Albrecht Dürer – Portrait of Maximilian I
Three Landsknechte.
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I’s persistent attempts to argue that the Estates should provide money and manpower for the defence of the Reich were met with an equally stubborn reluctance to oblige. In his propaganda, Maximilian repeatedly emphasized the centrality of `Germany’ and the Germans to his system: the Germans had been entrusted with the empire because of their brave fighting spirit. 24 It was thus their duty, in his view, to provide the material and military foundation for his campaigns. The German Estates, by contrast, took a narrower view of their patriotic duty. Increasingly they distinguished between the interests of the Reich of the `German nation’ and the wider `universal’ Reich. Thus they could see some justification in providing limited assistance for an offensive against the Turks, since they in fact threatened the German `nation’, but they refused repeatedly to contemplate support for any campaign against the French in Italy.
In reality, even the limited concession of a duty to safeguard the Reich against the Turks yielded little in terms of either money or men. The traditional criticism that Maximilian pursued his universal imperial dream on the strength of German resources is without foundation. At Worms in 1495, for example, Maximilian asked for 4 million gulden over four years. Only 250,000 gulden was granted, and even that was never paid in full. Throughout his reign, Maximilian drew only the equivalent of 50,000 gulden per annum from the Reich. This pales into insignificance when compared with the revenue of between 500,000 gulden and 1 million gulden per annum that he drew from his Austrian territories, or the 1 million gulden he received from his uncle-in-law, the Duke of Milan, between 1494 and 1500. Even the annual tax paid by the Jews of the hereditary lands and the Reich was higher than the amount ever paid by the German Estates. By far the most significant financial instrument was the loan system that Maximilian built up on the rich mineral resources of the Tyrol. In effect, the great universal imperial project depended on the sale of monopolies to south German merchants such as the Fuggers in Augsburg, and the raising of loans from the south German Imperial Cities.
Men proved even more difficult to extract from the Reich than money. Maximilian essentially brought to the Reich the formula that he had inherited in Burgundy and employed to considerable effect in the struggle for the Burgundian succession in the 1480s. A combination of knights and German mercenaries had proved crucial against the French and their Swiss mercenaries. As emperor after 1493, Maximilian attempted to develop this combination further, and envisaged the formation of an imperial standing army. The only relatively successful aspect of this strategy was the integration of knights and members of the upper nobility into his forces.
Maximilian’s sponsorship of the Order of St George’s Shield and renewal of the Austrian Order of St George ultimately did not produce a new imperial army. Nor were these organizations effective in a military sense. The Order of St George, for example, did not provide a viable basis for the projected south-eastern military frontier in Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, although on occasion Maximilian was able to employ individuals such as Götz von Berlichingen and Franz von Sickingen as military commanders. Similarly, Albert the Brave of Saxony, Rudolf of Anhalt, and Margrave Casimir of Brandenburg were members of the upper nobility who played a significant role in a variety of campaigns. All were commanders recruited through the traditional feudal clientele network, rather than as `modern’ military professionals.
Harnessing the traditions of the German mercenaries was more problematic. The Landsknechte did indeed become an imperial army, with an internal discipline and organization expressed in distinctive uniforms; they easily matched the standards set by the Swiss, who were generally regarded as the most formidable fighters of the time. This was undoubtedly the result of Maximilian’s own personal commitment and participation. In the Italian campaigns, dressed in the distinctive slit gambeson or doublet and feather cap, he led his Landsknechte into battle himself, as he had done earlier in Burgundy. The Landsknechte, however, remained mercenaries. When their wages were not paid, even commanders such as Georg von Frundsberg, who normally enjoyed their respect and unconditional loyalty, were unable to control them.
The fundamental obstacle both to the military integration of the knights and nobles and to the transformation of the Landsknechte into something approaching a `national’ imperial army was the opposition of the Estates in the Reichstag. Maximilian’s proposals from 1495 onwards all more or less failed because they became enmeshed in the wider debate about constitutional reform of the Reich. The Estates repeatedly refused to contemplate an imperial tax to establish an imperial standing army composed of mercenaries, since they feared this would strengthen the emperor’s position. In 1510, for example, Maximilian’s proposal for a standing army of 50,000 men was simply postponed to the next Reichstag in 1512, when it was rejected outright.
The Estates also proved reluctant to grant any more than minimal assistance in terms of one-off levies of men (or their financial equivalent). They favoured the periodic levy system because it gave them greater freedom to pass on the burden of any tax to their subjects (the imperial tax made no distinction between princes and their subjects). Yet in practice they were reluctant to pay anything at all towards campaigns that many regarded as not of their `national’ concern. Even when assistance was promised, as in 1505 and 1507, the money was not in fact given in full and, frequently, what was paid arrived far too late to be of any use in the campaign for which it was intended. Without the combination of Fugger loans secured on Tyrolean silver and copper and the troops that were raised in the Tyrol and the other Austrian hereditary lands, Maximilian would not have been able to march anywhere at all.
If all that Maximilian wanted from the Reich of the `German nation’ was its money and its soldiers, he clearly failed miserably. Questions of imperial taxation and the military assistance due from the Reich to its emperor were only gradually resolved during the reign of Charles V. However, there was more to Maximilian’s efforts to assert his prerogatives in the Reich than this. Indeed, it is a tribute to his success that what emerged by the end of his reign was not an oligarchy of princes but a strengthened monarchy. 35 It is true that the monarchy had less power in the Reich than some other Western European monarchs had in their kingdoms. Yet the fact that the institution had been strengthened at all has often been overlooked. Given the manifest ability of the Estates to refuse both money and manpower, this outcome also perhaps represents something of a paradox.
