uire into the size and populousness of
mediaeval German cities, as into those of the classical world of
antiquity, we are at first sight staggered by the smallness of their
proportions. The largest and most populous free Imperial cities in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Nuernberg and Strassburg, numbered
little more than 20,000 resident inhabitants within the walls, a
population rather less than that of (say) many an English country town
at the present time. Such an important place as Frankfurt-am-Main is
stated at the middle of the fifteenth century to have had less than
9,000 inhabitants. At the end of the fifteenth century Dresden could
only boast of about 5,000. Rothenburg on the Tauber is to-day a dead
city to all intents and purposes, affording us a magnificent example
of what a mediaeval town was like, as the bulk of its architecture,
including the circuit of its walls, which remain intact, dates
approximately from the sixteenth century. At present a single line of
railway branching off from the main line with about two trains a day
is amply sufficient to convey the few antiquaries and artists who are
now its sole visitors, and who have to content themselves with
country-inn accommodation. Yet this old free city has actually a
larger population at the present day than it had at the time of which
we are writing, when it was at the height of its prosperity as an
important centre of activity. The figures of its population are now
between 8,000 and 9,000. At the beginning of the sixteenth century
they were between 6,000 and 7,000. A work written and circulated in
manuscript during the first decade of the sixteenth century, "A
Christian Exhortation" (_Ein Christliche Mahnung_), after referring to
the frightful pestilences recently raging as a punishment from God,
observes, in the spirit of true Malthusianism, and as a justification
of the ways of Providence, that "an there were not so many that died
there were too much folk in the land, and it were not good that such
should be lest there were not food enough for all."

Great population as constituting importance in a city is
comparatively a modern notion. In other ages towns became famous on
account of their superior civic organization, their more advantageous
situation, or the greater activity, intellectual, political, or
commercial, of their citizens.

What this civic organization of mediaeval towns was, demands a few
words of explanation, since the confli