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.