120 and 600 respectively). Yet, Giengen was to be one of the 50 Free Imperial Cities that were to survive the Thirty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia and continue as quasi-sovereign entities until 1802-03. Protestant Reformation Like almost all the other Imperial Cities, Giengen was profoundly transformed by the Protestant Reformation, which made its way into the city-states before it did into the secular and ecclesiastical principalities of the Empire. Even before the advent of the Reformation, there had been much discontent against the pervasive influence of the Church, particularly in the Free Imperial Cities that, while largely independent politically, had to contend with the control of the Church in religious matters such as tithes, ecclesiastical tribunals, etc., not counting the fact that religious property and the clergy, both secular and regular, were largely exempted from taxation and civic control. Therefore, a final break with Rome and the local bishop—in the case of Giengen, the Bishop of Augsburg—meant the end of a severe irritant and a significant increase in the political reach of the new Protestant cities and princes who, from then on, would have full control over the reformed clergy, tithes and religious regulations and foundations. One Kaspar Pfeiffelmann was the first Protestant preacher to preach in Giengen, more specifically at the hospital church in 1528. In 1531, after having been repeatedly requested by local burghers to hire a permanent Evangelical (Lutheran) preacher, the Town Council finally hired preacher and reformer Martin Rauber. The City officially adopted the new Lutheran doctrine in 1537. Later that year, the famous reformer and theologian Martin Bucer from Strasburg visited Giengen. Catholic services were prohibited in 1556 and soon after, following the general trend already well underway in the other Free Cities, Giengen abandoned its conversion policy that relied on quiet persuasion and decreed that all Nonconformists such as the Anabaptists – deemed too radical and a threat to social order and religious peace – had to leave the city if they refused to convert to Lutheranism. The city suffered heavily during the Thirty Years' War and was looted and ransomed repeatedly by Swedish, Imperial/Spanish and French troops and in 1634 a devastating fire destroyed much of the city. The last soldiers billeted in the city left in August 1650, more than a year after the signing of the Peace of Westphalia. Life very slowly went back to normal and money