Yet grave as were these difficulties, and obstinate as was the conservative opposition of the older economic institutions, especially those of the towns, we cannot help seeing, in all directions, that the necessities of real life were relentlessly driving society toward the territorial organisation. The old forms of loose combination characteristic of the Middle Ages, like the town-leagues and alliances to maintain the public peace, the town toll-system and staple, the town currency, the everlasting hostility of town and country, all the old mediaeval corporations, these became every day greater hinderances in the way of trade and economic progress. People had to get free from them and make their way to larger unities, to associations of districts, and to more far-sighted coalitions of interests, such as were to be found in the territorial assemblies (Landtage) and at the courts of the princes. The more completely the princely territories coincided with old boundaries and primitive tribal feelings; the stronger happened to be the system of parliamentary Estates binding, first, towns together and nobles together, and then the whole municipal estate to the whole estate of the nobles; the more intelligent and forceful were the princes who guided the movement, with frugal and competent officials to help them; the quicker proceeded the process of economic assimilation.
To be sure it never ran its course without meeting with the bitterest opposition.
What trouble the Hohenzollern princes in Brandenburg had before they subjected to themselves, even externally and in military matters, the nobles and towns of the land! The severance of the Brandenburg towns from the Hanseatic League and the abolition of their independent right of alliance were barely accomplished during the years 1448 to 1488. The towns did not, however, surrender the right to pursue an independent commercial policy till long after this. The very important treaties with regard to the Frankfurt Staple (1490-1512) were certainly afterwards confirmed by the princes concerned. But the initiative still came from the towns; and this independence was retained as late as the Thirty Years' War, though in a lessened measure, and with increasing moderation and prudence in its exercise.
Throughout the sixteenth century we find the princes of Brandenburg and their neighbours giving their attention more and more closely to matters of this kind. In the commercial controversies between Pomerania and Brandenburg (1562 and 1572), both the princely and the municipal authorities took part, although it was Frankfurt and Stettin that engaged in the trial before the Imperial Chamber (Reichskammergericht). The treaties of mutual defence with towns in other territories like Luneburg,(3*) - which were made as late as the time of Joachim Iof Brandenburg, - seemed in the next period no longer suitable, since they aroused the distrust of the Luneburg princes. As the maintenance of the public peace passed into the hands of the princes, to them, and not to the towns, it fell to negotiate with one another for its strict preservation; for instance, in the treaty between Brandenburg and Pomerania of July 29, 1479,(4*)and that between Brandenburg and Magdeburg of July 24, 1479.(5*)The negotiations for commercial treaties, as well as the signature of the treaties themselves, between Brandenburg and Poland in 1514,(6*) 1524-27,(7*) 1534,(8*) and 1618,(9*) were the work of the princes and not of the towns. At the congresses to deal with the navigation of the Elbe and Oder in the sixteenth century, some of the ambassadors came from Frankfurt, but it was those sent by the elector who led the discussion. The treaty with "the common merchant" about transit through the Mark of Brandenburg was made by Joachim I, and not by the Brandenburg towns.(10*) In short, the representation of the country in the way of commercial policy passed over, slowly but surely, from the towns to the princely government. And if, in spite of this, the impression spread, about 1600, that all the trade of the country was coming to grief, the explanation is not to be found in this transference, but in the fact that the prince's policy was too feebly pursued, and that he was really at a disadvantage in dealing with Saxony, Silesia, Magdeburg, Hamburg, and Poland.
