"--were paid by the city of
Zurich. In return they received the small silver utensils which were
won in the urn by the Zurichers. The collective costs of the journey
which Zurich then paid for its marksmen amounted to 1500 gulden.

It is of great interest to consider these brotherly festivals of the
city communities, according to districts. In the middle of the
sixteenth century, a journey from Nuremburg to Augsburg was neither so
easy nor free from danger, as now from Leipsig to Zurich. The birds of
prey of the country gladly flew from their castellated eyries into the
woods which surrounded, in wide circles, the hospitable city; more than
once was the fortunate marksman waylaid and robbed, by noble horsemen,
of the beautiful purse with the guldens he had won, and his banner
broken. Even to greater companies the road was insecure, and the
travelling toilsome; the inns at small places were frequently very bad,
without meat or drink. It is easily understood that at the largest
prize-shooting, to which every unexceptional man was welcome, persons
from a distance only took a part when accident had brought them into
the neighbourhood. Therefore it is matter of surprise that the district
to which cities sent their invitations was so large. The Wittenburghers
were welcome guests at Ratisbon and the men of Stuttgart at Meissen.
Sometimes accident or the friendship of distinguished citizens, knit
these bonds of hospitality betwixt far-distant cities; then the
invitations went forty, fifty, or one hundred miles. But, on the whole,
we may divide these hospitable cities into groups. The Swiss, Suabians,
and Bavarians were in close union. Augsburg, more than Nuremberg, was
long the centre and pattern of these groups. To it belonged the Rhine
as far as Strasbourg. The greatest and most splendid prize-shootings
were for two centuries celebrated in this part of Germany. In Bavaria,
about 1400, all the more powerful places were in firm intercommunion.
There, the city whose marksmen, at one shooting, had won the first
prize, was bound at the next shooting festival to produce the same
first prize. Thus Kehlheim, which had won the ram at Munich, invited
the Munichers, in 1404, to contend for it again.[71] But smaller
festivals also comprehended a wide circle. At Ratisbon, for example,
the Bavarians and Suabians shot with the larger cities of Thuringia and
Meissen; also with Lindau, Salzburg, and some places in Bohemia. The
Tyrolese and Sa