The town was captured by the Swabian League in 1519, by Turenne in 1647, and again in 1688 by the French, who destroyed the walls.
These watchwords are said to have arisen in Germany during the disputed succession of the empire between 1135 and 1152, when the Welfs of Bavaria opposed the Swabian princes of Waiblingen origin.
Under the imperial rule of Lothar the Saxon (1125-1137) and Conrad the Swabian (1138I I 52), these civil wars increased in violence owing to the absence of authority.
When they might have won national independence, after their warfare with the Swabian emperors, they let the golden opportunity slip. Pampered with commercial prosperity, eaten to the core with inter-urban rivalries, they submitted to despots, renounced the use of arms, and offered themselves in the hour of need, defenceless and disunited to the shock of puissant nations.
It is romantically situated in a wild and deep valley of the Swabian Alps at an altitude of 1600 ft.
