From the time that the counts of Zollern were awarded with the March of Brandenburg in 1415, their Frankish possessions were also designated as margraviates. In First Margrave War (1449-1450) the Zollern, Albert Achilles of Brandenburg-Ansbach, tried to gain supremacy over Franconia and unsuccessfully besieged the free imperial city of Nuremberg. In the end the margrave failed and had to confine himself to his original estates. Albert bequeathed his eldest son and heir with the March of Brandenburg and his other sons, Frederick and Sigmund, with the areas around Ansbach and Kulmbach. Thus the Franconian territories of the Zollerns were gathered into independent principalities. Even other lords, such as the Prince Bishop of Würzburg, were not able to build a larger, contiguous, territorial power. By contrast, the free imperial city of Nuremberg emerged from the Margrave War victorious and, at the end of the Middle Ages, had the largest imperial municipal area in all of Germany.