about  the  same  time,  in  a  few  instances,  to  those  of  France.1
Gradually,  however,  they  began  to  elect  councils  of  citizens,
as  a  sort  of  senate  and  magistracy.  This  innovation  might
psvhaps  take  place  as  early  as  the  reign  of  Frederic  I.-,3  at
least  it  was  fully  established  in  that  of  his  grandson.  They
were  at  first  only  assistants  to  the  imperial  or  episcopal
bailiff,  who  probably  continued  to  administer  criminal  justice.
But  in  the  thirteenth  century  the  citizens,  grown  richer  and
stronger,  either  purchased  the  jurisdiction,  or  usurped  it
through  the  lord's  neglect,  or  drove  out  the  bailiff  by  force.8
The  great  revolution  in  Franconia  and  Suabia  occasioned  by
the  fall  of  the  Hohenstauffen  family  completed  the  victory
of  the  cities.  Those  which  had  depended  upon  mediate  lords
became  immediately  connected  with  the  empire ;  and  with
the  empire  in  its  state  of  feebleness,  when  an  occasional
present  of  money  would  easily  induce  its  chief  to  acquiesce
in  any  claims  of  immunity  which  the  citizens  might  prefer.
It  was  a  natural  consequence  of  the  importance  which  the
free  citizens  had  reached,  and  of  their  immediacy,  that  they
were  admitted  to  a  place  in  the  diets,  or  general  meetings
of  the  confederacy.  They  were  tacitly  acknowledged  to  be
equally  sovereign  with  the  electors  and  princes.  No  proof
exists  of  any  law  by  which  they  were  adopted  into  the  diet.
