Читать книгу The Pictures of German Life Throughout History - Gustav Freytag - Страница 7

In seven hundred years the independent life of the Greeks terminated; about a thousand embraces the growth, dominion, and decline of the Roman power; but the German Empire had lasted fifteen hundred years from the fight in the Teutoburg Forest,^[1] before it began to emerge from its epic time. So entirely different was the duration of the life of the ancient world to that of the modern; so slow and artificial are our transformations. How rich were the blossoms which Greek life had matured in the five centuries from Homer to Aristotle! How powerful were the changes which the Roman State had undergone, from the rise of the free peasantry on the hills of the Tiber to the subjection of the Italian husbandmen under German landlords! But the Germans worked for fifteen centuries with an intellectual inheritance from the Romans and the East, and are now only in the beginning of a development which we consider as peculiar to the German mind, in contradistinction to the Roman, of the new time, to the ancient. It is indeed no longer an isolated people which has to emerge from barbarism by its own creations; it is a family of nations more painstaking and more enduring, which has risen, at long and laborious intervals, from the ruins of the Roman Empire, and from the intellectual treasures of antiquity: one nation reciprocally acting on the other, under the law of the same faith.

The Romans from free peasants had become farmers, and they were ruined because they could not overcome the social evil of slavery. The German warriors also, in the time of Tacitus, took little pleasure in cultivating their own fields, and were glad to make use of dependents. It was only shortly before the year 1500, that the German cities arrived at the conviction that the labour of freemen is the foundation of prosperity, opulence, and civilisation. But in the country, even after the Thirty Years' War, the mass of the labourers--more than half of the whole German nation--were in a state of servitude, which in many provinces differed little from slavery. It is only in the time of our fathers that the peasant has become an independent man, a free citizen of the State: so slowly has the groundwork of German civilisation and of the modern State been developed.

All earthly progress does not take the straight course which men expect when improvement begins; thus the position of the German husbandman in 1700 was worse in many respects than a hundred years before; nay, even in our time it is not comparatively so good as it was 600 years earlier, in the time of the Hohenstaufen.

The German peasant for centuries lost much that was valuable in order to attain a higher condition; his freedom and elevation to citizenship in our State was effected in an apparently indirect way. At the time of the Carlovingians more than half the peasants were free and armed, and the pith of the popular strength; at the time of Frederick the Great, almost all the country people were under strict bondage,--the beasts of burden of the new State, weak and languishing, without political object or interest in the State. Somewhat of the old weakness still clings to them.

We shall therefore first take a short review of an earlier period, comparing it with the peasant life of the last two centuries.

What the Romans mention of the condition of the German agricultural districts, is only sufficient to give us a glimpse of ancient peasant life. According to their accounts, the Germans were long considered to be a wild warrior race, who lived in transition from a wandering life to an uncertain settlement, and it was seldom inquired how it was possible that such hordes should for centuries carry on a victorious resistance to the disciplined armies of the greatest power on earth. When Cheruskers, Chattens, Bructerers, Batavers, and other people of less geographical note, occasioned terror, not only to single legions, but to large Roman armies, not once, but in continual wars for more than one generation,--when a Markomannen chief disciplined 70,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry after the fashion of legions; when a Roman, after a century of devastating wars between the Rhine and the Elbe, puts before us with great emphasis the powerful masses of the Germans,--we may conclude that single tribes which, with their allies, could sometimes bring into the field more than 100,000 warriors, must have counted a population of hundreds of thousands. And we equally approach to a second conclusion, that such a multitude in a narrowly limited space, surrounded by warlike neighbours, could only exist by means of a simple, perhaps, but regular and extensive cultivation of field products. That the agriculture of the Germans should appear meagre to the Romans, after the garden cultivation of Italy and Gaul, is comprehensible; nevertheless they found corn, millet, wheat, and barley; but the common corn of the country was oats, the meal of which they despised, and rye, which Pliny calls an unpalatable growth of the Alpine country, productive of colic. But in the year 301, the corn which made the German black bread, was introduced as the third article of commerce in the corn bourse of Greece and Asia Minor. And from barley the German brewed his home drink, beer; he also brewed from wheat.

Now we know that in the time of the Romans, most of the German races lived in a condition similar to that in which it appears from records they lived shortly after their great exodus, in the early centuries of the Christian era: sometimes on single farms, but generally in enclosed villages, with boundaries marked out by posts. They had a peculiar method of laying out new village districts, and the Romans found it difficult to understand the mode of farming customary to the country. Probably the dwellers in the marshes near the North Sea had, as Pliny writes, made the first simple dykes against the encroachments of the water; already were their dwellings built on small hillocks, which, in high tides, raised them above the water, and their sheep pastured in the summer on the grass of the new alluvial soil;^[2] but further from the coast the peasant dwelt in his blockhouse, or within mud walls, which he then loved to whitewash. Herds of swine lay in the shadows of the woods,^[3] horses and cattle grazed on the village meadows, and long-woolled sheep on the dry declivities of the hills. Large flocks of geese furnished down for soft pillows; the women wove linen on a simple loom, and dyed it with native plants, the madder and the blue woad; and made coats and mantles of skins, which had already borders of finer fur introduced from foreign parts. Well-trod commercial roads crossed the territory from the Rhine to the Vistula in every direction. The foreign trader, who brought articles of luxury and the gold coins of Rome in his wagon to the house of the countryman, exchanged them with him for the highly-prized feathers of the goose, smoked hams, and sausages, the horns of the ure ox and antlers of the stag, fur skins, and even articles of toilet, such as the blonde hair of slaves, and a fine pomade to colour the hair. He bought German carrots, which had been ordered as a delicacy by his Emperor Tiberius; he beheld with astonishment in the garden of his German host, gigantic radishes, and related to his country-people that a German had shown him honeycombs eight feet long.

The warlike householder, it is true, held his weapons in higher esteem than his plough, not because agriculture was unimportant or despised, but because in the free classes there was already an aristocratic development. For, although the warrior did not employ himself in any field labour, he insisted upon his household cultivating his ground, and his bondmen had to pay a tribute in corn and cattle. The bondman dwelt with his wife and child near his master in special huts, which were erected on the land that was allotted to him for cultivation. Freemen were not only associated in communities, but several races were joined in one confederacy, being by the old constitution knit together by religious memories and public worship. The boundaries of the province were marked out, like those of the village, by casts of the holy hammer, and consecrated by processions of divine cars. Notwithstanding the numerous feuds of individual tribes, there were many points of union which served to reconcile and keep them together,--blood relationship and marriage alliances, similitude in customs and privileges, and, above all, the feeling of the same origin, the same language, and those pious rites which keep alive the memory of ancient communion.

Although the German of Tacitus appears to us as a fierce warrior, who, clothed in skins, watched with spear and wooden shield over the abatis which guarded his village against the assaults of enemies; yet this same German is shown, by the results of new researches, to have been a householder and landlord. He looked with satisfaction on the great brewer's copper which had been wrought by his neighbour, the skilful smith; or he stood in coloured linen smock-frock before the laden harvest wagon, on which his boy was throwing the last sheaf of rye, and his daughter placing the harvest wreath with pious ejaculations.

The German is incomprehensible to us, when, according to the Roman, he worshipped Mercury as the highest god; but we can realise the figure of the Asengott Woden, when we see the connection, of the wild hunter of our traditions and the sleeping Emperor of Kyffhäuser, with German antiquity. Now, we know how lovingly and actively the gods and spirits hovered round the hearths, farms, fields, rivers, and woods of our forefathers. From this tendency also the old Chatte or Hermundure has been transformed into a Hessian or Thuringian householder, who in the twilight looks wistfully up to his rooftree, on which the little household spirit loves to sit, and who, when the storm rages, carefully covers the window-openings, in order that a spectral horse's head from the train of the wild god who rides on the blast may not look into his hall.

Even from the productions of the Germans in that century that were most full of heart and soul, their songs, which no careful hand transcribed on parchment, we may draw some conclusions. Their oldest kind of poetry is not entirely unknown to us,--the native epic verse, with its alliterations--and in some of the popular songs and proverbs which have been preserved, we still find the ancient love of contests of wit and of enigmas, with which a troubadour delighted his hearers by the hearth of the Saxon chief.

After the great national exodus, written records begin slowly to appear in Germany. They came, together with that irresistible power which changed so much of the whole spirit of the German people,--with Christianity. However energetically religion turned the mind into new paths, and however fearful was the destruction occasioned by popular tumults at that period of immigration, the changes in the Germans arising from both sources were not sufficient to shatter everything ancient into ruins. We are too apt to consider the national exodus as a chaotic process of destruction. It is true that it drove from their homes many of the most powerful German nationalities that were located in and beyond East Germany, and the depopulated domiciles were filled with the Sclavonians who followed. The Bavarians migrated from Bohemia to the Danube; the Suevi, Allemanni, and Burgundians, southwards to their present localities. The names of old nationalities have disappeared, and new ones have spread themselves far across the Rhine. But nearly half the Germany which was known to the Romans--the wide territory from the North Sea to the Thuringian woods and the Rhone, from the Saal to near the Rhine--retains, on the whole, its old inhabitants; for the Thuringians, the Chattens, and indeed most of the races of Lower Saxony, only came in partial swarms; they probably greatly diminished in marching through foreign lands, and by emigrations of their kinsmen; they were also, as for example the Thuringians, frequently intermingled with foreign hordes, who settled among them. But the nucleus of the old inhabitants remained through all fluctuations, and maintained their own old home traditions, peculiarities of speech, customs, and laws.

About the year 600 the oldest law books and records in the new Franconia, afford us the richest insight into the life of the German countryman. Each had a right to a holding, generally of 30 morgans, on the common land, the morgan being decided according to the nature of the soil. On each holding there was a yard fenced round, closed by a gate, within which was the dwelling-house with stables and barn, and by the side of it a garden; and in the southwest of Germany frequently a vineyard. These homesteads formed villages divided by lanes; it was only in part of Lower Saxony that the inhabitants of the marsh and hilly country lived in separate farms, in the midst of their holdings. But amongst most Germans the holding is not a connected tract of land. The collective arable land of the village was divided into three portions--winter, summer, and fallow fields; each of these fields, according to soil and situation, again into small parcels; and in each of these parcels in every field each holder had his share. Thus the arable land of every holding consisted of a number of square acres which, lying dispersed through the three principal divisions of the village district, gave, as far as possible, an equal measure of land in each. Besides this, a share of the pastures, meadows, and wood of the community belonged to the holding; for round the arable land lay the meadow land of the community, and its woods, in which were the treasured acorns. Already the boundaries were carefully marked, and on the boundary hills boys received blows on their cheeks and had their ears pulled, and already was it called an old custom to set up a small bundle of straw as a warning on a forbidden footway. Already we find the property not unfrequently divided, where the vassals dwell in the house and farm, the grades of their vassalage and their burdens being various. The households of freemen also contained bondservants, who differed little from Roman slaves; only in the service of God could they be equal with the free; they shared in all the holy usages of the Church; they could become priests and perform marriages with the permission of their masters, but the master had a right over their life.

