ABSTRACT

The history of Rothenburg as an imperial city ended on 2 September 1802 as Bavarian troops oeeupied the town. In return for eeding territories west of the Rhine, Bavaria reeeived eompensation by absorbing neighboring prineely, eeclesiastical, and Reichsstadt territories. Rothenburg's loss of independenee was an immediate consequenee of the political upheavals during the Napoleonie Wars. It was also symptomatie of broader trends accompanying the onset of the industrial revolution and the formation of modem states, both of which made city-states like Rothenburg and the old Holy Roman Empire itself increasingly anachronistic. Bavarian officials took control of the local administration and all municipal property. Bavarian soldiers soon removed the old stone imperial eagle, a symbol of local civic sovereignty, from the town hall. Despite this indignity, Rothenburgers seemed hospitable, at least superficially, to living under Bavarian jurisdiction.\ Faeed with a spiraling municipal debt, population decline sinee the 1770s, and a general inability to cope with the contemporary international scene, Rothenburgers greeted Bavarian annexation with a measure of relief.