St. Gallen

St. Gallen was a princely abbey of the Holy Roman Empire, whose abbot ruled territory around the monastery and town of St. Gallen.

The abbot's Appenzell estates revolted in 1401 and defeated his allies at Stoss in 1405. St. Gallen's town bought its liberty from King Sigismund in 1415 and became fully free in 1457. It turned Protestant in 1524, while the abbey remained Catholic. During the Toggenburg War in 1712, Swiss troops pillaged the abbey and carried books to Zürich and Bern. The abbot's secular rule ended in 1798; the monastery dissolved in 1805.