expanded
with the extension of citizen’s rights to the inhabitants of their surrounding countryside.
For their defense, the city-states relied on the regional alliances of cities and rural communes.
These leagues were not a unified state and their main objective
was the protection of the constituent city-states only from external threats.
Flemish cities of the time had a huge surge in urban population[1], and the leading cities[2]
struggled with the count of Flanders for more autonomy and control over the countryside.
The conflict between the Flemish cities and the count of Flanders
was also integrated into the Hundred Years’ War, as most of the cities supported the English while
the count himself allied with the French. In the wake of the van Artevelde revolt of the 1340s,
Flanders was divided into quarters, each assigned to one of the three leading cities, who exerted
their influence over the hinterlands. They established militias to enforce their ordinances,
accepted country-dwellers as external citizens to deter immigration, and used economic strength
to organize rural production in a way preventing them from competing with their urban textiles. But
these cities were not united. Ghent for example, attempted to assert its hegemony throughout
Flanders, earning the hatred of the other cities. Despite the rivalry between Flemish cities,
some regional leagues were established between merchants. The most prominent was the Hansa of
the towns[3], which included cloth merchants. The most influential Flemish city during this period
was Ghent, managing to exert full dominion over its entire quarter. An 8km franchise for wool
manufacturing allowed it to become the most powerful commercial metropolis in the region.
Ghent actively recruited nobles and knights[4] to serve in its militia, formed to keep in check
their countryside’s manufacturing capability, deter immigration and to dominate the grain
trade on the Scheldt. The hegemony of Ghent would see its demise at the Battle of Gavere,
where its liberties were curtailed. As the feudals managed to shift the balance of power
again in the late 14th Century, the Flemish cities never developed into city-states,
yet they certainly show us a primary example of the growth of cities in the era.
In north Germany, we see some of the most prominent city-states[5] of the Middle Ages.
Managing to remain independent under the Holy Roman Empire, and becoming Reichsstädte or Free
Imperial City, they safeguarded their trade routes, maintained commercial privileges and
expanded through the acquisition of rural estates or the economic dominance of the countryside.
If the cities decided to pursue a territorial expansion, they needed an agreement with the
feudals as they were surrounded by the territories ruled by noblemen.
Individual citizens or city magistracies acquired their territories by the purchase of mortgages
that held a commercial interest for them. Lüneburg, Bremen, Hamburg,
and Lübeck were among the ones that engaged in the acquisition of mortgaged lands; for example,
such an occasion came in 1359, when the city of Lübeck purchased the town and bailiwick of Mölln
from the dukes of Saxony-Lauenburg and managed to hold it until the late 17th Century.
Lübeck also purchased the rights to the Wakenitz river to dam it and create a lade for a series
of industrial mills, but also to reinforce its own control over their rural estates nearby.
For the defense of their trade routes or urban precinct, the
German cities constructed Landwehren, a series of ramparts-cum-ditches, surmounted by thorn hedges,
with the roads traversing it guarded by gates and watchtowers where their militias were stationed.
Yet the main mechanism of defense for the north German cities was the formation of commercial
leagues. The German Hansa[6] rose in the 11th Century from the city of Lübeck, and at its
height united eighty towns and cities from Saxony to the Rhineland. It also saw in the northeastern
Low Countries[7] some of their very first early partners, which would be formally incorporated
into the Hansa in the 14th Century. Although the initial purpose of the league was to protect its
merchants trading overseas, the Hansa would evolve to become a regional peacekeeper within Northern
Germany, mainly concerned with fighting the expansionist policies of the Kingdom of Denmark.
By the 15th Century, the Hansa was beginning to show state-like characteristics:
it created a Hanseatic diet, levied taxes, established a bureaucracy, raised an army,
and signed treaties with external powers[8]. Internally, however, the Hanseatic cities retained
considerable autonomy and pursued a territorial policy in their hinterlands on their own, so the
league wasn’t a state in and of itself; instead, its constituent parts, such as Lübeck and Hamburg,
were in all respects individual city-states united under the same regional objectives.
Away from Lübeck and its Baltic trade, the German Hansa also partook in a complex network of inland
trade across Germany. Cologne, the inland capital of the Hansa, was definitely not a typical
Hanseatic city. First off, this Rhenish city-state shouldn’t be confused with the archbishopric
of Cologne, which was once their overlord; yet, after the battle of Worringen in 1288,
the archbishops lost their control, and Cologne became a Free Imperial City.