Among the farms of freemen and vassals might be found the farm of a larger landed proprietor, who had a manor house with a hall, and a great number of huts for domestics and labourers. For as yet, artisans, wheelwrights, potters, armourers, and goldsmiths were most of them bondmen; as the number of markets and cities were small, their influence in the country was still unimportant. All kinds of grain were cultivated in the fields, which are now used in our succession of crops, and in the gardens, almost all the vegetables of our markets, also gherkins, pumpkins, and melons; the laws were vigilant for the protection of the orchards. The clergy brought from Italy costly grafts, and peaches and apricots were to be found in the gardens of the wealthy. Already the old Bavarian house began to appear, formed of beams, with galleries outside, and its flat projecting roof; and it may be assumed also, that the old Saxon house with its heathen horses' heads on the gable ends, its thatched roof over the porch, its hearth, sleeping cells, and cattle stalls, spread widely over the country, and that the Thuringians, even then, as in a century later, lived in the unfloored hall, in the background of which a raised daïs--the most distinguished part of the house--separated from the hall the women's apartments and the sleeping-rooms. Dwellings were seldom without a bathhouse; for their winter work the women descended into their underground chamber, which had already astonished the Romans, where stood the loom; the places for the mistresses and servants were separated. In the court-yard fluttered numerous poultry, amongst them swans and even cranes, which, up to the Thirty Years' War, were treasured as masters of the German poultry yard. The greatest pleasure of the countryman was the training of his horse, and the steeds which were used in war were of great value. They pastured with their feet hobbled; any one was severely punished who stole them from their pasture; the impositions of horse dealers also were well known, and the laws endeavoured to afford protection against them. All the South Germans fastened bells round the necks of their cattle, and the Franconians round the swine in the woods.

Every means of ascertaining the relative number of bond and freemen in the time of Charles V. is deficient, even in that part of the country which had for a long time been won over to Christianity; yet we see distinctly that the whole strength of the nation lay in the masses of free yeomen. But even in his time, larger landed proprietors, tyrannical officials, and the not less domineering Church, eagerly endeavoured to diminish the number of the free by obtruding upon them their protection, and thus placing them under a gentle servitude. The position of the free peasant must have been frequently insupportable; the burdens laid upon him by the monarchy were very great, such as the tithes, the military service, and the supply of horses and vehicles for the journeys of the king and his officials. There was no law to protect him against the powerful, and he was especially tormented by robber hordes and the violence of his neighbours. Therefore he found safety by giving up his freedom, surrendering his house and farm into the hands of a powerful noble, and receiving it back again from him. Then he delivered to his new master as a symbol of his service, a fowl from his farm yard, and a portion of the produce of his field or of his labour as a yearly tax. In return for this, his new master undertook to defend him, and to perform his military service for him by means of his own followers.

Thus began the diminution of the national strength of Germany, the oppression of the peasants, the deterioration of the infantry, and the origin of the feudal lords, and of their vassal-followers, from which arose in the next century the higher and lower German nobility. Every internal war, every invasion of foreign enemies,--of Normans, of Hungarians, or of Sclaves,--drove numerous freemen into servitude, and without ceasing did the Church work to recommend itself or its saints as feudal lords to repentant sinners.^[4]

Yet about the year 1000, under the great Saxon emperors, the free peasant had still some consciousness of strength. The bondman, indeed, was still under severe oppression; he was slightly esteemed, and obliged to give outward proof of the difference between himself and the freeman, by bad dress and short hair. The free peasant then wore the long linen or cloth dress of a similar cut to the Emperor himself; with his sword by his side he went to the assembly under the tree, or to the judgment stone of his village. And if he descended from four free ancestors, and possessed three free hides, he was, according to Saxon law, higher in rank than some of the noble courtiers who had serf blood in their veins, and whoever injured him had to make atonement as to one of princely blood. It was then he began to cultivate his fields more carefully; it appears to have been about this time that the practice arose of ploughing a second time before sowing the summer seed. In the neighbourhood of rich cloisters, fine garden-culture progressed, vineyards were carefully cultivated, and in the low countries of the Rhine, in Holland and Flanders, there was a husbandry of moor and marsh grounds, which in the next century was carried by numerous colonists of these races, into the Elbe country, and far into the east.

The peasant in the time of Otto the Great, had become a good Christian, but the old customs of the heathen faith still surrounded him in his house and fields, his phantasy filled nature, beasts, and plants with warm life. Whatever flew or bounded over his fields, whether hare, wolf, fox, or raven, were to him familiar forms, to whose character and fate he gave a human turn, and of whom with cheerful spirit he used to sing in heroic terms, or tell beautiful tales. In his house were numerous trained birds; and those were valued the highest which could comport themselves most like men. The starling repeated in a comic way the paternoster; the jackdaw welcomed him on his return home; and he rejoiced in the dance of the trained bear. He loved his cattle with all his heart, he honoured his horses, oxen, cows, and dogs with the names of the ancient gods, to whom he still continued to attach ideas of dignity and sanctity. This craving for familiar intercourse with all that surrounded him was the peculiar characteristic of the German peasant in the olden time. This great love of beasts, tame birds, dogs and horses continued long, as late as Luther's time, a few years before the great peasant war. A true-hearted peasant having in the fullness of his joy kissed his decorated foal upon the neck, a lurking monk who happened to see it, cited him before the ecclesiastical court, and inflicted a heavy fine upon him, because it was unseemly. On this account Karsthans clenched his fists at the priests.^[5] In the eleventh century, the countryman still sang by his hearth the stirring heroic songs, the subject-matter of which is in part older than the great exodus,--those of Siegfried and the Virgin of Battle Brunhild, of the treachery of the Burgundian King, Gunthar; of the struggle of the strong Walthar with Hagen, and of the downfall of the Nibelungen. Though his language was clumsy in writing, it flowed from his lips solemn and sonorous, with full terminations and rich in alternations of the vowels. Still had the solemnly spoken word in prayer, in forms of law, and in invocations, a mysterious power of magic effect: not only is the meaning of the speech, but also its sound full of significance. A wise saw was the source of great good fortune to him who possessed it; it could be bought and sold, and the buyer could return it again if it was useless to him.

About the beginning of the twelfth century there was a change in the life and position of the peasant. The disquiets and passions of the Crusades reached him also by degrees. To the serf, who lived in an insecure possession of his hut, from which the landed proprietor could eject him and his children, it was very attractive to obtain, by a sign affixed to his shoulder by the hand of a priest, freedom for himself, exemption from rent and other burdens, and the protection of the Church for his family left at home. From this the Lord of the Manor was himself in danger of losing his husbandmen, and becoming a beggar by the departure of his serfs; in order therefore to avert this danger bondmen had often the inheritance of their possessions given to them, and greater personal freedom, thus the position of serfs became more favourable. Besides this, the distinction between the old freemen and bondmen, both in the agricultural districts and the cities, was obliterated by the new societies of citizens and officials. In the cities bond and free-men were under the same law; in the palaces of princes, freemen claimed the same privileges which were originally for the advantage of the vassal retinue of territorial lords, and both bond and free-men bore, as serving men, the knightly shield.

We can obtain an insight into the spirit of the country-people of this period, and many details of their life. Since the middle of the twelfth century, the manuscripts of the Hohenstaufen time have handed down to us many invaluable features of the life of the lower orders. We discover, with astonishment, from these sources, that the countryman of that time formed a portion of the national strength, very different from what he did some centuries later. The thriving peasant lived on his farm; the young people gambolled about, blythesome and fond of enjoyment, on the village green and in the lanes; the countryman passed through life in the calm consciousness of strength, the preserver of old customs, in contradistinction to the nobleman, with his new-fangled modes, who adorned himself with foreign discourse and language, and with great pretentions set up distinguished court usages in opposition to country manners. Great was the pleasure of the country people in the awakening of nature: impatiently did the maidens await the breaking forth of the first catkins on the willow and hazel; they look for the leaves that burst from the buds, and search the ground for the first flowers. The earliest summer game is with the ball, in the village streets or on the tender grass of the green,--it is thrown by old and young, men and women. Whoever has a coloured feather ball to throw sends it with a greeting to her he loves. The agile movements, the powerful throw, the short cheer to friends and opponents, are the pleasures both of players and spectators. When sunny May comes, then the maidens get their holiday attire from the press, and twine wreaths for their own hair and that of their friends. Thus they go, crowned with garlands and adorned with ribbons, the hand-glass as an ornament by their sides, with their playfellows to the green; full a hundred maidens and women are there assembled for the dance. Thither also hasten the men, smart also is their dress, the waistcoat trimmed with coloured buttons, perhaps even with bells, which for a long time had been the most choice attire of persons of distinction; there is no want of silk, nor in winter of fur trimmings. The belt is well inlaid with shining metal, the coat of mail is quilted in the dress, and the point of the sword, in walking, clinks against the heel. The proud youths are defiant, take great pleasure in fight, and are jealous of their own importance. Vehement is the energy displayed in the great dances, they are venturesome in their springs, jubilant in their joy; everywhere there is the poetry of enjoyment of the senses. The chorus of bystanders sing loudly to the dance, and the maidens join softly in the melody. Still greater becomes our astonishment when we examine closer the rhythm and words of these old national dances, there is a grace not only in the language but in its social relation, which reminds us much more of the ancient world than of the feelings of our country people. Introductory strophes, which extol in countless variations the advent of spring, are followed by others which have little coherence, and are, as it were, improvised, like the schnader hüpflen, which is still retained in Upper Germany among the popular dances. The subject is often a dispute between mother and daughter, the daughter dressing herself for the festivity, the mother wishing to keep her back from the dance; or it is the praise of a beautiful maiden, or droll enumerations of dancing couples; often the text conveys attacks upon opposite parties amongst the dancers, who are depicted and turned into ridicule. Parties are easily formed amongst the dancers, the opponents are challenged in caustic verses; the glory of the young lad is not to put up with any slight, and to be the most vigorous dancer, cheeriest singer, and the best fighter. The dances are followed by feasting, with loud and boisterous merriment. The winter brings new pleasures; the men amuse themselves with dice, and with sledging on the ice, and the people assemble in a large room for the dance. Then stools and tables are carried out; the music consists of two violins; the conductor begins the melody, and the head dancer leads off. The rondes and other dances are various in character; more antique and popular is the measure and text of the chain dance in the old national style of two parallel rows; the winter dances are more artistic and modish. For in the song dances, which we may consider as the beautified copy of the old rhythm and text, the courtly law of triplets in the strophes is everywhere followed; one perceives in them the imitation of Romanesque knightly customs. Among the different kinds of dances may be mentioned the Sclave Reidawac. The noble dances and drinks with the peasants in these village diversions, though with the pride of more refined manners; but however much he may be inclined to ridicule those around him, he fears them, not only their fists and weapons, but also the strokes of their tongues. The long-haired and curly peasant offers the goblet to the Junker, and snatches it back as he attempts to grasp it, places it then according to court custom before drinking, on his head, and dances through the room, then the knight rejoices if the goblet falls from the lout's head and is spilt over him; but the knight has no scruple in making use of contemptuous oaths, when the indignant village youths call him to account for having shown too much attention to their wives and sweethearts.

Such is the aspect of village life given us in the songs of Neidhart von Reuenthal, the most witty and humorous songster of the thirteenth century. All his poetry dwells on the joys and sufferings of the peasantry, and the greater part of his life was spent amongst them. He has the complete self-dependence of a refined and cultivated man, but in spite of that, he had not always the advantage over the country people. A peasant youth, Engelhard, occasioned him the greatest sorrow of his life. It appears that he had made his love Friderun, a peasant girl, unfaithful to him; the thorn remained in the heart of the knight as long as he lived; but afterwards, also, in his courtship of the village maidens, the nobleman had much to fear from the wooing of the young peasants, and was frequently tormented by bitter jealousy.

This connection of the knight, Neidhart, and the peasantry was no exception in the beginning of the thirteenth century; for though in the period that immediately followed, the pride of the nobles, with respect to the citizen and peasant, quickly hardened into an exclusive class feeling, yet in 1300, when knightly dignity was in great request, and pride in noble quarterings had risen high, at least in Swabia, Bavaria, and Upper Austria, still the knight married the daughter of the rich peasant, and gave him his daughter in marriage; and the rich peasant's son became vassal and knight, with one knightly shield.^[6] Even in the sixteenth century this state of things continued in some provinces--for example, in the Isle of Rügen. After the Reformation also, the wealthy peasants put themselves on an equality with the nobles. They lived, as a nobleman of that time relates, arrogantly and contentiously, and these lamentable marriages were not unfrequent.

