Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire 1450-1550

✍ Scribed by Thomas A. Brady Jr

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 1985
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 324
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History
• Edition: First Edition
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book examines politics in the free cities of South Germany during the era of the Protestant Reformation, an age of German national awakening. The author's main theme is why Germany, unlike the other large European countries, failed to create a centralised dynastic monarchy during the sixteenth century. Two possible paths of political development faced the oligarchical governments of the autonomous towns: either they could support a strong monarchy based on a partnership between Austria and the free cities under Habsburg leadership, or they could try to form federations of self-governing cities with peasant leagues along Swiss lines. Fear of how a wave of liberation might affect the peasantry, and their own lower classes, inclined the oligarchies away from the 'Swiss way', but the Reformation and the distraction by wars and by other imperial concerns of Emperor Charles V and his brother, Archduke Ferdinand, prevented a partnership developing between the cities and the monarchy. In the end, the region went the 'German way' - of aristocratic particularism that dominated the Germanspeaking world until 1871.

✦ Table of Contents

Frontmatter......Page 1
Preface ......Page 11
A Note on Usages ......Page 13
Abbreviations and Special Notations ......Page 15
Maps ......Page 17
Introduction: The Setting ......Page 21
1. The Political Dilemma of the Urban Ruling Classes ......Page 28
2. The Free Cities Under Frederick III and Maximilian I, 1450-1500 ......Page 63
3. Maximilian and His Cities, 1493-1519 ......Page 100
4. Charles V and His Cities, 1519-1523 ......Page 121
5. The Reformation of the Common Man, 1521-1524 ......Page 171
6. Cities and Crown in the Age of the Reformation ......Page 204
7. Conclusion: Turning Swiss - A Lost Dream ......Page 242
Appendix A: A list of the Urban Diets, 1471-1585 ......Page 251
Appendix B: The Plan for a Centralized Austrian Government, 1520 ......Page 255
Appendix C: The Merchants' Petition to Charles V Against Banditry, 1521 ......Page 262
Bibliography ......Page 266
Index of Personal Names ......Page 305
Index of Place Names ......Page 311
Index of Subjects ......Page 315