As an independent city-state, Cologne held a considerable political influence,
concluding treaties of protection and military assistance with the nobility of the Rhineland
and the Palatinate. But as it was unable to expand territorially, the economic focus of
the Rhenish city was directed towards an agronomic improvement, the development of rural industries,
and the export trade downriver to overseas destinations. This gave Cologne the ability
to organize and regulate the economy of its region, uniting the leading merchants of the
Rhineland in four major guilds that took part in the government of the city as a plutocracy.
Outside of the Hanseatic League, many town leagues of regional self-defense were established in
Germany, but these usually disintegrated once the immediate threat had passed.
One example of this is the Rhenish Town League[9], which lasted only for ten years. Usually, these
leagues were formed to attempt to assert their urban autonomy under the Emperor’s overlordship
against power-hungry princes. In Southern Germany, some leagues even managed to secure recognition
from the Emperors, and some were also promoted by them as agents of regional peace-keeping[10].
In this way, the south German cities[11] that blossomed in the 15th Century
had a close and mutually beneficial relationship with the Emperors because of their close proximity
to them. In exchange for privileges and protection, the Free Imperial Cities of
the south supplied the Emperors with credit, councilors, militias, and even mistresses.
These cities also had the advantage of lying in a region of advanced territorial fragmentation,
which allowed them to construct a landed territory with the objective of safeguarding their urban
precincts. As is the case with the north German cities, this was done through outright purchase
or by mortgages, although with a characteristic difference: the transactions were done via third
parties without the city’s stake ever being revealed. Sometimes being individual burghers
and sometimes being hospitals or charitable foundations, these third parties were tasked
with administering the acquired estates under the direction of the city-states. Both in the
north as well as in the south of Germany, the territorial expansion of the German city-states
was accompanied by the acceptance of outburghers, which was very beneficial economically.
In the case of Augsburg for example, the acquisition of external citizens bound
to wealthy convents allowed the Swabian city to harness and channel the economic
power of these convents. Defensively, the south German cities also constructed protective cordons
and Landwehren; and, at the intersection of major roads, watchtowers built of stone were
erected and passage was regulated by barred gates. Two notable examples in Southern Germany are Ulm
and Nuremberg, the two biggest German city-states of the Middle Ages by territorial extension.
For starters, Ulm was a major center of the Swabian linen and later fustian industry, yet
the heartlands of its production were to the south of the city, in the valleys of the tributaries of
the Danube[12], where the Swabian city possessed no territory at all. To regulate and profit from
the fustian-weavers in their hinterlands, Ulm extended them outburghership, thus subjecting
the fustian-weavers to civic supervision and having no need to expand in that way.
But to the north, Ulm’s primary interest was to protect its artery of trade down the Geislingen
Steige[13], a trade route that led to some other major Swabian cities, and then to Franconia and
Bavaria along the Danube. To strengthen their control over the northern route, Ulm acquired
two contiguous blocks of land from the counts of Werdenberg-Sargans and from the counts of
Helfenstein, both of them in economic difficulties and owing large sums of money to the Swabian city.
In the end, Ulm’s territory amounted to 830 km2, taking in three dependent towns[14],
55 villages, and 22 other settlements. Whereas Ulm expanded defensively to better
control its northern trade route, Nuremberg pursued an aggressive expansion through war[15]
to establish a buffer between them and the threatening Hohenzollern and Wittelsbach families.
With their conquest of the Neue Landschaft and the acquisition of any other states in the area,
Nuremberg extended to 1200 km2. It’s also worth noting that Nuremberg didn’t accept outburghers of
any kind except for local nobles and knights that the Franconian city could use in their military.
The two examples show us that although most city-states expanded to secure their hinterlands
and urban precincts, Ulm and Nuremberg did so to create a political and strategic buffer instead.
And looking to the southwest, we find in Switzerland some of the most successful
city-states of the Middle Ages. These cities did not only manage to consolidate their independence,
but they also established a strong Confederation that in time would create a powerful national
identity for the Swiss people. Yet this wouldn’t be achieved until the late 15th Century, with the
Habsburg dynastic domain controlling most of the Swiss territory by the start of the 14th Century.