Some score of years after Neidhart, in the same districts of Germany, the idealism of knighthood, its courtly manners and refined form, were lost; a large portion of the nobles had become robbers and highwaymen. The ceaseless and sorrowful complaints of the better sort of the nobility testify how bad were the doings of the greater part. In comparison with such fellows, in spite of their privileges, the peasant might well regard his own life with pride. It was still with a sense of wealth and power that he entered on the beginning of a hard period. At this time a travelling singer, Wernher, the Gardener, gave a portraiture of the life of the peasantry, particularly rich in characteristic features--a picture of the times of the highest value, and a poem of great beauty. Unfortunately only an abstract of the contents can be given here; but even in extracts, his narrative gives a surprising insight into the life of the country people in 1240. The poem, "Helmbrecht," is edited by Moriz Haupt, according to the manuscripts in volume iv. of the Zeit periodical on German antiquity.

"The old former, Helmbrecht--in Bavaria, not far from the Austrian frontier--had a son. The blonde locks of the young Helmbrecht hung upon his shoulder; he confined them in a beautiful silk cap, embroidered with doves, parrots, and many figures. This cap had been embroidered by a nun who had run away from her cell on account of an amour, as happens to so many. From her, Helmbrecht's sister, Gotelind, learned to embroider and sew; the maiden and her mother deserved well of the nun, for they gave her a cow, much cheese, and eggs. The mother and sister attired the boy in fine linen, a doublet of mail and a sword, with a pouch and mantle, and a beautiful surcoat of blue cloth, adorned with gold, silver, and crystal buttons, which shone bright when he went to the dances; the seams were trimmed with bells, and whenever he bounded about in the dance, they tinkled in the ears of the women.

"When the proud youth was thus attired he said to his father, 'Now I will go to court; I pray you, dear father, give me somewhat to help thereto.' The father answered, 'I could easily buy you a swift steed that would leap hedge and ditch; but, dear son, desist from your journey to court. Its usages are difficult for him who has not been accustomed to it from his youth. Take the plough and cultivate the farm with me, thus will you live and die in honour. See how I live--true, honourable and upright. I give my tenths every year, and have never experienced hatred or envy throughout my life. Farmer Ruprecht will give you his daughter in marriage, and with her many sheep and pigs, and ten cows. At court you will have a hard life, and be deprived of all affection; there you will be the scorn of the real courtiers,--in vain will you endeavour to be like them; and, on the other hand, you will incur the hatred of the peasants, who will delight in revenging on you what they have lost by the noble robbers.' But the son replied, 'Silence, dear father. Never shall your sacks graze my shoulders; never will I load your waggon with dung; that would ill suit my beautiful coat and embroidered cap; and I will not be encumbered with a wife. Shall I drag on three years with a foal or an ox, when I may every day have my booty? I will help myself to strangers' cattle and drag the peasants by their hair through the hedges. Hasten, father, I will not remain with you any longer.' Then the father bought a steed, and said, 'Alas, how this is thrown away!' But the youth shook his head, looked at himself and exclaimed, 'I could bite through a stone so wild is my courage; I could even eat iron. I will gallop over the fields, without care for my life, in defiance of all the world.' On parting from him his father said, 'I cannot keep you--I give you up; but once more I warn you, beautiful youth, take care of your cap with the silken birds, and guard your long locks. You go amongst those whom men curse, and who live upon the wrongs of the people. I dreamt I saw you groping about on a staff, with your eyes out; and again I dreamt I saw you standing on a tree, your feet fall a fathom and a half from the grass. A raven and a crow sat on a branch over your head, your curly hair was entangled; on the right hand the raven combed it, and on the left the crow parted it. I repent me that I have reared you.' But the son exclaimed, 'Never will I give up my will as long as I live. God protect you, father, mother and children.'

"So he trotted off and rode up to a castle, whose lord lived by fighting, and was glad to retain any who would serve him as a trooper. There the lad became one of the retainers, and soon was the most nimble of robbers. No plunder was too small for him, and none too great; he took horses and cattle, he took mantles and coats, what others left he crammed into his sack. The first year everything went according to his wishes; his little vessel sailed with favourable winds. Then he began to think of home; he got leave of absence from the court, and rode to his father's house. All flocked together--man and maid-servant did not say, 'Welcome, Helmbrecht;' they were advised not to do so. But they said, 'Young gentleman, God give you welcome!' He answered, 'Kindeken, ik yunsch üch ein gud leven'^[7] (Children, I wish you a good life). His sister ran and embraced him; then he spoke to her, 'Gratia vestra!' The old people followed, and oft embraced him; then he called to his father, 'Dieu vous salut!' and to his mother he spoke in Bohemian, 'Dobraybra!' The father and mother looked at one another, and the latter said to her husband, 'Goodman, are we not out of our senses? it is not our child; it is a Bohemian or a Wend.' The father exclaimed, 'It is a foreigner; he is not my son whom I commended to God, however like he may appear to him.' And his sister Gotelind said, 'He is not your son, he spoke Latin to me; he must truly be a priest.' And the servant, 'From what I have seen of him he must belong to Saxony or Brabant; he said ik and Kindeken; he must, undoubtedly, be a Saxon.'

"Then the master of the house spoke in homely phrase, 'Are you my son Helmbrecht? Show your respect for your mother and me by speaking a word of German, and I myself will rub down your horse--I, and not my servant.' 'Ei wat segget ihr Gebureken? min parit,^[8] minen klaren Lif soll kein bureumaun nimmer angripen' (What are you boors saying? my steed and my fine body shall be touched by no boors). Then the master of the house, quite horrified, replied, 'Are you Helmbrecht, my son? In that case I will this very night boil one hen and roast another; but if you are a stranger--a Bohemian or a Wend--you may go to the winds. If you are of Saxony or Brabant, you must take your repast with you; from me you will receive nothing, though the night should last a whole year. For a Junker, such as you, I have no meal or wine; you must seek that from the nobles.'

"Now it had waxed late, and there was no host in the neighbourhood who would have received the youth, so, having weighed the matter, he said, 'Truly I am your son, I am Helmbrecht; once I was your son and servant.' The father answered 'You are not him.' 'But I am so.' 'Tell me the four names of my oxen.' Then the son mentioned the four names, 'Auer, Räme, Erke, Sonne. I have often flourished my switch over them; they are the best oxen in the world; will you recognise me now? Let the door be opened to me.' The father cried out, 'Gate and door, chamber and cupboard, shall all be opened to you now.'

"Thus the son was well received, and had a soft bed prepared for him by his sister and mother, and the latter called out to her daughter, 'Run, fetch a bolster and a soft cushion.' That was put under his arm and laid near the warm stove, and he waited in comfort till the meal was prepared. It was a supper for a lord; finely minced vegetables with good meat, a fat goose as large as a bustard, roasted on the spit, roasted and boiled fowls. And the father said, 'If I had wine it should be drunk to-day; but drink, dear son, of the best spring that ever flowed out of the earth.'

"The young Helmbrecht then unpacked his presents for his father, a whetstone, a scythe, and an axe, the best peasant-treasures in the world; for his mother, a fur cloak, which he had stolen from a priest; to his sister, Gotelind, a silk sash and gold lace, which would have better suited a lady of distinction,--he had taken it from a pedlar. Then he said, 'I must sleep, I have ridden far, and rest is needful for me to night.' He slept till late the next day in the bed over which his sister Gotelind had spread a newly washed shirt, for a sheet was unknown there.

"So the son abode with his father.

"After a time the father inquired of his son what were the court customs where he had been living. 'I also,' he said, 'went once when I was a boy, with cheese and eggs to court. The knights were then very different from now, courteous, and with good manners; they occupied themselves with knightly games, they danced and sang with the ladies; when the musician came with his fiddle, the ladies stood up, the knights advanced to them, took them elegantly by the hand, and danced featly; when that was over, one of them read out of a book about one Ernst;^[9] all was carried on then with cheerful familiarity. Some shot at a mark with bow and arrows, others went out hunting and deer shooting; the worst of them would now be the best. For now those are esteemed who are liars and eaves-droppers, and truth and honour are changed for falsehood; the old tournaments are no longer the custom, others are in vogue instead of them. Formerly one heard them call out in the knightly games "Hurrah, knight, be joyful!" There now only resounds through the air, "Hunt knight, hunt; stab, strike, and mutilate this one, cut off this man's foot for me, and the hands of that one, and hang the other for me, or catch this rich man who will pay us a hundred pounds." I think, therefore, things were better formerly than now. Relate to me, my son, more of the new manners.'

"'That I will. Drinking is now the court fashion. Gentlemen exclaim "Drink, drink; if you drink this, I will drink that." They no longer sit with the ladies, but at their wine. Believe me, the old mode of life which is lived by such as you, is now abjured both by man and woman. Excommunication and outlawry are now held in derision.'

"'Son,' said the father, 'have nothing to do with court usages, they are bitter and sour. I had much rather be a peasant than a poor courtling, who must always ride for his living, and take care that his enemies do not catch, mutilate, and hang him.'

"'Father,' said the young man, 'I thank you, but it is more than a week that I have drank no wine; since then I have taken in my girdle by three holes. I must capture some cattle before my buckle will return to its former place. A rich man has done me a great injury. I saw him once riding over the standing crops of my godfather the knight; he shall pay dear for it. I shall trot off his cattle, sheep, and swine, because he has trampled over the fields of my dear godfather. I know another rich man who has also grievously injured me; he eat bread with his tartlets; by my life I will revenge that. I know yet another rich man who has occasioned me more annoyance than almost any other; I will not forgive it him, even if a bishop should intercede for him, for once when he was sitting at table he most improperly dropped his girdle. If I can seize what is called his, it shall help me to a Christmas dress. There is yet another simple fool who was unseemly enough to blow the froth of his beer into a goblet. If I do not revenge that, I will never gird sword to my side, nor be worthy of a wife. You shall soon hear of Helmbrecht.'

"The father answered 'Alack! Tell me who are the companions who taught you to rob a rich man if he eats pastry and bread together.' Then the son named his ten companions; 'Lämmerschling (lamb devourer), Schluckdenwidder (ram swallower), Höllensack (hell sack), Ruttelshrein (shake press), Kühfrass (cow destroyer), Knickekelch (goblet jerker), Wolfsgaumen (wolf's jaw), Wolfsrüssel (wolf's snout), and Wolfsdarm (wolf's gut)^[10]--the last name was given by the noble Duchess of Nonarra Narreia--these are my schoolmasters.'

"The father said, 'And how do they name you?'

"I am called Schlingdengau. I am not the delight of the peasants; their children are obliged to eat porridge made with water; what the peasants have is mine; I gouge the eyes of one, I hack the back of another, I tie this one down on an ant-hill, and another I hang by his legs to a willow.'

"The father broke forth. 'Son, however violent those may be whom you have named and extolled, yet I hope, if there is a righteous God, the day will come when the hangman may seize them, and throw them off from his ladder.'

"'Father, I have often defended your geese and fowls, your cattle and fodder, from my associates, I will do it no more. You speak too much against the honour of my excellent companions. I had wished to make your daughter Gotelind the wife of my friend Lämmerschling; she would have led a pleasant life with him; but that is over now, you have spoken too coarsely against us.' He took his sister Gotelind aside, and said to her secretly, 'When my companion, Lämmerschling, first asked me about you, I said to him; you will get on well with her; if you take her do not fear that you will hang long upon the tree, she will take you down with her own hands and carry you to the grave on the cross-road, and she will fumigate your bones with frankincense and myrrh for a whole year. And if you have the good fortune to be only blinded, she will lead you by the hand along the highways and roads through all countries; if your foot is cut off, she will carry your crutches every morning to your bed; and if you lose your hand, she will cut your bread and meat as long as you live. Then said Lämmerschling to me, "I have three sacks, heavy as lead, full of fine linen, dresses, kirtles, and costly jewels, with scarlet cloth and furs. I have concealed them in a neighbouring cave, and will give them to her for a dowry." All this, Gotelind, you have lost, owing to your father; now give your hand to a peasant, with whom you may dig turnips, and at night lie on the heart of an ignoble boor. Go to your father, for mine he is not; I am sure that a courtier has been my father, from him I have my high spirit.'

