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 GERMAN CULTURE PAST AND PRESENT

 BY ERNEST BELFORT BAX

 AUTHOR OF "JEAN PAUL MARAT, " "THE RELIGION OF SOCIALISM, " "THE ETHICS OF SOCIALISM, " "THE ROOTS OF REALITY, " ETC. , ETC. 

 LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN, LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W. C. 

 _First published in 1915_ [_All rights reserved_]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

 INTRODUCTORY:--SITUATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 7

 I. THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 65

 II. POPULAR LITERATURE OF THE TIME 85

 III. THE FOLKLORE OF REFORMATION GERMANY 99

 IV. THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN TOWN 114

 V. COUNTRY AND TOWN AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 122

 VI. THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD 154

 VII. GENERAL SIGNS OF RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL REVOLT 174

VIII. THE GREAT RISING OF THE PEASANTS AND THE ANABAPTIST MOVEMENT 183

 IX. POST-MEDIÆVAL GERMANY 229

 X. MODERN GERMAN CULTURE 263

PREFACE

The following pages aim at giving a general view of the social andintellectual life of Germany from the end of the mediæval period tomodern times. In the earlier portion of the book, the first half ofthe sixteenth century in Germany is dealt with at much greater lengthand in greater detail than the later period, a sketch of which formsthe subject of the last two chapters. The reason for this is to befound in the fact that while the roots of the later German characterand culture are to be sought for in the life of this period, it iscomparatively little known to the average educated English reader. Inthe early fifteenth century, during the Reformation era, German lifeand culture in its widest sense began to consolidate themselves, andat the same time to take on an originality which differentiated themfrom the general life and culture of Western Europe as it was duringthe Middle Ages. 

To those who would fully appreciate the later developments, therefore, it is essential thoroughly to understand the details of the social andintellectual history of the time in question. For the later periodthere are many more works of a generally popular character availablefor the student and general reader. The chief aim of the sketch givenin Chapters IX and X is to bring into sharp relief those events which, in the Author's view, represent more or less crucial stages in thedevelopment of modern Germany. 

For the earlier portion of the present volume an older work of theAuthor's, now out of print, entitled _German Society at the Close ofthe Middle Ages_, has been largely drawn upon. Reference, as will beseen, has also been made in the course of the present work to twoother writings from the same pen which are still to be had for thosedesirous of fuller information on their respective subjects, viz. _ThePeasants' War_ and _The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists_ (Messrs. George Allen & Unwin). 

German Culture Past and Present

INTRODUCTORY

The close of the fifteenth century had left the whole structure ofmediæval Europe to all appearance intact. Statesmen and writers likePhilip de Commines had apparently as little suspicion that the stateof things they saw around them, in which they had grown up and ofwhich they were representatives, was ever destined to pass away, asothers in their turn have since had. Society was organized on thefeudal hierarchy of status. In the first place, a noble class, spiritual and temporal, was opposed to a peasantry either whollyservile or but nominally free. In addition to this opposition of nobleand peasant there was that of the township, which, in its corporatecapacity, stood in the relation of lord to the surrounding peasantry. 

The township in Germany was of two kinds--first of all, there was thetownship that was "free of the Empire, " that is, that held nominallyfrom the Emperor himself (_Reichstadt_), and secondly, there was thetownship that was under the domination of an intermediate lord. Theeconomic basis of the whole was still land; the status of a man or ofa corporation was determined by the mode in which they held theirland. "No land without a lord" was the principle of mediæval polity;just as "money has no master" is the basis of the modern world withits self-made men. Every distinction of rank in the feudal system wasstill denoted for the most part by a special costume. It was a worldof knights in armour, of ecclesiastics in vestments and stoles, oflawyers in robes, of princes in silk and velvet and cloth of gold, andof peasants in laced shoe, brown cloak, and cloth hat. 

But although the whole feudal organization was outwardly intact, thethinker who was watching the signs of the times would not have beenlong in arriving at the conclusion that feudalism was "played out, "that the whole fabric of mediæval civilization was becoming dry andwithered, and had either already begun to disintegrate or was on theeve of doing so. Causes of change had within the past half-centurybeen working underneath the surface of social life, and were rapidlyundermining the whole structure. The growing use of firearms in war;the rapid multiplication of printed books; the spread of the newlearning after the taking of Constantinople in 1453, and thesubsequent diffusion of Greek teachers throughout Europe; the surelyand steadily increasing communication with the new world, and theconsequent increase of the precious metals; and, last but not least, Vasco da Gama's discovery of the new trade route from the East by wayof the Cape--all these were indications of the fact that thedeath-knell of the old order of things had struck. 

Notwithstanding the apparent outward integrity of the system based onland tenures, land was ceasing to be the only form of productivewealth. Hence it was losing the exclusive importance attaching to itin the earlier period of the Middle Ages. The first form of moderncapitalism had already arisen. Large aggregations of capital in thehands of trading companies were becoming common. The Roman law wasestablishing itself in the place of the old customary tribal law whichhad hitherto prevailed in the manorial courts, serving in some sort asa bulwark against the caprice of the territorial lord; and this changefacilitated the development of the bourgeois principle of private, asopposed to communal, property. In intellectual matters, thoughtheology still maintained its supremacy as the chief subject of humaninterest, other interests were rapidly growing up alongside of it, themost prominent being the study of classical literature. 

Besides these things, there was the dawning interest in nature, whichtook on, as a matter of course, a magical form in accordance withtraditional and contemporary modes of thought. In fact, like theflicker of a dying candle in its socket, the Middle Ages seemed at thebeginning of the sixteenth century to exhibit all their own salientcharacteristics in an exaggerated and distorted form. The old feudalrelations had degenerated into a blood-sucking oppression; the oldrough brutality, into excogitated and elaborated cruelty (aptlyillustrated in the collection of ingenious instruments preserved inthe Torture-tower at Nürnberg); the old crude superstition, into asystematized magical theory of natural causes and effects; the oldlove of pageantry, into a lavish luxury and magnificence of which wehave in the "field of the cloth of gold" the stock historical example;the old chivalry, into the mercenary bravery of the soldier, whosetrade it was to fight, and who recognized only one virtue--to wit, animal courage. Again, all these exaggerated characteristics weremixed with new elements, which distorted them further, and whichforeshadowed a coming change, the ultimate issue of which would betheir extinction and that of the life of which they were the signs. 

The growing tendency towards centralization and the consequentsuppression or curtailment of the local autonomies of the Middle Agesin the interests of some kind of national government, of which thepolitical careers of Louis XI in France, of Edward IV in England, andof Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain were such conspicuous instances, did not fail to affect in a lesser degree that loosely connectedpolitical system of German States known as the Holy Roman Empire. Maximilian's first Reichstag in 1495 caused to be issued an Imperialedict suppressing the right of private warfare claimed and exercisedby the whole noble class from the princes of the empire down to themeanest knight. In the same year the Imperial Chamber (_Reichskammer_)was established, and in 1501 the Imperial Aulic Council. Maximilianalso organized a standing army of mercenary troops, called_Landesknechte_. Shortly afterwards Germany was divided into Imperialdistricts called circles (_Kreise_), ultimately ten in number, all ofwhich were under an imperial government (_Reichsregiment_), which hadat its disposal a military force for the punishment of disturbers ofthe peace. But the public opinion of the age, conjoined with theparticular circumstances, political and economic, of Central Europe, robbed the enactment in a great measure of its immediate effect. Highway plundering and even private war were still going on, to aconsiderable extent, far into the sixteenth century. Charles V pursuedthe same line of policy as his predecessor; but it was not until afterthe suppression of the lower nobility in 1523, and finally of thepeasants in 1526, that any material change took place; and then thecentralization, such as it was, was in favour of the princes, ratherthan of the Imperial power, which, after Charles V's time, grew weakerand weaker. The speciality about the history of Germany is, that ithas not known till our own day centralization on a national or racialscale like England or France. 

At the opening of the sixteenth century public opinion not merelysanctioned open plunder by the wearer of spurs and by the possessor ofa stronghold, but regarded it as his special prerogative, the exerciseof which was honourable rather than disgraceful. The cities certainlyresented their burghers being waylaid and robbed, and hanged theknights wherever they could; and something like a perpetual feudalways existed between the wealthier cities and the knights whoinfested the trade routes leading to and from them. Still, thesebelligerent relations were taken as a matter of course; and nodisgrace, in the modern sense, attached to the occupation of highwayrobbery. 

In consequence of the impoverishment of the knights at this period, owing to causes with which we shall deal later, the trade orprofession had recently received an accession of vigour, and at thesame time was carried on more brutally and mercilessly than everbefore. We will give some instances of the sort of occurrence whichwas by no means unusual. In the immediate neighbourhood of Nürnberg, which was _bien entendu_ one of the chief seats of the Imperial power, a robber-knight leader, named Hans Thomas von Absberg, was a standingmenace. It was the custom of this ruffian, who had a large following, to plunder even the poorest who came from the city, and, not contentwith this, to mutilate his victims. In June 1522 he fell upon awretched craftsman, and with his own sword hacked off the poorfellow's right hand, notwithstanding that the man begged him upon hisknees to take the left, and not destroy his means of earning hislivelihood. The following August he, with his band, attacked aNürnberg tanner, whose hand was similarly treated, one of hisassociates remarking that he was glad to set to work again, as it was"a long time since they had done any business in hands. " On the sameoccasion a cutler was dealt with after a similar fashion. The hands inthese cases were collected and sent to the Bürgermeister of Nürnberg, with some such phrase as that the sender (Hans Thomas) would treat allso who came from the city. 

The princes themselves, when it suited their purpose, did not hesitateto offer an asylum to these knightly robbers. With Absberg wereassociated Georg von Giech and Hans Georg von Aufsess. Among othernotable robber-knights of the time may be mentioned the Lord ofBrandenstein and the Lord of Rosenberg. As illustrating the strictlyprofessional character of the pursuit, and the brutally callous natureof the society practising it, we may narrate that Margaretha vonBrandenstein was accustomed, it is recorded, to give the advice to thechoice guests round her board that when a merchant failed to keep hispromise to them, they should never hesitate to cut off _both_ hishands. Even Franz von Sickingen, known sometimes as the "last flowerof German chivalry, " boasted of having among the intimate associatesof his enterprise for the rehabilitation of the knighthood manygentlemen who had been accustomed to "let their horses on the highroad bite off the purses of wayfarers. " So strong was the publicopinion of the noble class as to the inviolability of the privilege ofhighway plunder that a monk, preaching one day in a cathedral andhappening to attack it as unjustifiable, narrowly escaped death at thehands of some knights present amongst his congregation, who assertedthat he had insulted the prerogatives of their order. Whenever thisform of knight-errantry was criticized, there were never wantingscholarly pens to defend it as a legitimate means of aristocraticlivelihood; since a knight must live in suitable style, and this wasoften his only resource for obtaining the means thereto. 

The free cities, which were subject only to Imperial jurisdiction, were practically independent republics. Their organization was amicrocosm of that of the entire empire. At the apex of the municipalsociety was the Bürgermeister and the so-called "Honorability"(_Ehrbarkeit_), which consisted of the patrician clans or _gentes_ (inmost cases), those families which were supposed to be descended fromthe original chartered freemen of the town, the old Mark-brethren. They comprised generally the richest families, and had monopolized theentire government of the city, together with the right to administerits various sources of income and to consume its revenue at theirpleasure. By the time, however, of which we are writing, thetrade-guilds had also attained to a separate power of their own, andwere in some cases ousting the burgher-aristocracy, though they werevery generally susceptible of being manipulated by the members of thepatrician class, who, as a rule, could alone sit in the Council(_Rath_). The latter body stood, in fact, as regards the town, much inthe relation of the feudal lord to his manor. Strong in their wealthand in their aristocratic privileges, the patricians lorded it alikeover the townspeople and over the neighbouring peasantry, who weresubject to the municipality. They forestalled and regrated withimpunity. They assumed the chief rights in the municipal lands, inmany cases imposed duties at their own caprice, and turned guildprivileges and rights of citizenship into a source of profit forthemselves. Their bailiffs in the country districts forming part oftheir territory were often more voracious in their treatment of thepeasants than even the nobles themselves. The accounts of income andexpenditure were kept in the loosest manner, and embezzlement clumsilyconcealed was the rule rather than the exception. 

The opposition of the non-privileged citizens, usually led by thewealthier guildsmen not belonging to the aristocratic class, operatedthrough the guilds and through the open assembly of the citizens. Ithad already frequently succeeded in establishing a representation ofthe general body of the guildsmen in a so-called Great Council(_Grosser Rath_), and in addition, as already said, in ousting the"honorables" from some of the public functions. Altogether thepatrician party, though still powerful enough, was at the opening ofthe sixteenth century already on the decline, the wealthy andunprivileged opposition beginning in its turn to constitute itselfinto a quasi-aristocratic body as against the mass of the poorercitizens and those outside the pale of municipal rights. The latterclass was now becoming an important and turbulent factor in the lifeof the larger cities. The craft-guilds, consisting of the body ofnon-patrician citizens, were naturally in general dominated by theirmost wealthy section. 

We may here observe that the development of the mediæval township fromits earliest beginnings up to the period of its decay in the sixteenthcentury was almost uniformly as follows:[1] At first the township, orrather what later became the township, was represented entirely bythe circle of _gentes_ or group-families originally settled within themark or district on which the town subsequently stood. Theseconstituted the original aristocracy from which the tradition of the_Ehrbarkeit_ dated. In those towns founded by the Romans, such asTrier, Aachen, and others, the case was of course a little different. There the origin of the _Ehrbarkeit_ may possibly be sought for in theleading families of the Roman provincials who were in occupation ofthe town at the coming of the barbarians in the fifth century. Roundthe original nucleus there gradually accreted from the earliest periodof the Middle Ages the freed men of the surrounding districts, fugitive serfs, and others who sought that protection and means oflivelihood in a community under the immediate domination of a powerfullord, which they could not otherwise obtain when their nativevillage-community had perchance been raided by some marauding nobleand his retainers. Circumstances, amongst others the fact that thecommunity to which they attached themselves had already adoptedcommerce and thus become a guild of merchants, led to thedifferentiation of industrial functions amongst the new-comers, andthus to the establishment of craft-guilds. 

Another origin of the townsfolk, which must not be overlooked, is tobe found in the attendants on the palace-fortress of some greatoverlord. In the early Middle Ages all such magnates kept up anextensive establishment, the greater ecclesiastical lords no less thanthe secular often having several castles. In Germany this origin ofthe township was furthered by Charles the Great, who establishedschools and other civil institutions, with a magistrate at their head, round many of the palace-castles that he founded. "A new epoch, " saysVon Maurer, "begins with the villa-foundations of Charles the Greatand his ordinances respecting them, for that his celebratedcapitularies in this connection were intended for his newlyestablished villas is self-evident. In that proceeding he obviouslyhad the Roman villa in his mind, and on the model of this he ratherfurther developed the previously existing court and villa constitutionthan completely reorganized it. Hence one finds even in his newcreations the old foundation again, albeit on a far more extendedplan, the economical side of such villa-colonies being especially morecompletely and effectively ordered. "[2] The expression "Palatine, " asapplied to certain districts, bears testimony to the fact herereferred to. As above said, the development of the township waseverywhere on the same lines. The aim of the civic community wasalways to remove as far as possible the power which controlled them. Their worst condition was when they were immediately overshadowed by aterritorial magnate. When their immediate lord was a prince, the areaof whose feudal jurisdiction was more extensive, his rule was lessoppressively felt, and their condition was therefore considerablyimproved. It was only, however, when cities were "free of the empire"(_Reichsfrei_) that they attained the ideal of mediæval civic freedom. 

It follows naturally from the conditions described that there was, inthe first place, a conflict between the primitive inhabitants asembodied in their corporate society and the territorial lord, whoeverhe might be. No sooner had the township acquired a charter of freedomor certain immunities than a new antagonism showed itself between theancient corporation of the city and the trade-guilds, theserepresenting the later accretions. The territorial lord (if any) nowsided, usually though not always, with the patrician party. But theguilds, nevertheless, succeeded in ultimately wresting many of theleading public offices from the exclusive possession of the patricianfamilies. Meanwhile the leading men of the guilds had become _hommesarrivés_. They had acquired wealth, and influence which was in manycases hereditary in their family, and by the beginning of thesixteenth century they were confronted with the more or less veiledand more or less open opposition of the smaller guildsmen and of thenewest comers into the city, the shiftless proletariat of serfs andfree peasants, whom economic pressure was fast driving within thewalls, owing to the changed conditions of the times. 

The peasant of the period was of three kinds: the _leibeigener_ orserf, who was little better than a slave, who cultivated his lord'sdomain, upon whom unlimited burdens might be fixed, and who was in allrespects amenable to the will of his lord; the _höriger_ or villein, whose services were limited alike in kind and amount; and the _freier_or free peasant, who merely paid what was virtually a quit-rent inkind or in money for being allowed to retain his holding or status inthe rural community under the protection of the manorial lord. Thelast was practically the counterpart of the mediæval Englishcopyholder. The Germans had undergone essentially the sametransformations in social organization as the other populations ofEurope. 

The barbarian nations at the time of their great migration in thefifth century were organized on a tribal and village basis. The headman was simply _primus inter pares_. In the course of their wanderingsthe successful military leader acquired powers and assumed a positionthat was unknown to the previous times, when war, such as it was, wasmerely inter-tribal and inter-clannish, and did not involve themovements of peoples and federations of tribes, and when, inconsequence, the need of permanent military leaders or for thesemblance of a military hierarchy had not arisen. The military leadernow placed himself at the head of the older social organization, andassociated with his immediate followers on terms approaching equality. A well-known illustration of this is the incident of the vase takenfrom the Cathedral of Rheims, and of Chlodowig's efforts to rescue itfrom his independent comrade-in-arms. 

The process of the development of the feudal polity of the Middle Agesis, of course, a very complicated one, owing to the various strandsthat go to compose it. In addition to the German tribes themselves, who moved _en masse_, carrying with them their tribal and villageorganization, under the overlordship of the various military leaders, were the indigenous inhabitants amongst whom they settled. The latterin the country districts, even in many of the territories within theRoman Empire, still largely retained the primitive communalorganization. The new-comers, therefore, found in the ruralcommunities a social system already in existence into which theynaturally fitted, but as an aristocratic body over against theconquered inhabitants. The latter, though not all reduced to a servilecondition, nevertheless held their land from the conquering body underconditions which constituted them an order of freemen inferior to thenew-comers. 

To put the matter briefly, the military leaders developed into baronsand princes, and in some cases the nominal centralization culminated, as in France and England, in the kingly office; while, in Germany andItaly, it took the form of the revived Imperial office, the spiritualoverlord of the whole of Christendom being the Pope, who had hisvassals in the prince-prelates and subordinate ecclesiastical holders. In addition to the princes sprung originally from the military leadersof the migratory nations, there were their free followers, whodeveloped ultimately into the knighthood or inferior nobility; theinhabitants of the conquered districts forming a distinct class ofinferior freemen or of serfs. But the essentially personal relationwith which the whole process started soon degenerated into one basedon property. The most primitive form of property--land--was at theoutset what was termed _allodial_, at least among the conqueringrace, from every social group having the possession, under thetrusteeship of his head man, of the land on which it settled. Now, owing to the necessities of the time, owing to the need of protection, to violence, and to religious motives, it passed into the hands of theoverlord, temporal or spiritual, as his possession; and theinhabitants, even in the case of populations which had not beenactually conquered, became his vassals, villeins, or serfs, as thecase might be. The process by means of which this was accomplished wasmore or less gradual; indeed, the entire extinction of communalrights, whereby the notion of private ownership is fully realized, wasnot universally effected even in the West of Europe till within ameasurable distance of our own time. [3]

From the foregoing it will be understood that the oppression of thepeasant, under the feudalism of the Middle Ages, and especially of thelater Middle Ages, was viewed by him as an infringement of his rights. During the period of time constituting mediæval history, the peasant, though he often slumbered, yet often started up to a suddenconsciousness of his position. The memory of primitive communism wasnever quite extinguished, and the continual peasant-revolts of theMiddle Ages, though immediately occasioned, probably, by some freshinvasion, by which it was sought to tear from the "common man" yetanother shred of his surviving rights, always had in the backgroundthe ideal, vague though it may have been, of his ancient freedom. Such, undoubtedly, was the meaning of the Jacquerie in France, withits wild and apparently senseless vengeance; of the Wat Tyler revoltin England, with its systematic attempt to envisage the vaguetradition of the primitive village community in the legends of thecurrent ecclesiastical creed; of the numerous revolts in Flanders andNorth Germany; to a large extent of the Hussite movement in Bohemia, under Ziska; of the rebellion led by George Doza in Hungary; and, aswe shall see in the body of the present work, of the social movementsof Reformation Germany, in which, with the partial exception of Ket'srebellion in England a few years later, we may consider them asvirtually coming to an end. 

For the movements in question were distinctly the last of their kind. The civil wars of religion in France, and the great rebellion inEngland against Charles I, which also assumed a religious colouring, open a new era in popular revolts. In the latter, particularly, wehave clearly before us the attempt of the new middle class of town andcountry, the independent citizen, and the now independent yeoman, toassert supremacy over the old feudal estates or orders. The newconditions had swept away the special revolutionary tradition of themediæval period, whose golden age lay in the past with itscommunal-holding and free men with equal rights on the basis of thevillage organization--rights which with every century the peasant feltmore and more slipping away from him. The place of this tradition wasnow taken by an ideal of individual freedom, apart from any socialbond, and on a basis merely political, the way for which had beenprepared by that very conception of individual proprietorship on thepart of the landlord, against which the older revolutionary sentimenthad protested. A most powerful instrument in accommodating men's mindsto this change of view, in other words, to the establishment of thenew individualistic principle, was the Roman or Civil law, which, atthe period dealt with in the present book, had become the basiswhereon disputed points were settled in the Imperial Courts. In thisrespect also, though to a lesser extent, may be mentioned the Canonor Ecclesiastical law--consisting of papal decretals on various pointswhich were founded partially on the Roman or Civil law--a juridicalsystem which also fully and indeed almost exclusively recognized theindividual holding of property as the basis of civil society (albeitnot without a recognition of social duties on the part of the owner). 

Learning was now beginning to differentiate itself from theecclesiastical profession, and to become a definite vocation in itsvarious branches. Crowds of students flocked to the seats of learning, and, as travelling scholars, earned a precarious living by begging or"professing" medicine, assisting the illiterate for a small fee, orworking wonders, such as casting horoscopes, or performingthaumaturgic tricks. The professors of law were now the mostinfluential members of the Imperial Council and of the variousImperial Courts. In Central Europe, as elsewhere, notably in France, the civil lawyers were always on the side of the centralizing power, alike against the local jurisdictions and against the peasantry. 

The effects of the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and theconsequent dispersion of the accumulated Greek learning of theByzantine Empire, had, by the end of the fifteenth century, begun toshow themselves in a notable modification of European culture. Thecircle of the seven sciences, the Quadrivium, and the Trivium, inother words, the mediæval system of learning, began to be antiquated. Scholastic philosophy, that is to say, the controversy of the Scotistsand the Thomists, was now growing out of date. Plato was extolled atthe expense of Aristotle. Greek, and even Hebrew, was eagerly soughtafter. Latin itself was assuming another aspect; the Renaissance Latinis classical Latin, whilst Mediæval Latin is dog-Latin. The physicaluniverse now began to be inquired into with a perfectly freshinterest, but the inquiries were still conducted under the ægis of theold habits of thought. The universe was still a system of mysteriousaffinities and magical powers to the investigator of the Renaissanceperiod, as it had been before. There was this difference, however; itwas now attempted to _systematize_ the magical theory of the universe. While the common man held a store of traditional magical beliefsrespecting the natural world, the learned man deduced these beliefsfrom the Neo-Platonists, from the Kabbala, from Hermes Trismegistos, and from a variety of other sources, and attempted to arrange thissomewhat heterogeneous mass of erudite lore into a system of organizedthought. 

The Humanistic movement, so called, the movement, that is, of revivedclassical scholarship, had already begun in Germany before what may betermed the _sturm und drang_ of the Renaissance proper. Foremost amongthe exponents of this older Humanism, which dates from the middle ofthe fifteenth century, were Nicholas of Cusa and his disciples, Rudolph Agricola, Alexander Hegius, and Jacob Wimpheling. But the newHumanism and the new Renaissance movement generally throughoutNorthern Europe centred chiefly in two personalities, JohannesReuchlin and Desiderius Erasmus. Reuchlin was the founder of the newHebrew learning, which up till then had been exclusively confined tothe synagogue. It was he who unlocked the mysteries of the Kabbala tothe Gentile world. But though it is for his introduction of Hebrewstudy that Reuchlin is best known to posterity, yet his services inthe diffusion and popularization of classical culture were enormous. The dispute of Reuchlin with the ecclesiastical authorities at Cologneexcited literary Germany from end to end. It was the first generalskirmish of the new and the old spirit in Central and Northern Europe. 

But the man who was destined to become the personification of theHumanist movement, us the new learning was called, was Erasmus. Theillegitimate son of the daughter of a Rotterdam burgher, he earlybecame famous on account of his erudition, in spite of the adversecircumstances of his youth. Like all the scholars of his time, hepassed rapidly from one country to another, settling finally in Basel, then at the height of its reputation as a literary and typographicalcentre. The whole intellectual movement of the time centres roundErasmus, as is particularly noticeable in the career of Ulrich vonHutten, dealt with in the course of this history. As instances of theclassicism of the period, we may note the uniform change of thepatronymic into the classical equivalent, or some classicism supposedto be the equivalent. Thus the name Erasmus itself was a classicism ofhis father's name Gerhard, the German name Muth became Mutianus, Trittheim became Trithemius, Schwarzerd became Melanchthon, and so on. 

We have spoken of the other side of the intellectual movement of theperiod. This other side showed itself in mystical attempts at reducingnature to law in the light of the traditional problems which had beenset, to wit, those of alchemy and astrology: the discovery of thephilosopher's stone, of the transmutation of metals, of the elixir oflife, and of the correspondences between the planets and terrestrialbodies. Among the most prominent exponents of these investigations maybe mentioned Philippus von Hohenheim or Paracelsus, and CorneliusAgrippa of Nettesheim, in Germany, Nostrodamus in France, and Cardanusin Italy. These men represent a tendency which was pursued bythousands in the learned world. It was a tendency which had the honourof being the last in history to embody itself in a distinct mythicalcycle. "Doctor Faustus" may probably have had an historical germ; butin any case "Doctor Faustus, " as known to legend and to literature, ismerely a personification of the practical side of the new learning. 

