Robber barons

A robber baron or robber knight (German Raubritter) was an unscrupulous feudal landowner who resorted to banditry while protected by his fief's legal status. Medieval robber barons robbed merchants, land travelers, and river traffic. They might rob cargoes, steal entire ships, or kidnap for ransom.

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. 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.

The term Raubritter was coined by Friedrich Bottschalk in 1810.

For one thousand years, from around 800 AD to 1800 AD, tolls were collected from ships sailing on the River Rhine in Europe. 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.

Only the Holy Roman Emperor could authorise the collection of such tolls. 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.

Often iron chains were stretched across the river to prevent passage without paying the toll, and strategic towers were built to facilitate this.

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.

Among the decisions involved in managing the collection of tolls on the Rhine were:

While this decision process was made no less complex by being informal, common factors included the local power structure (archbishops and nobles being the most likely recipients of a charter to collect tolls), space between toll stations (authorized toll stations seem to have been at least five kilometres apart), and ability to be defended from attack (some castles through which tolls were collected were tactically useful until the French invaded in 1689 and levelled them).

Tolls were standardized either in terms of an amount of silver coin allowed to be charged or an "in-kind" toll of cargo from the ship.

In contrast, the men who came to be known as robber barons or robber knights (German: Raubritter) violated the structure 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.

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