"The foolish sister answered, 'Dear brother Schlingdengau, persuade your companion to marry me, I will leave father, mother, and relations.' The parents were unaware of the conversation held secretly by the brother and sister. The brother said, 'I will send a messenger to you, whom you are to follow; hold yourself in readiness. God protect you, I go from hence; the host here is as little to me as I to him. Mother, God bless you.' So he went on his old way, and told his companion his sister's wish. He kissed his hands for joy, and made obeisance to the wind that blew from Gotelind.

"Many widows and orphans were robbed of their property when the hero Lämmerschling and his wife Gotelind sat at their marriage feast. Young men actively conveyed in waggons and on horses stolen food and drink to the house of Lämmerschling's father. When Gotelind came, the bridegroom met her, and received her with, 'Welcome, dame Gotelind.' 'God reward you, Herr Lämmerschling.' So they gave each other a friendly greeting. And an old man, wise of speech, rose, and placing both in the circle, asked three times of the man and the maiden, 'Will you take each other in marriage, yea or nay?' So they were united. All sang the bridal song, and the bridegroom trod on the foot of the bride.^[11] Then was the marriage feast prepared. It was wonderful how the food disappeared before the youths, as if a wind blew it from the table; they eat incessantly of everything that was brought from the kitchen by the servants, and there remained nothing but bare bones for the dogs. It is said that any one who eats so immoderately approaches his end.^[12] Gotelind began to shudder and to exclaim, 'Woe to us! Some misfortune approaches; my heart is so heavy! Woe is me that I have abandoned my father and mother; whoever desires too much, will gain little; this greediness leads to the abyss of hell.'

"They had sat awhile after their meal, and the musicians had received their gifts from the bride and bridegroom, when a magistrate appeared with five men. The struggle was short; the magistrate with his five, was victorious over the ten; for a real thief, however bold he may be, and willing to confront a whole army, is defenceless against the hangman. The robbers slipped into the stove and under the benches, and he who would not have fled before four, was now by the hangman's servant alone dragged out by the hair. Gotelind lost her bridal dress, and was found behind a hedge terrified, stripped, and degraded. The skins of the cattle which the thieves had stolen were bound round their necks, as the perquisite of the magistrate. The bridegroom, in honour of the day carried only two, the others more. The magistrate could sooner have been bribed to spare a wild wolf than these robbers. Nine were hung by the hangman; the life of the tenth was allowed to the hangman as his right, and this tenth was Schlingdengau Helmbrecht; the hangman revenged the father, by putting out his eyes, and the mother, by cutting off a hand and a foot. Thus the blind Helmbrecht was led with the help of a staff, by a servant, home to his father's house.

"Hear how his father greeted him: 'Dieu salue, monsieur Blindman, go from hence, monsieur Blindman; if you delay, I will have you driven away by my servant; away with you from the door!'

"'Sir, I am your child.'

"'Is the boy become blind, who called himself Schlingdengau? Now do you not fear the threats of the hangman or all the magistrates in the world! Heigh! how you 'ate iron' when you rode off on the steed for which I gave my cattle. Begone, and never return again!'

"Again the blind man spoke. 'If you will not recognise me as your child, at least allow a miserable man to crawl into your house, as you do the poor sick; the country people hate me; I cannot save myself if you are ungracious to me.'

"The heart of the host was shaken, for the blind man who stood before him was his own flesh and blood--his son; yet he exclaimed with a scornful laugh, 'You went out daringly into the world; you have caused many a heart to sigh, and robbed many a peasant of his possessions. Think of my dream. Servant, close the door and draw the bolt; I will betake me to my rest. As long as I live, I had rather take in a stranger whom my eyes never beheld, than share my loaf with you.' Thus saying, he struck the servant of the blind man. 'I would do so to your master, if I were not ashamed to strike a blind man; take him, whom the sun hates, from before me!' Thus did the father exclaim, but the mother put a loaf in his hand as to a child. So the blind man went away, the peasants hooting and scoffing at him.

"For a whole year he endured great hardships. Early one morning when he was going through the forest to beg bread, some peasants who were gathering wood saw him, and one of them from whom he had taken a cow called to the others to help him. All of them had been injured by him, he had broken into the hut of one and stripped it; he had dishonoured the daughter of another; and a fourth, trembling like a reed with passion, said, 'I will wring his neck; he thrust my sleeping child into a sack, and when it awoke and cried, he tossed it out into the snow, so that it died.' Thus they all turned against Helmbrecht. 'Now take care of your hood.' The embroidery which the hangman had left untouched was now torn, and scattered on the road with his hair. They allowed the miserable wretch to make his confession, and one of them broke a fragment from the ground and gave it to the worthless man as gate money for hell fire. Then they hung him to a tree.

"If there be still any children living with their father and mother who feel disposed to be jovial knights, let them take warning from the fate of Helmbrecht."

Thus ends the story of young Helmbrecht, who was desirous of becoming a knight. And such on the whole we may consider was the condition and disposition of the free peasantry at the beginning of the long period of decline, which loosened the connection of the German Empire, founded the power of the great princely houses, made the burgher communities of fortified cities rich and powerful, and which was also the beginning of that wild time of self-help and free fraternization of cities, as of nobles. But the details of the changes which the German peasant underwent from 1250 to 1500, can no longer be accurately discerned by us. The wild deeds of violence and oppression of the robber-nobles, drove the helpless into the cities, and the enterprising into foreign countries. There were always opportunities of fighting under the sign of the cross against Sclavonians, Wends, and Poles, and on the east of the Elbe, broad countries were opened for the weapons and the plough of the German countryman. There was agitation also in the minds of men. The new despotism of the Roman papacy and of the fanatical Mendicant friars, drove the Katharers on the Rhine, and the Stedingers in Lower Saxony, to apostacy from the church. Where the free peasants were thickly located and favoured by the nature of their country, they rose in arms against the oppression of feudal lords. In the valleys of Switzerland and in the marsh lands on the German ocean, the associated country people gained victories over the mailed knights, which still belong to the glorious reminiscences of the people. But in the interior of Germany, the peasantry under the increasing oppression of the nobles and a degenerate church, became weaker, more incapable, and coarser; ever more powerfully did the barons lord it over them. Even the resident free peasant of Lower Saxony was cast down from the place of honour, which he once maintained above the knightly serving man. The consciousness of a higher civilisation and more refined manners caused the citizen also to despise the countryman,--his love of eating, his rough simplicity, and his crafty shrewdness were treated with endless derision.

And yet the countryman in the fifteenth century still retained much of his good old habits and somewhat of his old energy. He still continued to extol his own calling in his songs, and was inclined to view with ridicule the unstable life of others. In a well-known popular song, three sisters married--one a nobleman, another a musician, and the third a peasant. Both brothers-in-law came with their wives to pay a visit at the peasant's farm. "There the gay musician played, the hungry nobleman danced, and the peasant sat and laughed." At the end of the fifteenth century a dancing scene in a Hessian village is described in a city poem, the same customs as in the time of Neidhart, only wilder and coarser. The proud labourers come from different villages, armed with halberds and pikes, to dance under the Linden tree; the parties are divided by distinctive marks, willow and birch twigs and hop leaves on the shoulder and on the cap. From one village the whole four-and-twenty labourers are clothed in red plush, with yellow waistcoat and breeches. A gaily-attired maiden, a favourite dancer, will only dance with one party, sharp words follow, and weapons are drawn, the citizen, being a clerk, is persecuted with such forcible, pungent words, that he is obliged to withdraw himself by ignominious flight from the wild company.^[13]

The life of the countryman within the village gates was still rich in festivals and poetical usages, his privileges--so far as they were not interfered with by deeds of violence--were valuable, and interwoven with his life; and all his occupations were established by customs and etiquette, by ceremonies and dramatic co-operation with his village association.

But the oppression under which he lived became insupportable. After the end of the fifteenth century he began to make a powerful resistance to his masters.

It is probable that the great agitation in the European money-market contributed to the excitement of the countryman. The sinking of the value of metal since the discovery of America, was considered by producers at first as a lasting rise in the price of corn. To the peasant every sheffel of corn, and his labour also, became of higher value; and, in the same measure, both were of higher importance to the landed proprietor. It was natural, therefore, that the peasant should take a proportionate view of his freedom, and here and there think of relief from his burdens, whilst it became the interest of the landed proprietor to maintain his servitude--nay, even to increase it. Yet, one need not ascribe the great movement to such reasons. The pride of victory of the Swiss who had prostrated the Knights of Burgundy, the self-dependence of the new Landsknechts, and, above all, the religious movement, and the social turn which it took in South Germany, made a deep impression on the mind of the peasant. For the first time his condition was viewed by the educated with sympathy. The countryman was almost suddenly introduced into the literature as a judge and associate. His grievances against the priesthood, and also against the landed proprietors, were ever brought forward in popular language with great skill. A few years before, he had played the standing rôle of a clown in the shrove-tide games of the Nürembergers, but now even Hans Sachs^[14] wrote dialogues full of hearty sympathy with his condition, and the portraiture of the simple, intelligent, and industrious peasant, called Karsthans,^[15] was repeatedly assumed, in order to show the sound judgment and wit of the people against the priests.

But, dangerous as the great peasant insurrection appeared for many weeks, and manifold as were the characters and passions which blazed forth in it, the peasants themselves were little more than an undulating mass; the greater part of their demagogues and leaders belonged to another class; on the whole, it appears to us that the intelligence and capacity of the leaders, whether peasants or others, was but small, and equally small the warlike capacity of the masses. Therefore here where the peasant for the first time is powerfully influenced by the literary men of the period, more pleasure is experienced in the contemplation of the minds that roused up his soul. It was the case here, as it always is in popular insurrections, that the masses were first excited by those who were more influential and far-sighted, nobler and more refined; then they lost the mastery, which was seized by vain, coarse demagogues, like Andreas Karlstadt and Thomas Münzer. But the way in which, in this case, the more rational lost their control is specially characteristic of that time.

