The chief prize was a neck chain--"The Jewel of the Country"--which the victor wore round his neck for a year, and which imposed upon the victorious place the duty of giving the next shooting meeting. If the community of the union who had to give the feast was small and poor, the meeting was badly attended. Thus at Neustadt, on Saale, in 1568, only delegates from eighteen cities and three villages appeared. The small participation of the village communities, at this period, is a proof that their strength was diminished in comparison with the former period. Another group comprehended the possessions of the House of Saxony; the Thuringians and many Franconians and Meisseners who sent the garland to one another. These also zealously maintained the cross-bow at their prize-shootings; the popinjay was seldom erected, except at smaller meetings, where it was long upheld. At these festivals the Franconians, up to and beyond Nuremberg, were regular guests; some of the Suabians and more of the German Bohemians. But, on the frontiers of this group, at Halle, another association began, the centre of which was Magdeburg; here the popinjay was more frequent. Thus at the great prize-shooting at Halle, in 1601, the expression "shooting court" appears, and many special usages. This circle embraced the Harz cities up to Brunswick, and the Altmark, and reaches further to the east and north, for the people of Halle sent their invitations as far as Berlin, Brandenburg, and even Griefswald. Again, the cities of the great province of Silesia were in close union, with Breslau for their centre point; there the popinjay shooting attained to its highest development, and the festivals were very frequent. Competition was not unfrequent between two cities; thus, in 1504, between Liegnitz and Neisse, when the Breslauers said, in answer to the invitation of Neisse, that they had already accepted the invitation of Liegnitz, and therefore could not go. The chief places of meeting of the cities of middle Rhine were Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle; but the great prize-shootings of this country, which flourished at the end of the fifteenth century, were embittered by religious discord. It is remarkable that in the countries of Lower Saxony, on the North Sea and Baltic, where the old Hanse towns had founded such noble city unions, the prize-shootings were less frequent and distinguished. The most zealous supporters of them were the Swiss, Suabians, Thuringians, Meisseners, and Silesians. With the Swiss these great festivals attained the character of exercises of arms; they were practical and serious; the waggish humour and the tricks of the _pritschmeister_ flourished in Middle Germany.[72] It is not accidental that in the whole of the Protestant portion of the German empire, the power and comfort of the citizen have been most nobly developed.