From the Diet of Worms to the Augsburg Confession - James Aitken Wylie

A more precious possession still than either its
exquisite genius or its unrivalled art did Nuremberg
boast: liberty, namely–liberty, lacking which
genius droops, and the right hand forgets its
cunning. Nuremberg was one of the free cities of
Germany. In those days there were not fewer than
ninety-three such towns in the Empire. They were
green oases in the all but boundless desert of
oppression and misery which the Europe of those
days presented. They owed their rise in part to war,
but mainly to commerce. When the emperors on
occasion found themselves hard pushed, in the long
war which they waged with the Popes, when their
soldiers were becoming few and their exchequer
empty, they applied to the towns to furnish them
with the means of renewing the contest. They
offered them charters of freedom on condition of
their raising so many men-at-arms, or paying over
a certain sum to enable them to continue their
campaigns. The bargain was a welcome one on
both sides. Many of these towns had to buy their
enfranchisement with a great sum, but a little
liberty is worth a great deal of gold. Thus it was on
the red fields of the period that their freedom put
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