Next to Luther, no individual before the war exercised so powerful an influence on the dispositions of the country people of Southern Germany, as a barefooted Franciscan, who came among the people at Ulm from the cloisters of the Franciscan monastery, Johann Eberlin von Günzburg. He had many of the qualities of a great agitator, and was one of the most amiable among those that figure in the early period of the Reformation. More than any other, he took up the social side of the movement. In the year 1521, he published, anonymously, in the national form of a small popular flying sheet, his ideal of a new state and a new social life. The old claims which were subsequently drawn up by a preacher, in twelve articles, for the peasantry, are to be found, with many others, collectively in the fifteen "Bundesgenossen."^[16] The eloquence of Eberlin irresistibly influenced the listening multitudes; a flow of language, a poetical strain, a genial warmth, and at the same time a vein of good humour and of dramatic power, made him a favourite wherever he appeared. To that was added a harmless self-complacency, and just sufficient enjoyment of the present moment, as was necessary to make his success valuable and the persecutions of his opponents bearable. And yet he was only a dexterous demagogue. When he left his order from honourable convictions, with a heart passionately excited by the corruption of the church and the distress of the people, he could hardly pass, even according to the standard of the time, for an educated man; it was only by degrees that he became clear on certain social questions; then he conscientiously endeavoured to recal his former assertions; with whatever complacency he may speak of himself, there is always a holy earnestness in him concerning the truth. He had, withal, a quiet, aristocratic bias; he was the child of a citizen; his connections were people of consideration, and even of noble origin; coarse violence was contrary to his nature, in which a strong common sense was incessantly at work to control the ebullition of his feelings. He clung with great devotion to all his predecessors who had advanced his education, especially to the Wittemberg reformers. After he had restlessly roamed about the South of Germany for many years, he went to Wittemberg; there Melancthon powerfully influenced the fiery southern German; he became quieter, more moderate, and better instructed. But later he belonged--like his monastic companion, Heinrich von Kettenbach--to the preachers who collected round Hutten and Sickengen. This personal union, which lasted up to Sickengen's catastrophe, kept the national movement in a direction which could not last. For a short time it appeared as if the religious and social movement of South Germany, even if not led, could be made use of, by the noble landed proprietors; it was an error into which both the knights and their better friends fell; neither Hutten nor Sickengen had sufficient strength or insight to win the country people really to them. This came to light when Sickengen was overpowered by the neighbouring princes. The peasants became the most zealous assistants of the princes in persecuting the junkers of the Sickengen party and burning their castles; this warfare may, indeed, be considered as the prelude to the present war. It had unshackled the country people in the neighbouring provinces, and accustomed them to the pulling down of castles. A dialogue of the year 1524 has been preserved to us, in which the fury of the country people against the nobles already breaks forth.^[17]

From that period the decided demagogues gained the ear of the peasants, and the moderate amongst the popular leaders lost their supremacy. Eberlin had once more, at Erfurt, an opportunity of showing, as a mediator, the power of his eloquence over the revolted peasant hosts; under its influence the assembled populace fell on their knees, pious and penitent; but the weakness of his advice made this last endeavour fruitless. He died the following year, and with him passed away most of the poetry of the Reformation.

Cruelly was the revolt against the terrified princes punished, and the smaller tyrants were the most eager to bring the conquered again under their yoke. Yet in South Germany and Thuringia there was a real improvement in the condition of the country people; for it happened at a period in which a learned class of jurists spread over the country, and the working of Roman law in Germany became everywhere perceptible. The point of view taken by the jurists of the Roman school, of the relations between the landed proprietors and their villeins, was indeed not always favourable to the latter; for the lawyers were inclined to fix every kind of subjection upon the peasant from the deficiency in his right of property in his holding; but they were equally ready to recognise his personal freedom. Thus, in the first half of the sixteenth century, the old serfdom which still existed in a very harsh form in many provinces was mitigated, and villeinage substituted. Besides this, a more patriarchal feeling began to prevail among the higher German Sovereigns, and in the new ordinances which they projected in conjunction with their clergy, the welfare of the peasantry was taken into consideration. This was the case above all with the Wettiner princes in Franconia, Thuringia, and Meissen; and, lastly, with Elector August. The authority, also, of the Saxon chancery, which had been established in Germany since the fifteenth century, contributed essentially to this, by making the Saxon laws a pattern for the rest of Germany.

But some ten years before the Thirty Years' War, an advance in the pretensions of the nobles became apparent, at least in the provinces beyond the Elbe; for example, in Pommerania and Silesia. Under weak rulers the courtly influence of the nobility increased, the constant money embarrassments of the princes raised the independence of the States, which granted the taxes; and the peasants had no representatives in the States, except in the Tyrol, East Friesland, the old Bailiwick of Swabia, and a few small territories. The landed proprietors indemnified themselves for the concessions made to the princes by double exactions on the peasantry. Serfdom was formally re-established in Pommerania in 1617.

It was just at this period of reaction that the Thirty Years' War broke out. It devastated alike the houses of the nobles and the huts of the peasants. It brought destruction on man and beast, and corrupted those that were left.^[18]

After the great war--in the period which will be here portrayed--a struggle began on the part of the landed proprietors and the newly established Government against the wild practices of the war time. The countryman had learned to prefer the rusty gun to handling the plough. He had become accustomed to perform court service, and his mind was not rendered more docile by disbanded soldiers having settled themselves on the ruins of the old village huts. The peasant lads and servants bore themselves like knights, wearing jack-boots, caps faced with marten's fur, hats with double bands, and coats of fine cloth; they carried rifles and long-handled axes when they came together in the cities, or assembled on Sundays. At one time perhaps these had been useful against robbers and wild beasts; but it had become far more dangerous to the nobles and their bailiffs, and still more insupportable to their villeins,--it was always rigorously forbidden.^[19] The settlement of disbanded soldiers, who brought their prize money into the village, was welcome; but whoever had once worn a soldier's dress revolted against the heavy burdens of the bondsman. It was, therefore, established that whoever had served under a banner became free from personal servitude; only those who had been camp-followers continued as bondsmen. The inhabitants of the different States had been interspersed during the war; subjects had wilfully changed their dwellings, and established themselves on other territories, with or without the permission of the new lords of the manor. This was insupportable, and a right was given to the landed proprietor to fetch them back; and if the new lord of the manor thought it his interest to protect them, and refused to give them up, force might be used to recover them. Thus the noblemen rode with their attendants into a district to catch such of their villeins as had escaped without pass-tickets.^[20]--The opposition of the people must have been violent, for the ordinances even in the provinces, where villeinage was most strict--as, for example, in Silesia--were obliged to recognise that the villeins were free people, and not slaves. But this remained a theoretical proposition, and was seldom attended to in the following century. The depopulation of the country, and the deficiency in servants and labourers, was very injurious to the landowner. All the villagers were forbidden to let rooms to single men or women; all such lodgers were to be taken before the magistracy, and put into prison in case they should refuse domestic service, even if they maintained themselves by any other occupation--such as labouring for the peasant for daily hire, or carrying on business with money or corn.^[21] Through a whole generation we find, in the ordinances of the territorial lords, bitter complaints against the malicious and wilful menials who would not yield to their hard conditions, nor be content with the pay assigned by law. It was forbidden to individual proprietors to give more than the tax established by the provincial States. Nevertheless, the conditions of service shortly after the war are sometimes better than they were a hundred years later; in 1652 menials in Silesia had meat twice in the week; but in our century there are provinces where they get it only three times in the year.^[22] The daily pay also was higher immediately after the war than in the following century.

Thus was an iron yoke again bound slowly round the necks of the undisciplined country people, closer and harder than before the war. During the war small villages, and still more the single farms, which had been so favorable to the independence of the peasants, had vanished from the face of the earth; in the Palatinate, for example, and on the hills of Franconia, they had been numerous, and even in the present day their names cling to the soil. The village huts concentrated themselves in the neighbourhood of the manor house, and control over the weak community was easier when under the eye of the lord or his bailiff. What was the course of their life in the time of our fathers will be distinctly seen when one examines more closely the nature of their service. A cursory glance at it will appear to the youth of the present generation like a peep into a strange and fearful world. The conditions under which the German country people suffered were undoubtedly various. Special customs existed, not only in the provinces, but in almost every community. If the names by which the different services and imposts were designated were arranged they would form an unpleasant vocabulary.^[23] But, notwithstanding the difference in the names and extent of these burdens, there was an unanimity throughout the whole of Europe on the main points, which is, perhaps, more difficult to explain than the deviations.

The tenths were the oldest tax upon the countryman--the tenth sheaf, the tenth portion of slaughtered beasts, and even a tenth of wine, vegetables and fruit. It was probably older in Western Germany than Christianity, but the early church of the middle ages cunningly claimed it on the authority of scripture. It did not, however, succeed in retaining it only for itself; it was obliged to share it with the rulers, and often with the noble landed proprietors. At last it was paid by the agricultural peasant, either as a tax to the ruler or to his landlord, and besides as the priest's tithe to his church. However low his harvest yield might be valued, the tenth sheaf was far more than the tenth share of his clear produce.

But the countryman had, in the first place, to render service to the landed proprietor, both with his hands and with his team; in the greatest part of Germany, in the middle ages, three days a week,--thus he gave half of the working time of his life. Whoever was bound to keep beasts of burden on his property was obliged to perform soccage, in the working hours, with the agricultural implements and tools till sunset; the poorer people had to do the same with hand labour--nay, according to the obligations of their tenure, with two, four, or more hands, and even the days were appointed by the landlords: they were well off if during such labour they received food. These obligations of ancient times were, in many cases, increased after the war by the encroachments of the masters--chiefly in Eastern Germany. These soccage days were arbitrarily divided into half or even quarter days, and thereby the hindrance to the countryman and the disorder to his own farm were considerably increased. The number of the days was also increased. Such was the case even in the century which we, with just feelings of pride, call the humane. In the year 1790, just when Goethe's "Torquato Tasso" made its first appearance in the refined court of Saxony, the peasants of Meissen rose against the landowners, because they had so immoderately increased the service that their villeins seldom had a day free for their own work.^[24] Again in 1799, when Schiller's "Wallenstein" was exciting the enthusiasm of the warlike nobility of Berlin, Frederick William III. was obliged to issue a cabinet order, enjoining on his nobility not to lay claim to the soccage of the peasants more than three days in the week, and to treat their people with equity.

The second burden on the villeins was the tax on change of property by death or transfer; the heriot and fine on alienation. The best horse and the best ox were once the price which the heir of a property had to pay to the landowner for his fief. This tax was long ago changed into money. But though in the sixteenth century, even in countries where the peasant was heavily oppressed, the provincial ordinances allowed that peasant's property might be bought and sold, and that the lord of the peasant who sold could take no deduction upon it,^[25] yet in the same province in 1617, before the Thirty Years' War, it was established that landlords might compel their villeins against their will to sell their property, and that in case no purchaser should be found they themselves might buy it at two-thirds of the tax. It was under Frederick the Great that the inheritance and rights of property of villeins were first secured to them in most of the provinces of the kingdom of Prussia. This ordinance helped to put an end to a burden on the country people which threatened to depopulate the country. For in the former century, after the landowners had resolved to increase the revenue of their estates, they found it advantageous to rid themselves of some of their villeins, whose holdings they attached to their own property. The poor people, thus driven from their homes, fell into misery; and the burdens became quite unbearable to the remaining villeins, for they were expected by the landed proprietor to cultivate those former holdings, whose possessors had hitherto by their labour assisted in the cultivation of the whole estate. This system of ejection had become particularly bad in the east of Germany. When Frederick II. conquered Silesia there were many thousand farms without occupiers; the huts lay in ruins, and the fields were in the hands of the landed proprietors. All the separate homesteads had to be reformed and reoccupied, furnished with cattle and implements, and given up to the farmer as his own heritable property. In Rügen this grievance occasioned a rising of the peasantry, in the youth of Ernst Moritz Arndt; soldiers were sent thither, and the rioters were put in prison; the peasants endeavoured to revenge themselves for this by laying in wait for and slaying individual noblemen. In the same way in Electoral Saxony as late as 1790 this grievance occasioned a revolt.

The children also of villeins were subject to compulsory service. If they were capable of work they were brought before the authorities, and, if these demanded it, had to serve some time, frequently three years, on the farm. To serve in other places it was necessary to have a permit, which must be bought. Even those who had already served elsewhere had once a year--frequently about Christmas--to present themselves to the lord of the manor for choice. If the child of a villein entered into a trade or any other occupation, a sum had to be paid to the authorities for a letter of permission. It was considered a mitigation of the old remains of feudalism, when it was decided that the daughters of peasants might marry on to other properties without indemnifying their lord. But then the new lord had to greet the other in a friendly letter in acknowledgment of this emancipation.^[26] The price which the villein had to give for the emancipation of himself and his family varied extremely, according to the period and the district. Under Frederick II. it was reduced in Silesia to one ducat per head. But this was an unusually favourable rate for the villein. In Rügen, at a still later date, the emancipation was left to the valuation of the proprietor; it could even be refused: a fine-looking youth had there to pay full a hundred and fifty, and a pretty girl fifty or sixty, thalers.

