The disintegrating Holy Roman Empire’s landholding nobles have established themselves as individual entities with private armies and the system of secret courts known as the Holy Vehm, or Veme.
The nobles, their strengths deriving from ancient feudal privileges, war frequently between and among themselves, as do Imperial (free) towns, cities and even units of the church.
Nobles and church units fight to stop annexations by the oligarchical towns, whose increasing wealth draws many rural workers; the towns fight to halt excessive and illegal tolls on their trade in raw materials and manufactured commodities.
The ineffective Emperor Wenceslas, king of Germany and Bohemia, a weak and lazy ruler made weaker by alcoholism, attempts to reign from Bohemia, but finds it nearly impossible to control the private powers.
One of these, the exceptionally oppressive Duke Leopold of Austria, had provoked the large Swabian League of Cities, whose forces, allied with those of the Swiss Confederation, had fought and defeated Leopold’s forces at Sempach in 1386.
A general war between towns and had nobles ensued.
By 1389, the towns, especially in southern Germany, have had the worst of it, being isolated pockets of autonomy surrounded by feudal territory.
Wenceslas, who sides with the nobles, arranges an unsatisfactory peace, which tones down the so-called German Town War but does not completely end it.