The minds of men were waking up to interest in nature. There was oneman, Copernicus, who, at least partially, struck through thetraditionary atmosphere in which nature was enveloped, and to hisinsight we owe the foundation of astronomical science; but otherwisethe whole intellectual atmosphere was charged with occult views. Infact, the learned world of the sixteenth century would have founditself quite at home in the pretensions and fancies of our moderntheosophist and psychical researchers, with their notions of makingerstwhile miracles non-miraculous, of reducing the marvellous tobeing merely the result of penetration on the part of certain seersand investigators of the secret powers of nature. Every wonder-workerwas received with open arms by learned and unlearned alike. Thepossibility of producing that which was out of the ordinary range ofnatural occurrences was not seriously doubted by any. Spells andenchantments, conjurations, calculations of nativities, were mattersearnestly investigated at Universities and Courts. 

There were, of course, persons who were eager to detect impostors: andamongst them some of the most zealous votaries of the occult arts--forexample, Trittheim and the learned Humanist, Conrad Muth or Mutianus, both of whom professed to have regarded Faust as a fraudulent person. But this did not imply any disbelief in the possibility of the allegedpretensions. In the Faust-myth is embodied, moreover, the oppositionbetween the new learning on its physical side and the old religiousfaith. The theory that the investigation of the mysteries of naturehad in it something sinister and diabolical which had been latentthroughout the Middle Ages, was brought into especial prominence bythe new religious movements. The popular feeling that the line betweennatural magic and the black art was somewhat doubtful, that the onehad a tendency to shade off into the other, now received freshstimulus. The notion of compacts with the devil was a familiar one, and that they should be resorted to for the purpose of acquiring anacquaintance with hidden lore and magical powers seemed quite natural. 

It will have already been seen from what we have said that thereligious revolt was largely economical in its causes. The intensehatred, common alike to the smaller nobility, the burghers, and thepeasants, of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, was obviously due to itsever-increasing exactions. The chief of these were the _pallium_ orprice paid to the Pope for an ecclesiastical investiture; the_annates_ or first year's revenues of a church fief; and the _tithes_which were of two kinds, the great tithe paid in agricultural produce, and the small tithe consisting in a head of cattle. The latter seemsto have been especially obnoxious to the peasant. The sudden increasein the sale of indulgences, like the proverbial last straw, broke downthe whole system; but any other incident might have served the purposeequally well. The prince-prelates were in some instances, at theoutset, not averse to the movement; they would not have beenindisposed to have converted their territories into secular fiefs ofthe empire. It was only after this hope had been abandoned that theydefinitely took sides with the Papal authority. 

The opening of the sixteenth century thus presents to us mediævalsociety, social, political, and religious, in Germany as elsewhere, "run to seed. " The feudal organization was outwardly intact; thepeasant, free and bond, formed the foundation; above him came theknighthood or inferior nobility; parallel with them was the_Ehrbarkeit_ of the less important towns, holding from mediatelordship; above these towns came the free cities, which heldimmediately from the empire, organized into three bodies, a governingCouncil in which the _Ehrbarkeit_ usually predominated, where they didnot entirely compose it, a Common Council composed of the masters ofthe various guilds, and the General Council of the free citizens. Those journeymen, whose condition was fixed from their being outsidethe guild-organizations, usually had guilds of their own. Above thefree cities in the social pyramid stood the Princes of the empire, layand ecclesiastic, with the Electoral College, or the seven ElectoralPrinces, forming their head. These constituted the feudal "estates" ofthe empire. Then came the "King of the Romans"; and, as the apex ofthe whole, the Pope in one function and the Emperor in another, crowned the edifice. The supremacy, not merely of the Pope but of thecomplementary temporal head of the mediæval polity, the Emperor, wasacknowledged in a shadowy way, even in countries such as France andEngland, which had no direct practical connection with the empire. For, as the spiritual power was also temporal, so the temporalpolitical power had, like everything else in the Middle Ages, aquasi-religious significance. 

The minds of men in speculative matters, in theology, in philosophy, and in jurisprudence, were outgrowing the old doctrines, at least intheir old forms. In theology the notion of salvation by the faith ofthe individual, and not through the fact of belonging to a corporateorganization, which was the mediæval conception, was latent in theminds of multitudes of religious persons before expression was givento it by Luther. The aversion to scholasticism, bred by the revivedknowledge of the older Greek philosophies in the original, produced acurious amalgam; but scholastic habits of thought were still dominantthrough it all. The new theories of nature amounted to little morethan old superstitions, systematized and reduced to rule, though hereand there the later physical science, based on observation andexperiment, peeped through. In jurisprudence the epoch is marked bythe final conquest of the Roman civil law, in its spirit, where notin its forms, over the old customs, pre-feudal and feudal. 

The subject of Germany during that closing period of the Middle Ages, characterized by what is known as the revival of learning and theReformation, is so important for an understanding of later Germanhistory and the especial characteristics of the German culture oflater times, that we propose, even at the risk of wearying somereaders, to recapitulate in as short a space as possible, compatiblewith clearness, the leading conditions of the times--conditions which, directly or indirectly, have moulded the whole subsequent course ofGerman development. 

Owing to the geographical situation of Germany and to the politicalconfiguration of its peoples and other causes, mediæval conditions oflife as we find them in the early sixteenth century left more abidingtraces on the German mind and on German culture than was the case withsome other nations. The time was out of joint in a very literal senseof that somewhat hackneyed phrase. At the opening of the sixteenthcentury every established institution--political, social, andreligious--was shaken and showed the rents and fissures caused by timeand by the growth of a new life underneath it. The empire--the HolyRoman--was in a parlous way as regarded its cohesion. The power of theprinces, the representatives of local centralized authority, wasproving itself too strong for the power of the Emperor, the recognizedrepresentative of centralized authority for the whole German-speakingworld. This meant the undermining and eventual disruption of thesmaller social and political unities, [4] the knightly manors with theprivileges attached to the knightly class generally. The knighthood, or lower nobility, had acted as a sort of buffer between the princesof the empire and the Imperial power, to which they often looked forprotection against their immediate overlord or their powerfulneighbour--the prince. The Imperial power, in consequence, found thelower nobility a bulwark against its princely vassals. Economicchanges, the suddenly increased demand for money owing to the rise ofthe "world-market, " new inventions in the art of war, new methods offighting, the rapidly growing importance of artillery, and theincrease of the mercenary soldier, had rendered the lower nobility, as an institution, a factor in the political situation which was fastbecoming negligible. The abortive campaign of Franz von Sickingen in1523 only showed its hopeless weakness. The _Reichsregiment_, orImperial governing council, a body instituted by Maximilian, hadlamentably failed to effect anything towards cementing together thevarious parts of the unwieldy fabric. Finally, at the Reichstag heldin Nürnberg, in December 1522, at which all the estates wererepresented, the _Reichsregiment_, to all intents and purposes, collapsed. 

The Reichstag in question was summoned ostensibly for the purpose ofraising a subsidy for the Hungarians in their struggle against theadvancing power of the Turks. The Turkish movement westward was, ofcourse, throughout this period, the most important question of what inmodern phraseology would be called "foreign politics. " The princesvoted the proposal of the subsidy without consulting therepresentatives of the cities, who knew the heaviest part of theburden was to fall upon themselves. The urgency of the situation, however, weighed with them, with the result that they submitted afterconsiderable remonstrance. The princes, in conjunction with theirrivals, the lower nobility, next proceeded to attack the commercialmonopolies, the first fruits of the rising capitalism, the appanagemainly of the trading companies and the merchant magnates of thetowns. This was too much for civic patience. The city representatives, who, of course, belonged to the civic aristocracy, waxed indignant. The feudal orders went on to claim the right to set up vexatioustariffs in their respective territories, whereby to hinderartificially the free development of the new commercial capitalist. This filled up the cup of endurance of the magnates of the city. Thecity representatives refused their consent to the Turkish subsidy andwithdrew. The next step was the sending of a deputation to the youngEmperor Karl, who was in Spain, and whose sanction to the decrees ofthe Reichstag was necessary before their promulgation. The result ofthe conference held on this occasion was a decision to undermine the_Reichsregiment_ and weaken the power of the princes, by whom and bywhose tools it was manned, as a factor in the Imperial constitution. As for the princes, while some of their number were positively opposedto it, others cared little one way or the other. Their chief aim wasto strengthen and consolidate their power within the limits of theirown territories, and a weak empire was perhaps better adapted foreffecting this purpose than a stronger one, even though certain oftheir own order had a controlling voice in its administration. Asalready hinted, the collapse of the rebellious knighthood underSickingen, a few weeks later, clearly showed the political drift ofthe situation in the _haute politique_ of the empire. 

The rising capitalists of the city, the monopolists, merchant princes, and syndicates, are the theme of universal invective throughout thisperiod. To them the rapid and enormous rise in prices during the earlyyears of the sixteenth century, the scarcity of money consequent onthe increased demand for it, and the impoverishment of large sectionsof the population, were attributed by noble and peasant alike. Thewhole trend of public opinion, in short, outside the wealthierburghers of the larger cities--the class immediately interested--wasadverse to the condition of things created by the new world-market, and by the new class embodying it. At present it was a small class, the only one that gained by it, and that gained at the expense of allthe other classes. 

Some idea of the class-antagonisms of the period may be gathered fromthe statement of Ulrich von Hutten about the robber-knights alreadyspoken of, in his dialogue entitled "Predones, " to the effect thatthere were four orders of robbers in Germany--the _knights_, the_lawyers_, the _priests_, and the _merchants_ (meaning especially thenew capitalist merchant-traders or syndicates). Of these, he declaresthe robber-knights to be the least harmful. This is naturally only tobe expected from so gallant a champion of his order, the friend andabettor of Sickingen. Nevertheless, the seriousness of therobber-knight evil, the toleration of which in principle was so deeplyingrained in the public opinion of large sections of the population, may be judged from the abortive attempts made to stop it, at theinstance alike of princes and of cities, who on this point, if on noother, had a common interest. In 1502, for example, at the Reichstagheld in Gelnhausen in that year, certain of the highest princes of theempire made a representation that, at least, the knights should permitthe gathering in of the harvest and the vintage in peace. But eventhis modest demand was found to be impracticable. The knights had tolive in the style required by their status, as they declared, andwhere other means were more and more failing them, their ancient rightor privilege of plunder was indispensable to their order. Still, Hutten was right so far in declaring the knight the most harmless kindof robber, inasmuch as, direct as were his methods, his sun wasobviously setting, while as much could not be said of the otherclasses named; the merchant and the lawyer were on the rise, and thepriest, although about to receive a check, was not destined speedilyto disappear, or to change fundamentally the character of hisactivity. 

The feudal orders saw their own position seriously threatened by thenew development of things economic in the cities. The guilds werebecoming crystallized into close corporations of wealthy families, constituting a kind of second _Ehrbarkeit_ or town patriciate; thenumbers of the landless and unprivileged, with at most a bare footingin the town constitution, were increasing in an alarming proportion;the journeyman workman was no longer a stage between apprentice andmaster craftsman, but a permanent condition embodied in a large andgrowing class. All these symptoms indicated an extraordinary economicrevolution, which was making itself at first directly felt only in thelarger cities, but the results of which were dislocating the socialrelations of the Middle Ages throughout the whole empire. 

Perhaps the most striking feature in this dislocation was the transitionfrom direct barter to exchange through the medium of money, and theconsequent suddenly increased importance of the rôle played by usury inthe social life of the time. The scarcity of money is a perennial themeof complaint for which the new large capitalist-monopolists are maderesponsible. But the class in question was itself only a symptom of thegeneral economic change. The seeming scarcity of money, though but theconsequence of the increased demand for a circulating medium, wasexplained, to the disadvantage of the hated monopolists, by a crude formof the "mercantile" theory. The new merchant, in contradistinction tothe master craftsman working _en famille_ with his apprentices andassistants, now often stood entirely outside the processes ofproduction, as speculator or middleman; and he, and still more thesyndicate who fulfilled the like functions on a larger scale (especiallywith reference to foreign trade), came to be regarded as particularlyobnoxious robbers, because interlopers to boot. Unlike the knights, theywere robbers with a new face. 

The lawyers were detested for much the same reason (cf. _GermanSociety at the Close of the Middle Ages_, pp. 219-28). Theprofessional lawyer class, since its final differentiation from theclerk class in general, had made the Roman or civil law itsspeciality, and had done its utmost everywhere to establish theprinciples of the latter in place of the old feudal law of earliermediæval Europe. The Roman law was especially favourable to thepretensions of the princes, and, from an economic point of view, ofthe nobility in general, inasmuch as land was on the new legalprinciples treated as the private property of the lord; over which hehad full power of ownership, and not, as under feudal and canon law, as a _trust_ involving duties as well as rights. The class of juristswas itself of comparatively recent growth in Central Europe, and itsrapid increase in every portion of the empire dated from less thanhalf a century back. It may be well understood, therefore, why theseinterlopers, who ignored the ancient customary law of the country, andwho by means of an alien code deprived the poor freeholder orcopyholder of his land, or justified new and unheard-of exactions onthe part of his lord on the plea that the latter might do what heliked with his own, were regarded by the peasant and humble man asrobbers whose depredations were, if anything, even more resented thanthose of their old and tried enemy--the plundering knight. 

The priest, especially of the regular orders, was indeed an old foe, but his offence had now become very rank. From the middle of thefifteenth century onwards the stream of anti-clerical literature waxesalike in volume and intensity. The "monk" had become the object ofhatred and scorn throughout the whole lay world. This view of the"regular" was shared, moreover, by not a few of the secular clergythemselves. Humanists, who were subsequently ardent champions of theChurch against Luther and the Protestant Reformation--men such asMurner and Erasmus--had been previously the bitterest satirists of the"friar" and the "monk. " Amongst the great body of the laity, however, though the religious orders came in perhaps for the greater share ofanimosity, the secular priesthood was not much better off in popularfavour, whilst the upper members of the hierarchy were naturallyregarded as the chief blood-suckers of the German people in theinterests of Rome. The vast revenues which both directly in the shapeof _pallium_ (the price of "investiture"), _annates_ (first year'srevenues of appointments), _Peter's-pence_, and recently of_indulgences_--the latter the by no means most onerous exaction, sinceit was voluntary--all these things, taken together with what wasindirectly obtained from Germany, through the expenditure of Germanecclesiastics on their visits to Rome and by the crowd of parasitics, nominal holders of German benefices merely, but real recipients ofGerman substance, who danced attendance at the Vatican--obviouslyconstituted an enormous drain on the resources of the country from allthe lay classes alike, of which wealth the papal chair could beplainly seen to be the receptacle. 

If we add to these causes of discontent the vastness in number of theregular clergy, the "friars" and "monks" already referred to, whoconsumed, but were only too obviously unproductive, it will besufficiently plain that the Protestant Reformation had something verymuch more than a purely speculative basis to work upon. Religiousreformers there had been in Germany throughout the Middle Ages, buttheir preachings had taken no deep root. The powerful personality ofthe Monk of Wittenberg found an economic soil ready to hand in whichhis teachings could fructify, and hence the world-historic result. Thepeasant revolts, sporadic the Middle Ages through, had for thehalf-century preceding the Reformation been growing in frequency andimportance, but it needed nevertheless the sudden impulse, thepowerful jar given by a Luther in 1517, and the series of blows withwhich it was followed during the years immediately succeeding, tocrystallize the mass of fluid discontent and social unrest in itsvarious forms and give it definite direction. The blow which wasprimarily struck in the region of speculative thought andecclesiastical relations did not stop there in its effects. The attackon the dominant theological system--at first merely on certaincomparatively unessential outworks of that system--necessarily of itsown force developed into an attack on the organization representingit, and on the economic basis of the latter. The battle againstecclesiastical abuses, again, in its turn, focussed theever-smouldering discontent with abuses in general; and this time, notin one district only, but simultaneously over the whole of Germany. The movement inaugurated by Luther gave to the peasant groaning underthe weight of baronial oppression, and the small handicraftsmansuffering under his _Ehrbarkeit_, a rallying-point and a rallying cry. 

In history there is no movement which starts up full grown from thebrain of any one man, or even from the mind of any one generation ofmen, like Athene from the head of Zeus. The historical epoch whichmarks the crisis of the given change is, after all, little beyond aprominent landmark--a parting of the ways--led up to by a longpreparatory development. This is nowhere more clearly illustrated thanin the Reformation and its accompanying movements. The ideas andaspirations animating the social, political, and intellectual revoltof the sixteenth century can each be traced back to, at least, thebeginning of the fifteenth century, and in many cases farther still. The way the German of Luther's time looked at the burning questions ofthe hour was not essentially different from the way the EnglishWyclifites and Lollards, or the Bohemian Hussites and Taborites viewedthem. There was obviously a difference born of the later time, butthis difference was not, I repeat, essential. The changes which, acentury previously, were only just beginning, had, meanwhile, madeenormous progress. 

The disintegration of the material conditions of mediæval social lifewas now approaching its completion, forced on by the inventions anddiscoveries of the previous half-century. But the ideals of the massof men, learned and simple, were still in the main the ideals that hadbeen prevalent throughout the whole of the later Middle Ages. Menstill looked at the world and at social progress through mediævalspectacles. The chief difference was that now ideas which hadpreviously been confined to special localities, or had only had asporadic existence among the people at large, had become generalthroughout large portions of the population. The invention of the artof printing was, of course, largely instrumental in effecting thischange. 

The comparatively sudden popularization of doctrines previouslyconfined to special circles was the distinguishing feature of theintellectual life of the first half of the sixteenth century. Amongthe many illustrations of the foregoing which might be given, we arespecially concerned here to note the sudden popularity during thisperiod of two imaginary constitutions dating from early in theprevious century. From the fourteenth century we find traces, perhapssuggested by the Prester John legend, of a deliverer in the shape ofan emperor who should come from the East, who should be the last ofhis name; should right all wrongs; should establish the empire inuniversal justice and peace; and, in short, should be the forerunnerof the kingdom of Christ on earth. This notion or mystical hope tookincreasing root during the fifteenth century, and is to be found inmany respects embodied in the spurious constitutions mentioned, whichbore respectively the names of the Emperors Sigismund and Friedrich. It was in this form that the Hussite theories were absorbed by theGerman mind. The hopes of the Messianists of the "Holy Roman Empire"were centred at one time in the Emperor Sigismund. Later on the rôleof Messiah was carried over to his successor, Friedrich III, upon whomthe hopes of the German people were cast. 

_The Reformation of Kaiser Sigismund_, originally written about 1438, went through several editions before the end of the century, and wasas many times reprinted during the opening years of Luther's movement. Like its successor, that of Friedrich, the scheme attributed toSigismund proposed the abolition of the recent abuses of feudalism, ofthe new lawyer class, and of the symptoms already making themselvesfelt of the change from barter to money payments. It proposed, inshort, a return to primitive conditions. It was a scheme of reform ona Biblical basis, embracing many elements of a distinctly communisticcharacter, as communism was then understood. It was pervaded with theidea of equality in the spirit of the Taborite literature of the age, from which it took its origin. 

The so-called _Reformation of Kaiser Sigismund_ dealt especially withthe peasantry--the serfs and villeins of the time; that attributed toFriedrich was mainly concerned with the rising population of thetowns. All towns and communes were to undergo a constitutionaltransformation. Handicraftsmen should receive just wages; all roadsshould be free; taxes, dues, and levies should be abolished; tradingcapital was to be limited to a maximum of 10, 000 _gulden_; allsurplus capital should fall to the Imperial authorities, who shouldlend it in case of need to poor handicraftsmen at 5 per cent. ;uniformity of coinage and of weights and measures was to be decreed, together with the abolition of the Roman and Canon law. Legists, priests, and princes were to be severely dealt with. But, curiouslyenough, the middle and lower nobility, especially the knighthood, weremore tenderly handled, being treated as themselves victims of theirfeudal superiors, lay and ecclesiastic, especially the latter. In thisconnection the secularization of ecclesiastical fiefs was stronglyinsisted on. 

As men found, however, that neither the Emperor Sigismund, nor theEmperor Friedrich III, nor the Emperor Maximilian, upon each of whomsuccessively their hopes had been cast as the possible realization ofthe German Messiah of earlier dreams, fulfilled their expectations, nay, as each in succession implicitly belied these hopes, showing nodisposition whatever to act up to the views promulgated in theirnames, the tradition of the Imperial deliverer gradually lost itsforce and popularity. By the opening of the Lutheran Reformation theopinion had become general that a change would not come from above, but that the initiative must rest with the people themselves--with theclasses specially oppressed by existing conditions, political, economic, and ecclesiastical--to effect by their own exertions such atransformation as was shadowed forth in the spurious constitutions. These, and similar ideas, were now everywhere taken up and elaborated, often in a still more radical sense than the original; and theyeverywhere found hearers and adherents. 

The "true inwardness" of the change, of which the ProtestantReformation represented the ideological side, meant the transformationof society from a basis mainly corporative and co-operative to oneindividualistic in its essential character. The whole polity of theMiddle Ages industrial, social, political, ecclesiastical, was basedon the principle of the group or the community--ranging inhierarchical order from the trade-guild to the town corporation; fromthe town corporation through the feudal orders to the Imperial throneitself; from the single monastery to the order as a whole; and fromthe order as a whole to the complete hierarchy of the Church asrepresented by the papal chair. The principle of this socialorganization was now breaking down. The modern and bourgeoisconception of the autonomy of the individual in all spheres of lifewas beginning to affirm itself. 

The most definite expression of this new principle asserted itself inthe religious sphere. The individualism which was inherent in earlyChristianity, but which was present as a speculative content merely, had not been strong enough to counteract even the remains of corporatetendencies on the material side of things, in the decadent RomanEmpire; and infinitely less so the vigorous group-organization andsentiment of the northern nations, with their tribal society andcommunistic traditions still mainly intact. And these were theelements out of which mediæval society arose. Naturally enough the newreligious tendencies in revolt against the mediæval corporateChristianity of the Catholic Church seized upon this individualisticelement in Christianity, declaring the chief end of religion to be apersonal salvation, for the attainment of which the individual himselfwas sufficing, apart from Church organization and Church tradition. This served as a valuable destructive weapon for the iconoclasts intheir attack on ecclesiastical privilege; consequently, in religion, this doctrine of Individualism rapidly made headway. But in morematerial matters the old corporative instinct was still too strong andthe conditions were as yet too imperfectly ripe for the speedy triumphof Individualism. 

The conflict of the two tendencies is curiously exhibited in the popularmovements of the Reformation-time. As enemies of the decaying andobstructive forms of Feudalism and Church organization, the peasant andhandicraftsman were necessarily on the side of the new Individualism. Sofar as negation and destruction were concerned, they were workingapparently for the new order of things--that new order of things which_longo intervallo_ has finally landed us in the developed capitalisticIndividualism of the twentieth century. Yet when we come to considertheir constructive programmes we find the positive demands put forwardare based either on ideal conceptions derived from reminiscences ofprimitive communism, or else that they distinctly postulate a return toa state of things--the old mark-organisation--upon which the laterfeudalism had in various ways encroached, and finally superseded. Hencethey were, in these respects, not merely not in the trend ofcontemporary progress, but in actual opposition to it; and therefore, asLassalle has justly remarked, they were necessarily and in any casedoomed to failure in the long run. 

This point should not be lost sight of in considering the variouspopular movements of the earlier half of the sixteenth century. Theworld was still essentially mediæval; men were still dominated bymediæval ways of looking at things and still immersed in mediævalconditions of life. It is true that out of this mediæval soil the newindividualistic society was beginning to grow, but its manifestationswere as yet not so universally apparent as to force a recognition oftheir real meaning. It was still possible to regard the varioussymptoms of change, numerous as they were, and far-reaching as we nowsee them to have been, as sporadic phenomena, as rank but unessentialovergrowths on the old society, which it was possible by pruning andthe application of other suitable remedies to get rid of, and therebyto restore a state of pristine health in the body political andsocial. 

Biblical phrases and the notion of Divine Justice now took the placein the popular mind formerly occupied by Church and Emperor. All thethen oppressed classes of society--the small peasant, half villein, half free-man; the landless journeyman and town-proletarian; thebeggar by the wayside; the small master, crushed by usury ortyrannized over by his wealthier colleague in the guild, or by thetown-patriciate; even the impoverished knight, or the soldier offortune defrauded of his pay; in short, all with whom times were bad, found consolation for their wants and troubles, and at the same timean incentive to action, in the notion of a Divine Justice which shouldrestore all things, and the advent of which was approaching. All hadBiblical phrases tending in the direction of their immediateaspirations in their mouths. 

As bearing on the development and propaganda of the new ideas, theexistence of a new intellectual class, rendered possible by the newmethod of exchange through money (as opposed to that of barter), whichfor a generation past had been in full swing in the larger towns, mustnot be forgotten. Formerly land had been the essential condition oflivelihood; now it was no longer so. The "universal equivalent, "money, conjoined with the printing press, was rendering a literaryclass proper, for the first time, possible. In the same way theteacher, physician, and the small lawyer were enabled to subsist asfollowers of independent professions, apart from the special serviceof the Church or as part of the court-retinue of some feudalpotentate. To these we must add a fresh and very important section ofthe intellectual class which also now for the first time acquired anindependent existence--to wit, that of the public official orfunctionary. This change, although only one of many, is itselfspecially striking as indicating the transition from the barbariccivilization of the Middle Ages to the beginnings of the civilizationof the modern world. We have, in short, before us, as alreadyremarked, a period in which the Middle Ages, whilst still dominant, have their force visibly sapped by the growth of a new life. 

To sum up the chief features of this new life: Industrially, we havethe decline of the old system of production in the countryside inwhich each manor or, at least, each district, was for the most partself-sufficing and self-supporting, where production was almostentirely for immediate use, and only the surplus was exchanged, andwhere such exchange as existed took place exclusively under the formof barter. In place of this, we find now something more than thebeginnings of a national-market and distinct traces of that of aworld-market. In the towns the change was even still more marked. Herewe have a sudden and hothouse-like development of the influence ofmoney. The guild-system, originally designed for associations ofcraftsmen, for which the chief object was the man and the work, andnot the mere acquirement of profit, was changing its character. Theguilds were becoming close corporations of privileged capitalists, while a commercial capitalism, as already indicated, was raising itshead in all the larger centres. In consequence of this state ofthings, the rapid development of the towns and of commerce, nationaland international, and the economic backwardness of the country-side, a landless proletariat was being formed, which meant on the one handan enormous increase in mendicancy of all kinds, and on the other thecreation of a permanent class of only casually-employed persons, whomthe towns absorbed indeed, but for the most part with a new form ofcitizenship involving only the bare right of residence within thewalls. Similar social phenomena were, of course, manifestingthemselves contemporaneously in other parts of Europe; but in Germanythe change was more sudden than elsewhere, and was complicated byspecial political circumstances. 