But the peasant was employed in other ways by the landed proprietor. He was bound to aid, with his hands and teams, in the cultivation of the estate; he was also bound to act as messenger. Whoever wished to go to the town had first to ask the bailiff and lord of the manor whether they had any orders. No householder could, except in special cases, remain a night out of the village without the previous sanction of the magistrate of the place. He was obliged to furnish a night watch of two men for the nobleman's mansion. He had, when a child of the lord of the manor was to be married, to bring a contribution of corn, small cattle, honey, wax, and linen to the castle; finally, he had almost everywhere to carry to his lord his rent-hens and eggs, the old symbol of his dependence for house and farm.

But what was still more repugnant to the German peasant than many greater burdens, was the landlord's right of chase over his fields. The fearful tyranny with which the right of chase was practised by the German princes in the middle ages, was renewed after the Thirty Years' War. The peasant was forbidden to carry a gun, and poachers were shot down. Where the cultivated ground bordered on the larger woods, or where the lord of the manor held the supreme right of chase, a secret and often bloody war was carried on for centuries betwixt the foresters and poachers. As long as wolves continued to prowl about the villages, the irritated peasant dug holes round the margin of the wood which he covered with branches, and the bottom of them was studded with pointed stakes. He called them wolf-pits, but they were well known to the law as game-traps, and were forbidden under severe penalties. He ventured to let such portions of ground as were most exposed to be injured by game, to soldiers or cities, but that also was forbidden him; he endeavoured to defend his fields by hedges, and his hedges were broken down. In the Erzgebirge of Saxony the peasants, in the former century, had watched by their ripening corn; then huts were built on the fields, fires were lighted in the night, the watchers called out and beat the drum, and their dogs barked; but the game at last became accustomed to these alarms, and feared neither peasant nor dog. In Electoral Saxony, at the end of a former century, under a mild government, where a moderate tax might be paid as indemnity for damage to game, it was forbidden to erect fences for fields above a certain height, or to employ pointed stakes, that the game might not be injured, nor prevented seeking its support on the fields, till at last fourteen communities in the Hohnstein bailiwick in a state of exasperation combined for a general hunt, and frightened the game over the frontier. The logs which the sheep dogs wore round their necks were not sufficient to hinder them from hurting the hares, so they were held by cords on the fields. But the countrymen were bound, when the lord of the manor went to the chase, to go behind the nets and, as beaters, to swing the rattles. The coursing, moreover, spoilt his fields, as the riders with their greyhounds uprooted and trampled on the seed.

To these burdens, which were common to all, were added numerous local restrictions, of which only some of the more widely diffused will be here mentioned. The number of cattle that villeins were permitted to keep was frequently prescribed to them according to the extent of their holdings. A portion of the pasture land upon his holding before seed time, and of the produce after the harvest, belonged to the landowner. This right, to which pretensions had been already made in the middle ages, became a severe plague in the last century, when the noblemen began increasing their flocks of sheep. For they made demands on the peasants' fields generally, when fodder for cattle was failing: how, then, could the peasants maintain their own animals?

As early as 1617 it was held as a maxim in Silesia, that peasants must not keep sheep unless they possessed an old authorisation for it. The keeping of goats was altogether forbidden in many places. This old prohibition is one of the reasons why the poor in wide districts of Eastern Germany are deprived of these useful animals. Elector August of Saxony in 1560 denounced in his ordinances the pigeons of the peasants, and since that time they have been prohibited in other provincial ordinances. Other tyrannies were devised by the love of game. Shortly after the war it was held to be the duty of peasants to offer everything saleable, in the first instance, to the lord of the manor,--dung, wool, honey, and even eggs and poultry: if the authorities would not take his goods, he was bound to expose them for a fixed period in the nearest town; it was only then that the sale became free. But it was truly monstrous, when the authorities compelled their subjects to buy goods from the manorial property which they did not need. These barbarisms were quite common, at least in the East of Germany, after 1650, especially in Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia. When the great proprietors drew their ponds and could not sell the fish, the villeins were obliged to take them, in proportion to their means, at a fixed rate. The same was the case with butter, cheese, corn, and cattle. This was the cause of so many of the country people in Bohemia becoming small traders, as they had to convey these goods into neighbouring countries, often to their own great loss.^[27] In vain did the magistrates in Silesia in 1716 endeavour to check this abuse.^[28]

We will only mention here the worst tyranny of all. The nobleman had seigneurial rights: he decreed through the justices, who were dependent on him, the punishments of police offences: fines, imprisonment, and corporal punishment. He was also in the habit of using the stick to the villeins when they were at work. Undoubtedly there was already in the sixteenth century, in the provincial ordinances, a humane provision, which prohibited the nobles from striking their villeins; but in the two following centuries this prohibition was little attended to. When Frederick the Great re-organized Silesia, he gave the peasants the right of making complaint to the government against severe bodily punishment! And this was considered a progress!

But other burdens also weighed upon the life of the peasant. For, beside the landowner, the territorial ruler also demanded his impost or contribution, a land-tax or poll-tax; he could impress the son of the peasant under his banner, and demand waggons and gear for relays in time of war. And again, above the territorial ruler, was the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, which claimed in those parts of Germany where the constitution of the circles was still in force, a quota for their exchequers.

The peasants, however, were not everywhere under the curse of bondage. In the old domain of the Ripuarian Franks, the provinces on the other side of the Rhine from Cleves to the Moselle, and the Grafschaft of Mark, Essen, Werden, and Berg, had already in the middle ages freed themselves from bondage: those who had not property as landowners were freemen with leases for life. In the rest of Germany, freedom had taken refuge in the southern and northern frontiers, on the coasts of the North Sea and among the Alps. East Friesland, the marsh lands on the coasts of the Weser and the Elbe up to Ditmarschen,--those almost unconquerable settlements of sturdy peasant communities,--have remained free from the most ancient times. In the south, the Tyrol and the neighbouring Alps, at least the greatest portion of them, were occupied by free country-people; in Upper Austria also the free peasantry were numerous; and in Steiermark the tenths, which was the chief tax paid to the landed proprietors, was less oppressive than soccage was elsewhere. Wherever the arable land was scarce, and the mountain pastures afforded sustenance to the inhabitants, the legal condition of the lower orders was better. On the other hand, in the countries of old Saxony from the time of the Carlovingians, with the exception of a few free peasant holdings, a severe state of bondage had been developed. The Brunswickers, the dwellers on the Church lands of Bremen and Verden, were in the most favourable condition, those of Hildesheim and the Grafschaft of Hoya in the worst. In the bishopric of Münster the soccage service of villeins was generally changed into a moderate money payment; the only thing that pressed heavily on them was the compulsory leading, and the necessity of buying exemption from their burdens. On the other hand, the right of the landed proprietor over the inheritance of villeins existed to the greatest extent. As late as the year 1800 the country-people, who--exceptionally--desired to save money, endeavoured to preserve their property to their heirs, by fictitious transactions with the citizens; consequently more than a fourth portion of the Münster land remained uncultivated. A similar condition, in a somewhat milder form, existed in the bishopric of Osnabruck. Among the races of the interior, Hessians, Thuringians, Bavarians, Suabians, and Allemanni, the number of free peasants was continually decreasing during the whole of the middle ages: it was only in Upper Bavaria that they still formed a powerful part of the population. In Thuringia also the number of freemen was not inconsiderable. There the rule of the princes over the serf peasantry was lenient.

Far worse, except in a large part of Holstein, was the condition of all the countries east of the Elbe,--in fact wherever Germans colonized Sclave countries, that is almost half present Germany; but worst of all was the life of the villeins in Bohemia and Moravia, in Pomerania and Mecklenberg: in the last province villeinage is not yet abolished. It was in these countries that villeinage became more oppressive after the Thirty Years' War; only the free peasants, and the "Erb-und Gerichtsscholtiseien," as they were still called in memory of the circumstances of the old Germanization, formed themselves into a pauper aristocracy.

In the last century it might easily be perceived, from the agriculture and the prosperity of the villagers, whether they were freemen or serfs; and even now we may sometimes still discover, from the intelligence and personal appearance of the present race, what was the condition of their fathers. The peasants on the Lower Rhine, the Westphalian inhabitants of the marshes, the East Frieslanders, the Upper Austrians and Upper Bavarians, attained a certain degree of prosperity soon after the war; on the other hand, the remaining Bavarians, about the year 1700, complained that the third portion of their fields lay waste, and we learn of Bohemia in 1730 that the fourth part of the ground which had been under culture before the Thirty Years' War was overgrown with wood. The value of land there was lower by one half than in the other provinces.

Undoubtedly those freemen were to be envied who felt the advantage of their better position, but only a small portion were so fortunate. Generally, even in the eighteenth century, freemen with little or no land of their own, preferred being received as villeins on some great landed property. When Frederick I. of Prussia, shortly after 1700, wished to free the serfs in Pomerania, they refused it, because they considered the new duties imposed upon them more severe than what they had hitherto borne. And in fact the free peasants were scarcely less burdened with new service than those who had been the villeins of the old time.

It is difficult to judge impartially of the human condition which developed itself under this oppression. For such a life looks very different in daily intercourse, to what it does in the statute-book. Much that appears insupportable to us was made bearable by ancient custom. Undoubtedly the kind-hearted benevolence of the nobles, of old families who had grown up with their country-people through many generations, mitigated the severity of servitude, and a cordial connexion existed between master and serfs. Still more frequently the brutal selfishness of the masters was softened and kept within bounds by that prudence which now influences the American slaveholders. The landed proprietor and his family passed their lives among the peasants, and if he endeavoured to instil fear, he also had cause for fear. Easily on a stormy night might the flames be kindled among his wooden farm buildings, and no province was without its dismal stories of harsh landlords or bailiffs who had been slain by unknown hands in field or wood. However much we may admit the goodness or prudence of masters, the position of the peasants still remains the darkest feature of the past time. For we find everywhere in the scanty records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an unhealthy antagonism of classes. And it was the larger portion of the German people which was ruined by this oppression.^[29]

Men even of uncommon strength and intelligence seldom succeeded in extricating themselves from the proscribed boundaries by which their life was fenced in. Ever greater became the chasm which separated them from the smaller portion of the nation, who, by their perukes, bagwigs, and pigtails, showed from afar that they belonged to a privileged class. Up to the end of the seventeenth century these polished classes seldom entertained a friendly feeling towards the peasant; on all sides were to be heard complaints of his obduracy, dishonesty, and coarseness. At no period was the suffering portion of the people so harshly judged as in that, in which a spiritless orthodoxy embittered the souls of those who had to preach the gospel of love. None were more eager than the theologians in complaining of the worthlessness of the country people, among whom they had to live; they always heard hell-hounds howling round the huts of the villeins; their whole conception of life was, indeed, dark, pedantic, and joyless. A well-known little book, from the native district of Christopher von Grimmelshausen, is especially characteristic. This book, entitled "Des Bauerstands Lasterprob"--the exposure of the vices of the peasant class^[30]--never ceased to point out from the deeds of the villagers, that the lives of the peasantry, from the village justice to the goose-herd, were worthless and godless; that they were in the habit of representing themselves as poor and miserable, and of complaining on all occasions; that they were rude and overbearing to those whom they did not fear; that they considered none as their friends, and ungratefully deceived their benefactors. This book is much more cruel than "The Lexicon of Deceit," by the hypochondriacal Coburger Hönn, which some centuries later analysed the impositions of all classes,--and amongst others, those of the peasants,--alphabetically, morosely, and with apt references.

