Pictures of German Life in the XVth, XVIth, and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. I.

by Gustav Freytag

"Ursula Freherin."

CHAPTER XI.

GERMAN NOBILITY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

In the beginning of the sixteenth century we find the names of the German nobles, Fronsperg, Hutten, and Sickingen, conspicuous in the three different ways in which the nobles then employed themselves,--the Army, the Church, and State, and the representation and maintenance of the rights and interests of the landed proprietors. But it appears strange that even up to the middle of the seventeenth century, men like these should have had so few of their own class following in their footsteps. From the time of Fronsperg to that of the Bohemian Junker Albrecht of Waldstein, and the wild cavalry leader Pappenheim, the whole of Germany produced no General of more than average skill from among the nobility. There were a few Landsknechte leaders of citizen extraction like Schärtlin, and some German princes, all however with more pretension than capacity, and it was principally to Spaniards and Italians that the family of the Emperor Charles V. and their opponents owed their most important victories. As to the intellectual life of Germany, there was still less of that amongst the nobility after the time of Hutten. How few noble names do we find in the long list of reformers, scholars, poets, architects, and artists! The first occur in the seventeenth century, when we find those of the members of the Palmenordens, the author of the 'Simplicissimus,' and of some noble rhymers belonging to the Silesian school of poetry or to the Saxon court. One may well ask how it happened that an order so numerous, holding such an advantageous position with respect to the people, should have accomplished so little in this great field of action, which up to the time of the Hohenstaufen was especially in the possession of the nobility. And even with the most favourably disposed judgment, it would be difficult to ascribe to the landed nobility of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, any beneficial influences on any one of the great currents of life in Germany.

In fact the lower nobility--considered as an order--had been, since the time of the Hohenstaufen, a misfortune to Germany. It was after the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the difference betwixt the noblemen and freeholders had been established by the laws, by the interests and inclinations of the Emperor, and by the limited ideal, which was formed by the aristocratic body, that the nobility gradually decayed. In the cities, undoubtedly, the old dominion of the privileged freeman was broken in the last period of the middle ages; there, in spite of all hindrances, a quicker circulation of popular strength had established itself. The labourer could become a citizen, the experienced citizen could rise to be the ruler of his city, or of a confederation of cities, and be the leader of great interests. But the landed nobleman after the beginning of the thirteenth century sank gradually into a state of isolation; labour was a disgrace to him, his acres were cultivated by dependent vassals, and he naturally endeavoured as much as possible to separate himself from them. Ever heavier became the oppression by which he kept them down; ever higher rose the pretensions which he, as lord of the land and soil, raised against his own people.

But the oppression of the agriculturist was not the worst consequence of the privileged position of the noble. If he found it to his advantage to treat his beast of burden, the peasant, with moderation, he was so much the more eager to make use of his landed rights in other directions. The highroads, the river that ran by his castle, afforded him the opportunity of laying hold of the goods of strangers; he levied imposts upon goods and travellers; he obtruded his protecting escort upon them, and robbed such as considered this escort unnecessary; he built a bridge where there was no river, in order to raise a toll; he designedly kept the roads in bad condition, because he chose to consider that the goods of travelling merchants, though under the Emperor's protection, so long as they were in waggons or in vessels afloat; if the waggons were upset or vessels ran aground, belonged, according to manorial right, to the possessor of the land. Finally he became himself a robber, and with his comrades seized whatever he could lay hands on; he took the goods to his house, plundered the travellers, and kept them prisoners till they could free themselves by ransom. Nevertheless there were certain regulated observances accompanying these robberies, according to which the conscientious Junker distinguished between honourable and dishonourable plunder. But this moral code had very little to justify it. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were very few noblemen's houses which did not deserve the name of robber-holds, and still fewer out of which plundering attacks were not made.

But this life was most of all detrimental to the nobles themselves; their love of plunder, and their pugnacity, made them turn as much against their fellow-nobles as against the cities, and through the whole of the middle ages led to innumerable feuds. When the feud was notified by letter, some days previous to the beginning of hostilities, it was considered honourable. Any trifle was sufficient to occasion a feud: never-ending boundary disputes, encroachments on the chase, or the flogging of a servant, caused discord, even between old comrades and friendly neighbours. Then both parties strengthened themselves by the assistance of relations and dependents; they enlisted troopers, and endeavoured to learn through the medium of spies how they could gain an advantage over the property, house, or person of their adversary. The opulence of the cities, and the rancour entertained by the nobles against the rising independence of the citizens, gave an agreeable excitement to their feuds with the latter. Whoever was unable to establish a profitable feud of his own, united himself as an assistant to another, and thus old comrades were often by the chapter of accidents opposed, and then, in the full consciousness of doing their duty, would beat and even stab each other.

This marauding life on the highways, in the woods and caverns, and with drunken companions, was neither favourable to their family life nor to their higher interests, nor was it even fitted to develop warlike capacity except among the subordinates. At the best, it only formed leaders of small bodies of mounted troopers for foraging expeditions and surprises. Sickingen himself, the most skilful specimen of a Junker of the sixteenth century, showed in his great and decisive feud, only very moderate talents as a general; and the capacities of Götz, in a military point of view, do not stand higher than those of an experienced serjeant of hussars. Thus wild, vicious, and detrimental to the community, was the conduct of even the quietest of the lower nobility. Their being a privileged order whose members considered themselves superior to citizen of peasant, who kept themselves apart from others, in marriage, business, law, manners, and ceremonials, made them for centuries weak, and their existence a misfortune to the people; but at the same time it saved them from the ruin consequent upon their disorderly life. On retrospect of the act itself, there is little difference to be seen between the robber who now waylays the wanderer on the lonely heath, and the country nobleman who about the year 1500 dragged the Nuremberger merchant from his horse and kept him in a dark prison upon bread and water, whilst the noble's wife made coats and mantles out of the stolen cloth. But three hundred and fifty years ago, the noble robber practised his evil deeds with the feeling, that though his actions were perhaps contrary to the decrees of an Imperial Diet, yet they were looked upon by the whole nobility of his province, indeed by the highest sovereigns of the country, as pleasant or at the worst as daring tricks. Certainly if he was caught by the city whose citizens he had injured, he might possibly lose his life, as does now a murderer on the high-road, but the law of the city was not his law, and if he died, his death would probably be revenged by other active comrades. However unreasonable were the laws of honour according to which he lived, he felt that these same laws were honoured by thousands whom he esteemed as the best upon earth. Thus it was possible, that amidst the greatest immorality and perversity, many manly virtues might be exhibited by individuals; fidelity to their word, devotion to their friends, and kind-hearted friendliness even to those whom they had robbed and imprisoned.

It was at this period, under the new Emperor Maximilian, that the memorable attempt was begun, to give a new constitution to the shattered body of the Empire, and with it the possibility of a new life. More than a century elapsed and three generations passed away before the lesser nobility could accustom themselves to the restraint of the new laws; but the princes and cities, however much they might quarrel together, had the greatest interest in enforcing obedience to these laws. It is however worthy of note, that while losing a portion of their wild straightforward resoluteness, they adopted the faults more especially belonging to the new epoch. How the change gradually took place, we will demonstrate here by a few examples.