Augsburg

Augsburg was a Free Imperial City on the trade routes to Italy, with textile and metalworking industries. It became independent of its prince-bishop in 1276.

The Fugger and Welser banking families enriched Augsburg in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At the 1530 Diet, reformers presented the Augsburg Confession; the 1555 Peace left a mixed Catholic and Protestant council. Swedish troops occupied the city in 1632, and hunger and disease killed thousands during the imperial siege of 1634 to 1635. Augsburg lost its autonomy in 1803 and passed to Bavaria.