These issues were brought to a head by the rapid westward progress of the Ottoman Turks after their victory at Varna on the Black Sea in 1444 and their definitive conquest of Serbia in 1459. The Habsburg kingdom of Hungary and Frederick III’s own duchy of Styria lay in the path of the invaders. In 1453 the fall of Constantinople extinguished the Eastern Empire and aroused fears in Germany that the Western (i.e., Holy Roman) Empire would meet the same fate. The king used the opportunity to demand financial aid against the Turks from the diet, the German assembly of estates. Under the leadership of the princes, the diet reminded him that Germany’s capacity for defense was weakened by the current internal anarchy. In 1455 six electors proposed to the king the establishment of an imperial court of justice in which all three estates (electors, princes, and cities) should be represented. Frederick dismissed the scheme as an attempted invasion of his authority and stubbornly maintained his disapproval in a series of stormy interviews.
In time an increasing number of princes became convinced that reform would make no significant progress until Frederick was removed. As early as 1460 the Wittelsbach princes urged his deposition in favour of George of Poděbrady, the able and resourceful king of Bohemia. To check the danger, Frederick began to dole out reforms with a sparing hand. In 1464 he consented to make the court of the treasury (Kammergericht) independent of his person, to staff it with representatives of the three estates, and to extend its jurisdiction into fields other than financial. It was the acquisition of Austria in 1463 on the death of his brother Albert that finally proved his undoing. The unruly Austrian nobility early took the measure of Frederick and thereafter disregarded his authority. On the east and south the duchy was imminently threatened by the expanding kingdom of Hungary under its land-hungry ruler Matthias Corvinus. The southern borders of the Habsburg lands were also ravaged by the Turks. Frederick’s continuing irresolution and passivity encouraged Matthias Corvinus, who had already seized a portion of Bohemia, to launch a campaign against Austria. The Austrian nobility made no move against him, and Vienna fell to him in 1485. Frederick fled to Germany and made pitiful appeals for help to the princes. His misfortune provided the party of reform with a long-awaited opportunity. Led by Berthold von Henneberg, the able and resolute archbishop of Mainz, they pressed the aging and afflicted Frederick to relinquish the kingship in favour of his son Maximilian. Solaced somewhat by the assurance of a Habsburg succession, he gave a reluctant acquiescence, and Maximilian was elected on February 16, 1486. Frederick retained the title of emperor, held since his imperial coronation at Rome in 1452—the last imperial coronation held in the Holy See. But he played no part in the government of Germany, and his death on August 19, 1493, passed almost unnoticed. Developments in the individual states to about 1500 The princes and the Landstände
In the various principalities the outcome of the struggle between the territorial princes and the assemblies of estates (Landstände) was not fully decided by 1500. The vigour of the conflict arose partly out of the contrasting conceptions of government held by the protagonists. The secular princes looked upon their lands as private possessions that could be divided by agreement among their sons and drew little distinction between their private and their public revenues. The three estates regarded themselves as the corporate representatives of the whole territorial community and maintained that actions by a prince affecting their interests and privileges should be subject to their consent. They therefore opposed the partition of the territory by family pact among the princes’ sons. The inadvisability of breaking up the principalities into petty territorial lordships was at length conceded by the more prudent princes. By 1500 the rulers of Bavaria, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Württemberg had accepted the principles of territorial indivisibility and primogeniture.
In financial matters the imposition of extraordinary taxes (Notbeden) remained the crucial issue between the princes and the estates. The mounting cost of war and administration outstripped the ordinary revenues of the ruler, plunged him deeply into debt, and compelled him to seek financial aid from the estates with increasing frequency. In the absence of a clear distinction between public and private revenue, the estates often contended that the deficit was a private debt of the prince and disclaimed responsibility. Needy princes were thus forced to buy temporary solvency by concessions that later shackled them in their dealings with the estates. The estates regarded the Notbede strictly as an occasional emergency tax and insisted that it should be reasonable in amount. Indeed, the estates of Bavaria and Brunswick extracted from their respective princes in the course of the 14th century a formal recognition of their right of armed resistance to extortionate taxation. Similarly, any prince who broke his agreements with the estates was subject to the right of resistance. Thus the aims of these territorial assemblies were mixed. They sought to preserve the privileges of the three orders, to restrain the power of the prince, and to limit taxation. They were, however, also actively interested in good government, and the more enlightened rulers usually issued their ordinances only after consultation with the estates.
The princes proceeded against these powerful and often turbulent bodies with great caution. They persistently demanded that territorial assemblies convene only at the summons of the prince. They discountenanced the widespread conviction that absentees from the assembly were not bound to pay the taxes that it voted. In consequence, the peasants, who were not represented except in the Swiss cantons, Baden, Friesland, and Tirol, remained in the grasp of the princes’ tax collectors. In these directions the princes had generally made notable advances by 1500, but in the vital matter of the Notbede they were still obliged to bargain with the estates as equals. They had nowhere attained their ultimate objective: to transform the tax into a regular imposition voted automatically by the estates on demand.
Beyond the confines of the assemblies of estates, the attempts of the princes to curb their overmighty subjects aroused vigorous resistance. The noble vassals, proud and unruly, readily combined against any prince who sought to tamper with their liberties. Wise rulers deflected the nobles’ energies into useful channels by employing them as stipendiaries. Hence even the most powerful princes—the Habsburgs in Austria and the Hohenzollerns in Brandenburg—proceeded circumspectly, and the difficult task of bringing the nobility to heel was far from completed in 1500. The cities of the princely territories defended their independence no less stubbornly. The princes revoked their charters, influenced municipal elections, and forbade the cities to associate in self-defense. The struggle was most intense in the north and east, where the Hohenzollern dynasty of Brandenburg emerged as the chief foe of municipal freedom. In 1442 the elector Frederick II (“Iron Tooth”) crushed a federation of Brandenburg cities and deprived its leader, Berlin, of its most valued privileges. In the Franconian possessions of the dynasty, Albert Achilles of Hohenzollern waged a destructive war (1449–50) against a city league headed by Nürnberg. He suffered a resounding defeat in a pitched battle near Pillenreuth in 1450. The elector John Cicero took up the battle 38 years later, when the cities of the Altmark in west Brandenburg refused to pay an excise tax on beer voted by the assembly of estates. He discomfited the cities in the ensuing “Beer War” and radically revised their constitutions to his own advantage. On the other hand, the great cities of southern Germany, enriched by the Italian trade, were more than a match for the local princes: the Wittelsbach dukes of Bavaria were decisively worsted by Regensburg in 1488. The growth of central governments