The political and military functions of that for the mediæval polityof Germany, so important class, the knighthood, or lower nobility, hadby this time become practically obsolete, mainly owing to the changedconditions of warfare. But yet the class itself was numerous, andstill, nominally at least, possessed of most of its old privileges andauthority. The extent of its real power depended, however, upon theabsence or weakness of a central power, whether Imperial orState-territorial. The attempt to reconstitute the centralized powerof the empire under Maximilian, of which the _Reichsregiment_ was theoutcome, had, as we have seen, not proved successful. Its means ofcarrying into effect its own decisions were hopelessly inadequate. In1523 it was already weakened, and became little more than a "survival"after the Reichstag held at Nürnberg in 1524. Thus this body, whichhad been called into existence at the instance of the most powerfulestates of the empire, was "shelved" with the practically unanimousconsent of those who had been instrumental in creating it. 

But if the attempt at Imperial centralization had failed, the force ofcircumstances tended partly for this very reason to favourState-territorial centralization. The aim of all the territorialmagnates, the higher members of the Imperial system, was toconsolidate their own princely power within the territories owing themallegiance. This desire played a not unimportant part in theestablishment of the Reformation in certain parts of the country--forexample, in Würtemberg, and in the northern lands of East Prussiawhich were subject to the Grand Master of the Teutonic knights. Thetime was at hand for the transformation of the mediæval feudalterritory, with its local jurisdictions and its ties of service, intothe modern bureaucratic state, with its centralized administration andorganized system of salaried functionaries subject to a centralauthority. 

The religious movement inaugurated by Luther met and was absorbed byall these elements of change. It furnished them with a religious_flag_, under cover of which they could work themselves out. This wasnecessary in an age when the Christian theology was unquestioninglyaccepted in one or another form by wellnigh all men, and hence enteredas a practical belief into their daily thoughts and lives. TheLutheran Reformation, from its inception in 1517 down to the Peasants'War of 1525, at once absorbed, and was absorbed by, all therevolutionary elements of the time. Up to the last-mentioned date itgathered revolutionary force year by year. But this was the turningpoint. 

With the crushing of the peasants' revolt and the decisivelyanti-popular attitude taken up by Luther, the religious movementassociated with him ceased any longer to have a revolutionarycharacter. It henceforth became definitely subservient to the newinterests of the wealthy and privileged classes, and as suchcompletely severed itself from the more extreme popular reformingsects. 

Up to this time, though by no means always approved by Luther himselfor his immediate followers, and in some cases even combated by them, the latter were nevertheless not looked upon with disfavour by largenumbers of the rank and file of those who regarded Martin Luther astheir leader. 

Nothing could exceed the violence of language with which Lutherhimself attacked all who stood in his way. Not only theecclesiastical, but also the secular heads of Christendom came in forthe coarsest abuse; "swine" and "water-bladder" are not the strongestepithets employed. But this was not all; in his _Treatise on TemporalAuthority and how far it should be Obeyed_ (published in 1523), whilstprofessedly maintaining the thesis that the secular authority is aDivine ordinance, Luther none the less expressly justifies resistanceto all human authority where its mandates are contrary to "the word ofGod. " At the same time, he denounces in his customary energeticlanguage the existing powers generally. "Thou shouldst know, " he says, "that since the beginning of the world a wise prince is truly a rarebird, but a pious prince is still more rare. " "They" (princes) "aremostly the greatest fools or the greatest rogues on earth; thereforemust we at all times expect from them the worst, and little good. "Farther on, he proceeds: "The common man begetteth understanding, andthe plague of the princes worketh powerfully among the people and thecommon man. He will not, he cannot, he purposeth not, longer to sufferyour tyranny and oppression. Dear princes and lords, know ye what todo, for God will no longer endure it? The world is no more as of oldtime, when ye hunted and drove the people as your quarry. But think yeto carry on with much drawing of sword, look to it that one do notcome who shall bid ye sheath it, and that not in God's name!"

Again, in a pamphlet published the following year, 1524, relative tothe Reichstag of that year, Luther proclaims that the judgment of Godalready awaits "the drunken and mad princes. " He quotes the phrase:"Deposuit potentes de sede" (Luke i. 52), and adds "that is your case, dear lords, even now when ye see it not!" After an admonition tosubjects to refuse to go forth to war against the Turks, or to paytaxes towards resisting them, who were ten times wiser and more godlythan German princes, the pamphlet concludes with the prayer: "May Goddeliver us from ye all, and of His grace give us other rulers!"Against such utterances as the above, the conventional exhortations toChristian humility, non-resistance, and obedience to those inauthority, would naturally not weigh in a time of popular ferment. So, until the momentous year 1525, it was not unnatural that, notwithstanding his quarrel with Münzer and the Zwickau enthusiasts, and with others whom he deemed to be going "too far, " Luther shouldhave been regarded as in some sort the central figure of therevolutionary movement, political and social, no less than religious. 

But the great literary and agitatory forces during the period referredto were of course either outside the Lutheran movement proper or atmost only on the fringe of it. A mass of broadsheets and pamphlets, specimens of some of which have been given in a former volume (_GermanSociety at the Close of the Middle Ages_, pp. 114-28), poured from thepress during these years, all with the refrain that things had gone onlong enough, that the common man, be he peasant or townsman, could nolonger bear it. But even more than the revolutionary literature werethe wandering preachers effective in working up the agitation whichculminated in the Peasants' War of 1525. The latter comprised men ofall classes, from the impoverished knight, the poor priest, theescaped monk, or the travelling scholar, to the peasant, the mercenarysoldier out of employment, the poor handicraftsman, of even thebeggar. Learned and simple, they wandered about from place to place, in the market place of the town, in the common field of the village, from one territory to another, preaching the gospel of discontent. Their harangues were, as a rule, as much political as religious, andthe ground tone of them all was the social or economic misery of thetime, and the urgency of immediate action to bring about a change. Asin the literature, so in the discourses, Biblical phrases designed togive force to the new teaching abounded. The more thorough-going ofthese itinerant apostles openly aimed at nothing less than theestablishment of a new Christian Commonwealth, or, as they termed it, "the Kingdom of God on Earth. "

FOOTNOTES:

[1] We are here, of course, dealing more especially with Germany; butsubstantially the same course was followed in the development ofmunicipalities in other parts of Europe. 

[2] _Einleitung_, pp. 255, 256. 

[3] Cf. Von Maurer's _Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark-Verfassung_;Gomme's _Village Communities_; Laveleye, _La Propriété Primitive_;Stubbs's _Constitutional History_; also Maine's works. 

[4] It should be remembered that Germany at this time was cut up intofeudal territorial divisions of all sizes, from the principality, or theprince-bishopric, to the knightly manor. Every few miles, and sometimesless, there was a fresh territory, a fresh lord, and a freshjurisdiction. 

CHAPTER I

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT

The "great man" theory of history, formerly everywhere prevalent, andeven now common among non-historical persons, has long regarded theReformation as the purely personal work of the Augustine monk who wasits central figure. The fallacy of this conception is particularlystriking in the case of the Reformation. Not only was it preceded bynumerous sporadic outbursts of religious revivalism which sometimestook the shape of opposition to the dominant form of Christianity, though it is true they generally shaded off into mere movements ofindependent Catholicism within the Church; but there were in additionat least two distinct religious movements which led up to it, whilemuch which, under the reformers of the sixteenth century, appears as adistinct and separate theology, is traceable in the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries in the mystical movement connected with the namesof Meister Eckhart and Tauler. Meister Eckhart, whose free treatmentof Christian doctrines, in order to bring them into consonance withhis mystical theology, had drawn him into conflict with the Papacy, undoubtedly influenced Luther through his disciple, Tauler, andespecially through the book which proceeded from the latter's school, the _Deutsche Theologie_. It is, however, in the much more importantmovement, which originated with Wyclif and extended to Central Europethrough Huss, that we must look for the more obvious influencesdetermining the course of religious development in Germany. 

The Wyclifite movement in England was less a doctrinal heterodoxy thana revolt against the Papacy and the priestly hierarchy. Meretheoretical speculations were seldom interfered with, but anythingwhich touched their material interests at once aroused the vigilanceof the clergy. It is noticeable that the diffusion of Lollardism, thatis of the ideas of Wyclif, if not the cause of, was at least followedby the peasant rising under the leadership of John Ball, a connectionwhich is also visible in the Tziska revolt following the Hussitemovement, and the Peasants' War in Germany which came on the heels ofthe Lutheran Reformation. How much Huss was directly influenced by theteachings of Wyclif is clear. The works of the latter were widelycirculated throughout Europe; for one of the advantages of the customof writing in Latin, which was universal during the Middle Ages, wasthat books of an important character were immediately current amongstall scholars without having, as now, to wait upon the caprice andability of translators. Huss read Wyclif's works as the preparationfor his theological degree, and subsequently made them his text-bookswhen teaching at the University of Prague. After his treacherousexecution at Constance, and the events which followed thereupon inBohemia, a number of Hussite fugitives settled in Southern Germany, carrying with them the seeds of the new doctrines. An anonymouscontemporary writer states that "to John Huss and his followers are tobe traced almost all those false principles concerning the power ofthe spiritual and temporal authorities and the possession of earthlygoods and rights which before in Bohemia, and now with us, have calledforth revolt and rebellion, plunder, arson, and murder, and haveshaken to its foundations the whole commonwealth. The poison of thesefalse doctrines has been long flowing from Bohemia into Germany, andwill produce the same desolating consequences wherever it spreads. "

The condition of the Catholic Church, against which the Reformationmovement generally was a protest, needs here to be made clear to thereader. The beginning of clerical disintegration is distinctly visiblein the first half of the fourteenth century. The interdicts, as aninstitution, had ceased to be respected, and the priesthood itselfbegan openly to sink itself in debauchery and to play fast and loosewith the rites of the Church. Indulgences for a hundred years werereadily granted for a consideration. The manufacture of relics becamean organized branch of industry; and festivals of fools and festivalsof asses were invented by the jovial priests themselves in travesty ofsacred mysteries, as a welcome relaxation from the monotony ofprescribed ecclesiastical ceremony. Pilgrimages increased in numberand frequency; new saints were created by the dozen; and the disbeliefof the clergy in the doctrines they professed was manifest even to themost illiterate, whilst contempt for the ceremonies they practised wasopenly displayed in the performance of their clerical functions. Anillustration of this is the joke of the priests related by Luther, whowere wont during the celebration of the Mass, when the worshippersfondly imagined that the sacred formula of transubstantiation wasbeing repeated, to replace the words _Panis es et carnem fiebis_, "Bread thou art and flesh thou shalt become, " by _Panis es et panismanebis_, "Bread thou art and bread thou shalt remain. "

The scandals as regards clerical manners, growing, as they had been, for many generations, reached their climax in the early part of thesixteenth century. It was a common thing for priests to drive aroaring trade as moneylenders, landlords of alehouses and gamblingdens, and even in some cases, brothel-keepers. Papal ukases had provedineffective to stem the current of clerical abuses. The regular clergyevoked even more indignation than the secular. "Stinking cowls" was afavourite epithet for the monks. Begging, cheating, shamelessignorance, drunkenness, and debauchery, are alleged as being theirnoted characteristics. One of the princes of the empire addresses aprior of a convent largely patronized by aristocratic ladies as "Thou, our common brother-in-law!" In some of the convents of Friesland, promiscuous intercourse between the sexes was, it is said, quiteopenly practised, the offspring being reared as monks and nuns. Thedifferent orders competed with each other for the fame and wealth tobe obtained out of the public credulity. A fraud attempted by theDominicans at Bern, in 1506, _with the concurrence of the heads of theorder throughout Germany_, was one of the main causes of that cityadopting the Reformation. 

In addition to the increasing burdens of investitures, annates, andother Papal dues, the brunt of which the German people had directly orindirectly to bear, special offence was given at the beginning of thesixteenth century by the excessive exploitation of the practice ofindulgences by Leo X for the purpose of completing the cathedral ofSt. Peter's at Rome. It was this, coming on the top of the exactionsalready rendered necessary by the increasing luxury and debauchery ofthe Papal Court and those of the other ecclesiastical dignitaries, that directly led to the dramatic incidents with which the LutheranReformation opened. 

The remarkable personality with which the religious side of theReformation is pre-eminently associated was a child of his time, whohad passed through a variety of mental struggles, and had alreadybroken through the bonds of the old ecclesiasticism before thatturning-point in his career which is usually reckoned the opening ofthe Reformation, to wit--the nailing of the theses on to the door ofthe Schloss-Kirche in Wittenberg on the 31st of October, 1517. MartinLuther, we must always bear in mind, however, was no Protestant in theEnglish Puritan sense of the word. It was not merely that he retainedmuch of what would be deemed by the old-fashioned English Protestant"Romish error" in his doctrine, but his practical view of life showeda reaction from the ascetic pretensions which he had seen bred nothingbut hypocrisy and the worst forms of sensual excess. It is, indeed, doubtful if the man who sang the praises of "Wine, Women, and Song"would have been deemed a fit representative in Parliament or elsewhereby the British Nonconformist conscience of our day; or would beacceptable in any capacity to the grocer-deacon of our provincialtowns, who, not content with being allowed to sand his sugar andadulterate his tea unrebuked, would socially ostracise every one whoseconduct did not square with his conventional shibboleths. MartinLuther was a child of his time also as a boon companion. The freedomof his living in the years following his rupture with Rome was thesubject of severe animadversions on the part of the noble, but in thisrespect narrow-minded, Thomas Münzer, who, in his open letteraddressed to the "Soft-living flesh of Wittenberg, " scathinglydenounces what he deems his debauchery. 

It does not enter into our province here to discuss at length thereligious aspects of the Reformation; but it is interesting to notein passing the more than modern liberality of Luther's views withrespect to the marriage question and the celibacy of the clergy, contrasted with the strong mediæval flavour of his belief inwitchcraft and sorcery. In his _De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiæ_(1519) he expresses the view that if, for any cause, husband or wifeare prevented from having sexual intercourse they are justified, thewoman equally with the man, in seeking it elsewhere. He was opposed todivorce, though he did not forbid it, and recommended that a manshould rather have a plurality of wives than that he should put awayany of them. Luther held strenuously the view that marriage was apurely external contract for the purpose of sexual satisfaction, andin no way entered into the spiritual life of the man. On this groundhe sees no objection in the so-called mixed marriages, which were, ofcourse, frowned upon by the Catholic Church. In his sermon on "MarriedLife" he says: "Know therefore that marriage is an outward thing, likeany other worldly business. Just as I may eat, drink, sleep, walk, ride, buy, speak, and bargain with a heathen, a Jew, a Turk, or aheretic, so may I also be and remain married to such an one, and Icare not one jot for the fool's laws which forbid it. .. . A heathen isjust as much man or woman, well and shapely made by God, as St. Peter, St. Paul, or St. Lucia. " Nor did he shrink from applying his views toparticular cases, as is instanced by his correspondence with Philipvon Hessen, whose constitution appears to have required more than onewife. He here lays down explicitly the doctrine that polygamy andconcubinage are not forbidden to Christians, though, in his advice toPhilip, he adds the _caveat_ that he should keep the matter dark tothe end that offence might not be given. "For, " says he, "it mattersnot, provided one's conscience is right, what others say. " In one ofhis sermons on the Pentateuch[5] we find the words: "It is notforbidden that a man have more than one wife. I would not forbid itto-day, albeit I would not advise it. .. . Yet neither would I condemnit. " Other opinions on the nature of the sexual relation were equallybroad; for in one of his writings on monastic celibacy his wordsplainly indicate his belief that chastity, no more than other fleshlymortifications, was to be considered a divine ordinance for all men orwomen. In an address to the clergy he says: "A woman not possessed ofhigh and rare grace can no more abstain from a man than from eating, drinking, sleeping, or other natural function. Likewise a man cannotabstain from a woman. The reason is that it is as deeply implanted inour nature to breed children as it is to eat and drink. "[6] The worthyJanssen observes in a scandalized tone that Luther, as regards certainmatters relating to married life, "gave expression to principlesbefore unheard of in Christian Europe";[7] and the BritishNonconformist of to-day, if he reads these "immoral" opinions of thehero of the Reformation, will be disposed to echo the sentiments ofthe Ultramontane historian. 

The relation of the Reformation to the "New Learning" was in Germanynot unlike that which existed in the other northern countries ofEurope, and notably in England. Whilst the hostility of the latter tothe mediæval Church was very marked, and it was hence disposed toregard the religious Reformation as an ally, this had not proceededvery far before the tendency of the Renaissance spirit was to sidewith Catholicism against the new theology and dogma, as merelydestructive and hostile to culture. The men of the Humanist movementwere for the most part Free-thinkers, and it was with them thatfree-thought first appeared in modern Europe. They therefore hadlittle sympathy with the narrow bigotry of religious reformers, andpreferred to remain in touch with the Church, whose then loose andtolerant Catholicism gave freer play to intellectual speculations, provided they steered clear of overt theological heterodoxy, than thenewer systems, which, taking theology _au grand sérieux_, tended toregard profane art and learning as more or less superfluous, and spenttheir whole time in theological wrangles. Nevertheless, there were notwanting men who, influenced at first by the revival of learning, endedby throwing themselves entirely into the Reformation movement, thoughin these cases they were usually actuated rather by their hatred ofthe Catholic hierarchy than by any positive religious sentiment. 

Of such men Ulrich von Hutten, the descendant of an ancient andinfluential knightly family, was a noteworthy example. After havingalready acquired fame as the author of a series of skits in the newLatin and other works of classical scholarship, being also well knownas the ardent supporter of Reuchlin in his dispute with the Church, and as the friend and correspondent of the central Humanist figure ofthe time, Erasmus, he watched with absorbing interest the movementwhich Luther had inaugurated. Six months after the nailing of thetheses at Wittenberg, he writes enthusiastically to a friendrespecting the growing ferment in ecclesiastical matters, evidentlyregarding the new movement as a Kilkenny-cat fight. "The leaders, " hesays, "are bold and hot, full of courage and zeal. Now they shout andcheer, now they lament and bewail, as loud as they can. They havelately set themselves to write; the printers are getting enough to do. Propositions, corollaries, conclusions, and articles are being sold. For this alone I hope they will mutually destroy each other. " "A fewdays ago a monk was telling me what was going on in Saxony, to which Ireplied: 'Devour each other in order that ye in turn may be devoured(_sic_). ' Pray Heaven that our enemies may fight each other to thebitter end, and by their obstinacy extinguish each other. "

Thus it will be seen that Hutten regarded the Reformation in itsearlier stages as merely a monkish squabble, and failed to see thetremendous upheaval of all the old landmarks of ecclesiasticaldomination which was immanent in it. So soon, however, as he perceivedits real significance, he threw himself wholly into the movement. Itmust not be forgotten, moreover, that, although Hutten's zeal forHumanism made him welcome any attempt to overthrow the power of theclergy and the monks, he had also an eminently political motive forhis action in what was, in some respects, the main object of his life, viz. To rescue the "knighthood, " or smaller nobility, from havingtheir independence crushed out by the growing powers of the princes ofthe empire. Probably more than one-third of the manors were held byecclesiastical dignitaries, so that anything which threatened theirpossessions and privileges seemed to strike a blow at the veryfoundations of the Imperial system. Hutten hoped that the newdoctrines would set the princes by the ears all round; and that then, by allying themselves with the reforming party, the knighthood mightsucceed in retaining the privileges which still remained to them, butwere rapidly slipping away, and might even regain some of those whichhad been already lost. It was not till later, however, that Hutten sawmatters in this light. He was, at the time the above letter waswritten, in the service of the Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, theleading favourer of the New Learning amongst the prince-prelates, andit was mainly from the Humanist standpoint that he regarded thebeginnings of the Reformation. After leaving the service of thearchbishop he struck up a personal friendship with Luther, instigatedthereto by his political chief, Franz von Sickingen, the leader of theknighthood, from whom he probably received the first intimation of theimportance of the new movement to their common cause. 

When, in 1520, the young Emperor, Charles V, was crowned at Aachen, Luther's party, as well as the knighthood, expected that considerablechanges would result in a sense favourable to their position from thepresumed pliability of the new head of the empire. His youth, it wassupposed, would make him more sympathetic to the newer spirit whichwas rapidly developing itself; and it is true that about the time ofhis election Charles had shown a transient favour to the "recalcitrantmonk. " It would appear, however, that this was only for the purpose offrightening the Pope into abandoning his declared intention ofabolishing the Inquisition in Spain, then regarded as one of themainstays of the royal power, and still more to exercise pressure uponhim, in order that he should facilitate Charles's designs on theMilanese territory. Once these objects were attained, he was just asready to oblige the Pope by suppressing the new anti-Papal movement ashe might possibly otherwise have been to have favoured it with a viewto humbling the only serious rival to his dominion in the empire. 

Immediately after his coronation he proceeded to Cologne, and convokedby Imperial edict a Reichstag at Worms for the following 27th ofJanuary, 1521. The proceedings of this famous Reichstag have beenunfortunately so identified with the edict against Luther that theother important matters which were there discussed have almost falleninto oblivion. At least two other questions were dealt with, however, which are significant of the changes that were then taking place. Thefirst was the rehabilitation and strengthening of the ImperialGoverning Council (_Reichsregiment_), whose functions under Maximilianhad been little more than nominal. There was at first a feelingamongst the States in favour of transferring all authority to it, evenduring the residence of the Emperor in the empire; and in the end, while having granted to it complete power during his absence, itpractically retained very much of this power when he was present. Inconstitution it was very similar to the French "Parliaments, " and, like them, was principally composed of learned jurists, four beingelected by the Emperor and the remainder by the estates. The characterand the great powers of this council, extending even to ecclesiasticalmatters during the ensuing years, undoubtedly did much to hasten onthe substitution of the civil law for the older customary or commonlaw, a matter which we shall consider more in detail later on. Thefinancial condition of the empire was also considered; and it herefirst became evident that the dislocation of economic conditions, which had begun with the century, would render an enormously increasedtaxation necessary to maintain the Imperial authority, amounting tofive times as much as had previously been required. 

It was only after these secular affairs of the empire had beendisposed of that the deliberations of the Reichstag on ecclesiasticalmatters were opened by the indictment of Luther in a long speech byAleander, one of the papal nuncios, in introducing the Pope's letter. In spite of the efforts of his friends, Luther was not permitted to bepresent at the beginning of the proceedings; but subsequently he wassent for by the Emperor, in order that he might state his case. Hisjourney to Worms was one long triumph, especially at Erfurt, where hewas received with enthusiasm by the Humanists as the enemy of thePapacy. But his presence in the Reichstag was unavailing, and theproceedings resulted in his being placed under the ban of the empire. The safe-conduct of the Emperor was, however, in his case respected;and in spite of the fears of his friends that a like fate mightbefall him as had befallen Huss after the Council of Constance, he wasallowed to depart unmolested. 

On his way to Wittenberg Luther was seized, by arrangement with hissupporter, the Kurfürst of Saxony, and conveyed in safety to theCastle of Wartburg, in Thüringen, a report in the meantime beingindustriously circulated by certain of his adherents, with a view ofarousing popular feeling, that he had been arrested by order of theEmperor and was being tortured. In this way he was secured from alldanger for the time being, and it was during his subsequent stay thathe laid the foundations of the literary language of Germany. 

Says a contemporary writer, [8] an eye-witness of what went on at Wormsduring the sitting of the Reichstag: "All is disorder and confusion. Seldom a night doth pass but that three or four persons be slain. TheEmperor hath installed a provost, who hath drowned, hanged, andmurdered over a hundred men. " He proceeds: "Stabbing, whoring, flesh-eating (it was in Lent) . .. Altogether there is an orgie worthyof the Venusberg. " He further states that many gentlemen and othervisitors had drunk themselves to death on the strong Rhenish wine. Aleander was in danger of being murdered by the Lutheran populace, instigated thereto by Hutten's inflammatory letters from theneighbouring Castle of Ebernburg, in which Franz von Sickingen hadgiven him a refuge. The fiery Humanist wrote to Aleander himself, saying that he would leave no stone unturned "till thou who earnesthither full of wrath, madness, crime, and treachery shalt be carriedhence a lifeless corpse. " Aleander naturally felt exceedinglyuncomfortable, and other supporters of the Papal party were not lessdisturbed at the threats which seemed in a fair way of being carriedout. The Emperor himself was without adequate means of withstanding apopular revolt should it occur. He had never been so low in cash or inmen as at that moment. On the other hand, Sickingen, to whom he owedmoney, and who was the only man who could have saved the situationunder the circumstances, had matters come to blows, was almost overtlyon the side of the Lutherans; while the whole body of the impoverishedknighthood were only awaiting a favourable opportunity to overthrowthe power of the magnates, secular and ecclesiastic, with Sickingen asa leader. Such was the state of affairs at the beginning of the year1521. 

The ban placed upon Luther by the Reichstag marks the date of thecomplete rupture between the Reforming party and the old Church. Henceforward, many Humanist and Humanistically influenced persons whohad supported him withdrew from the movement and swelled the ranks ofthe Conservatives. Foremost amongst these were Pirckheimer, thewealthy merchant and scholar of Nürnberg, and many others, who dreadedlest the attack on ecclesiastical property and authority should, asindeed was the case, issue in a general attack on all property andauthority. Thomas Murner, also, who was the type of the "moderate" ofthe situation, while professing to disapprove of the abuses of theChurch, declared that Luther's manner of agitation could only lead tothe destruction of all order, civil no less than ecclesiastical. Thetwo parties were now clearly defined, and the points at issue wereplainly irreconcilable with one another or involved irreconcilabledetails. 

The printing-press now for the first time appeared as the vehicle forpopular literature; the art of the bard gave place to the art of thetypographer, and the art of the preacher saw confronting it aformidable rival in that of the pamphleteer. Similarly in the FrenchRevolution, modern journalism, till then unimportant and sporadic, received its first great development, and began seriously to displacealike the preacher, the pamphlet, and the broadside. The flood oftheological disquisitions, satires, dialogues, sermons, which nowpoured from every press in Germany, overflowed into all classes ofsociety. These writings are so characteristic of the time that it isworth while devoting a few pages to their consideration, the moreespecially because it will afford us the opportunity for consideringother changes in that spirit of the age, partly diseased growths ofdecaying mediævalism and partly the beginnings of the modern criticalspirit, which also find expression in the literature of theReformation period. 

