were guaranteed hereditary rule over the city for centuries, binding Rostock for a long time, and recognizing them as the supreme judicial authority, was the conflict ended. The citizens slighted the fortress the following spring. From 1575 to 1577 it the city walls were rebuilt, as was the Lagebusch tower and the Stein Gate in the Dutch Renaissance style. The inscription sit intra te concordia et publica felicitas, which can still be read on the gate, refers directly to the conflict with the Duke. In 1584 it finally came to the Second Rostock Inheritance Agreement, which resulted in a further loss of former tax privileges. At the same time, these inheritance contracts put paid to Rostock's ambition of achieving imperial immediacy as L�beck had done in 1226.
The strategic location of Rostock provoked the envy of its rivals. Danes and Swedes occupied the city twice, first during the Thirty Years' War (1618�48) and again from 1700 to 1721. Later, the French, under Napoleon, occupied the town for about a decade until 1813. It was in nearby L�beck-Ratekau that Bl�cher, who was actually born in Rostock and who was one of few generals to fight on after the Battle of Jena, surrendered to the French in 1806. This was only after furious street fighting in the Battle of L�beck, in which he led some of the cavalry charges himself; the exhausted Prussians had, by the time of the surrender, neither food nor ammunition.
In the first half of the 19th century Rostock regained much of its economic importance, at first due to the wheat trade, and, from the 1850s, to industry, especially to its shipyards. The first propeller-driven steamers in Germany were constructed here.
The city grew in size and population, with new quarters emerging in the south and west of the ancient borders of the city. Two notable developments were added to house the increasing population at around 1900:
1. Steintor-Vorstadt in the south, stretching from the old
