Imperial Diet of 1495 Bogs Down In Deliberation

It is one of those apparent ironies of history that while Emperor Maximilian deliberated with his princes during the diet of Worms, French King Charles VIII was leaving Naples. Maximilian had wanted to raise funds to build an army and take them over the Alps to drive the French from Italy. The assembled members of the meeting that lasted through the spring of 1495 not only did not agree with Max but wanted something very different from him.

As Thomas A Brady tells us in his German Histories In The Age of Reformations the Diet proposed creating an executive council that was centered in Frankfurt, had an annual budget, could raise armies and negotiate directly with the Roman Curia. The Emperor knew this would not only lessen his own power but create an entire new structure outside his overseeing control and away from his direct holdings.

It was on May 23, 1495 that the royal council told those assembled that such a body might exist only in the event of an Imperial absence, as in a war against the Ottomans. If this were the case, the Emperor himself would appoint its members and structures. This was not to the council's liking.

They also had asked for a Perpetual Public Peace in German lands, a supreme judicial body jointly staffed, an entire police system to maintain the peace, and a direct public tax on all Imperial subjects. Of these, only the tax was eventually accepted and which came to be called the Common Penny.

"Several treasurers were appointed, headquartered at Frankfurt, and, there being no Imperial local officials, parish priets were saddled with the task of collecting moneys at the local level." [p. 117]

Over four years, only six percent of the originally projected sum of two million gulden were collected. A third of this Brady says was collected by the treasurers and about one-tenth came from the princes. Some forty to nearly sixty percent of this Common Penny came from the Emperor himself. The result was a political disaster. The clergy were hated for taking the taxes, the Imperial Council and any order it could manifest could not be established, and the Public Peace could not be found. The following year Maximillian would venture over the Alps on his march to Italy.

Maximillian had hoped to lead Prince Sigismund, as he wrote to him, and other princes with their little green tent, famous Swiss pikemen,and chamois, and beat the French back from Naples and save Christiandom. That too would end in disappointment. But all the while over the years, each of these would be announced as some form of victory, but each time the rhetoric rang hollow and far short of projections.
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quotes and pagination from: Thomas A Brady Jr: German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650;  University of California, Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009