FOOTNOTES:

[5] _Sämmtliche Werke_, vol. Xxxiii. Pp. 322-4. 

[6] Quoted in Janssen, _Ein Zweites Wort an meine Kritiker_ 1883, p. 94. 

[7] _Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes_, vol. Ii. P. 115. 

[8] Quoted in Janssen, bk. Ii. 162. 

CHAPTER II

POPULAR LITERATURE OF THE TIME

In accordance with the conventional view the Reichstag at Worms was alandmark in the history of the Reformation. This is, however, onlytrue as regards the political side of the movement. The popularfeeling was really quite continuous, at least from 1517 to 1525. Withthe latter year and the collapse of the peasant revolt a change isnoticeable. In 1525 the Reformation, as a great upstirring of thepopular mind of Central Europe, in contradistinction to its characteras an academic and purely political movement, reached high-water mark, and may almost be said to have exhausted itself. Until the latter yearit was purely a revolutionary movement, attracting to itself all thedisruptive elements of its time. Later, the reactionary possibilitieswithin it declared themselves. The emancipation from the thraldom ofthe Catholic hierarchy and its Papal head, it was soon found, meantnot emancipation from the arbitrary tyranny of the new political andcentralizing authorities then springing up, but, on the contrary, rather their consecration. The ultimate outcome, in fact, of the wholebusiness was, as we shall see later on, the inculcation of thenon-resistance theory as regards the civil power, and the clearing ofthe way for its extremest expression in the doctrine of the DivineRight of Kings, a theory utterly alien to the belief and practice ofthe Mediæval Church. 

The Reichstag of Worms, by cutting off all possibility ofreconciliation, rather gave further edge to the popular revolutionaryside of the movement than otherwise. The whole progress of the changein public feeling is plainly traceable in the mass of ephemeralliterature that has come down to us from this period, broadsides, pamphlets, satires, folk-songs, and the rest. The anonymous literatureto which we more especially refer is distinguished by its coarsebrutality and humour, even in the writings of the Reformers, whichwere themselves in no case remarkable for the suavity of theirpolemic. 

Hutten, in some of his later vernacular poems, approaches thecharacter of the less-cultured broadside literature. To the criticalmind it is somewhat amusing to note the enthusiasm with which themodern Dissenting and Puritan class contemplates the period of whichwe are writing--an enthusiasm that would probably be effectivelydamped if the laudators of the Reformation knew the real character ofthe movement and of its principal actors. 

The first attacks made by the broadside literature were naturallydirected against the simony and benefice-grabbing of the clergy, acharacteristic of the priestly office that has always powerfullyappealed to the popular mind. Thus the "Courtisan and Benefice-eater"attacks the parasite of the Roman Court, who absorbs ecclesiasticalrevenues wholesale, putting in perfunctory _locum tenens_ on thecheap, and begins:--

 I'm fairly called a Simonist and eke a Courtisan, And here to every peasant and every common man My knavery will very well appear. I called and cried to all who'd give me ear, To nobleman and knight and all above me: "Behold me! And ye'll find I'll truly love ye. "

In another we read:--

 The Paternoster teaches well How one for another his prayers should tell, Thro' brotherly love and not for gold, And good those same prayers God doth hold. So too saith Holy Paul right clearly, Each shall his brother's load bear dearly. 

But now, it declares, all that is changed. Now we are being taughtjust the opposite of God's teachings:--

 Such doctrine hath the priests increased, Whom men as masters now must feast, 'Fore all the crowd of Simonists, Whose waxing number no man wists, The towns and thorps seem full of them, And in all lands they're seen with shame. Their violence and knavery Leave not a church or living free. 

A prose pamphlet, apparently published about the summer of 1520, shortly after Luther's ex-communication, was the so-called "Wolf Song"(_Wolf-gesang_), which paints the enemies of Luther as wolves. Itbegins with a screed on the creation and fall of Adam, and adissertation on the dogma of the Redemption; and then proceeds: "Asone might say, dear brother, instruct me, for there is now in ourtimes so great commotion in faith come upon us. There is one in Saxonywho is called Luther, of whom many pious and honest folk tell how thathe doth write so consolingly the good evangelical (_evangelische_)truth. But again I hear that the Pope and the cardinals at Rome haveput him under the ban as a heretic; and certain of our own preachers, too, scold him from their pulpits as a knave, a misleader, and aheretic. I am utterly confounded, and know not where to turn; albeitmy reason and heart do speak to me even as Luther writeth. But yetagain it bethinks me that when the Pope, the cardinal, the bishop, thedoctor, the monk, and the priest, for the greater part are againsthim, and so that all save the common men and a few gentlemen, doctors, councillors, and knights, are his adversaries, what shall I do?" "Foranswer, dear friend, get thee back and search the Scriptures, and thoushalt find that so it hath gone with all the holy prophets even as itnow fareth with Doctor Martin Luther, who is in truth a godlyChristian and manly heart and only true Pope and Apostle, when he thetrue office of the Apostles publicly fulfilleth. .. . If the godly manLuther were pleasing to the world, that were indeed a true sign thathis doctrine were not from God; for the word of God is a fiery sword, a hammer that breaketh in pieces the rocks, and not a fox's tail or areed that may be bent according to our pleasure. " Seventeen noxiousqualities of the wolf are adduced--his ravenousness, his cunning, hisfalseness, his cowardice, his thirst for robbery, amongst others. ThePopes, the cardinals, and the bishops are compared to the wolves inall their attributes: "The greater his pomp and splendour, the moreshouldst thou beware of such an one; for he is a wolf that cometh inthe shape of a good shepherd's dog. Beware! it is against the customof Christ and His Apostles. " It is again but the song of the wolveswhen they claim to mix themselves with worldly affairs and maintainthe temporal supremacy. The greediness of the wolf is discernible inthe means adopted to get money for the building of St. Peter's. Theinterlocutor is warned against giving to mendicant priests and monks. 

We have given this as a specimen of the almost purely theologicalpamphlet; although, as will have been evident, even this is directlyconnected with the material abuses from which the people weresuffering. Another pamphlet of about the same date deals with usury, the burden of which had been greatly increased by the growth of thenew commercial combinations already referred to in the Introduction, which combinations Dr. Eck had been defending at Bologna ontheological grounds, in order to curry favour with the Augsburgmerchant-prince, Fuggerschwatz. [9] It is called "Concerning Dues. Hither comes a poor peasant to a rich citizen. A priest comes alsothereby, and then a monk. Full pleasant to read. " A peasant visits aburgher when he is counting money, and asks him where he gets it allfrom. "My dear peasant, " says the townsman, "thou askest me who gaveme this money. I will tell thee. There cometh hither a peasant, andbeggeth me to lend him ten or twenty gulden. Thereupon I ask him an hepossesseth not a goodly meadow or corn-field. 'Yea! good sir!' saithhe, 'I have indeed a good meadow and a good corn-field. The twain areworth a hundred gulden. ' Then say I to him: 'Good, my friend, wiltthou pledge me thy holding? and an thou givest me one gulden of thymoney every year I will lend thee twenty gulden now. ' Then is thepeasant right glad, and saith he: 'Willingly will I pledge it thee. ''I will warn thee, ' say I, 'that an thou furnishest not the one guldenof money each year, I will take thy holding for my own having. 'Therewith is the peasant well content, and writeth him downaccordingly. I lend him the money; he payeth me one year, or may betwain, the due; thereafter can he no longer furnish it, and thereuponI take the holding, and drive away the peasant therefrom. Thus I getthe holding and the money. The same things do I with handicraftsmen. Hath he a good house? He pledgeth that house until I bring it behindme. Therewith gain I much in goods and money, and thus do I pass mydays. " "I thought, " rejoined the peasant, "that 'twere only the Jewwho did usury, but I hear that ye also ply that trade. " The burgheranswers that interest is not usury, to which the peasant replies thatinterest (_Gült_) is only a "subtle name. " The burgher then quotesScripture, as commanding men to help one another. The peasant readilyanswers that in doing this they have no right to get advantage fromthe assistance they proffer. "Thou art a good fellow!" says thetownsman. "If I take no money for the money that I lend, how shall Ithen increase my hoard?" The peasant then reproaches him that he seeswell that his object in life is to wax fat on the substance of others;"But I tell thee, indeed, " he says, "that it is a great and heavysin. " Whereupon his opponent waxes wroth, and will have nothing moreto do with him, threatening to kick him out in the name of a thousanddevils; but the peasant returns to the charge, and expresses hisopinion that rich men do not willingly hear the truth. A priest nowenters, and to him the townsman explains the dispute. "Dear peasant, "says the priest, "wherefore camest thou hither, that thou shouldstmake of a due[10] usury? May not a man buy with his money what hewill?" But the peasant stands by his previous assertion, demandinghow anything can be considered as bought which is only a pledge. "Wepriests, " replies the ecclesiastic, "must perforce lend moneys fordues, since thereby we get our living"; to which, after sundryejaculations of surprise, the peasant retorts: "Who gave to you thepower? I well hear ye have another God than we poor people. We haveour Lord Jesus Christ, who hath forbidden such money-lending forgain. " Hence it comes, he goes on, that land is no longer free; toattempt to whitewash usury under the name of due or interest, he says, is just the same as if one were to call a child christened Friedrichor Hansel, Fritz or Hans, and then maintain it was no longer the samechild. They require no more Jews, he says, since the Christians havetaken their business in hand. The townsman is once more about to turnthe peasant out of his house when a monk enters. He then lays thematter before the new-comer, who promises to talk the peasant overwith soft words; for, says he, there is nothing accomplished withvainglory. He thereupon takes him aside and explains it to him by theillustration of a merchant whose gain on the wares he sells is notcalled usury, and argues that therefore other forms of gain inbusiness should not be described by this odious name. But the peasantwill have none of this comparison; for the merchant, he says, needsto incur much risk in order to gain and traffic with his wares; whilemoney-lending on security is, on the other hand, without risk orlabour, and is a treacherous mode of cheating. Finding that they canmake nothing of the obstinate countryman, the others leave him; buthe, as a parting shot, exclaims: "Ah, well-a-day! I would to havetalked with thee at first, but it is now ended. Farewell, gracioussir, and my other kind sirs. I, poor little peasant, I go my way. Farewell, farewell, due remains usury for ever more. Yea, yea! due, indeed!"

The above specimens of the popular writing of the time must suffice. But for the reader who wishes to further study this literature we givethe titles, which sufficiently indicate their contents, of a selectionof other similar pamphlets and broadsheets: "A New Epistle from theEvil Clergy sent to their righteous Lord, with an answer from theirLord. Most merry to read" (1521). "A Great Prize which the Prince ofHell, hight Lucifer, now offereth to the Clergy, to the Pope, Bishops, Cardinals, and their like" (1521). "A Written Call, made by the Princeof Hell to his dear devoted, of all and every condition in hiskingdom" (1521). "Dialogue or Converse of the Apostolicum, Angelica, and other spices of the Druggist, anent Dr. Martin Luther and hisdisciples" (1521). "A Very Pleasant Dialogue and Remonstrance from theSheriff of Gaissdorf and his pupil against the pastor of the same andhis assistant" (1521). The popularity of "Karsthans, " an anonymoustract, amongst the people is illustrated by the publication and widedistribution of a new "Karsthans" a few months later, in which it issought to show that the knighthood should make common cause with thepeasants, the _dramatis personæ_ being Karsthans and Franz vonSickingen. Referring to the same subject we find a "Dialogue whichFranciscus von Sickingen held fore heaven's gate with St. Peter andthe Knights of St. George before he was let in. " This was published in1523, almost immediately after the death of Sickingen. "A Talk betweena Nobleman, a Monk, and a Courtier" (1523). "A Talk between a Fox anda Wolf" (1523). "A Pleasant Dialogue between Dr. Martin Luther and thecunning Messenger from Hell" (1523). "A Conversation of the Pope withhis Cardinals of how it goeth with him, and how he may destroy theWord of God. Let every man very well note" (1523). "A Christian andMerry Talk, that it is more pleasing to God and more wholesome for mento come out of the monasteries and to marry, than to tarry thereinand to burn; which talk is not with human folly and the falseteachings thereof, but is founded alone in the holy, divine, biblical, and evangelical Scripture" (1524). "A Pleasant Dialogue of a Peasantwith a Monk that he should cast his Cowl from him. Merry and fair toread" (1525). 

The above is only a selection taken haphazard from the mass offugitive literature which the early years of the Reformation broughtforth. In spite of a certain rough but not unattractive directness ofdiction, a prolonged reading of them is very tedious, as will havebeen sufficiently seen from the extracts we have given. Their humouris of a particularly juvenile and obvious character, and consistsalmost entirely in the childish device of clothing the personages withridiculous but non-essential attributes, or in placing them ingrotesque but pointless situations. Of the more subtle humour, whichconsists in the discovery of real but hidden incongruities, and theperception of what is innately absurd, there is no trace. The obviousabuses of the time are satirized in this way _ad nauseam_. Therapacity of the clergy in general, the idleness and lasciviousness ofthe monks, the pomp and luxury of the prince-prelates, theinconsistencies of Church traditions and practices with Scripture, with which they could now be compared, since it was everywherecirculated in the vulgar tongue, form their never-ending theme. Theyreveal to the reader a state of things that strikes one none the lessin English literature of the period--the intense interest of allclasses in theological matters. It shows us how they looked at allthings through a theological lens. Although we have left this phase ofpopular thought so recently behind us, we can even now scarcelyimagine ourselves back into it. The idea of ordinary men, or of thevast majority, holding their religion as anything else than a verypious opinion absolutely unconnected with their daily life, public orprivate, has already become almost inconceivable to us. In all thewritings of the time, the theological interest is in the forefront. The economic and social groundwork only casually reveals itself. Thisit is that makes the reading of the sixteenth-century polemics soinsufferably jejune and dreary. They bring before us the ghosts ofcontroversies in which most men have ceased to take any part, albeitthey have not been dead and forgotten long enough to have acquired arevived antiquarian interest. 

The great bombshell which Luther cast forth on June 24, 1520, in hisaddress to the German nobility, [11] indeed, contains strong appeals tothe economical and political necessities of Germany, and therein wesee the veil torn from the half-unconscious motives that lay behindthe theological mask; but, as already said, in the popular literature, with a few exceptions, the theological controversy rules undisputed. 

The noticeable feature of all this irruption of the _cacoethesscribendi_ was the direct appeal to the Bible for the settlement notonly of strictly theological controversies but of points of social andpolitical ethics also. This practice, which even to the modernProtestant seems insipid and played out after three centuries and ahalf of wear, had at that time the to us inconceivable charm ofnovelty; and the perusal of the literature and controversies of thetime shows that men used it with all the delight of a child with a newtoy, and seemed never tired of the game of searching out texts tojustify their position. The diffusion of the whole Bible in thevernacular, itself a consequence of the rebellion against priestlytradition and the authority of the Fathers, intensified the revolt bymaking the pastime possible to all ranks of society. 

FOOTNOTES:

[9] See Appendix C. 

[10] We use the word "due" here for the German word _Gült_. Thecorresponding English of the time does not make any distinction between_Gült_ or interest, and _Wucher_ or usury. 

[11] _An der Christlichen Adel deutscher Nation. _

CHAPTER III

THE FOLKLORE OF REFORMATION GERMANY

Now in the hands of all men, the Bible was not made the basis ofdoctrinal opinions alone. It lent its support to many of the popularsuperstitions of the time, and in addition it served as thestarting-point for new superstitions and for new developments of theolder ones. The Pan-dæmonism of the New Testament, with itswonder-workings by devilish agencies, its exorcisms of evil spiritsand the like, could not fail to have a deep effect on the popularmind. The authority that the book believed to be divinely inspirednecessarily lent to such beliefs gave a vividness to the popularconception of the devil and his angels, which is apparent throughoutthe whole movement of the Reformation, and not least in the utterancesof the great Luther himself. Indeed, with the Reformation there comesa complete change over the popular conception of the devil anddiabolical influences. 

It is true that the judicial pursuit of witches and witchcraft, inthe earlier Middle Ages only a sporadic incident, received a greatimpulse from the Bull of Pope Innocent VIII (Dec. 5, 1484), entitled_Summis Desideruntes_, to which has been given the title of _MalleusMaleficorum_, or _The Hammer of Sorcerers_, directed against thepractice of witchcraft; but it was especially amongst the men of theNew Spirit that the belief in the prevalence of compacts with thedevil, and the necessity for suppressing them, took root, and led tothe horrible persecutions that distinguished the "Reformed" Churcheson the whole even more than the Catholic. 

Luther himself had a vivid belief, tinging all his views and actions, in the ubiquity of the devil and his myrmidons. "The devils, " says he, "are near us, and do cunningly contrive every moment without ceasingagainst our life, our salvation, and our blessedness. .. . In woods, waters, and wastes, and in damp, marshy places, there are many devilsthat seek to harm men. In the black and thick clouds, too, there aresome that make storms, hail, lightning, and thunder, that poison theair and the pastures. When such things happen, the philosophers andthe physicians ascribe them to the stars, and show I know not whatcauses for such misfortunes and plagues. " Luther relates numerousinstances of personal encounters that he himself had had with thedevil. A nobleman invited him, with other learned men from theUniversity of Wittenberg, to take part in a hare hunt. A large, finehare and a fox crossed the path. The nobleman, mounted on a strong, healthy steed, dashed after them, when, suddenly, his horse fell deadbeneath him, and the fox and the hare flew up in the air and vanished. "For, " says Luther, "they were devilish spectres. "

Again, on another occasion, he was at Eisleben on the occasion ofanother hare-hunt, when the nobleman succeeded in killing eight hares, which were, on their return home, duly hung up for the next day'smeal. On the following morning, horses' heads were found in theirplace. "In mines, " says Luther, "the devil oftentimes deceives menwith a false appearance of gold. " All disease and all misfortune werethe direct work of the devil; God, who was all good, could not produceeither. Luther gives a long history of how he was called to a parishpriest, who complained of the devil's having created a disturbance inhis house by throwing the pots and pans about, and so forth, and ofhow he advised the priest to exorcise the fiend by invoking his ownauthority as a pastor of the Church. 

At the Wartburg, Luther complained of having been very much troubledby the Satanic arts. When he was at work upon his translation of theBible, or upon his sermons, or engaged in his devotions, the devil wasalways making disturbances on the stairs or in the room. One day, after a hard spell of study, he lay down to sleep in his bed, when thedevil began pelting him with hazel-nuts, a sack of which had beenbrought to him a few hours before by an attendant. He invoked, however, the name of Christ, and lay down again in bed. There wereother more curious and more doubtful recipes for driving away Satanand his emissaries. Luther is never tired of urging that contemptuoustreatment and rude chaff are among the most efficacious methods. 

There was, he relates, a poor soothsayer, to whom the devil came invisible form, and offered great wealth provided that he would denyChrist and never more do penance. The devil provided him with acrystal, by which he could foretell events, and thus become rich. Thishe did; but Nemesis awaited him, for the devil deceived him one day, and caused him to denounce certain innocent persons as thieves. Inconsequence, he was thrown into prison, where he revealed the compactthat he had made, and called for a confessor. The two chief forms inwhich the devil appeared were, according to Luther, those of a snakeand a sheep. He further goes into the question of the population ofdevils in different countries. On the top of the Pilatus at Luzern, hesays, is a black pond, which is one of the devil's favourite abodes. In Luther's own country there is also a high mountain, thePoltersberg, with a similar pond. When a stone is thrown into thispond, a great tempest arises, which often devastates the wholeneighbourhood. He also alleges Prussia to be full of evil spirits(!!). 

Devilish changelings, Luther said, were often placed by Satan in thecradles of human children. "Some maids he often plunges into thewater, and keeps them with him until they have borne a child. " Thesechildren are placed in the beds of mortals, and the true children aretaken out and hurried away. "But, " he adds, "such changelings are saidnot to live more than to the eighteenth or nineteenth year. " As apractical application of this, it may be mentioned that Luther advisedthe drowning of a certain child of twelve years old, on the ground ofits being a devil's changeling. Somnambulism is, with Luther, theresult of diabolical agency. "Formerly, " says he, "the Papists, beingsuperstitious people, alleged that persons thus afflicted had not beenproperly baptized, or had been baptized by a drunken priest. " Theirony of the reference to superstition, considering the "greatreformer's" own position, will not be lost upon the reader. 

Thus, not only is the devil the cause of pestilence, but he is alsothe immediate agent of nightmare and of nightsweats. At Mölburg inThüringen, near Erfurt, a piper, who was accustomed to pipe atweddings, complained to his priest that the devil had threatened tocarry him away and destroy him, on the ground of a practical jokeplayed upon some companions, to wit, for having mixed horse-dung withtheir wine at a drinking bout. The priest consoled him with manypassages of Scripture anent the devil and his ways, with the resultthat the piper expressed himself satisfied as regarded the welfare ofhis soul, but apprehensive as regarded that of his body, which was, heasserted, hopelessly the prey of the devil. In consequence of this, heinsisted on partaking of the Sacrament. The devil had indicated to himwhen he was going to be fetched, and watchers were accordingly placedin his room, who sat in their armour and with their weapons, and readthe Bible to him. Finally, one Saturday at midnight, a violent stormarose, that blew out the lights in the room, and hurled the lucklessvictim out of a narrow window into the street. The sound of fightingand of armed men was heard, but the piper had disappeared. The nextmorning he was found in a neighbouring ditch, with his arms stretchedout in the form of a cross, dead and coal-black. Luther vouches forthe truth of this story, which he alleges to have been told him by aparish priest of Gotha, who had himself heard it from the parishpriest of Mölburg, where the event was said to have taken place. 

Amongst the numerous anecdotes of a supernatural character told by"Dr. Martin" is one of a "Poltergeist, " or "Robin Goodfellow, " who wasexorcised by two monks from the guest-chamber of an inn, and whooffered his services to them in the monastery. They gave him a cornerin the kitchen. The serving-boy used to torment him by throwing dirtywater over him. After unavailing protests, the spirit hung the boy upto a beam, but let him down again before serious harm resulted. Lutherstates that this "brownie" was well known by sight in the neighbouringtown (the name of which he does not give). But by far the largernumber of his stories, which, be it observed, are warranted asordinary occurrences, as to the possibility of which there was noquestion, are coloured by that more sinister side of supernaturalismso much emphasised by the new theology. 

The mediæval devil was, for the most part, himself little more than aprankish Rübezahl, or Robin Goodfellow; the new Satan of theReformers was, in very deed, an arch-fiend, the enemy of the humanrace, with whom no truce or parley might be held. The old folklorebelief in _incubi_ and _succubi_ as the parents of changelings isbrought into connection with the theory of direct diabolic begettal. Thus Luther relates how Friedrich, the Elector of Saxony, told him ofa noble family that had sprung from a _succubus_: "Just, " says he, "asthe Melusina at Luxembourg was also such a _succubus_, or devil. " Inthe case referred to, the _succubus_ assumed the shape of the man'sdead wife, and lived with him and bore him children, until, one day, he swore at her, when she vanished, leaving only her clothes behind. After giving it as his opinion that all such beings and theiroffspring are wiles of the devil, he proceeds: "It is truly a grievousthing that the devil can so plague men that he begetteth children intheir likeness. It is even so with the nixies in the water, that lurea man therein, in the shape of wife or maid, with whom he doth dallyand begetteth offspring of them. " The change whereby the beings of theold naïve folklore are transformed into the devil or his agents issignificant of that darker side of the new theology, which wasdestined to issue in those horrors of the witchcraft-mania thatreached their height at the beginning of the following century. 

One more story of a "changeling" before we leave the subject. Luthergives us the following as having come to his knowledge nearHalberstadt, in Saxony. A peasant had a baby, who sucked out itsmother and five nurses, besides eating a great deal. Concluding thatit was a changeling, the peasant sought the advice of his neighbours, who suggested that he should take it on a pilgrimage to a neighbouringshrine of the Mother of God. While he was crossing a brook on the wayan impish voice from under the water called out to the infant, whom hewas carrying in a basket. The brat answered from within the basket, "Ho, ho!" and the peasant was unspeakably shocked. When the voice fromthe water proceeded to ask the child what it was after, and receivedthe answer from the hitherto inarticulate babe that it was going to belaid on the shrine of the Mother of God, to the end that it mightprosper, the peasant could stand it no longer, and flung basket andbaby into the brook. The changeling and the little devil played for afew moments with each other, rolling over and over, and crying, "Ho, ho, ho!" and then they disappeared together. Luther says that thesedevilish brats may be generally known by their eating and drinking toomuch, and especially by their exhausting their mother's milk, but theymay not develop any certain signs of their true parentage untileighteen or nineteen years old. The Princess of Anhalt had a childwhich Luther imagined to be a changeling, and he therefore advised itsbeing drowned, alleging that such creatures were only lumps of fleshanimated by the devil or his angels. Some one spoke of a monster whichinfested the Netherlands, and which went about smelling at people likea dog, and whoever it smelt died. But those that were smelt did notsee it, albeit the bystanders did. The people had recourse to vigilsand masses. Luther improved the occasion to protest against the"superstition" of masses for the dead, and to insist upon hisfavourite dogma of faith as the true defence against assaults of thedevil. 

Among the numerous stories of Satanic compacts, we are told of a monkwho ate up a load of hay, of a debtor who bit off the leg of hisHebrew creditor and ran off to avoid payment, and of a woman whobewitched her husband so that he vomited lizards. Luther observes, with especial reference to this last case, that lawyers and judgeswere far too pedantic with their witnesses and with their evidence;that the devil hardens his clients against torture, and that therefusal to confess under torture ought to be of itself sufficientproof of dealings with the Prince of Darkness. "Towards such, " sayshe, "we would show no mercy; I would burn them myself. " Black magic orwitchcraft he proceeds to characterize as the greatest sin a humanbeing can be guilty of, as, in fact, high treason against GodHimself--_crimen læsæ majestatis divinæ_. 

The conversation closes with a story of how Maximilian's father, theEmperor Friedrich, who seems to have obtained a reputation for magicarts, invited a well-known magician to a banquet, and on his arrivalfixed claws on his hands and hoofs on his feet by his cunning. Hisguest, being ashamed, tried to hide the claws under the table as longas he could, but finally he had to show them, to his greatdiscomfiture. But he determined to have his revenge, and asked hishost whether he would permit him to give proofs of his own skill. TheEmperor assenting, there at once arose a great noise outside thewindow. Friedrich sprang up from the table, and leaned out of thecasement to see what was the matter. Immediately an enormous pair ofstag's horns appeared on his head, so that he could not draw it back. Finding the state of the case, the Emperor exclaimed: "Rid me of themagain! Thou hast won!" Luther's comment on this was that he was alwaysglad to see one devil getting the better of another, as it showedthat some were stronger than others. 

