The Holy Roman Emperor and the various noblemen and archbishops who were authorised to levy tolls seem to have worked out an informal way of regulating this process. Iron chains were often stretched across the river to prevent passage without paying the toll, and strategic towers were built to facilitate this. Allowing the nobility and Church to collect tolls from the busy traffic on the Rhine seems to have been an attractive alternative to other means of taxation and funding of government functions. Only the Holy Roman Emperor could authorise the collection of such tolls. During this time, various feudal lords (among them archbishops who held fiefs from the Holy Roman Emperor) collected tolls from passing cargo ships to bolster their finances. Tolls were collected from ships sailing on the River Rhine in Europe for one thousand years from around 800 AD to 1800 AD. Some robbed merchants, land travelers, and river traffic-seizing money, cargoes, entire ships, or engaged in kidnapping for ransom. Medieval robber barons most often imposed high or unauthorized tolls on rivers or roads passing through their territory. During the period in the history of the Holy Roman Empire known as the Great Interregnum (1250–1273), the number of such tolling stations exploded in the absence of Imperial authority. Some robber barons violated the custom under which tolls were collected on the Rhine either by charging higher tolls than the standard or by operating without authority from the Holy Roman Emperor altogether. The German term for robber barons, Raubritter (robber knights), was coined by Friedrich Bottschalk in 1810. Legendary Raubritter Eppelein von Gailingen (1311–1381) during his escape from Nuremberg CastleĪ robber baron or robber knight ( German: Raubritter) was an unscrupulous feudal landowner who, protected by his fief's legal status, imposed high taxes and tolls out of keeping with the norm without authorization by some higher authority.
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