Free Cities

in German history, a considerable number of towns that in the midst of the confusion of the Middle Ages succeeded in maintaining a more or less complete independence. All were walled towns of commercial importance. In return for contributions to the purse of the reigning king or emperor within whose territory they were situated, the free cities obtained permission to govern themselves through local councils. In the absence of anything like a modern system of taxation, sovereigns were glad to obtain a revenue in this way. These cities were, to all intents and purposes, states, ranking with the grand duchies. Their mayors ranked with the smaller nobility and were entitled to seats in the Imperial Diet. Free from the interference and exactions of rulers, these cities, when not subject to the worse tyranny of local factions, became centers of free thought and expression,--the homes of art and literature. At the time of the French Revolution there were fifty-one free towns including Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Worms, Spires, Augsburg, Nuremberg, and Ulm. Most of these lost their charters during or at the close of the Napoleonic wars. At the present time, Hamburg, Lubeck, and Bremen are the only free cities. Frankfurt had the bad judgment to side with the Austrians in the war of 1866, and was punished by being reduced to the rank of an ordinary Prussian city. See Hanseatic League