All this belongs, roughly speaking, to the side of the matter whichregards popular theology; but there is another side which is connectedmore especially with the New Learning. This other school, which soughtto bring the somewhat elastic elements of the magical theory of theuniverse into the semblance of a systematic whole, is associated withsuch names as those of Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, and the Abbotvon Trittenheim. The fame of the first-named was so great throughoutGermany that when he visited any town the occasion was looked upon asan event of exceeding importance. [12] Paracelsus fully shared in thebeliefs of his age, in spite of his brilliant insights on certainoccasions. What his science was like may be imagined when we learnthat he seriously speaks of animals who conceive through the mouth ofbasilisks whose glance is deadly, of petrified storks changed intosnakes, of the stillborn young of the lion which are afterwardsbrought to life by the roar of their sire, of frogs falling in ashower of rain, of ducks transformed into frogs, and of men born frombeasts; the menstruation of women he regarded as a venom whenceproceeded flies, spiders, earwigs, and all sorts of loathsome vermin;night was caused, not by the absence of the sun, but by the presenceof the stars, which were the positive cause of the darkness. Herelates having seen a magnet capable of attracting the eyeball fromits socket as far as the tip of the nose; he knows of salves to closethe mouth so effectually that it has to be broken open again bymechanical means, and he writes learnedly on the infallible signs ofwitchcraft. By mixing horse-dung with human semen he believed he wasable to produce a medium from which, by chemical treatment in aretort, a diminutive human being, or _homunculus_, as he called it, could be produced. The spirits of the elements, the sylphs of the air, the gnomes of the earth, the salamanders of the fire, and the undinesof the water, were to him real and undoubted existences in Nature. 

Strange as all these beliefs seem to us now, they were a very realfactor in the intellectual conceptions of the Renaissance period, noless than of the Middle Ages, and amidst them there is to be found attimes a foreshadowing of more modern knowledge. Many other personswere also more or less associated with the magical school, amongstthem Franz von Sickingen. Reuchlin himself, by his Hebrew studies, andespecially by his introduction of the Kabbala to Gentile readers, also contributed a not unimportant influence in determining the courseof the movement. The line between the so-called black magic, oroperations conducted through the direct agency of evil spirits, andwhite magic, which sought to subject Nature to the human will by thediscovery of her mystical and secret laws, or the character of thequasi-personified intelligent principles under whose form Naturepresented herself to their minds, had never throughout the Middle Agesbeen very clearly defined. The one always had a tendency to shade offinto the other, so that even Roger Bacon's practices were, althoughnot condemned, at least looked upon somewhat doubtfully by the Church. At the time of which we treat, however, the interest in such mattershad become universal amongst all intelligent persons. The scientificimagination at the close of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissanceperiod was mainly occupied with three questions: the discovery of themeans of transmuting the baser metals into gold, or otherwise ofproducing that object of universal desire; to discover the ElixirVitæ, by which was generally understood the invention of a drug whichwould have the effect of curing all diseases, restoring man toperennial youth, and, in short, prolonging human life indefinitely;and, finally, the search for the Philosopher's Stone, the happypossessor of which would not only be able to achieve the first two, but also, since it was supposed to contain the quintessence of all themetals, and therefore of all the planetary influences to which themetals corresponded, would have at his command all the forces whichmould the destinies of men. In especial connection with the latterobject of research may be noted the universal interest in astrology, whose practitioners were to be found at every Court, from that of theEmperor himself to that of the most insignificant prince or princelet, and whose advice was sought and carefully heeded on all importantoccasions. Alchemy and astrology were thus the recognized physicalsciences of the age, under the auspices of which a Copernicus and aTycho Brahe were born and educated. 

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Cf. Sebastian Franck, _Chronica_, for an account of a visit ofParacelsus to Nürnberg. 

CHAPTER IV

THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN TOWN

From what has been said the reader may form for himself an idea of theintellectual and social life of the German town of the period. Thewealthy patrician class, whose mainstay politically was the _Rath_, gave the social tone to the whole. In spite of the sharp and sometimesbrutal fashion in which class distinctions asserted themselves then, as throughout the Middle Ages, there was none of that aloofnessbetween class and class which characterizes the bourgeois society ofthe present day. Each town, were it great or small, was a little worldin itself, so that every citizen knew every other citizen more orless. The schools attached to its ecclesiastical institutions werepractically free of access to all the children whose parents couldfind the means to maintain them during their studies; and consequentlythe intellectual differences between the different classes were by nomeans necessarily proportionate to the difference in social position. So far as culture and material prosperity were concerned, the townsof Bavaria and Franconia, Munich, Augsburg, Regensburg, and perhaps, above all, Nürnberg, represented the high-water mark of mediævalcivilization as regards town life. On entering the burg, should ithave happened to be in time of peace and in daylight, the strangerwould clear the drawbridge and the portcullis without much challenge;passing along streets lined with the houses and shops of the burghers, in whose open frontages the master and his apprentices and _gesellen_plied their trades, discussing eagerly over their work the politics ofthe town, and at this period probably the theological questions whichwere uppermost in men's minds, our visitor would make his way to somehostelry, in whose courtyard he would dismount from his horse, and, entering the common room, or _Stube_, with its rough but artisticfurniture of carved oak, partake of his flagon of wine or beer, according to the district in which he was travelling, whilst the hostcracked a rough and possibly coarse jest with the other guests, ornarrated to them the latest gossip of the city. The stranger wouldprobably find himself before long the object of interrogatoriesrespecting his native place and the object of his journey (althoughhis dress would doubtless have given general evidence of this), whether he were a merchant or a travelling scholar or a practiser ofmedicine; for into one of those categories it might be presumed thehumble but not servile traveller would fall. Were he on a diplomaticmission from some potentate he would be travelling at the least as aknight or a noble, with spurs and armour, and, moreover, would belittle likely to lodge in a public house of entertainment. 

In the _Stube_ he would probably see, drinking heavily, representatives of the ubiquitous _Landsknechte_, the mercenary troopsenrolled for Imperial purposes by the Emperor Maximilian towards theend of the previous century, who in the intervals of war weredisbanded and wandered about spending their pay, and thus constitutedan excessively disintegrative element in the life of the time. Acontemporary writer[13] describes them as the curse of Germany, andstigmatizes them as "unchristian, God-forsaken folk, whose hand isever ready in striking, stabbing, robbing, burning, slaying, gaming, who delight in wine-bibbing, whoring, blaspheming, and in the makingof widows and orphans. "

Presently, perhaps, a noise without indicates the arrival of a newguest. All hurry forth into the courtyard, and their curiosity ismore keenly whetted when they perceive by the yellow knitted scarfround the neck of the new-comer that he is an _itineransscholasticus_, or travelling scholar, who brings with him not only thepossibility of news from the outer world, so important in an age whenjournals were non-existent and communications irregular and deficient, but also a chance of beholding wonder-workings, as well as of beingcured of the ailments which local skill had treated in vain. Alreadysurrounded by a crowd of admirers waiting for the words of wisdom tofall from his lips, he would start on that exordium which bore nolittle resemblance to the patter of the modern quack, albeitinterlarded with many a Latin quotation and great display of mediævallearning. "Good people and worthy citizens of this town, " he mightsay, "behold in me the great master . .. Prince of necromancers, astrologer, second mage, chiromancer, agromancer, pyromancer, hydromancer. My learning is so profound that were all the works ofPlato and Aristotle lost to the world I could from memory restore themwith more elegance than before. The miracles of Christ were not sogreat as those which I can perform wherever and as often as I will. Ofall alchemists I am the first, and my powers are such that I canobtain all things that man desires. My shoe-buckles contain morelearning than the heads of Galen and Avicenna, and my beard has moreexperience than all your high schools. I am monarch of all learning. Ican heal you of all diseases. By my secret arts I can procure youwealth. I am the philosopher of philosophers. I can provide you withspells to bind the most potent of the devils in hell. I can cast yournativities and foretell all that shall befall you, since I have thatwhich can unlock the secrets of all things that have been, that are, and that are to come. "[14] Bringing forth strange-looking phials, covered with cabalistic signs, a crystal globe and an astro-labe, followed by an imposing scroll of parchment inscribed with mysteriousHebraic-looking characters, the travelling student would probablydrive a roaring trade amongst the assembled townsmen in love-philtres, cures for the ague and the plague, and amulets against them, horoscopes, predictions of fate, and the rest of his stock-in-trade. 

As evening approaches, our traveller strolls forth into the streetsand narrow lanes of the town, lined with overhanging gables thatalmost meet overhead and shut out the light of the afternoon sun, sothat twilight seems already to have fallen. Observing that theburghers, with their wives and children, the work of the day beingdone, are all wending toward the western gate, he goes along with thestream till, passing underneath the heavy portcullis and through theouter rampart, he finds himself in the plain outside, across which arugged bridle-path leads to a large quadrangular meadow, rough andmore or less worn, where a considerable crowd has already assembled. This is the _Allerwiese_, or public pleasure-ground of the town. Herethere are not only high festivities on Sundays and holidays, but everyfine evening in summer numbers of citizens gather together to watchthe apprentices exercising their strength in athletic feats, andcompeting with one another in various sports, such as running, wrestling, spear-throwing, sword-play, and the like, wherein theinferior rank sought to imitate and even emulate the knighthood, whilst the daughters of the city watched their progress with keeninterest and applauding laughter. As the shadows deepen and darknessfalls upon the plain, our visitor joins the groups which are now fastleaving the meadow, and re-passes the great embrasure just as therushlights begin to twinkle in the windows and a swinging oil-lamp tocast a dim light here and there in the streets. But as his companypasses out of a narrow lane debouching on to the chief market-place, their progress is stopped by the sudden rush of a mingled crowd ofunruly apprentices and journeymen returning from their sports, withhot heads well beliquored. Then from another side-street there is asudden flare of torches, borne aloft by guildsmen come out to quellthe tumult and to send off the apprentices to their dwellings, whilstthe watch also bears down and carries off some of the more turbulentof the journeymen to pass the night in one of the towers which guardthe city wall. At last, however, the visitor reaches his inn by theaid of a friendly guildsman and his torch; and retiring to hischamber, with its straw-covered floor, rough oaken bedstead, hardmattress, and coverings not much better than horse-cloths, he fallsasleep as the bell of the minster tolls out ten o'clock over the nowdark and silent city. 

Such approximately would have been the view of a German city in thesixteenth century as presented to a traveller in a time of peace. Morestirring times, however, were as frequent--times when the tocsin rangout from the steeple all night long, calling the citizens to arms. Bysuch scenes, needless to say, the year of the Peasants' War was morethan usually characterized. In the days when every man carried armsand knew how to use them, when the fighting instinct was imbibed withthe mother's milk, when every week saw some street brawl, oftenattended by loss of life, and that by no means always among the mostworthless and dissolute of the inhabitants, every dissatisfactionimmediately turned itself into an armed revolt, whether it were of theapprentices or the journeymen against the guild-masters, the body ofthe townsmen against the patriciate, the town itself against itsfeudal superior, where it had one, or of the knighthood against theprinces. The extremity to which disputes can at present be carriedwithout resulting in a breach of the peace, as evinced in modernpolitical and trade conflicts, exacerbated though some of them are, was a thing unknown in the Middle Ages, and indeed to any considerableextent until comparatively recent times. The sacred right ofinsurrection was then a recognized fact of life, and but very littlestraining of a dispute led to a resort to arms. In the subsequentchapters we have to deal with the more important of those outbursts towhich the ferment due to the dissolution of the mediæval system ofthings, then beginning throughout Central Europe, gave rise, of whichthe religious side is represented by what is known as the Reformation. 

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Sebastian Franck, _Chronica_, ccxvii. 

[14] Cf. Trittheim's letter to Wirdung of Hasfurt regarding Faust. _J. Tritthemii Epistolarum Familiarum_, 1536, bk. Ii. Ep. 47; also the worksof Paracelsus. 

CHAPTER V

COUNTRY AND TOWN AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES

For the complete understanding of the events which follow it must beborne in mind that the early sixteenth century represents the end of adistinct historical period; and, as we have pointed out in theIntroduction, the expiring effort, half-conscious and half-unconscious, of the people to revert to the conditions of an earlier age. Nor can thesignificance be properly gauged unless a clear conception is obtained ofthe differences between country and town life at the beginning of thesixteenth century. From the earliest periods of the Middle Ages of whichwe have any historical record, the _Markgenossenschaft_, or primitivevillage community of the Germanic race, was overlaid by a territorialdomination, imposed upon it either directly by conquest or voluntarilyaccepted for the sake of the protection indispensable in that rudeperiod. The conflict of these two elements, the mark organization andthe territorial lordship, constitutes the marrow of the social historyof the Middle Ages. 

In the earliest times the pressure of the overlord, whoever he mightbe, seems to have been comparatively slight, but its inevitabletendency was for the territorial power to extend itself at the expenseof the rural community. It was thus that in the tenth and eleventhcenturies the feudal oppression had become thoroughly settled, and hadreached its greatest intensity all over Europe. It continued thus withlittle intermission until the thirteenth century, when from variouscauses, economic and otherwise, matters began to improve in theinterests of the common man, till in the fifteenth century thecondition of the peasant was better than it has ever been, eitherbefore or since within historical times, in Northern and WesternEurope. But with all this, the oppressive power of the lord of thesoil was by no means dead. It was merely dormant, and was destined tospring into renewed activity the moment the lord's necessitiessupplied a sufficient incentive. From this time forward the element ofterritorial power, supported in its claims by the Roman law, with itsbasis of private property, continued to eat into it until it hadfinally devoured the old rights and possessions of the villagecommunity. The executive power always tended to be transferred fromits legitimate holder, the village in its corporate capacity, to thelord; and this was alone sufficient to place the villager at hismercy. 

At the time of the Reformation, owing to the new conditions which hadarisen and had brought about in a few decades the hithertounparalleled rise in prices, combined with the unprecedentedostentation and extravagance more than once referred to in thesepages, the lord was supplied with the requisite incentive to theexercise of the power which his feudal system gave him. Consequently, the position of the peasant rapidly changed for the worse; andalthough at the outbreak of the movement not absolutely _in extremis_, according to our notions, yet it was so bad comparatively to hisprevious condition and that less than half a century before, andtended as evidently to become more intolerable, that discontent becameeverywhere rife, and only awaited the torch of the new doctrines toset it ablaze. The whole course of the movement shows a peasantry, notdowntrodden and starved but proud and robust, driven to take up armsnot so much by misery and despair as by the deliberate will tomaintain the advantages which were rapidly slipping away from them. 

Serfdom was not by any means universal. Many free peasant villageswere to be found scattered amongst the manors of the territoriallords, though it was but too evidently the settled policy of thelatter at this time to sweep everything into their net, and to compelsuch peasant communes to accept a feudal overlordship. Nor were theyat all scrupulous in the means adopted for attaining their ends. Theecclesiastical foundations, as before said, were especially expert inforging documents for the purpose of proving that these free villageswere lapsed feudatories of their own. Old rights of pasture were beingcurtailed, and others, notably those of hunting and fishing, had inmost manors been completely filched away. 

It is noticeable, however, that although the immediate causes of thepeasant rising were the new burdens which had been laid upon thecommon people during the last few years, once the spirit of discontentwas aroused it extended also in many cases to the traditional feudaldues to which, until then, the peasant had submitted with littlemurmuring, and an attempt was made by the country-side to reconquerthe ancient complete freedom of which a dim remembrance had beenhanded down to them. 

The condition of the peasant up to the beginning of the sixteenthcentury--that is to say, up to the time when it began to so rapidlychange for the worse--may be gathered from what we are told bycontemporary writers, such as Wimpfeling, Sebastian Brandt, Wittenweiler, the satires in the _Nürnberger Fastnachtspielen_, andnumberless other sources, as also from the sumptuary laws of the endof the fifteenth century. All these indicate an ease and profusenessof living which little accord with our notions of the word "peasant". Wimpfeling writes: "The peasants in our district and in many parts ofGermany have become, through their riches, stiff-necked andease-loving. I know peasants who at the weddings of their sons ordaughters, or the baptism of their children, make so much display thata house and field might be bought therewith, and a small vineyard toboot. Through their riches, they are oftentimes spendthrift in foodand in vestments, and they drink wines of price. "

A chronicler relates of the Austrian peasants, under the date of 1478, that "they wore better garments and drank better wine than theirlords"; and a sumptuary law passed at the Reichstag held at Lindau, in1497, provides that the common peasant man and the labourer in thetowns or in the field "shall neither make nor wear cloth that costsmore than half a gulden the ell, neither shall they wear gold, pearls, velvet, silk, nor embroidered clothes, nor shall they permittheir wives or their children to wear such. "

Respecting the food of the peasant, it is stated that he ate his fullin flesh of every kind, in fish, in bread, in fruit, drinking wineoften to excess. The Swabian, Heinrich Müller, writes in the year1550, nearly two generations after the change had begun to take place:"In the memory of my father, who was a peasant man, the peasant dideat much better than now. Meat and food in plenty was there every day, and at fairs and other junketings the tables did wellnigh break withwhat they bore. Then drank they wine as it were water, then did a manfill his belly and carry away withal as much as he could; then waswealth and plenty. Otherwise is it now. A costly and a bad time hatharisen since many a year, and the food and drink of the best peasantis much worse than of yore that of the day labourer and the servingman. "

We may well imagine the vivid recollections which a peasant in theyear 1525 had of the golden days of a few years before. The daylabourers and serving men were equally tantalized by the remembranceof high wages and cheap living at the beginning of the century. A daylabourer could then earn, with his keep, nine, and without keep, sixteen groschen[15] a week. What this would buy may be judged fromthe following prices current in Saxony during the second half of thefifteenth century. A pair of good working-shoes cost three groschen; awhole sheep, four groschen; a good fat hen, half a groschen;twenty-five cod-fish, four groschen; a wagon-load of firewood, together with carriage, five groschen; an ell of the best homespuncloth, five groschen; a scheffel (about a bushel) of rye, six or sevengroschen. The Duke of Saxony wore grey hats which cost him fourgroschen. In Northern Rhineland about the same time a day labourercould, in addition to his keep, earn in a week a quarter of rye, tenpounds of pork, six large cans of milk, and two bundles of firewood, and in the course of five weeks be able to buy six ells of linen, apair of shoes, and a bag for his tools. In Augsburg the daily wages ofan ordinary labourer represented the value of six pounds of the bestmeat, or one pound of meat, seven eggs, a peck of peas, about a quartof wine, in addition to such bread as he required, with enough overfor lodging, clothing, and minor expenses. In Bavaria he could earndaily eighteen pfennige, or one and a half groschen, whilst a pound ofsausage cost one pfennig, and a pound of the best beef two pfennige, and similarly throughout the whole of the States of Central Europe. 

A document of the year 1483, from Ehrbach in the Swabian Odenwald, describes for us the treatment of servants by their masters. "Alljourneymen, " it declares, "that are hired, and likewise bondsmen(serfs), also the serving men and maids, shall each day be given twicemeat and what thereto longith, with half a small measure of wine, saveon fast days, when they shall have fish or other food that nourisheth. Whoso in the week hath toiled shall also on Sundays and feast daysmake merry after mass and preaching. They shall have bread and meatenough, and half a great measure of wine. On feast days also roastedmeat enough. Moreover, they shall be given, to take home with them, agreat loaf of bread and so much of flesh as two at one meal may eat. "

Again, in a bill of fare of the household of Count Joachim vonOettingen in Bavaria, the journeymen and villeins are accorded in themorning, soup and vegetables; at midday, soup and meat, withvegetables, and a bowl of broth or a plate of salted or pickled meat;at night, soup and meat, carrots, and preserved meat. Even the womenwho brought fowls or eggs from the neighbouring villages to the castlewere given for their trouble--if from the immediate vicinity, a plateof soup with two pieces of bread; if from a greater distance, acomplete meal and a cruse of wine. In Saxony, similarly, theagricultural journeymen received two meals a day, of four courseseach, besides frequently cheese and bread at other times should theyrequire it. Not to have eaten meat for a week was the sign of thedirest famine in any district. Warnings are not wanting against theevils accruing to the common man from his excessive indulgence ineating and drinking. 

Such was the condition of the proletariat in its first inception, thatis, when the mediæval system of villeinage had begun to loosen and toallow a proportion of free labourers to insinuate themselves into itsworking. How grievous, then, were the complaints when, while wages hadrisen either not at all or at most from half a groschen to a groschen, the price of rye rose from six or seven groschen a bushel to aboutfive-and-twenty groschen, that of a sheep from four to eighteengroschen, and all other articles of necessary consumption in a likeproportion![16]

In the Middle Ages, necessaries and such ordinary comforts as were tobe had at all were dirt cheap; while non-necessaries and luxuries, that is, such articles as had to be imported from afar, were for themost part at prohibitive prices. With the opening up of theworld-market during the first half of the sixteenth century, thisstate of things rapidly changed. Most luxuries in a short time fellheavily in price, while necessaries rose in a still greaterproportion. 

This latter change in the economic conditions of the world exercisedits most powerful effect, however, on the character of the mediævaltown, which had remained substantially unchanged since the first greatexpansion at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of thefourteenth centuries. With the extension of commerce and the openingup of communications, there began that evolution of the town whoseultimate outcome was to entirely change the central idea on which theurban organization was based. 

The first requisite for a town, according to modern notions, isfacility of communication with the rest of the world by means ofrailways, telegraphs, postal system, and the like. So far has thisgone now that in a new country, for instance, America, the railway, telegraph lines, etc. , are made first, and the towns are then strungupon them, like beads upon a cord. In the mediæval town, on thecontrary, communication was quite a secondary matter, and more of aluxury than a necessity. Each town was really a self-sufficing entity, both materially and intellectually. The modern idea of a town is thatof a mere local aggregate of individuals, each pursuing a trade orcalling with a view to the world-market at large. Their own localityor town is no more to them economically than any other part of theworld-market, and very little more in any other respect. The mediævalidea of a town, on the contrary, was that of an organization of groupsinto one organic whole. Just as the village community was a somewhatextended family organization, so was, _mutatis mutandis_, the largerunit, the township or city. Each member of the town organization owedallegiance and distinct duties primarily to his guild, or immediatesocial group, and through this to the larger social group whichconstituted the civic society. Consequently, every townsman felt akind of _esprit de corps_ with his fellow-citizens, akin to that, say, which is alleged of the soldiers of the old French "foreign legion"who, being brothers-in-arms, were brothers also in all otherrelations. But if every citizen owed duty and allegiance to the townin its corporate capacity, the town no less owed protection andassistance, in every department of life, to its individual members. 

As in ancient Rome in its earlier history, and as in all other earlyurban communities, agriculture necessarily played a considerable partin the life of most mediæval towns. Like the villages, they possessedeach its own mark, with its common fields, pastures, and woods. Thesewere demarcated by various landmarks, crosses, holy images, etc. ; and"the bounds" were beaten every year. The wealthier citizens usuallypossessed gardens and orchards within the town walls, while eachinhabitant had his share in the communal holding without. The use ofthis latter was regulated by the Rath or Council. In fact, the townlife of the Middle Ages was not by any means so sharply differentiatedfrom rural life as is implied in our modern idea of a town. Even inthe larger commercial towns, such as Frankfurt, Nürnberg, or Augsburg, it was common to keep cows, pigs, and sheep, and, as a matter ofcourse, fowls and geese, in large numbers within the precincts of thetown itself. In Frankfurt in 1481 the pigsties in the town had becomesuch a nuisance that the Rath had to forbid them _in the front_ of thehouses by a formal decree. In Ulm there was a regulation of thebakers' guild to the effect that no single member should keep morethan twenty-four pigs, and that cows should be confined to theirstalls at night. In Nürnberg in 1475 again, the Rath had to interferewith the intolerable nuisance of pigs and other farm-yard stockrunning about loose in the streets. Even in a town like München we areinformed that agriculture formed one of the staple occupations of theinhabitants, while in almost every city the gardeners' or thewine-growers' guild appears as one of the largest and mostinfluential. 

It is evident that such conditions of life would be impossible withtown-populations even approaching only distantly those of to-day; and, in fact, when we come to inquire into the size and populousness ofmediæval German cities, as into those of the classical world ofantiquity, we are at first sight staggered by the smallness of theirproportions. The largest and most populous free Imperial cities in thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Nürnberg and Strassburg, numberedlittle more than 20, 000 resident inhabitants within the walls, apopulation rather less than that of (say) many an English country townat the present time. Such an important place as Frankfurt-am-Main isstated at the middle of the fifteenth century to have had less than9, 000 inhabitants. At the end of the fifteenth century Dresden couldonly boast of about 5, 000. Rothenburg on the Tauber is to-day a deadcity to all intents and purposes, affording us a magnificent exampleof what a mediæval town was like, as the bulk of its architecture, including the circuit of its walls, which remain intact, datesapproximately from the sixteenth century. At present a single line ofrailway branching off from the main line with about two trains a dayis amply sufficient to convey the few antiquaries and artists who arenow its sole visitors, and who have to content themselves withcountry-inn accommodation. Yet this old free city has actually alarger population at the present day than it had at the time of whichwe are writing, when it was at the height of its prosperity as animportant centre of activity. The figures of its population are nowbetween 8, 000 and 9, 000. At the beginning of the sixteenth centurythey were between 6, 000 and 7, 000. A work written and circulated inmanuscript during the first decade of the sixteenth century, "AChristian Exhortation" (_Ein Christliche Mahnung_), after referring tothe frightful pestilences recently raging as a punishment from God, observes, in the spirit of true Malthusianism, and as a justificationof the ways of Providence, that "an there were not so many that diedthere were too much folk in the land, and it were not good that suchshould be lest there were not food enough for all. "

Great population as constituting importance in a city iscomparatively a modern notion. In other ages towns became famous onaccount of their superior civic organization, their more advantageoussituation, or the greater activity, intellectual, political, orcommercial, of their citizens. 

What this civic organization of mediæval towns was, demands a fewwords of explanation, since the conflict between the two main elementsin their composition plays an important part in the events whichfollow. Something has already been said on this head in theIntroduction. We have there pointed out that the Rath or Town Council, that is, the supreme governing body of the municipality, was in allcases mainly, and often entirely, composed of the heads of the townaristocracy, the patrician class or "honorability" (_Ehrbarkeit_), asthey were termed, who on the ground of their antiquity and wealth laidclaim to every post of power and privilege. On the other hand were thebody of the citizens enrolled in the various guilds, seeking, as theirposition and wealth improved, to wrest the control of the town'sresources from the patricians. It must be remembered that the townsstood in the position of feudal over-lords to the peasants who heldland on the city territory, which often extended for many square milesoutside the walls. A small town like Rothenburg, for instance, whichwe have described above, had on its lands as many as 15, 000 peasants. The feudal dues and contributions of these tenants constituted thestaple revenue of the town, and the management of them was one of thechief bones of contention. 