To such defects, which are peculiar to the oppressed, others must, indeed, be added, the consequences of the long war and its demoralization. In the rooms of the village inns, about 1700, neither candlesticks nor snuffers were to be seen, for everything had been pilfered by the wayfarers; even the prayer-book had been stolen from the host; a small looking-glass was a thing not to be thought of, though 500 years earlier the village maiden, when she adorned herself for the dance, took her little hand-glass with her as an ornament; and if a householder lodged carriers, he was obliged to conceal all portable goods, and to lock up all barns and hay-lofts. It was even dangerous sometimes for a traveller to set foot in an inn. The desolate room was filled, not only with tobacco-smoke, but also with the fumes of powder; for it was a holiday amusement of the country people to play with powder, and to molest unlucky strangers by throwing squibs or small rockets before their feet or on their perukes; this was accompanied by railery and abuse.^[31] We are frequently disposed to observe with astonishment, in these and similar complaints of contemporaries, how the German nature maintained, amidst the deepest degradation, a vital energy which, more than a hundred years after, made the beginning of a better condition possible; and we may sometimes doubt whether to admire the patience, or to lament the weakness, which so long endured such misery; for, in spite of all that party zeal has ever said in excuse of these servile relations, they were an endless source of immorality both to the masters, their officials, and to the people themselves. The sensuality of landed proprietors, and the self-interest of magistrates and stewards, were exposed to daily temptation at a period when a feeling of duty was weak in all classes. More than once did the sluggish provincial governments exert themselves to prevent bailiffs from compelling the peasant to feed cattle, sow linseed, and spin for them; and foresters were in ill repute who carried on traffic with the peasants, and winked at their proceedings when the stems of the lordly wood were felled.^[32] What was the feeling of the country people against the landed proprietors, may be concluded from the wicked proverb which became current about 1700, and fell from the mouth of the rich Mansfeld peasant--"The young sparrows and young nobles should have their heads broken betimes."^[33]

Slowly did the dawn of a new day come to the German peasant. If we would seek from whence arose the first rays of the new light, we shall find them, together with the renovation of the people, in the studies of the learned, who proclaimed the science, which was the most strange and most incomprehensible to the country-people, then called philosophy. After the teaching of Leibnitz and Wolff had found scholars in a larger circle of the learned, there was a sudden change in the views held about the peasant and his state. Everywhere began a more human conception of earthly things, the struggle against the orthodox errors. We find, again, in the scholars and proclaimers of the new philosophy, somewhat of the zeal of an apostle to teach, to improve, and to free. Soon after 1700 a hearty interest in the life of the peasant appears again in the small literature. The soundness of his calling, the utility and blessings of his labour, were extolled, and his good qualities carefully sought out; his old songs, in which a manly self-consciousness finds graceful expression, and which had once been polished by the single-minded theologians of the sixteenth century, were again spread in cheap publications. In these the poor countryman modestly boasts that agriculture was founded by Adam; he rejoices in "his falconry"; the larks in the field, the swallows in the straw of his roof, and the cocks in the farm-yard; and amidst his hard labour again seeks comfort in the "heavenly husbandman, Jesus."^[34]

On the other hand, there was even help in the severity of a despotic State. The oppressed peasant gave, through his sons, to the ruler the greater part of his soldiers, and, through his taxes, the means of keeping up the new State. By degrees it was discovered that such material ought to be taken care of. About 1700 this may everywhere be perceived in the provincial laws. The Imperial Court, also, was influenced in its way by this awakening philanthropy. In 1704 it even gave a grand privilege to the shepherds, wherein it declared them and their lads honourable, and graciously advised the German nation to give up the prejudice against this useful class of men, and no longer to exclude their children from being artisans, on account of magic and plying the knacker's trade. A few years afterwards it gave armorial bearings; it also granted them the rights of a corporate body, with seal, chest, and banner, on which a pious picture was painted.^[35] More stringent was the interference of the Hohenzollerns, who were themselves, during four generations, the princely colonists of Eastern Germany. Frederick II. made the most fundamental reforms in the conquered provinces; many examples are cited of the blessings resulting from them. When he took possession of Silesia, the village huts were block-houses, formed from the stems of trees, and roofed with straw or shingles, without brick chimneys; the baking ovens, joined on to the houses, exposed them to the danger of fires; the husbandry was in a pitiful plight; great commons and pastures covered with mole-hills and thistles, small weak horses, and lean cows; and the landed proprietors were for the most part harsh despots, against whom the clumsy Imperial and magisterial administration could scarcely enforce any law. The King carried on three severe wars in Silesia, during which his own soldiers, the Austrians, and the Russians, consumed and ravaged the province. Yet, only a few years after the Seven Years' War, 250 new villages and 2000 new cottages were erected, and frequently stone houses and tiled roofs were to be seen. All the wooden chimneys and all the clay ovens had been pulled down by the conqueror, and the people were compelled to build anew; horses were brought from Prussia, and the sheep shorn once in the year; peat cutters from Westphalia, and silkworm-breeders from France, were introduced into the country. Oaks and mulberries were planted, and premiums were given for the laying out of vineyards. At his command the new potato was introduced; at the beginning of the Seven Years' War, by the celebrated patent of the Minister of Justice, von Carmer, commons and general pastures were abolished, and divided among separate holders. With far-sighted forethought, a state of things was introduced which has only recently been carried out. The inheritance of property, also, was secured by law to the villeins. The peasant obtained the right of complaint to the royal government, and this right became for him a quick and vigorous law, for, however much the King favoured the nobility when it was serviceable to the State, yet he was constantly occupied, together with his officials, in elevating the mass of tax-payers. The most insignificant might present his petition, and the whole people knew, from numerous examples, that the King read them. Many of this great Prince's attempts at civilization did not succeed; but on all sides the pressure of a system was felt which so assiduously raised the strength of the people, in order to utilise them to the utmost in the State. Nowhere is the work of this mighty ruler so thankfully acknowledged by contemporaries as by the peasantry of the conquered province. When, on his numerous journeys through Silesia, the country-people thronged round his carriage with respectful awe, every look, every fleeting word that he addressed to a village magistrate was treasured as a dear remembrance, handed down carefully from generation to generation, and still lives in all hearts.

Ever greater became the sympathy of the literary classes. It is true that poetry and art did not yet find in the life of the peasant, material which could foster a creative spirit. When Goethe wrote "Hermann and Dorothea," it was a new discovery for the nation that the petty citizen was worthy of artistic notice; it was long, however, before any one ventured lower among the people; but the honourable philanthropists, the popular promulgators of enlightenment in the burgher classes, preached and wrote with hearty zeal upon the singular, uncouth, and yet numerous fellow-creature, the peasant, whose character frequently only appeared to consist of an aggregate of unamiable qualities, but who, nevertheless, was undeniably the indispensable foundation of the other classes of human society.

One of the most influential writings of this kind was by Christian Garve, "Upon the Character of the Peasants, Breslau, 1786," taken from lectures given shortly before the outbreak of the French revolution. The author was a clear-sighted, upright man, who was anxious for the public weal, and was listened to with respect throughout the whole of Germany, whenever he spoke upon social questions. His little book has a thoroughly philanthropic tendency; the life of the peasant was accurately known by him as it was by many others who were then occupied with the improvement of the country people. The propositions which he makes for the elevation of the class are sensible, but unsatisfactory; as indeed are almost all theories with respect to social evils. Yet, when we scan the contents of this well-meaning book, we are seized with alarm; not at what he relates concerning the oppression of the peasant, but at the way in which he himself seems necessitated to speak of two-thirds of the German people. They are strangers to him and his contemporaries: it is something new and attractive to their philanthropy to realize the condition of these peculiar men. There is an especial charm to a conscientious and feeling mind in ascertaining clearly, what is the exact nature and cause of the stupidity, coarseness, and evil qualities of the country people. The author even compares their position with that of the Jews; he discusses their condition of mind much in the same way that our philanthropists do those of gaol prisoners; he sincerely wishes that the light of humanity may fall on their huts; he compares their sloth and indolence with the energetic working power which, as was even then known, the colonists developed in the ancient woods of the new world. He gives this well-meaning explanation of the contrast, that in our old and as it were already becoming antiquated state, the many work for the one, and a multitude of the industrious go without remuneration, therefore zeal and desire are extinguished in a great portion of them. Almost all that he says is true and right, but this calm kindliness, with which enlightened men of the period of Immanuel Kant and the poetic court of Weimar regarded the people, was unaccompanied by the slightest suspicion, that the pith of the German national strength must be sought in this despised and ruined class; that the condition of things under which he himself, the author, lived, was hollow, barbarous, and insecure; that the governments of his time possessed no guarantee of stability, and that a political state--the great source of every manly feeling, and of the noble consciousness of independence--was impossible, even for the educated, so long as the peasant lived as a beast of burden; and little did he think that all these convictions would be forced upon the very next generation, after bitter sufferings in a hard school, by the conquest of an external enemy. His work, therefore, deserves well to be remembered by the present generation. The following pages depict not only the condition of the peasantry, but the literary class. Garve speaks as follows:--

"One circumstance has great influence on the character of the peasantry: they hang much together. They live far more sociably one with another than do the common burghers in the cities. They see each other every day at their farm work; in the summer in the fields, in the winter in the barns and spinning-rooms. They associate like soldiers, and thus get an esprit de corps; many results arise from this: first, they become polished after their fashion, and more acute through this association. They are more fit for intercourse with their equals; and they have better notions than the common artisan of many of the relations of social life; that is to say, of all those which occur in their class and in their own mode of life. This constant intercourse, this continual companionship, is with them, as with soldiers, what lightens their condition. It is a happy thing to hare much and constant companionship with others, if they are your equals; it gives rise to an intimate acquaintance and a reciprocal confidence, at least in outward appearance, without which no intercourse can be agreeable. The noble enjoys this advantage; he associates for the most part only with his equals, being separated by his pride from those below him, and he and his equals live much together, as leisure and wealth enable him to do so. The peasant enjoys singular advantages from opposite reasons. His insignificance is so great that it prevents his having the wish, still more the opportunity, of associating with those above him; he hardly ever sees anything but peasants, and his servitude and his work bring him frequently in companionship with these his equals.

"But this very circumstance causes the peasants to act in a body; thus the inconveniences of a democratic constitution are introduced, so that a single unquiet head from their own body exercises great power over them, and often influences the whole community. It is, moreover, the reason why persons of another class have so little influence over them, and can only sway them by authority and compulsion. They seldom see or hear the judgments, conceptions, and examples of the higher orders, and only for a brief space.

"I have long studied the special signification of the word tückisch, which I have never heard so frequently as when the talk has been of peasants. It denotes, without doubt, a mixture of childish character, of simplicity, and weakness, with spite and cunning.

"Every one, without doubt, remembers having seen faces of peasant boys, in which one or both eyes leer out, as if by stealth, from under the half-closed eyelids, with the mouth open and drawn into a jeering yet somewhat vacant laugh, with the head bent down, as if they would conceal themselves; in a word, faces which depict a mixture of fear, shamefacedness, and simplicity, with derision and aversion. Such boys, when one speaks to or requires anything of them, stand dumb and motionless as a log; they answer no questions put to them by the passersby, and their muscles seem stiff and immovable. But as soon as the stranger is a little way off, they run to their comrades, and burst out laughing.

"The low condition of the peasant, his servitude, and his poverty produce in him a certain fear of the higher orders; his rearing and mode of life make him on the one hand unyielding and insolent, and on the other, in many respects, simple and ignorant; the frequent antagonism of his own will and advantage, to the will and the commands of those above him, implants in his mind the germs of animosity. Thus, if the failings of his class are not counteracted by his personal qualities, he becomes such as the boy described, especially in his demeanour to his superiors. It is these superiors and lords of the peasants who are to blame for his tückischen character. He will use dissimulation in place of open resistance; he will be humble and yielding, nay, even appear devoted in their presence; but when he thinks he can act secretly, he will do everything against their will and interest. He will think of tricks and intrigues, which, nevertheless, are not so finely woven but that they may be easily seen through.

