was provided for by an order of the Council in 1427, to the effect that
all householders, whether male or female, must work at the ditch one day
in the year with their children of over twelve years of age, and with
all their servants, male or female. Those who were not able to work had
to pay a substitute. Subsequently this order was changed to the effect
that every one who could or would not work must pay ten pfennige. There
were no exemptions from this liturgy, whether in favor of councillor,
official, or lady. The order remained ten years in force, tho the
amount of the payment was gradually reduced....

At the time of the construction of these and the other lofty towers it
was still thought that the raising of batteries as much as possible
would increase their effect. In practise the plunging fire from
platforms at the height of some eighty feet above the level of the
parapets of the town wall can hardly have been capable of producing any
great effect, more especially if the besieging force succeeded in
establishing itself on the crest of the counterscarp of the ditches,
since from that point the swell of the bastions masked the towers. But
there was another use for these lofty towers. The fact is that the
Nuremberg engineers, at the time that they were built, had not yet
adopted a complete system of flank-works, and not having as yet applied
with all its consequences the axiom that that which defends should
itself be defended, they wanted to see and command their external
defenses from within the body of the place, as, a century before, the
baron could see from the top of his donjon whatever was going on round
the walls of his castle, and send up his support to any point of attack.
The great round towers of Nuremberg are more properly, in fact, detached
keeps than portions of a combined system, rather observatories than
effective defenses.