Nowhere was the guild system brought to a greater perfection than inthe free Imperial towns of Germany. Indeed, it was carried further inthem, in one respect, than in any other part of Europe, for the guildsof journeymen (_Cesellenverbände_), which in other places neverattained any strength or importance, were in Germany developed to thefullest extent, and of course supported the craft-guilds in theirconflict with the patriciate. Although there were naturally numerousfrictions between the two classes of guilds respecting wages, workingdays, hours, and the like, it must not be supposed that there was thatirreconcilable hostility between them which would exist at the presenttime between a trade-union and a syndicate of employers. Eachrecognized the right to existence of the other. In one case, that ofthe strike of bakers towards the close of the fifteenth century, atColmar in Elsass, the craft-guilds supported the journeymen in theirprotest against a certain action of the patrician Rath, which theyconsidered to be a derogation from their dignity. 

Like the masters, the journeymen had their own guild-house, and theirown solemn functions and social gatherings. There were, indeed, twokinds of journeymen-guilds: one whose chief purpose was a religious one, and the other concerning itself in the first instance with the secularconcerns of the body. However, both classes of journeymen-guilds workedinto one another's hand. On coming into a strange town a travellingmember of such a guild was certain of a friendly reception, ofmaintenance until he procured work, and of assistance in finding it assoon as possible. 

Interesting details concerning the wages paid to journeymen and theircontributions to the guilds are to be found in the original documentsrelating exclusively to the journeymen-guilds, collected by GeorgSchanz. [17] From these and other sources it is clear that the positionof the artisan in the towns was in proportion much better than even thatof the peasants at that time, and therefore immeasurably superior toanything he has enjoyed since. In South Germany at this period theaverage price of beef was about two denarii[18] a pound, while thedaily wages of the masons and carpenters, in addition to their keep andlodging, amounted in the summer to about twenty, and in the winter toabout sixteen of these denarii. In Saxony the same journeymen-craftsmenearned on the average, besides their maintenance, two groschen fourpfennige a day, or about one-third the value of a bushel of corn. Inaddition to this, in some cases the workmen had weekly gratuities underthe name of "bathing money"; and in this connection it may be noticedthat a holiday for the purpose of bathing once a fortnight, once a week, or even oftener, as the case might be, was stipulated for by the guilds, and generally recognized as a legitimate demand. The common notion ofthe uniform uncleanliness of the mediæval man requires to beconsiderably modified when one closely investigates the condition oftown life, and finds everywhere facilities for bathing in winter andsummer alike. Untidiness and uncleanliness, according to our notions, there may have been in the streets and in the dwellings in many cases, owing to inadequate provisions for the disposal of refuse and the like;but we must not therefore extend this idea to the person, and imaginethat the mediæval craftsman or even peasant was as unwholesome as, say, the East European peasant of to-day. 

When the wages received by the journeymen artisans are compared withthe prices of commodities previously given, it will be seen howrelatively easy were their circumstances; and the extent of theirwell-being may be further judged from the wealth of their guilds, which, although varying in different places, at all times formed aconsiderable proportion of the wealth of the town. The guild systemwas based upon the notion that the individual master and workman wasworking as much in the interest of the guild as for his own advantage. Each member of the guild was alike under the obligation to labour, andto labour in accordance with the rules laid down by his guild, and atthe same time had the right of equal enjoyment with hisfellow-guildsmen of all advantages pertaining to the particular branchof industry covered by the guild. Every guildsman had to work himself_in propriâ personâ_; no contractor was tolerated who himself "in easeand sloth doth live on the sweat of others, and puffeth himself up inlustful pride. " Were a guild-master ill and unable to manage theaffairs of his workshop, it was the council of the guild, and nothimself or his relatives, who installed a representative for him andgenerally looked after his affairs. It was the guild again whichprocured the raw material, and distributed it in relatively equalproportions amongst its members; or where this was not the case, thetime and place were indicated at which the guildsman might buy at afixed maximum price. Every master had equal right to the use of thecommon property and institutions of the guild, which in someindustries included the essentials of production, as, for example, inthe case of the woollen manufacturers, where wool-kitchens, carding-rooms, bleaching-houses and the like were common to the wholeguild. 

Needless to say, the relations between master and apprentices and masterand journeymen were rigidly fixed down to the minutest detail. Thesystem was thoroughly patriarchal in its character. In the hey-day ofthe guilds, every apprentice and most of the journeymen regarded theiractual condition as a period of preparation which would end in theglories of mastership. For this dear hope they were ready on occasion toundergo cheerfully the most arduous duties. The education in handicraft, and, we may add, the supervision of the morals of the blossoming membersof the guild, was a department which greatly exercised itsadministration. On the other hand, the guild in its corporate capacitywas bound to maintain sick or incapacitated apprentices and journeymen, though after the journeymen had developed into a distinct class, andthe consequent rise of the journeymen-guilds, the latter function wasprobably in most cases taken over by the latter. The guild laws againstadulteration, scamped work, and the like, were sometimes ferocious intheir severity. For example, in some towns the baker who misconductedhimself in the matter of the composition of his bread was condemned tobe shut up in a basket which was fixed at the end of a long pole, andlet down so many times to the bottom of a pool of dirty water. In theyear 1456 two grocers, together with a female assistant, were burntalive at Nürnberg for adulterating saffron and spices, and a similarinstance happened at Augsburg in 1492. From what we have said it will beseen that guild life, like the life of the town as a whole, wasessentially a social life. It was a larger family, into which variousblood families were merged. The interest of each was felt to be theinterest of all, and the interest of all no less the interest of each. 

But in many towns, outside the town population properly speaking, outside the patrician families who generally governed the Rath, outside the guilds, outside the city organization altogether, therewere other bodies dwelling within the walls and forming _imperia inimperiis_. These were the religious corporations, whose possessionswere often extensive, and who, dwelling within their own walls, shutout from the rest of the town, were subject only to their ownordinances. The quasi-religious, quasi-military Order of the TeutonicKnights (_Deutscher Orden_), founded at the time of the Crusades, wasthe wealthiest and largest of these corporations. In addition to theextensive territories which it held in various parts of the empire, ithad establishments in a large number of cities. Besides this therewere, of course, the Orders of the Augustinians and Carthusians, and anumber of less important foundations, who had their cloisters invarious towns. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the pomp, pride, and licentiousness of the Teutonic Order drew upon it theespecial hatred of the townsfolk; and amid the general wreck ofreligious houses none were more ferociously despoiled than thosebelonging to this Order. There were, moreover, in some towns, theestablishments of princely families, which were regarded by thecitizens with little less hostility than that accorded to thereligious Orders. 

Such were the explosive elements of town life when changing conditionswere tending to dislocate the whole structure of mediæval existence. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 had struck a heavyblow at the commerce of the Bavarian cities which had come by way ofConstantinople and Venice. This latter city lost one by one itstrading centres in the East, and all Oriental traffic by way of theBlack Sea was practically stopped. It was the Dutch cities whichinherited the wealth and influence of the German towns when Vasco daGama's discovery of the Cape route to the East began to have itsinfluence on the trade of the world. This diversion of Orientaltraffic from the old overland route was the starting-point of themodern merchant navy, and it must be placed amongst the most potentcauses of the break-up of mediæval civilization. The above change, although immediately felt by the German towns, was not realized bythem in its full importance either as to its causes or itsconsequences for more than a century; but the decline of theirprosperity was nevertheless sensible, even now, and contributeddirectly to the coming upheaval. 

The impatience of the prince, the prelate, the noble, and the wealthyburgher at the restraints which the system of the Middle Ages placedupon his activity as an individual in the acquisition for his ownbehoof, and the disposal at his own pleasure, of wealth, regardless ofthe consequences to his neighbour, found expression, and a powerfullever, in the introduction from Italy of the Roman law in place of theold canon and customary law of Europe. The latter never regarded theindividual as an independent and autonomous entity, but invariablytreated him with reference to a group or social body, of which hemight be the head or merely a subordinate member; but in any case thefilaments of custom and religious duty attached him to a certainhumanity outside himself, whether it were a village community, aguild, a township, a province, or the empire. The idea of a right toindividual autonomy in his dealings with men never entered into themediæval man's conception. Hence the mere possession of property wasnot recognized by mediæval law as conferring any absolute rights inits holder to its unregulated use, and the basis of the mediævalnotions of property was the association of responsibility and dutywith ownership. In other words, the notion of _trust_ was nevercompletely divorced from that of _possession_. 

The Roman law rested on a totally different basis. It represented thelegal ethics of a society on most of its sides brutally and crasslyindividualistic. That that society had come to an end instead ofevolving to its natural conclusion--a developed capitalisticindividualism such as exists to-day--was due to the weakness of itseconomic basis, owing to the limitation at that time of man's powerover Nature, which deprived it of recuperative and defensive force, thereby leaving it a prey not only to internal influences of decay butalso to violent destructive forces from without. Nevertheless, it lefta legacy of a ready-made legal system to serve as an implement for thefirst occasion when economic conditions should be once more ready forprogress to resume the course of individualistic development, abruptlybrought to an end by the fall of ancient civilization as crystallizedin the Roman Empire. 

The popular courts of the village, of the mark, and of the town, whichhad existed up to the beginning of the sixteenth century with alltheir ancient functions, were extremely democratic in character. Caseswere decided on their merits, in accordance with local custom, by abody of jurymen chosen from among the freemen of the district, to whomthe presiding functionaries, most of whom were also of popularselection, were little more than assessors. The technicalities of acut-and-dried system were unknown. The Catholic-Germanic theory of theMiddle Ages proper, as regards the civil power in all its functions, from the highest downward, was that of the mere administrator ofjustice as such; whereas the Roman law regarded the magistrate as thevicegerent of the _princeps_ or _imperator_, in whose person wasabsolutely vested as its supreme embodiment the whole power of theState. The Divinity of the Emperors was a recognition of this fact;and the influence of the Roman law revived the theory as far aspossible under the changed conditions, in the form of the doctrine ofthe Divine Right of Kings--a doctrine which was totally alien to theCatholic feudal conception of the Middle Ages. This doctrine, moreover, received added force from the Oriental conception of theposition of the ruler found in the Old Testament, from whichProtestantism drew so much of its inspiration. 

But apart from this aspect of the question, the new juridicalconception involved that of a system of rules as the crystallizedembodiment of the abstract "State, " given through its representatives, which could under no circumstances be departed from, and which couldonly be modified in their operation by legal quibbles that left tothem their nominal integrity. The new law could therefore only beadministered by a class of men trained specially for the purpose, ofwhich the plastic customary law borne down the stream of history fromprimitive times, and insensibly adapting itself to new conditions butunderstood in its broader aspects by all those who might be called toadminister it, had little need. The Roman law, the study of which wasstarted at Bologna in the twelfth century, as might naturally beexpected, early attracted the attention of the German Emperors as asuitable instrument for use on emergencies. But it made little realheadway in Germany itself as against the early institutions until thefifteenth century, when the provincial power of the princes of theempire was beginning to overshadow the central authority of thetitular chief of the Holy Roman Empire. The former, while strenuouslyresisting the results of its application from above, found in it apowerful auxiliary in their Courts in riveting their power over theestates subject to them. As opposed to the delicately adjustedhierarchical notions of Feudalism, which did not recognize anyabsoluteness of dominion either over persons or things, in short forwhich neither the head of the State had any inviolate authority assuch, nor private property any inviolable rights or sanctity as such, the new jurisprudence made corner-stones of both these conceptions. 

Even the canon law, consisting in a mass of Papal decretals datingfrom the early Middle Ages, and which, while undoubtedly containingconsiderable traces of the influence of Roman law, was neverthelesslargely customary in its character, with an infusion of Christianethics, had to yield to the new jurisprudence, and that too incountries where the Reformation had been unable to replace the oldecclesiastical dogma and organization. The principles and practice ofthe Roman law were sedulously inculcated by the tribe of civilianlawyers who by the beginning of the sixteenth century infested everyCourt throughout Europe. Every potentate, great and small, little ashe might like its application by his feudal overlord to himself, wasyet only too ready and willing to invoke its aid for the oppression ofhis own vassals or peasants. Thus the civil law everywhere triumphed. It became the juridical expression of the political, economical, andreligious change which marks the close of the Middle Ages and thebeginnings of the modern commercial world. 

It must not be supposed, however, that no resistance was made to it. Everywhere in contemporary literature, side by side with denunciationsof the new mercenary troops, the _Landsknechte_, we finduncomplimentary allusions to the race of advocates, notaries, andprocurators who, as one writer has it, "are increasing likegrasshoppers in town and in country year by year. " Whenever theyappeared, we are told, countless litigious disputes sprang up. He whohad but the money in hand might readily defraud his poorer neighbourin the name of law and right. "Woe is me!" exclaims one author, "inmy home there is but one procurator, and yet is the whole countryround about brought into confusion by his wiles. What a misery willthis horde bring upon us!" Everywhere was complaint and in many placesresistance. 

As early as 1460 we find the Bavarian estates vigorously complainingthat all the courts were in the hands of doctors. They demanded thatthe rights of the land and the ancient custom should not be castaside; but that the courts as of old should be served by reasonableand honest judges, who should be men of the same feudal livery and ofthe same country as those whom they tried. Again in 1514, when theevil had become still more crying, we find the estates of Würtembergpetitioning Duke Ulrich that the Supreme Court "shall be composed ofhonourable, worthy, and understanding men of the nobles and of thetowns, who shall not be doctors, to the intent that the ancient usagesand customs should abide, and that it should be judged according tothem in such wise that the poor man might no longer be brought toconfusion. " In many covenants of the end of the fifteenth century, express stipulation is made that they should not be interpreted by adoctor or licentiate, and also in some cases that no such doctor orlicentiate should be permitted to reside or to exercise hisprofession within certain districts. Great as was the economicalinfluence of the new jurists in the tribunals, their politicalinfluence in the various courts of the empire, from the_Reichskammergericht_ downwards, was, if anything, greater. SaysWimpfeling, the first writer on the art of education in the modernworld: "According to the loathsome doctrines of the new jurisconsults, the prince shall be everything in the land and the people naught. Thepeople shall only obey, pay tax, and do service. Moreover, they shallnot alone obey the prince but also them that he has placed inauthority, who begin to puff themselves up as the proper lords of theland, and to order matters so that the princes themselves do as littleas may be reign. " From this passage it will be seen that the modernbureaucratic State, in which government is as nearly as possiblereduced to mechanism and the personal relation abolished, was usheredin under the auspices of the civil law. How easy it was for thecivilian to effect the abolition of feudal institutions may be readilyimagined by those cognizant of the principles of Roman law. Forexample, the Roman law, of course, making no mention of the right ofthe mediæval "estates" to be consulted in the levying of taxes or inother questions, the jurist would explain this right to his toowilling master, the prince, as an abuse which had no legaljustification, and which, the sooner it were abolished in the interestof good government the better it would be. All feudal rights asagainst the power of an overlord were explained away by the civiljurist, either as pernicious abuses, or, at best, as favours grantedin the past by the predecessors of the reigning monarch, which it waswithin his right to truncate or to abrogate at his will. 

From the preceding survey will be clearly perceived the important rôlewhich the new jurisprudence played on the Continent of Europe in thegestation of the new phase which history was entering upon in thesixteenth century. Even the short sketch given will be sufficient toshow that it was not in one department only that it operated; butthat, in addition to its own domain of law proper, its influence wasfelt in modifying economical, political, and indirectly even ethicaland religious conditions. From this time forth Feudalism slowly butsurely gave place to the newer order, all that remained being certainof its features, which, crystallized into bureaucratic forms, weredoubly veneered with a last trace of mediæval ideas and a densercoating of civilian conceptions. This transitional Europe, and notmediæval Europe, was the Europe which lasted on until the eighteenthcentury, and which practically came to an end with the FrenchRevolution. 

FOOTNOTES:

[15] One silver groschen = 1-1/5d. 

[16] The authorities for the above data may be found in Janssen, i. , vol. I. , bk. Iii. , especially pp. 330-46. 

[17] _Zur Geschichte der deutschen Gesellenverbände. _ Leipzig, 1876. 

[18] C. 1/5d. The denarius was the South German equivalent of the NorthGerman pfennig, of which twelve went to the groschen. 

CHAPTER VI

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD

We have already pointed out in more than one place the position towhich the smaller nobility, or the knighthood, had been reduced by theconcatenation of causes which was bringing about the dissolution of theold mediæval order of things, and, as a consequence, ruining theknights both economically and politically--economically by the rise ofcapitalism as represented by the commercial syndicates of the cities;by the unprecedented power and wealth of the city confederations, especially of the Hanseatic League; by the rising importance of thenewly developed world-market; by the growing luxury and the enormousrise in the prices of commodities concurrently with the reduction invalue of the feudal land-tenures; and by the limitation of thepossibilities of acquiring wealth by highway robbery, owing to Imperialconstitutions, on the one hand, and increased powers of defence on thepart of the trading community, on the other--politically, by the newmodes of warfare in which artillery and infantry, composed ofcomparatively well-drilled mercenaries (_Landsknechte_), were rapidlymaking inroads into the omnipotence of the ancient feudal chivalry, andreducing the importance of individual skill or prowess in the handlingof weapons, and by the development of the power of the princes orhigher nobility, partly due to the influence which the Roman civil lawnow began to exercise over the older customary Constitution of theempire, and partly to the budding centralism of authority--which inFrance and England became a national centralization, but in Germany, inspite of the temporary ascendancy of Charles V, finally issued in aprovincial centralization in which the princes were _de facto_independent monarchs. The Imperial Constitution of 1495, forbiddingprivate war, applied, it must be remembered, only to the lessernobility and not to the higher, thereby placing the former in adecidedly ignominious position as regards their feudal superiors. Andthough this particular enactment had little immediate result, yet itwas none the less resented as a blow struck at the old knightlyprivilege. 

The mental attitude of the knighthood in the face of this progressingchange in their position was naturally an ambiguous one, composedpartly of a desire to hark back to the haughty independence offeudalism, and partly of sympathy with the growing discontent amongother classes and with the new spirit generally. In order that theknights might succeed in recovering their old or even in maintainingtheir actual position against the higher nobility, the princes, backedas these now largely were by the Imperial power, the co-operation ofthe cities was absolutely essential to them, but the obstacles in theway of such a co-operation proved insurmountable. The towns hated theknights for their lawless practices, which rendered trade unsafe andnot infrequently cost the lives of the citizens. The knights for themost part, with true feudal hauteur, scorned and despised the artisansand traders who had no territorial family name and were unexercised inthe higher chivalric arts. The grievances of the two parties were, moreover, not identical, although they had their origin in the samecauses. 

The cities were in the main solely concerned to maintain their oldindependent position, and especially to curb the growing dispositionat this time of the other estates to use them as milch cows fromwhich to draw the taxation necessary to the maintenance of theempire. For example, at the Reichstag opened at Nürnberg on November17, 1522--to discuss the questions of the establishment of perpetualpeace within the empire, of organizing an energetic resistance to theinroads of the Turks, and of placing on a firm foundation theImperial Privy Council (_Kammergericht_) and the Supreme Council(_Reichsregiment_)--at which were represented twenty-six Imperialtowns, thirty-eight high prelates, eighteen princes, and twenty-ninecounts and barons--the representatives of the cities complainedgrievously that their attendance was reduced to a farce, since theywere always out-voted, and hence obliged to accept the decisions ofthe other estates. They stated that their position was no longerbearable, and for the first time drew up an Act of Protest, whichfurther complained of the delay in the decisions of the Imperialcourts; of their sufferings from the right of private war, which wasstill allowed to subsist in defiance of the Constitution; of theincrease of customs-stations on the part of the princes andprince-prelates; and, finally, of the debasement of the coinage dueto the unscrupulous practices of these notables and of the Jews. Theonly sympathy the other estates vouchsafed to the plaints of thecities was with regard to the right of private war, which the highernobles were also anxious to suppress amongst the lower, thoughwithout prejudice, of course, to their own privileges in this line. All the other articles of the Act of Protest were coolly waivedaside. From all this it will be seen that not much co-operation wasto be expected between such heterogeneous bodies as the knighthoodand the free towns, in spite of their common interest in checking thethreateningly advancing power of the princes and the central Imperialauthority in so far as it was manned and manipulated by the princes. 

Amid the decaying knighthood there was, as we have already intimated, one figure which stood out head and shoulders above every other nobleof the time, whether prince or knight, and that was Franz vonSickingen. He has been termed, not without truth, "the last flower ofGerman chivalry, " since in him the old knightly qualities flashed upin conjunction with the old knightly power and splendour with abrightness hardly known even in the palmiest days of mediæval life. Itwas, however, the last flicker of the light of German chivalry. Withthe death of Sickingen and the collapse of his revolt the knighthoodof Central Europe ceased any longer to play an independent part inhistory. 

Sickingen, although technically only one of the lower nobility, wasdeemed about the time of Luther's appearance to hold the immediatedestinies of the empire in his hand. Wealthy, inspiring confidence andenthusiasm as a leader, possessed of more than one powerful andstrategically situated stronghold, he held court at his favouriteresidence, the Castle of the Landstuhl, in the Rhenish Palatinate, ina style which many a prince of the empire might have envied. Ashonoured guests were to be found attending on him humanists, poets, minstrels, partisans of the new theology, astrologers, alchemists, andmen of letters generally--in short, the whole intelligence and cultureof the period. Foremost amongst these, and chief confidant ofSickingen, was the knight, courtier, poet, essayist, and pamphleteer, Ulrich von Hutten, whose pen was ever ready to champion with unstintedenthusiasm the cause of the progressive ideas of his age. He firsttook up the cudgels against the obscurantists on behalf of Humanism asrepresented by Erasmus and Reuchlin, the latter of whom he bravelydefended in his dispute with the Inquisition and the monks of Cologne, and in his contributions to the _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_ we seethe youthful ardour of the Renaissance in full blast in its onslaughton the forces of mediæval obstruction. Unlike most of those with whomhe was first associated, Hutten passed from being the upholder of theNew Learning to the rôle of champion of the Reformation; and it waslargely through his influence that Sickingen took up the cause ofLuther and his movement. 

Sickingen had been induced by Charles V to assist him in an abortiveattempt to invade France in 1521, from which campaign he had returnedwithout much benefit either material or moral, save that Charles wasleft heavily in his debt. The accumulated hatred of generations forthe priesthood had made Sickingen a willing instrument in the hands ofthe reforming party, and believing that Charles now lay to some extentin his power, he considered the moment opportune for putting hislong-cherished scheme into operation for reforming the Constitution ofthe empire. This reformation consisted, as was to be expected, inplacing his own order on a firm footing, and of effectually curbingthe power of the other estates, especially that of the prelates. Sickingen wished to make the Emperor and the lower nobility thedecisive factors in his new scheme of things political. The Emperor, it so happened, was for the moment away in Spain, and Sickingen'scolleagues of the knightly order were becoming clamorous at theunworthy position into which they found themselves rapidly beingdriven. The feudal exactions of their princely lieges had reached apoint which passed all endurance, and since they were practicallypowerless in the Reichstags, no outlet was left for their discontentsave by open revolt. Impelled not less by his own inclinations than bythe pressure of his companions, foremost among whom was Hutten, Sickingen decided at once to open the campaign. 

Hutten, it would appear, attempted to enter into negotiations for theco-operation of the towns and of the peasants. So far as can be seen, Strassburg and one or two other Imperial cities returned favourableanswers; but the precise measure of Hutten's success cannot beascertained, owing to the fact that all the documents relating to thematter perished in the destruction of Sickingen's Castle of Ebernburg. 

It should be premised that on August 13th, previous to thisdeclaration of war, a "Brotherly Convention" had been signed by anumber of the knights, by which Sickingen was appointed their captain, and they bound themselves to submit to no jurisdiction save their own, and pledged themselves to mutual aid in war in case of hostilitiesagainst any one of their number. Through this "Treaty of Landau, "Sickingen had it in his power to assemble a considerable force at amoment's notice. Consequently, a few days after the issue of the abovemanifesto, on August 27, 1522, Sickingen was able to start from theCastle of Ebernburg with an army of 5, 000 foot and 1, 500 knights, besides artillery, in the full confidence that he was about to destroythe position of the Palatine prince-prelate and raise himself withoutdelay to the chief power on the Rhine. 

By an effective piece of audacity, that of sporting the Imperial flagand the Burgundian cross, Franz spread abroad the idea that he wasacting on behalf of the Emperor, then absent in Spain; and thislargely contributed to the result that his army speedily rose to 5, 000knights and 10, 000 footmen. The Imperial Diet at Nürnberg nowintervened, and ordered Sickingen to cease the operations he hadalready begun, threatening him with the ban of the empire and a fineof 2, 000 marks if he did not obey. To this summons Franz sent acharacteristically impudent reply, and light-heartedly continued thecampaign, regardless of the warning which an astrologer had given himsome time previously, that the year 1522 or 1523 would probably befatal to him. It is evident that this campaign, begun so late in theyear, was regarded by Sickingen and the other leaders as merely apreliminary canter to a larger and more widespread movement thefollowing spring, since on this occasion the Swabian and Franconianknighthood do not appear to have been even invited to take part in it. 

After an easy progress, during which several trifling places, the mostimportant being St. Wendel, were taken, Franz with his army arrived onSeptember 8th before the gates of Trier. He had hoped to capture thetown by surprise, and was indeed not without some expectation ofco-operation and help from the citizens themselves. On his arrival heshot letters within the walls summoning the inhabitants to take hispart against their tyrant; but either through the unwillingness of theburghers to act with knights, or through the vigilance of theArchbishop, they were without effect. The gates remained closed; andin answer to Sickingen's summons to surrender, Richard replied that hewould find him in the city if he could get inside. In the meantimeSickingen's friends had signally failed in their attempts to obtainsupplies and reinforcements for him, in the main owing to theenergetic action of some of the higher nobles. The Archbishop of Triershowed himself as much a soldier as a Churchman; and after a week'ssiege, during which Sickingen made five assaults on the city, hispowder ran out, and he was forced to retire. He at once made his wayback to Ebernburg, where he intended to pass the winter, since he sawthat it was useless to continue the campaign, with his own armydiminishing and the hoped-for supplies not appearing, whilst theforces of his antagonists augmented daily. In his stronghold ofEbernburg he could rely on being secure from all attack until he wasable to again take the field on the offensive, as he anticipated doingin the spring. 

