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In the Holy Roman Empire, the collective term Free and Imperial Cities ((ドイツ語:Freie und Reichsstädte)), briefly worded Free imperial city (''Freie Reichsstadt'', (ラテン語:urbs imperialis libera)), was used from the 15th century to denote a self-ruling city that enjoyed a certain amount of autonomy and was represented in the Imperial Diet. An imperial city held the status of Imperial immediacy, and as such, was subordinate only to the emperor, as opposed to a territorial city or town (''Landstadt'') which was subordinate to a territorial prince – be it an ecclesiastical lord (prince-bishop, prince-abbot) or a secular prince (duke (''Herzog''), margrave, count (''Graf''), etc.). ==Origin== The evolution of some German cities into self-ruling constitutional entities of the Empire was slower than that of the secular and ecclesiastical princes. In the course of the 13th and 14th centuries, some cities were promoted by the emperor to the status of Imperial Cities (''Reichsstädte''; ''Urbes imperiales''), essentially for fiscal reasons. Those cities, which had been founded by the German kings and emperors in the 10th through 13th centuries and had initially been administered by royal/imperial stewards (''Vögte''), gradually gained independence as their city magistrates assumed the duties of administration and justice; some prominent examples are Colmar, Hagenau and Mulhouse in Alsace or Memmingen and Ravensburg in upper Swabia. The Free Cities (''Freie Städte''; ''Urbes liberae'') were those, such as Basel, Augsburg, Cologne or Strasbourg, that were initially subjected to a prince-bishop and, likewise, progressively gained independence from that lord. In a few cases, such as in Cologne, the former ecclesiastical lord continued to claim the right to exercise some residual feudal privileges over the Free City, a claim that gave rise to constant litigation almost until the end of the Empire. Over time, the difference between Imperial Cities and Free Cities became increasingly blurred, so that they became collectively known as "Free Imperial Cities", or "Free and Imperial Cities", and by the late 15th century many cities included both "Free" and "Imperial" in their name.〔Whaley, vol.1, p. 26.〕 Like the other Imperial Estates, they could wage war, make peace, and control their own trade, and they permitted little interference from outside. In the later Middle Ages, a number of Free Cities formed City Leagues (''Städtebünde''), such as the Hanseatic League or the Alsatian Décapole, to promote and defend their interests. In the course of the Middle Ages, cities gained, and sometimes - if rarely - lost, their freedom through the vicissitudes of power politics. Some favored cities gained a charter by gift. Others purchased one from a prince in need of funds. Some won it by force of arms during the troubled 13th and 14th centuries and other lost their privileges during the same period by the same way. Some cities became free through the void created by the extinction of dominant families, like the Swabian House of Hohenstaufen. Some voluntarily placed themselves under the protection of a territorial ruler and therefore lost their independence. A few, like Protestant Donauwörth, which in 1607 was annexed to the Roman Catholic Duchy of Bavaria, were stripped by the Emperor of their status as a Free City for genuine or trumped-up reasons. However, this rarely happened after the Reformation, and of the sixty Free Imperial Cities that remained at the Peace of Westphalia, all but the ten Alsacian cities (which were annexed by France during the late 17th century) continued to exist until the mediatization of 1803. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Free imperial city」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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