Medieval commune
When autonomy was won through violent uprising and overthrow, the commune was often called conspiratio (a conspiracy) (Italian: cospirazione).
During the 10th century in several parts of Western Europe, peasants began to gravitate towards walled population centers, as advances in agriculture (the three-field system) resulted in greater productivity and intense competition.
In central and northern Italy, and in Provence and Septimania, most of the old Roman cities had survived—even if grass grew in their streets—largely as administrative centers for a diocese or for the local representative of a distant kingly or imperial power.
Such townspeople needed physical protection from lawless nobles and bandits, part of the motivation for gathering behind communal walls, but also strove to establish their liberties, the freedom to conduct and regulate their own affairs and security from arbitrary taxation and harassment from the bishop, abbot, or count in whose jurisdiction these obscure and ignoble social outsiders lay.
When a commune formed, all participating members gathered and swore an oath in a public ceremony, promising to defend each other in times of trouble, and to maintain the peace within the city proper.
State officialdom expanded in England and France from the 12th century onwards, while the Holy Roman Empire was ruled by communal coalitions of cities, knights, farmer republics, prince-bishops and the large domains of the imperial lords.
Many were granted the rights to assembly, and executive power was often concentrated in one elected official, the mayor or first consul, with an advisory body of conseils.
[9]: 24–26 In Cantabria, seafaring towns led by Burgos formed the Hermandad de las Marismas (Marsh brotherhood), an organisation similar to the Hanseatic league.
In the 1470s the Santa Hermandad or Holy Brotherhood was formed, in which all municipalities sent representatives to a junta general which would coordinate law enforcement to protect trade.
One of the most famous cases of a commune being suppressed and the resulting defiant urban revolt occurred in the French town of Laon in 1112.
In times of a weak central government, communes typically formed to ensure the safety on the roads through their territory to enable commerce (Landfrieden).
Besides the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft, there were similar rural alpine communes in County of Tyrol, but these were destroyed by the House of Habsburg.
Milan led the Lombard cities against the Holy Roman Emperors and defeated them, gaining independence (battles of Legnano, 1176, and Parma, 1248).
Cities such as Florence, Parma, Ferrara, Verona, Padua, Lucca, Siena, Mantua and others were able to create stable states at the expenses of their neighbors, some of which lasted until modern times.
In southern Italy, which then formed the Kingdom of Sicily, autonomous communes were rarer, Republic of Sassari in Sardinia being one example.
Nevertheless, some of these communes (as Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Hamburg) were able to survive in Germany for centuries and became almost independent city-state vassals to the Holy Roman Emperors (see Free imperial city).