In spite of the obvious failure of the autumnal campaign, the cause ofthe knighthood did not by any means look irretrievably desperate, since there was always the possibility of successful recruitments thefollowing spring. Ulrich von Hutten was doing his utmost in Würtembergand Switzerland to scrape together men and money, though up to thistime without much success, while other emissaries of Sickingen wereworking with the same object in Breisgau and other parts of SouthernGermany. Relying on these expected reinforcements, Franz was confidentof victory when he should again take the field, and in the meantime hefelt himself quite secure in one or other of his strong places, whichhad recently undergone extensive repairs and seemed to be impregnable. In this anticipation he was deceived, for he had not reckoned with thenew and more potent weapons of attack which were replacing thebattering-ram and other mediæval besieging appliances. Franz retiredto his strong castle of the Landstuhl to await the onslaught of theprinces which followed in the spring. After heavy bombardmentSickingen was mortally wounded on May 6th, and the place wasimmediately surrendered. The next day the princes entered the castle, where, in an underground chamber, their enemy lay dying. 

He was so near his end that he could scarcely distinguish his threearch-enemies one from the other. "My dear lord, " he said to the CountPalatine, his feudal superior, "I had not thought that I should endthus, " taking off his cap and giving him his hand. "What has impelledthee, Franz, " asked the Archbishop of Trier, "that thou hast so laidwaste and harmed me and my poor people?" "Of that it were too long tospeak, " answered Sickingen, "but I have done nought without cause. Igo now to stand before a greater Lord. " Here it is worthy of remarkthat the princes treated Franz with all the knightliness and courtesywhich were customary between social equals in the days of chivalry, addressing him at most rather as a rebellious child than as aninsurgent subject. The Prince of Hesse was about to give utterance toa reproach, but he was interrupted by the Count Palatine, who toldhim that he must not quarrel with a dying man. The Count's chamberlainsaid some sympathetic words to Franz, who replied to him: "My dearchamberlain, it matters little about me. It is not I who am the cockround which they are dancing. " When the princes had withdrawn, hischaplain asked him if he would confess; but Franz replied: "I haveconfessed to God in my heart, " whereupon the chaplain gave himabsolution; and as he went to fetch the host "the last of the knights"passed quietly away, alone and abandoned. It is related by Spalatinthat after his death some peasants and domestics placed his body in anold armour-chest, in which they had to double the head on to theknees. The chest was then let down by a rope from the rocky eminenceon which stands the now ruined castle, and was buried beneath a smallchapel in the village below. 

The scene we have just described in the castle vault meant not merelythe tragedy of a hero's death, nor merely the destruction of a factionor party, it meant the end of an epoch. With Sickingen's death one ofthe most salient and picturesque elements in the mediæval life ofCentral Europe received its death-blow. The knighthood as a distinctfactor in the polity of Europe henceforth existed no more. 

Spalatin relates that on the death of Sickingen the princely partyanticipated as easy a victory over the religious revolt as they hadachieved over the knighthood. "The mock Emperor is dead, " so thephrase went, "and the mock Pope will soon be dead also. " Hutten, already an exile in Switzerland, did not many months survive hispatron and leader, Sickingen. The rôle which Erasmus played in thismiserable tragedy was only what was to be expected from the moralcowardice which seemed ingrained in the character of the greatHumanist leader. Erasmus had already begun to fight shy of theReformation movement, from which he was about to separate himselfdefinitely. He seized the present opportunity to quarrel with Hutten;and to Hutten's somewhat bitter attacks on him in consequence hereplied with ferocity in his _Spongia Erasmi adversus asperginesHutteni_. 

Hutten had had to fly from Basel to Mülhausen and thence to Zürich, inthe last stages of syphilitic disease. He was kindly received by thereformer, Zwingli of Zürich, who advised him to try the waters ofPfeffers, and gave him letters of recommendation to the abbot of thatplace. He returned, in no wise benefited, to Zürich, when Zwingliagain befriended the sick knight, and sent him to a friend of his, the"reformed" pastor of the little island of "Ufenau, " at the other endof the lake, where after a few weeks' suffering he died in abjectdestitution, leaving, it is said, nothing behind him but his pen. Thedisease from which Hutten suffered the greater part of his life, atthat time a comparatively new importation and much more formidableeven than nowadays, may well have contributed to an irascibility oftemper and to a certain recklessness which the typical free-lance ofthe Reformation in its early period exhibited. Hutten was never atheologian, and the Reformation seems to have attracted him mainlyfrom its political side as implying the assertion of the dawningfeeling of German nationality as against the hated enemies of freedomof thought and the new light, the clerical satellites of the Romansee. He was a true son of his time, in his vices no less than in hisvirtues; and no one will deny his partiality for "wine, women, andplay. " There is reason, indeed, to believe that the latter at timesduring his later career provided his sole means of subsistence. 

The hero of the Reformation, Luther, with whom Melanchthon may beassociated in this matter, could be no less pusillanimous on occasionthan the hero of the New Learning, Erasmus. Luther undoubtedly saw inSickingen's revolt a means of weakening the Catholic powers againstwhich he had to fight, and at its inception he avowedly favoured theenterprise. In some of the reforming writings Luther is represented asthe incarnation of Christian resignation and mildness, and as talkingof twelve legions of angels and deprecating any appeal to force asunbefitting the character of an evangelical apostle. That such, however, was not his habitual attitude is evident to all who are inthe least degree acquainted with his real conduct and utterances. Onone occasion he wrote: "If they (the priests) continue their madravings it seems to me that there would be no better method andmedicine to stay them than that kings and princes did so with force, armed themselves and attacked these pernicious people who do poisonall the world, and once for all did make an end of their doings withweapons, not with words. For even as we punish thieves with the sword, murderers with the rope, and heretics with fire, wherefore do we notlay hands on these pernicious teachers of damnation, on popes, oncardinals, bishops, and the swarm of the Roman Sodom--yea, with everyweapon which lieth within our reach, _and wherefore do we not wash ourhands in their blood?_"[19]

It is, however, in a manifesto published in July 1522, just beforeSickingen's attack on the Archbishop of Trier, for which enterprise itwas doubtless intended as a justification, that Luther expresseshimself in unmeasured terms against the "biggest wolves, " the bishops, and calls upon "all dear children of God and all true Christians" todrive them out by force from the "sheep-stalls. " In this pamphlet, entitled _Against the falsely called spiritual order of the Pope andthe Bishops_, he says: "It were better that every bishop weremurdered, every foundation or cloister rooted out, than that one soulshould be destroyed, let alone that all souls should be lost for thesake of their worthless trumpery and idolatry. Of what use are theywho thus live in lust, nourished by the sweat and labour of others, and are a stumbling-block to the word of God? They fear bodily uproarand despise spiritual destruction. Are they wise and honest people? Ifthey accepted God's word and sought the life of the soul, God would bewith them, for He is a God of peace, and they need fear no uprising;but if they will not hear God's word, but rage and rave with bannings, burnings, killings, and every evil, what do they better deserve than astrong uprising which shall sweep them from the earth? _And we wouldsmile did it happen. _[20] As the heavenly wisdom saith: 'Ye havehated my chastisement and despised my doctrine; behold, I will alsolaugh at ye in your distress, and will mock ye when misfortune shallfall upon your heads. '" In the same document he denounces the bishopsas an accursed race, as "thieves, robbers, and usurers. " Swine, horses, stones, and wood were not so destitute of understanding as theGerman people under the sway of them and their Pope. The religioushouses are similarly described as "brothels, low taverns, and murderdens, " He winds up this document, which he calls his "bull, " byproclaiming that "all who contribute body, goods, and honour that therule of the bishops may be destroyed are God's dear children and trueChristians, obeying God's command and fighting against the devil'sorder"; and, on the other hand, that "all who give the bishops awilling obedience are the devil's own servants, and fight againstGod's order and law. "[21]

No sooner, however, did things begin to look bad with Sickingen thanLuther promptly sought to disengage himself from all complicity oreven sympathy with him and his losing cause. So early as December 19, 1522, he writes to his friend Wenzel Link: "Franz von Sickingen hasbegun war against the Palatine. It will be a very bad business. "(_Franciscus Sickingen Palatino bellum indixit, res pessima futuraest. _) His colleague, Melanchthon, a few days later, hastened todeprecate the insinuation that Luther had had any part or lot ininitiating the revolt. "Franz von Sickingen, " he wrote, "by his greatill-will injures the cause of Luther; and notwithstanding that he beentirely dissevered from him, nevertheless whenever he undertaketh warhe wisheth to seem to act for the public benefit, and not for his own. He doth even now pursue a most infamous course of plunder on theRhine. " In another letter he says: "I know how this tumult grievethhim (Luther), "[22] and this respecting the man who had shortly beforewritten of the princes that their tyranny and haughtiness were nolonger to be borne, alleging that God would not longer endure it, andthat the common man even was becoming intelligent enough to deal withthem by force if they did not mend their manners. A more tellingexample of the "don't-put-him-in-the-horse-pond" attitude couldscarcely be desired. That it was characteristic of the "greatreformer" will be seen later on when we find him pursuing a similarpolicy anent the revolt of the peasants. 

After the fall of the Landstuhl all Sickingen's castles and most ofthose of his immediate allies and friends were of course taken, andthe greater part of them destroyed. The knighthood was now to allintents and purposes politically helpless and economically at the doorof bankruptcy, owing to the suddenly changed conditions of which wehave spoken in the Introduction and elsewhere as supervening since thebeginning of the century: the unparalleled rise in prices, concurrently with the growing extravagance, the decline of agriculturein many places, and the increasing burdens put upon the knights bytheir feudal superiors, and last, but not least, the increasingobstacles in the way of the successful pursuit of the profession ofhighway robbery. The majority of them, therefore, clung withrelentless severity to the feudal dues of the peasants, which nowconstituted their main, and in many cases their only, source ofrevenue; and hence, abandoning the hope of independence, they threw intheir lot with the authorities, the princes, lay and ecclesiastic, inthe common object of both, that of reducing the insurgent peasants tocomplete subjection. 

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Italics the present author's. 

[20] Italics the present author's. 

[21] _Sämmtliche Werke_ vol. Xxviii. Pp. 142-201. 

[22] _Corpus Reformatorum_, vol. I. Pp. 598-9. 

CHAPTER VII

GENERAL SIGNS OF RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL REVOLT

Peasant revolts of a sporadic character are to be met with throughoutthe Middle Ages even in their halcyon days. Some of these, like theJacquerie in France and the revolt associated with the name of WatTyler in England, were of a serious and more or less extendedcharacter. But most of them were purely local and of no significance, apart from temporary and passing circumstances. By the last quarter ofthe fifteenth century, however, peasant risings had becomeincreasingly numerous and their avowed aims much more definite andfar-reaching than, as a rule, were those of an earlier date. In sayingthis we are referring to those revolts which were directly initiatedby the peasantry, the serfs, and the villeins of the time, and whichhad as their main object the direct amelioration of the peasant's lot. Movements of a primarily religious character were, of course, of asomewhat different nature, but the tendency was increasingly, as weapproach the period of the Reformation, for the two currents to mergeone in the other. The echoes of the Hussite movement in Bavaria at thebeginning of the century spread far and wide throughout CentralEurope, and had by no means spent their force as the century drewtowards its close. 

From this time forward recurrent indications of social revolt with astrong religious colouring, or a religious revolt with a strong socialcolouring, became chronic in the Germanic lands and those adjacentthereto. As an example may be taken the movement of Hans Boheim, ofNiklashausen, in the diocese of Würzburg, in Franconia, in 1476, andwhich is regarded by some historians as the first of the movementsleading directly up to those of the Lutheran Reformation. Hans claimeda divine mission for preaching the gospel to the common man. Hanspreached asceticism and claimed Niklashausen as a place of pilgrimagefor a new worship of the Virgin. There was little in this to alarm theauthorities till Hans announced that the Queen of Heaven had revealedto him that there was to be no lay or spiritual authority, but thatall men should be brothers, earning their bread by the sweat of theirbrows, paying no more imposts or dues, holding land in common, andsharing alike in all things. The movement went on for some months, spreading rapidly in the neighbouring territories. At last Hans wasseized by armed men while asleep and hurried to Würzburg. The affaircaused immense commotion, and by the Sunday following, it is stated, 34, 000 armed peasants assembled at Niklashausen. Led by a decayedknight and his son, 16, 000 of them marched to Würzburg, demandingtheir prophet at the gate of the bishop's castle. By promises andcajolery, they were induced to disperse by the prince-bishop, who, assoon as he saw they were returning home in straggling parties, treacherously sent a body of his knights after them, killing some andtaking others prisoners. Two of the ringleaders were beheaded outsidethe castle, and at the same time the prophet Hans Boheim was burnt toashes. Thus ended a typical religio-social peasant revolt of thehalf-century preceding the great Reformation movement. 

In 1491 the oppressed and plundered villeins of Kempten revolted, butthe movement was quelled by the Emperor himself after a compromise. Agreat rising took place in Elsass (Alsace) in 1493 among thefeudatories of the Bishop of Strassburg, with the usual object offreedom for the "common man, " abolition of feudal exactions, Churchreformation, etc. This movement is interesting, as having firstreceived the name of the _Bundschuh_. It was decided that as theknight was distinguished by his spurs, so the peasant should have ashis device the common shoe of his class, laced from the ankle throughto the knee by leathern thongs, and the banner whereon this emblem wasdepicted was accordingly made. The movement was, however, betrayed andmercilessly crushed by the neighbouring knighthood. A few years latera similar movement, also having the _Bundschuh_ for its device, tookplace in the regions of the Upper and Middle Rhine. This movementcreated a panic among all the privileged classes, from the Emperordown to the knight. The situation was discussed in no less than threeseparate assemblies of the States. It was, however, eventuallysuppressed for the time being. A few years later, in 1512, it againburst forth under the leadership of an active adherent of the formermovement, one Joss Fritz, in Baden, at the village of Lehen, near thetown of Freiburg. The organization in this case, besides beingwidespread, was exceedingly good, and the movement was nearlysuccessful when at the last moment it was betrayed. Even inSwitzerland there were peasant risings in the early years of thesixteenth century. About the same time the duchy of Würtemberg wasconvulsed by a movement which took the name of the "Poor Conrad. " Itsobject was the freeing of the "common man" from feudal services anddues and the abolition of seignorial rights over the land, etc. Buthere again the movement was suppressed by Duke Ulrich and his knights. Another rising took place in Baden in 1517. Three years previously, in1514, occurred the great Hungarian peasant rebellion under GeorgeDaze. Under the able leadership of the latter the peasants had somenot inconsiderable initial successes, but this movement also, aftersome weeks, was cruelly suppressed. About the same time, too, occurredvarious insurrectionary peasant movements in the Styrian andCarinthian alpine districts. Similar movements to those referred towere also going on during those early years of the fifteenth centuryin other parts of Europe, but these, of course, do not concern us. 

The deep-reaching importance and effective spread of such movementswas infinitely greater in the Middle Ages than in modern times. Thesame phenomenon presents itself to-day in backward and semi-barbariccommunities. At first sight one is inclined to think that there hasbeen no period in the world's history when it was so easy to stir upa population as the present, with our newspapers, our telegraphs, ouraeroplane, our postal arrangements, and our railways. But this is justone of those superficial notions that are not confirmed by history. Weare similarly apt to think that there was no age in which travel wasso widespread and formed so great a part of the education of mankindas at present. There could be no greater mistake. The true age oftravelling was the close of the Middle Ages, or what is known as theRenaissance period. The man of learning, then just differentiated fromthe ecclesiastic, spent the greater part of his life in earning hisintellectual wares from Court to Court and from University toUniversity, just as the merchant personally carried his goods fromcity to city in an age in which commercial correspondence, bill-brokers, and the varied forms of modern business were but inembryo. It was then that travel really meant education, theacquirement of thorough and intimate knowledge of diverse manners andcustoms. Travel was then not a pastime, but a serious element in life. 

In the same way the spread of a political or social movement was atleast as rapid then as now, and far more penetrating. The methodswere, of course, vastly different from the present; but the humanmaterial to be dealt with was far easier to mould, and kept its shapemuch more readily when moulded, than is the case nowadays. Theappearance of a religious or political teacher in a village or smalltown of the Middle Ages was an event which keenly excited the interestof the inhabitants. It struck across the path of their daily life, leaving behind it a track hardly conceivable to-day. For one of thesalient symptoms of the change which has taken place since that timeis the disappearance of local centres of activity and the transferenceof the intensity of life to a few large towns. In the Middle Agesevery town, small no less than large, was a more or lessself-sufficing organism, intellectually and industrially, and was notessentially dependent on the outside world for its social sustenance. This was especially the case in Central Europe, where communicationwas much more imperfect and dangerous than in Italy, France, orEngland. In a society without newspapers, without easy communicationwith the rest of the world, where the vast majority could neither readnor write, where books were rare and costly, and accessible only tothe privileged few, a new idea bursting upon one of these communitieswas eagerly welcomed, discussed in the council chamber of the town, inthe hall of the castle, in the refectory of the monastery, at thesocial board of the burgess, in the workroom, and, did it but touchhis interests, in the hut of the peasant. It was canvassed, too, atchurch festivals (_Kirchweihe_), the only regular occasion on whichthe inhabitants of various localities came together. In the absence ofall other distraction, men thought it out in all the bearings whichtheir limited intellectual horizon permitted. If calculated in any wayto appeal to them it soon struck root, and became a part of their verynature, a matter for which, if occasion were, they were prepared tosacrifice goods, liberty, and even life itself. In the present day anew idea is comparatively slow in taking root. Amid the myriaddistractions of modern life, perpetually chasing one another, there isno time for any one thought, however wide-reaching in its bearings, totake a firm hold. In order that it should do so in the _modern mind_, it must be again and again borne in upon this not always too receptiveintellectual substance. People require to read of it day after day intheir newspapers, or to hear it preached from countless platforms, before any serious effect is created. In the simple life of formerages it was not so. 

The mode of transmitting intelligence, especially such as wasconnected with the stirring up of political and religious movements, was in those days of a nature of which we have now little conception. The sort of thing in vogue then may be compared to the methodsadopted in India to prepare the Mutiny of 1857, when the mysteriouscake was passed from village to village, signifying that the momenthad come for the outbreak. The sense of _esprit de corps_ and of thatkind of honour most intimately associated with it, it must also beremembered, was infinitely keener in ruder states of society thanunder a high civilization. The growth of civilization, as implying thedisruption of the groups in which the individual is merged under moreprimitive conditions, and his isolation as an autonomous unit havingvague and very elastic moral duties to his "country" or to mankind atlarge, but none towards any definite and proximate social whole, necessarily destroys that communal spirit which prevails in the formercase. This is one of the striking truths which the history of thesepeasant risings illustrates in various ways and brings vividly home tous. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE GREAT RISING OF THE PEASANTS AND THE ANABAPTIST MOVEMENT[23]

The year following the collapse of Franz Sickingen's rebellion saw thefirst mutterings of the great movement known as the Peasants' War, themost extensive and important of all the popular insurrections of theMiddle Ages, which, as we have seen in a previous chapter, had beenled up to during the previous half-century by numerous sporadicmovements throughout Central Europe having like aims. 

The first actual outbreak of the Peasants' War took place in August1524, in the Black Forest, in the village of Stühlingen, from anapparently trivial cause. It spread rapidly throughout the surroundingdistricts, having found a leader in a former soldier of fortune, HansMüller by name. The so-called Evangelical Brotherhood sprang intoexistence. On the new movement becoming threatening it was opposed bythe Swabian League, a body in the interests of the GermanicFederation, its princes, and cities, whose function it was to preservepublic tranquillity and enforce the Imperial decrees. The peasant armywas armed with the rudest weapons, including pitchforks, scythes, andaxes; but nothing decisive of a military character took place thisyear. Meanwhile the work of agitation was carried on far and widethroughout the South German territories. Preachers of discontent amongthe peasantry and the former towns were everywhere agitating andorganizing with a view to a general rising in the ensuing spring. Negotiations were carried on throughout the winter with nobles and theauthorities without important results. A diversion in favour of thepeasants was caused by Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg favouring thepeasants' cause, which he hoped to use as a shoeing-horn to his ownplans for recovering his ancestral domains, from which he had beendriven on the grounds of a family quarrel under the ban of the empirein 1519. He now established himself in his stronghold of Hohentwiel, in Würtemberg, on the Swiss frontier. By February or the beginning ofMarch peasant bands were organizing throughout Southern Germany. Early in March a so-called Peasants' Parliament was held at Memmingen, a small Swabian town, at which the principal charter of the movement, the so-called "Twelve Articles, " was adopted. This important documenthas a strong religious colouring, the political and economic demandsof the peasants being led up to and justified by Biblical quotations. They all turn on the customary grievances of the time. The "TwelveArticles" remain throughout the chief Bill of Rights of the SouthGerman peasantry, though there were other versions of the lattercurrent in certain districts. What was said before concerning thelocal sporadic movements which had been going en for a generationpreviously applies equally to the great uprising of 1525. The rapiditywith which the ideas represented by the movement, and in consequencethe movement itself, spread, is marvellous. By the middle of April itwas computed that no less than 300, 000 peasants, besides necessitoustownsfolk, were armed and in open rebellion. On the side of the noblesno adequate force was ready to meet the emergency. In every directionwere to be seen flaming castles and monasteries. On all sides werebodies of armed countryfolk, organized in military fashion, dictatingtheir will to the countryside and the small towns, whilstdisaffection was beginning to show itself in a threatening manneramong the popular elements of not a few important cities. A slightsuccess gained by the Swabian League at the Upper Swabian village ofLeipheim in the second week of April did not improve matters. InEaster week, 1525, it looked indeed as if the "Twelve Articles" atleast would become realized, if not the Christian Commonwealth dreamedof by the religious sectaries established throughout the length andbreadth of Germany. Princes, lords, and ecclesiastical dignitarieswere being compelled far and wide to save their lives, after theirproperty was probably already confiscated, by swearing allegiance tothe Christian League or Brotherhood of the peasants and bycountersigning the "Twelve Articles" and other demands of theirrefractory villeins and serfs. So threatening was the situation thatthe Archduke Ferdinand began himself to yield, in so far as to enterinto negotiations with the insurgents. In many cases the leaders andchief men of the bands were got up in brilliant costume. We read ofpurple mantles and scarlet birettas with ostrich plumes as the costumeof the leaders, of a suite of men in scarlet dress, of a vanguard often heralds, gorgeously attired. As Lamprecht justly observes(_Deutsche Geschichte_, vol. V. P. 343): "The peasant revolts were, in general, less in the nature of campaigns, or even of anuninterrupted series of minor military operations, than of a slowprocess of mobilization, interrupted and accompanied by continualnegotiations with lords and princes--a mobilization which was renderedpossible by the standing right of assembly and of carrying armspossessed by the peasants. " The smaller towns everywhere opened theirgates without resistance to the peasants, between whom and the poorerinhabitants an understanding commonly existed. The bands waxed fatwith plunder of castles and religious houses, and did full justice tothe contents of the rich monastic wine-cellars. 

Early in April occurred one of the most notable incidents. It was atthe little town of Weinsberg, near the free town of Heilbronn, inWürtemberg. The town, which was occupied by a body of knights andmen-at-arms, was attacked on Easter Sunday by the peasant bands, foremost among them being the "black troop" of that knightly championof the peasant cause, Florian Geyer. It was followed by a peasantcontingent, led by one Jäcklein Rohrbach, whose consuming passion washatred of the ruling classes. The knights within the town were underthe leadership of Count von Helfenstein. The entry of Rohrbach'scompany into Weinsberg was the signal for a massacre of the knightlyhost. Some were taken prisoners for the moment, including Helfensteinhimself, but these were massacred next morning in the meadow outsidethe town by "Jäcklein, " as he was called. The events at Weinsbergproduced in the first instance a horror and consternation which wasspeedily followed by a lust for vengeance on the part of theprivileged orders. 

In Franconia and Middle Germany the peasant movement went on apace. InFranconia one of its chief seats was the considerable town ofRothenburg, on the Tauber. The episcopal city of Würzburg was alsoentered and occupied by the peasant bands in coalition with thediscontented elements of the town. The sacking of churches andthrowing open of religious houses characterized proceedings here aselsewhere. The locking up of a large peasant host in Würzburg wasundoubtedly a source of great weakness to the movement. In the east, in the Tyrol and Salzburg, there were similar risings to those fartherwest. In the latter case the prince-bishop was the obnoxiousoppressor. 

The most interesting of the local movements was, however, in manyrespects that of Thomas Münzer in the town of Mülhausen, in Thuringia. Thomas Münzer is, perhaps, the best known of all the names in thepeasants' revolt. In addition to the ultra-Protestantism of histheological views, Münzer had as his object the establishment of acommunistic Christian Commonwealth. He started a practicalexemplification of this among his own followers in the town itself. 

Up to the beginning of May the insurrection had carried everythingbefore it. Truchsess and his men of the Swabian League had provedthemselves unable to cope with it. Matters now changed. Knights, men-at-arms, and free-lances were returning from the Italian campaignof Charles V after the battle of Pavia. Everywhere the revolt met withdisaster. The Mülhausen insurgents were destroyed at Frankenhausen byforces of the Count of Hesse, of the Duke of Brunswick, and of theDuke of Saxony. This was on May 15th. Three days before the defeat atFrankenhausen, on May 12th, a decisive defeat was inflicted on thepeasants by the forces of the Swabian League, under Truchsess, atBöblingen, in Würtemberg. Savage ferocity signalized the treatment ofthe defeated peasants by the soldiery of the nobles. Jäcklein Rohrbachwas roasted alive. Truchsess with his soldiery then hurried north andinflicted a heavy defeat on the Franconian peasant contingents atKönigshaven, on the Tauber. These three defeats, following oneanother in little more than a fortnight, broke the back of the wholemovement in Germany proper. In Elsass and Lorraine the insurrectionwas crushed by the hired troops and the Duke of Lorraine; eastward, onthe little river Luibas. In the Austrian territories, under the ableleadership of Michael Gaismayr, one of the lesser nobility, itcontinued for some months longer, and the fear of Gaismayr, who, itshould be said, was the only man of really constructive genius themovement had produced, maintained itself with the privileged classestill his murder in the autumn of 1528, at the instance of the Bishopof Brixen. 