"One may discover two main differences, both in the fate and the character of the peasantry. He who is entirely under subjection, who sighs under the yoke of a complete slavery, will, under usual circumstances, submit to everything with apathy, without attempting the least resistance, and even without a wish to lighten his own lot; he will throw himself at the feet of any one who will tread on him. But if he is roused from this torpor by special circumstances, by agitators, by a cunning and bold leader, then he will become like a raging tiger, and will lose at once, with the humility of the slave, all the feelings of humanity.

"The half-serf who has property, and enjoys the protection of the laws, but under more or less burdensome conditions, is bound to the glebe, and at the same time to the service of the proprietor, to whose jurisdiction he is amenable; this peasant does not usually bear his burdens without wincing. There is no fear that he will endeavour to throw them off his neck by open violence as a rebel; but he will carry on a continual secret war with his master. To diminish his profit, and to increase his own, is a wish that he has always at heart, and an object which covertly, and as often as is practicable, he endeavours to pursue. He practises crafty and small thefts on the property of his master, and does not consider them so disgraceful as if he did the same by his equal. He is not the entirely humble slave, nor yet the dreaded enemy of his master, but he is not an obedient dependent, from free will and a good heart; he is that which probably has been intended to be expressed in some sort by the word tückisch.

"One may add, as an ingredient or as a consequence of the 'tückischen' nature, a certain amount of stubbornness which distinguishes the peasant when his mind is agitated, or when a prejudice is once rooted in him. His soul in this case appears to become stiff, like his body and his limbs. He is then deaf to all representations, however obvious they may be, or however capable he might be, in an impartial state of mind, of seeing their justice. The lawyers employed in the lawsuits of peasants will sometimes have known such individuals, in whom it is doubtful whether the obstinacy with which they cling to an obviously absurd idea, arises from their blindness or from determined malice. Sometimes whole communities become thus addle-headed. They then resemble certain crazy people, who, as it is expressed, have a fixed idea, that is, a conception which their mind takes up incessantly or returns to on the slightest occasion, and which, however false it may be, can neither be removed by the evidence of the senses nor by the representations of reason, because it is not really in the mind, but has its foundation in the tenor of their organization."

Thus speaks Christian Garve. His final counsel was: "Better village schools." Some among the landed proprietors acted with a similar philanthropic feeling. We would gladly say that their number was great; but the frequent complaints to the contrary, and the zeal with which benevolent commentators bring forward individual examples--like one Rochow, of Rekahn, who established village schools at his own cost--justify the conclusion that such benevolence would have been less striking had it been more frequent. In fact it required individuals to be very prudent in showing their good feeling for the peasants in deeds, as it was often observed that they gave their service far more willingly to strict nobles than to citizen proprietors; and that when these, with a warmer feeling for the peasant, wished to show him kindness, their goodwill sometimes met with a bad return. Thus a citizen proprietor, taking possession of his property, gave each of his peasants a present in money, and showed consideration for them in many ways; the not unnatural consequence was, that they renounced all service to him, and broke out into open resistance.

Whilst the German philanthropists were anxiously thinking and writing for the countryman, a storm was already brewing on the other side of the Rhine which in a few years was to destroy in Germany also, the servitude of the peasants, together with the old form of government. About 1790 the peasants began to occupy themselves eagerly with politics. The schoolmaster read and explained the newspapers to them; the hearers sat motionless, amidst thick tobacco smoke, all ears. In Electoral Saxony some already made use of the new circulating library in the neighbouring city.^[36] In the Palatinate, and in the Upper Rhine, the country people became disturbed, and refused service. In the same year, in the richest part of Electoral Saxony, in the Lommatzscher district, and on the property of the Graf von Schönburg, a peasant revolt once more broke out. Once more did the insurgents seize the weapon of the slave, the wooden club with iron hoops. The peasants, by a deputation, renounced all villein service to the landholders; they sent to the neighbouring communities; from village to village hastened the secret messengers; the magistrates, in the service of noblemen, were expelled or beaten with sticks; the quiet parishes were threatened with fire and sword; in every village saddled horses were standing to send information to the neighbours of the march of the military. There were the same secret conspiracy, the same outbreak, spreading with the speed of lightning, the same union of measureless hate, with a natural feeling of their rights, as in the peasant war of the sixteenth century. Reciprocal agreements were laid before the landed proprietors, which most of them subscribed amicably; and severe nobles were threatened with the worst. Their demands quickly increased; soon they required, not only exemption from tenths and soccage service, but also the reimbursement of fines that had been paid. The peasants collected in troops of more than a thousand men; they threatened the town of Meissen, and attacked small detachments. But they never withstood larger divisions of military. The most daring bands threw their caps and clubs away, as soon as the cavalry were ordered to charge through them. One of the chief leaders, a stubborn, daring old man of seventy years of age, while still in chains, complained of the faintheartedness of his bands. The movement was suppressed without much bloodshed. It was characteristic of the time, that the landowners, from fear, did everything in their power to bring about a mutual forgiveness and forgetfulness, and that the condemned, during their penal labour, were separated from other criminals and treated with leniency; they were also excused the prison dress. From records of that period it may clearly be seen how general was the feeling among the higher magistrates, that the position of the peasant did not come up to the requirements of the times.

Two years later, also, the German peasants in the Palatinate and in the Electorate of Mainz danced round the red cap on the tree of freedom. Incessantly did French influence overspread Germany. The State of the Great Frederick was shattered; Germany became French up to the Elbe. In the new French possessions, villeinage and servitude were abolished, with a haste and recklessness which was intended to win the people to the new dominion. The Princes of the Rhine Confederation followed this example, with greater consideration for those whom they patronised; but still under the strong influence of French ideas. In Prussia the Governments and people saw, with alarm, how insecure was the constitution of a State which employed so much the bodies and working powers of the peasants, and took so little account of their souls. In the year 1807 the great change in the relations of the country people began in Prussia; the definition of the rights of the landowners and peasants has lasted there, with many fluctuations and interruptions, for half a century, and has not yet arrived at a full conclusion.

At this period the position of the countryman throughout Germany has so improved, that no other progress of civilization can be compared to it. The villein of the landowner has--with the exception of Mecklenburg, where the condition of the middle ages still exists--become the free citizen of his State; the law protects and punishes him and the landowner alike; he sends representatives, not of his class only, but of the nation, in union with the other classes of voters, to the capital; he has legally ceased everywhere to be a separate order in the State--in many provinces he has laid aside, with his present dress, his old frowardness; he begins to dress himself à la mode, and--sometimes in a clumsy, unpleasing form--to take his share in the inventions and enjoyments of modern civilization. But, however great these changes may be, they are not yet great enough generally, in Germany, to give the countryman that position which, as a member of the State, a citizen, and an agriculturist, he must attain, if the life of the people is to give an impression in all respects of perfect soundness and power. His interest in, and comprehension of, that highest earthly concern of man--the State--is much too little developed; his craving for instruction and cultivation, considered on the whole, is too small; and in the larger portion of the Fatherland his soul is still encumbered by some of the qualities which are nurtured by long oppression, hard egotism, distrust of men differently moulded, litigiousness, awkwardness, and a deficient understanding of his rights and position as a citizen. The minds which have shaken off the old spell are still in the form of transition which gives them a specially unfinished and unpleasing aspect.

The agriculture of the German peasantry may still be considered as not having, on the whole, reached that point which is necessary for an energetic development of our national strength; nevertheless, we have reason to rejoice in having made great progress in this direction. Intellect is everywhere incessantly occupied in introducing to the simple countryman new discoveries--machines, seeds, and a new method of cultivation. In some favoured districts the agriculture of the small farmer can scarcely be distinguished from the well-studied system of the larger model farms. Nor has the German peasant, in the times of the deepest depression, like the oppressed Slavonian, ever lost the instinct of self-acquisition. For the very qualities which are his characteristics, enduring systematic industry and strict parsimony, are the groundwork of the highest earthly prosperity. There still subsists, however, in wide districts, the old thraldom of the three-course system with rights of common, and all the pressure which this system entails on individuals. Even well-tested improvements are therefore difficult to the countryman; because, with all his perseverance, he is yet wanting in enterprising activity, and because the great scantiness of his youthful instruction and technical education makes it difficult for him to comprehend anything new. Thus the development of the German peasant to greater inward freedom and capacity is steady, but slow. The noble landed proprietor also, from entirely different reasons, frequently neglects to raise the culture of the soil by energy, technical knowledge, and the utmost exertion of his power; and, in like manner, we find in other branches of production--in manufactures, trade, commerce, and political life--a corresponding slowness of progress. It places us still at a disadvantage in comparison with the better-situated countries of Europe. For the position of Germany among the States of Europe is such, that all other progress depends on the development of its own agriculture, that is, on the degree of intelligence and productive power which is perceptible in this primeval manly occupation. We have no command of the sea; we have no colonies, and no subjected countries, to which we can export the produce of our industry. If this circumstance is perhaps a surety for our stability, on the other hand it raises the vital importance which the German countryman and the system of his agriculture exercise on the other classes of the German people.

If therefore it is allowable to compare two very different phases of human development, one may well say that the peasant of 1861 has not yet gained, comparatively with the other classes of the people, the independence and the conscious power which existed six centuries ago in the provinces of Reithart von Reuenthal and Farmer Helmbrecht. And whoever would teach us from the life of the past, how it has happened that the strength of the nation has passed from the rural districts into cities, and that the nobleman has raised himself so much above his neighbour the peasant, must beware of asserting, that this depression of the country-people is the natural consequence of the establishment of a higher culture and more artistic forms of life by the side of the simple agriculture of the lower class. He who follows his plough will seldom be a member of a company which extend their speculations to the distant corners of the earth; he will not read Homer in the original, he will hardly read the work of a German philosopher upon logic, and the easy intercourse of a modern salon will scarcely be enlivened by his wit. But the results of the collective culture, of that which the learned find, which the artist forms, which manufacturers create, must, at a period when the nation is vigorous and sound, when accessible to the simple countryman of sound judgment, be comprehended and valued by him.

Is it necessary that our neighbour the countryman should so seldom read a good book, and still less often buy one? Is it necessary that he should, as a rule, take in no other newspaper than the small sheet of his own district? Is it necessary that it should be unknown to him, and unfortunately sometimes also to his schoolmaster, how an angle is determined, a parallelogram measured, and an ellipse drawn? Whoever would now place a poem of Goethe's in the hand of a peasant woman, would probably do a useless thing, and raise a dignified smile in a "well-educated spectator." Must all that we possess of most beautiful be incomprehensible to half our nation? Six hundred years ago, the poem of Farmer Helmbrecht was understood in the village parlour, and the charm of his sonorous verse, the poetry and the warm eloquence of his language, were appreciated; and the rhythm and measure of those old songs that accompanied the dances of the thirteenth century are just as elegant and artistic as the finest verses now in the poems of the greatest modern poets. There was a time when the German peasant had the same lively susceptibility for noble poetry which we now assume as the privilege of the highly educated. Is it necessary that the peasant of the present day should be deficient in it? The Bohemian village musician still plays with heartfelt delight the harmonious tones produced by the genius of Haydn and Mozart; is it necessary that few other musical sounds should be permitted to the German peasant than the stale measures of spiritless dances? All this is not necessary; something of the same barbarism benumbs our life which we perceive with astonishment in the time of Christian Garve.

What, however, we consider at first as one of the still remaining weaknesses of the peasants, is also the characteristic weakness of our whole culture, which has become too artificial, because it has bloomed in comparatively small and isolated circles of society, without the regulation and ever-increasing invigoration which the collective popular mind would have afforded it by cordial reciprocity and warm sympathy. The peasant's having for so many centuries been a stranger to social culture has, in the first place, made him weak, and also made the culture of the other classes too unstable, over-refined, and sometimes unmanly and impracticable.