Nuremberg (Germany) -- Description and travel; Nuremberg (Germany) -- History
As Emperor, Maximilian stayed at the Kaiserburg. A brilliant assembly
attended his first Reichstag. Masques, dances, tourneys and so forth are
recorded with gusto by the chroniclers. The Emperor, they say,
entertained all the ladies of the town at dinner and provided them with
two hundred and forty sorts of dishes. No wonder he was popular!
Nuremberg was not allowed to be content with supplying Maximilian with
partners in the ball-room. In 1499 she had to support him in his
disastrous war with Switzerland. The Nuremberg contingent was under
Willibald Pirkheimer and Wolf Pömer. Beautifully dressed in red and
white uniforms these soldiers earned the reputation of cowardice and
treachery. Such imputations were, let it be confessed, not unfrequently
cast upon Nuremberg courage; but on this occasion the Emperor took their
part and refuted the charge.
Nuremberg knew at any rate how to fight her own battles. Throughout this
period we find her engaged in continual quarrels with the Markgrafs of
Brandenburg. The Burggraf Frederick once made Elector, had parted with
the Burggrafship, sold it, all but the title, to the burghers in 1427.
But principalities and territories were retained in that quarter, and
about these, and their feudal rights and boundaries and tolls, endless
trouble arose. Some fifty years later actual furious war resulted
between the Elector Albert Achilles and the jealous citizens--a war in
"which eight victories are counted on Albert's part--furious successful
skirmishes they call them; in one of which Albert plunged in alone, his
Ritters being rather shy, and laid about him hugely, hanging by a
standard he had taken, till his life was nearly beaten out. Eight
victories, and also one defeat wherein Albert got captured and had to
ransom himself. The captor was one Kunz of Kauffungen, the Nürnberg
hired General at the time, a man known to some readers for his stealing
of the Saxon princes (Prinzenraut, they call it), a feat which cost Kunz
his head."[19] Such quarrels continued, for the Markgrafs did not
relinquish their efforts to extend their powers. Details it would be
wearisome to give, but they illustrate the general family tendency of
the Hohenzollern. It is characteristic that they were generally
successful in their claims (all cases, it was now decided, arising from
Nuremberg property outside the walls were to be tried by the
Landgericht, of which the Markgraf was president), and based on this
success still greater claims in the future.
The memoirs of Götz von Berlichingen furnish us with an interesting
account of the Battle of the Forest of Nuremberg (1502), which affords a
good example of the sort of thing continually occurring in those days.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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