The only cities that remained independent at this point were the Forest cantons[16],
three imperial bailiwicks allied to manage their common defensive and economic interests.
Through their successful struggle[17] against the Habsburgs, the Forest cantons
expanded territorially and gradually expelled the outsiders from their lands,
causing their initial pact to be joined by more Swiss cities[18]. During this initial period of
the Swiss Confederation, there was much rivalry and overlapping interests among the cantons.
Each individual city was mainly concerned with their own independence,
striking defensive alliances not only with each other, but also with foreign powers. From all of
them, the cantons of Zürich and Bern would be the ones to rise and establish two separate spheres
of influence by the late 14th Century. Although conflict existed among members of these spheres,
the two main cantons decided to remain peaceful to one another,
thus allowing the Confederation to hold itself together until their individual powers diminished.
In the eastern sphere, the dominant city of Zürich struggled with the other cantons[19]
to take control of Inner Switzerland and the Alpine passes to Italy, the lifeline of its
commerce. Yet their efforts were better directed at the acquisition of Burgrecht agreements,
whereby the other party entered into Zürich’s protection and became an outburgher of the
city in exchange for nominal suzerainty. Through Burgrecht with the landed nobility,
the Swiss city hoped to lay claim to all or part of the prince’s inheritance; and in many
times it succeeded, such as in the case of count Friedrich VII of Toggenburg[20]. And Burgrechte
also went hand-in-hand with mortgages, such as when the emperor pledged the Austrian lordship
of Kyburg to Zürich in 1424, which would then become the cornerstone of its landed territory.
But in the end, the Swiss city would fail to establish a strong regional state in East
Switzerland after losing a punishment war against the other cantons[21]. By the mid-15th Century,
Zürich’s options had been blockaded by Schwyz and Luzern, and they could only expand north
towards the Rhine, where they would succeed at establishing more Burgrecht agreements[22].
Administratively, Zürich’s rural bailiwicks remained in the jurisdiction of seigneuries
over military affairs and taxation. This prompted the Swiss city to pursue a policy of maximizing
revenue while hobbling the rural economy, a policy which would evolve into the Leibsteuer,
a personal levy on all inhabitants with the result that revenue from the countryside
was ratcheted up by nearly 100%. A series of protectionist measures followed the Leibsteuer,
such as a salt monopoly and that trade was not permitted through middlemen,
but to be channeled through civic officials. These measures provoked deep hostility among the
rural population, which in turn forced Zürich to make economic concessions on its rural subjects.
In Western Switzerland, relations with the Forest cantons were a constant element in
Bern’s external affairs, and the politics of what is known as Burgundian Switzerland
shaped the interactions between foreign powers and the Swiss cantons. The Duchy of Burgundy
can be considered as the greatest threat faced by the Swiss Confederation, yet the defeats[23]
of Charles the Bold by Swiss pikemen in 1477 not only caused the collapse of the Burgundian duchy,
but were also a huge propaganda victory for the Swiss cantons. But speaking about Bern,
from the outset the dominant Swiss city concluded military alliances with their neighbors, many of
which ended up integrated into Bern’s territory through protective agreements[24]. Bern’s
territorial acquisitions then went groping around in the intricacies of what was best possible,
sending outburghers to politically influence districts which the Swiss city laid claim to.
Whereas Zürich established Burgrecht agreements to expand, Bern did so to bind the greater lords of
Western Switzerland to its interests and to erode the economic viability of the lesser nobility.
Through the city’s financial muscle, this strategy soon paid off and Bern became one of the greatest
mercantile cities of the Middle Ages, with trading links to Geneva and Lyon. Yet by the
means of military victory, Bern saw its greatest expansion, such as in the conquest of Aargau,
acquiring lands that stretched from Wangen down the Aare to Aarau and Brugg, and taking in
17 fortresses over a distance of 60 to 80 km from the city. Through the consolidation of
the Aargau, Bern became the most successful Swiss city-state, growing into a territory of 3000 km2
with some further 2600 km2 of civic territory from their lordships.
In the end, Bern would be satisfied with their territorial expansion and would further contribute
to the formation of a strong Swiss Confederation, which would go on to last even to this day.
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