But the Imperial cities of the south were, with the exception of Frankfort, in a state of decadence; they were deeply in debt, and a rotten patrician rule prevented modern industry from flourishing. The councils still continued to issue high-sounding decrees, but the _Senatus populusque, Bopfingensis_, or _Nordlingensis_ as they called themselves in heroic style, appeared only a caricature to their neighbours. The renowned Ulm, the southern capital of Suabia, once the mistress of Italian agency business, had sunk so low that it was supposed that she must sell her domain to preserve herself from bankruptcy; Augsburg also was only the shadow of its former greatness, its princely merchants had become weak commission agents and small money-changers: it was said that the city only contained six firms that could raise more than 200,000 gulden. The Academy of Arts of the city was nothing but a school for artisans. The famous engravers made bad pictures of saints for the village trade; the old hatred of confessions still raged among the inhabitants, for its famed Senate was divided into two factions, and nowhere did the parties of Frederic and Maria Theresa contend so bitterly. Even Nuremberg, once the flower and the pride of Germany, had been severely injured in the old bad time; its 30,000 inhabitants were hardly the fifth of that community which, 300 years earlier, had mustered in fearful battle array; but the city was still in the way to gain a modest position in the German markets, no longer by the artistic articles of old Nuremberg, but by an extended trade in small wares of wood and metal, in which some of the old artistic feeling might still be perceived.