The great peasant insurrection in Germany failed through want of awell-thought-out plan and tactics, and, above all, through a want ofcohesion among the various peasant forces operating in differentsections of the country, between which no regular communications werekept up. The attitude of Martin Luther towards the peasants and theircause was base in the extreme. His action was mainly embodied in twodocuments, of which the first was issued about the middle of April, and the second a month later. The difference in tone between them issufficiently striking. In the first, which bore the title, "AnExhortation to Peace on the Twelve Articles of the Peasantry inSwabia, " Luther sits on the fence, admonishing both parties of what hedeemed their shortcomings. He was naturally pleased with thosearticles that demanded the free preaching of the Gospel and abused theCatholic clergy, and was not indisposed to assent to many of theeconomic demands. In fact, the document strikes one as distinctly morefavourable to the insurgents than to their opponents. 

"We have, " he wrote, "no one to thank for this mischief and sedition, save ye princes and lords, in especial ye blind bishops and madpriests and monks, who up to this day remain obstinate and do notcease to rage and rave against the holy Gospel, albeit ye know that itis righteous, and that ye may not gainsay it. Moreover, in yourworldly regiment, ye do naught otherwise than flay and extort tribute, that ye may satisfy your pomp and vanity, till the poor, common mancannot, and may not, bear with it longer. The sword is on your neck. Ye think ye sit so strongly in your seats, that none may cast you fromthem. Such presumption and obstinate pride will twist your necks, asye will see. " And again: "God hath made it thus that they cannot, andwill not, longer bear with your raging. If ye do it not of your freewill, so shall ye be made to do it by way of violence and undoing. "Once more: "It is not peasants, my dear lords, who have set themselvesup against you. God Himself it is who setteth Himself against you tochastise your evil-doing. "

He counsels the princes and lords to make peace with their peasants, observing with reference to the "Twelve Articles" that some of themare so just and righteous that before God and the world theirworthiness is manifested, making good the words of the psalm that theyheap contempt upon the heads of the princes. Whilst he warns thepeasants against sedition and rebellion, and criticizes some of theArticles as going beyond the justification of Holy Writ, and whilst hemakes side-hits at "the prophets of murder and the spirits ofconfusion which had found their way among them, " the generalimpression given by the pamphlet is, as already said, one ofunmistakable friendliness to the peasants and hostility to the lords. 

The manifesto may be summed up in the following terms: Both sides are, strictly speaking, in the wrong, but the princes and lords haveprovoked the "common man" by their unjust exactions and oppressions;the peasants, on their side, have gone too far in many of theirdemands, notably in the refusal to pay tithes, and most of all in thenotion of abolishing villeinage, which Luther declares to be"straightway contrary to the Gospel and thievish. " The great sin ofthe princes remains, however, that of having thrown stumbling-blocksin the way of the Gospel--_bien entendu_ the Gospel according toLuther--and the main virtue of the peasants was their claim to havethis Gospel preached. It can scarcely be doubted that the ambiguoustone of Luther's rescript was interpreted by the rebellious peasantsto their advantage and served to stimulate, rather than to check, theinsurrection. 

Meanwhile, the movement rose higher and higher, and reached Thuringia, the district with which Luther personally was most associated. Hispatron, and what is more, the only friend of toleration in highplaces, the noble-minded Elector Friedrich of Saxony, fell ill anddied on May 5th, and was succeeded by his younger brother Johann, thesame who afterwards assisted in the suppression of the Thuringianrevolt. Almost immediately thereupon Luther, who had been visiting hisnative town of Eisleben, travelled through the revolted districts onhis way back to Wittenberg. He everywhere encountered black looks andjeers. When he preached, the Münzerites would drown his voice by theringing of bells. The signs of rebellion greeted him on all sides. The "Twelve Articles" were constantly thrown at his head. As thereports of violence towards the property and persons of some of hisown noble friends reached him his rage broke all bounds. He seems, however, to have prudently waited a few days, until the cause of thepeasants was obviously hopeless, before publicly taking his stand onthe side of the authorities. 

On his arrival in Wittenberg, he wrote a second pronouncement on thecontemporary events, in which no uncertainty was left as to hisattitude. It is entitled, "Against the Murderous and Thievish Bands ofPeasants. "[24] Here he lets himself loose on the side of theoppressors with a bestial ferocity. "Crush them" (the peasants), hewrites, "strangle them and pierce them, in secret places and in sightof men, he who can, even as one would strike dead a mad dog!" Allhaving authority who hesitated to extirpate the insurgents to theuttermost were committing a sin against God. "Findest thou thy deaththerein, " he writes, addressing the reader, "happy art thou: a moreblessed death can never overtake thee, for thou diest in obedience tothe Divine word and the command of Romans xiii. 1, and in the serviceof love, to save thy neighbour from the bonds of hell and the devil. "Never had there been such an infamous exhortation to the mostdastardly murder on a wholesale scale since the Albigensian crusadewith its "Strike them all: God will know His own"--a sentiment indeedthat Luther almost literally reproduces in one passage. 

The attitude of the official Lutheran party towards the poorcountryfolk continued as infamous after the war as it had been on thefirst sign that fortune was forsaking their cause. Like master, likeman. Luther's jackal, the "gentle" Melanchthon, specially signalizedhimself by urging on the feudal barons with Scriptural arguments tothe blood-sucking and oppression of their villeins. A humane andhonourable nobleman, Heinrich von Einsiedel, was touched in conscienceat the _corvées_ and heavy dues to which he found himself entitled. Hesent to Luther for advice upon the subject. Luther replied that theexisting exactions which had been handed down to him from his parentsneed not trouble his conscience, adding that it would not be good for_corvées_ to be given up, since the "common man" ought to haveburdens imposed upon him, as otherwise he would become overbearing. Hefurther remarked that a severe treatment in material things waspleasing to God, even though it might seem to be too harsh. Spalatinwrites in a like strain that the burdens in Germany were, if anything, too light. Subjects, according to Melanchthon, ought to know that theyare serving God in the burdens they bear for their superiors, whetherit were journeying, paying tribute, or otherwise, and as pleasing toGod as though they raised the dead at God's own behest. Subjectsshould look up to their lords as wise and just men, and hence bethankful to them. However unjust, tyrannical, and cruel the lord mightbe, there was never any justification for rebellion. 

A friend and follower of Luther and Melanchthon--Martin Butzer byname--went still farther. According to this "reforming" worthy asubject was to obey his lord in everything. This was all thatconcerned him. It was not for him to consider whether what wasenjoined was, or was not, contrary to the will of God. That was amatter for his feudal superior and God to settle between them. Referring to the doctrines of the revolutionary sects, Butzer urgesthe authorities to extirpate all those professing a false religion. Such men, he says, deserve a heavier punishment than thieves, robbers, and murderers. Even their wives and innocent children andcattle should be destroyed (_ap. Janssen_, vol. I. P. 595). 

Luther himself quotes, in a sermon on "Genesis, " the instances ofAbraham and Abimelech and other Old Testament worthies, as justifyingslavery and the treatment of a slave as a beast of burden. "Sheep, cattle, men-servants and maid-servants, they were all possessions, "says Luther, "to be sold as it pleased them like other beasts. It wereeven a good thing were it still so. For else no man may compel nortame the servile folk" (_Sämmtliche Werke_, vol. Xv. P. 276). In otherdiscourses he enforces the same doctrine, observing that if the worldis to last for any time, and is to be kept going, it will be necessaryto restore the patriarchal condition. Capito, the Strassburg preacher, in a letter to a colleague, writes lamenting that the pamphlets anddiscourses of Luther had contributed not a little to give edge to thebloodthirsty vengeance of the princes and nobles after theinsurrection. 

The total number of the peasants and their allies who fell either infighting or at the hands of the executioners is estimated by Anselm inhis _Berner Chronik_ at 130, 000. It was certainly not less than100, 000. For months after the executioner was active in many of theaffected districts. Spalatin says: "Of hanging and beheading there isno end. " Another writer has it: "It was all so that even a stone hadbeen moved to pity, for the chastisement and vengeance of theconquering lords was great. " The executions within the jurisdiction ofthe Swabian League alone are stated at 10, 000. Truchsess's provostboasted of having hanged or beheaded 1, 200 with his own hand. Morethan 50, 000 fugitives were recorded. These, according to a SwabianLeague order, were all outlawed in such wise that any one who foundthem might slay them without fear of consequences. 

The sentences and executions were conducted with true mediæval levity. It is narrated in a contemporary chronicle that in one village in theHenneberg territory all the inhabitants had fled on the approach ofthe Count and his men-at-arms save two tilers. The two were being ledto execution when one appeared to weep bitterly, and his reply tointerrogatories was that he bewailed the dwellings of the aristocracythereabouts, for henceforth there would be no one to supply them withdurable tiles. Thereupon his companion burst out laughing, because, said he, it had just occurred to him that he would not know where toplace his hat after his head had been taken off. These mildly humorousremarks obtained for both of them a free pardon. 

The aspect of those parts of the country where the war had mostheavily raged was deplorable in the extreme. In addition to the manyhundreds of castles and monasteries destroyed, almost as many villagesand small towns had been levelled with the ground by one side or theother, especially by the Swabian League and the various princelyforces. Many places were annihilated for having taken part with thepeasants, even when they had been compelled by force to do so. Fieldsin these districts were everywhere laid waste or left uncultivated. Enormous sums were exacted as indemnity. In many of the villagespeasants previously well-to-do were ruined. There seemed no limit tothe bleeding of the "common man, " under the pretence of compensationfor damage done by the insurrection. 

The condition of the families of the dead and of the fugitives wasappalling. Numbers perished from starvation. The wives and children ofthe insurgents were in some cases forcibly driven from theirhomesteads and even from their native territory. In one of thepamphlets published in 1525 anent the events of that year we read:"Houses are burned; fields and vineyards lie fallow; clothes andhousehold goods are robbed or burned; cattle and sheep are taken away;the same as to horses and trappings. The prince, the gentleman, or thenobleman will have his rent and due. Eternal God, whither shall thewidows and poor children go forth to seek it?" Referring to theLutheran campaign against friars and poor scholars, beggars, andpilgrims, the writer observes: "Think ye now that because of God'sanger for the sake of one beggar, ye must even for a season bear withtwenty, thirty, nay, still more?"

The courts of arbitration, which were established in various districtsto adjudicate on the relations between lords and villeins, werenaturally not given to favour the latter, whilst the fact that largenumbers of deeds and charters had been burnt or otherwise destroyed inthe course of the insurrection left open an extensive field for theimposition of fresh burdens. The record of the proceedings of one ofthe most important of these courts--that of the Swabian League'sjurisdiction, which sat at Memmingen--in the dispute between theprince-abbot of Kempten and his villeins is given in full in Baumann's_Akten_, pp. 329-46. Here, however, the peasants did not come off sobadly as in some other places. Meanwhile, all the other evils of thetime, the monopolies of the merchant-princes of the cities and of thetrading-syndicates, the dearness of living, the scarcity of money, etc. , did not abate, but rather increased from year to year. TheCatholic Church maintained itself especially in the South of Germany, and the official Reformation took on a definitely aristocraticcharacter. 

According to Baumann (_Akten, Vorwort_, v, vi), the true soul of themovement of 1525 consisted in the notion of "Divine justice, " theprinciple "that all relations, whether of political, social, orreligious nature, have got to be ordered according to the directionsof the 'Gospel' as the sole and exclusive source and standard of alljustice. " The same writer maintains that there are three phases in thedevelopment of this idea, according to which he would have the schemeof historical investigation subdivided. In Upper Swabia, says he, "Divine justice" found expression in the well-known "Twelve Articles, "but here the notion of a political reformation was as good as absent. 

In the second phase, the "Divine justice" idea began to be applied topolitical conditions. In Tyrol and the Austrian dominions, heobserves, this political side manifested itself in local or, at best, territorial patriotism. It was only in Franconia that all territorialpatriotism or "particularism" was shaken off and the idea of the unityof the German peoples received as a political goal. The Franconianinfluence gained over the Würtembergers to a large extent, and theplan of reform elaborated by Weigand and Hipler for the HeilbronnParliament was the most complete expression of this second phase ofthe movement. 

The third phase is represented by the rising in Thuringia, andespecially in its intellectual head, Thomas Münzer. Here we have thedoctrine of "Divine justice" taking precedence of all else andassuming the form of a thoroughgoing theocratic scheme, to be realizedby the German people. 

This division Baumann is led to make with a view to the formulation ofa convenient scheme for a "codex" of documents relating to thePeasants' War. It may be taken as, in the main, the best generaldivision that can be put forward, although, as we have seen, there areplaces where, and times when, the practical demands of the movementseem to have asserted themselves directly and spontaneously apart fromany theory whatever. 

Of the fate of many of the most active leaders of the revolt we knownothing. Several heads of the movement, according to a contemporarywriter, wandered about for a long time in misery, some of them indeedseeking refuge with the Turks, who were still a standing menace toImperial Christendom. The popular preachers vanished also on thesuppression of the movement. The disastrous result of the Peasants'War was prejudicial even to Luther's cause in South Germany. TheCatholic party reaped the advantage everywhere, evangelical preachers, even, where not insurrectionists, being persecuted. Littledistinction, in fact, was made in most districts between an opponentof the Catholic Church from Luther's standpoint and one fromKarlstadt's or Hubmayer's. Amongst seventy-one heretics arraignedbefore the Austrian court at Ensisheim, only one was acquitted. Theothers were broken on the wheel, burnt, or drowned. 

There were some who were arrested ten or fifteen years later oncharges connected with the 1525 revolt. Treachery, of course, played alarge part, as it has done in all defeated movements, in ensuring thefate of many of those who had been at all prominent. In fairness toLuther, who otherwise played such a villainous rôle in connection withthe peasants' movement, the fact should be recorded that he shelteredhis old colleague, Karlstadt, for a short time in the Augustinemonastery at Wittenberg, after the latter's escape from Rothenburg. 

Wendel Hipler continued for some time at liberty, and might probablyhave escaped altogether had he not entered a protest against theCounts of Hohenlohe for having seized a portion of his private fortunethat lay within their power. The result of his action might have beenforeseen. The Counts, on hearing of it, revenged themselves byaccusing him of having been a chief pillar of the rebellion. He had toflee immediately, and, after wandering about for some time in adisguise, one of the features of which is stated to have been a falsenose, he was seized on his way to the Reichstag which was being heldat Speier in 1526. Tenacious of his property to the last, he had hopedto obtain restitution of his rights from the assembled estates of theempire. Some months later he died in prison at Neustadt. 

Of the victors, Truchsess and Frundsberg considered themselves badlytreated by the authorities whom they had served so well, andFrundsberg even composed a lament on his neglect. This he loved tohear sung to the accompaniment of the harp as he swilled down his redwine. The cruel Markgraf Kasimir met a miserable death not long afterfrom dysentery, whilst Cardinal Matthaus Lang, the Archbishop ofSalzburg, ended his days insane. 

Of the fate of other prominent men connected with the eventsdescribed, we have spoken in the course of the narrative. 

The castles and religious houses, which were destroyed, as alreadysaid, to the number of many hundreds, were in most cases not built upagain. The ruins of not a few of them are visible to this day. Theirowners often spent the sums relentlessly wrung out of the "common man"as indemnity in the extravagances of a gay life in the free towns orin dancing attendance at the Courts of the princes and the highernobles. The collapse of the revolt was indeed an important link in theparticular chain of events that was so rapidly destroying theindependent existence of the lower nobility as a separate status witha definite political position, and transforming the face of societygenerally. Life in the smaller castle, the knight's _burg_ or tower, was already tending to become an anachronism. The Court of the prince, lay or ecclesiastic, was attracting to itself all the elements ofnobility below it in the social hierarchy. The revolt of 1525 gave afurther edge to this development, the first act of which closed withthe collapse of the knights' rebellion and death of Sickingen in 1523. The knight was becoming superfluous in the economy of the bodypolitic. 

The rise of capitalism, the sudden development of the world-market, the substitution of a money medium of exchange for direct barter--allthese new factors were doing their work. Obviously the great gainersby the events of the momentous year were the representatives of thecentralizing principle. But the effective centralizing principle wasnot represented by the Emperor, for he stood for what was after alllargely a sham centralism, because it was a centralism on a scale forwhich the Germanic world was not ripe. Princes and margraves weredestined to be bearers of the _territorial_ centralization, the onlyreal one to which the German peoples were to attain for a long time tocome. Accordingly, just as the provincial _grand seigneur_ of Francebecame the courtier of the King at Paris or Versailles, so thepreviously quasi-independent German knight or baron became thecourtier or hanger-on of the prince within or near whose territory hishereditary manor was situate. 

The eventful year 1525 was truly a landmark in German history in manyways--the year of one of the most accredited exploits of DoctorFaustus, the last mythical hero the progressive races have created;the year in which Martin Luther, the ex-monk, capped his repudiationof Catholicism and all its ways by marrying an ex-nun; the year of thedefinite victory of Charles V. The German Emperor, over Francis I. TheFrench King, which meant the final assertion of the "Holy RomanEmpire" as being a national German institution; and last, but notleast, the year of the greatest and the most widespread popularmovement Central Europe had yet seen, and the last of the mediævalpeasant risings on a large scale. The movement of the eventful yeardid not, however, as many hoped and many feared, within any short timerise up again from its ashes, after discomfiture had overtaken it. In1526, it is true, the genius of Gaismayr succeeded in resuscitatingit, not without prospect of ultimate success, in the Tyrol and otherof the Austrian territories. In this year, moreover, in other outlyingdistricts, even outside German-speaking populations, the movementflickered. Thus the traveller between the town of Bellinzona, in theSwiss Canton of Ticino, and the Bernardino Pass, in Canton Graubünden, may see to-day an imposing ruin, situated on an eminence in the narrowvalley just above the small Italian-speaking town of Misox. This wasone of the ancestral strongholds of the family, well known in Italianhistory, of the Trefuzios or Trevulzir, and was sacked by theinhabitants of Misox and the neighbouring peasants in the summer of1526, contemporaneously with Gaismayr's rising in the Tyrol. Aconnection between the two events would be difficult to trace, but thedestruction of the castle of Misox, if not a purely spontaneous localeffervescence, looks like an afterglow of the great movement, such asmay well have happened in other secluded mountain valleys. 

The Peasants' War in Germany we have been considering is the lastgreat mediæval uprising of the agrarian classes in Europe. Its resultwas, with some few exceptions, a riveting of the peasant's chains andan increase of his burdens. More than 1, 000 castles and religioushouses were destroyed in Germany alone during 1525. Many pricelessworks of mediæval art of all kinds perished. But we must not allow ourregret at such vandalism to blind us in any way to the intrinsicrighteousness of the popular demands. 

The elements of revolution now became absorbed by the Anabaptistmovement, a continuation primarily in the religious sphere of thedoctrines of the Zwickau enthusiasts and also in many respects ofThomas Münzer. At first Northern Switzerland, especially the towns ofBasel and Zürich, were the headquarters of the new sect, which, however, spread rapidly on all sides. Persecution of the direstdescription did not destroy it. On the contrary, it seemed only tohave the effect of evoking those social and revolutionary elementslatent within it which were at first overshadowed by more purelytheological interests. As it was, the hopes and aspirations of the"common man" revived this time in a form indissolubly associated withthe theocratic commonwealth, the most prominent representative ofwhich during the earlier movement had been Thomas Münzer. 

But, notwithstanding resemblances, it is utterly incorrect, as hassometimes been done, to describe any of the leaders of the greatpeasant rebellion of 1525 as Anabaptists. The Anabaptist sect, it istrue, originated in Switzerland during the rising, but it was thenconfined to a small coterie of unknown enthusiasts, holdingsemi-private meetings in Zürich. It was from these small beginningsthat the great Anabaptist movement of ten years later arose. It isdirectly from them that the Anabaptist movement of history dates itsorigin. Movements of a similar character, possessing a strong familylikeness, belong to the mental atmosphere of the time in Germany. Theso-called Zwickau prophets, for example, Nicholas Storch and hiscolleagues, seem in their general attitude to have approached veryclosely to the principles of the Anabaptist sectaries. But even hereit is incorrect to regard them, as has often been done, as directlyconnected with the latter; still more as themselves the germ of theAnabaptist party of the following years. Thomas Münzer, the onlyleader of the movement of 1525 who seems to have been acquainted withthe Zürich enthusiasts, was by no means at one with them on manypoints, notably refusing to attach any importance to their specialsign, rebaptism. Chief among the Zürich coterie may be mentionedKonrad Grebel, at whose house the sect first of all assembled. Atfirst the Anabaptist movement at Zürich was regarded as an extremewing of the party of the Church reformer, Zwingli, in that city, butit was not long before it broke off entirely from the latter, andhostilities, ensuing in persecution for the new party, broke out. 

To understand the true inwardness of the Anabaptist and similarmovements, it is necessary to endeavour to think oneself back into theintellectual conditions of the period. The Biblical text itself, noweverywhere read and re-read in the German language, was pondered anddiscussed in the house of the handicraftsman and in the hut of thepeasant, with as much confidence of interpretation as in the study ofthe professional theologian. But there were also not a few of thelatter order, as we have seen, who were becoming disgusted with thetrend of the official Reformation and its leading representatives. TheBible thus afforded a _point d'appui_ for the mystical tendencies nowbecoming universally prominent--a _point d'appui_ lacking to theearlier movements of the same kind that were so constantly arisingduring the Middle Ages proper. Seen in the dim religious light of acontinuous reading of the Bible and of very little else, the worldbegan to appear in a new aspect to the simple soul who practised it. All things seemed filled with the immediate presence of Deity. He whofelt a call pictured himself as playing the part of the Hebrewprophet. He gathered together a small congregation of followers, whofelt themselves as the children of God in the midst of a heathenworld. Did not the fall of the old Church mean that the day was athand when the elect should govern the world? It was not so muchpositive doctrines as an attitude of mind that was the ruling spiritin Anabaptism and like movements. Similarly, it was undoubtedly such asensitive impressionism rather than any positive dogma that dominatedthe first generation of the Christian Church itself. How this actedin the case of the earlier Anabaptists we shall presently see. 

The new Zürich sect, by one of those seemingly inscrutable chances insimilar cases of which history is full, not only prospered greatly butwent forth conquering and to conquer. It spread rapidly northward, eastward, and westward. In the course of its victorious career itabsorbed into itself all similar tendencies and local groups andmovements having like aims to itself. As was natural under suchcircumstances, we find many different strains in the developedAnabaptist movement. The theologian Bullinger wrote a book on thesubject, in which he enumerates thirteen distinct sects, as he termsthem, in the Anabaptist body. The general tenets of the organization, as given by Bullinger, may be summarized as follows: They regardthemselves as the true Church of Christ well pleasing to God; theybelieve that by rebaptism a man is received into the Church; theyrefuse to hold intercourse with other Churches or to recognize theirministers; they say that the preachings of these are different fromtheir works, that no man is the better for their preaching, that theirministers follow not the teaching of Paul, that they take payment fromtheir benefices, but do not work by their hands; that the Sacramentsare improperly served, and that every man, who feels the call, hasthe right to preach; they maintain that the literal text of theScriptures shall be accepted without comment or the additions oftheologians; they protest against the Lutheran doctrine ofjustification by faith alone; they maintain that true Christian lovemakes it inconsistent for any Christian to be rich, but that among theBrethren all things should be in common, or, at least, all availablefor the assistance of needy Brethren and for the common cause; thatthe attitude of the Christian towards authority should be that ofsubmission and endurance only; that no Christian ought to take officeof any kind, or to take part in any form of military service; thatsecular authority has no concern with religious belief; that theChristian resists no evil and therefore needs no law courts nor shouldever make use of their tribunals; that Christians do not kill orpunish with imprisonment or the sword, but only with exclusion fromthe body of believers; that no man should be compelled by force tobelieve, nor should any be slain on account of his faith; that infantbaptism is sinful and that adult baptism is the only Christianbaptism--baptism being a sacrament which should be reserved for theelect alone. 

Such seem to represent the doctrines forming the common ground of theAnabaptist groups as they existed at the end of the second decade ofthe fifteenth century. There were, however, as Heinrich Bullinger andhis contemporary, Sebastian Franck, point out, numerous divergenciesbetween the various sections of the party. Many of these recalledother mediæval heretic sects, e. G. The Cathari, the Brothers andSisters of the Spirit, the Bohemian Brethren, etc. 

For the first few years of its existence Anabaptism remained true toits original theologico-ethical principles. The doctrine ofnon-resistance was strictly adhered to. The Brethren believed inthemselves as the elect, and that they had only to wait in prayer andhumility for the "advent of Christ and His saints, " the "restitutionof all things, " the "establishment of the Kingdom of God upon earth, "or by whatever other phrase the dominant idea of the coming change wasexpressed. During the earlier years of the movement the Anabaptistswere peaceable and harmless fanatics and visionaries. In some cases, as in Moravia, they formed separate communities of their own, some ofwhich survived as religious sects long after the extinction of themain movement. 

In the earlier years of the fourth decade of the century, however, achange came over a considerable section of the movement. In Centraland South-eastern Germany, notably in the Moravian territories, barring isolated individuals here and there, the Anabaptist partycontinued to maintain its attitude of non-resistance and thevoluntariness of association which characterized it at first. Thefearful waves of persecution, however, which successively swept overit were successful at last in partially checking its progress. Atlength the only places in this part of the empire where it succeededin retaining any effective organization was in the Moravianterritories, where persecution was less strong and the communitiesmore closely knit together than elsewhere. Otherwise persecution hadplayed sad havoc with the original Anabaptist groups throughoutCentral Europe. 

Meanwhile a movement had sprung up in Western and Northern Germany, following the course of the Rhine Valley, that effectually threw theolder movement of Southern and Eastern Germany into the background. These earlier movements remained essentially religious andtheological, owing, as Cornelius points out (_Münsterische Aufruhr_, vol. Ii. P. 74), to the fact that they came immediately after theoverthrow of the great political movement of 1552. But although theolder Anabaptism did not itself take political shape, it succeeded inkeeping alive the tendencies and the enthusiasm out of which, underfavourable circumstances, a political movement inevitably grows. Theresult was, as Cornelius further observes, an agitation of such asweeping character that the fourth decade of the sixteenth centuryseemed destined to realize the ideals which the third decade hadstriven for in vain. 

The new direction in Anabaptism began in the rich and powerfulImperial city of Strassburg, where peculiar circumstances afforded theBrethren a considerable amount of toleration. It was in the year 1526that Anabaptism first made its appearance in Strassburg. It wasAnabaptism of the original type and conducted on the oldtheologico-ethical lines. But early in the year 1529 there arrived inStrassburg a much-travelled man, a skinner by trade, by name MelchiorHoffmann. He had been an enthusiastic adherent of the Reformation, andit was not long before he joined the Strassburg Anabaptists and madehis mark in their community. Owing to his personal magnetism andoratorical gifts, Melchior soon came to be regarded as a speciallyordained prophet and to have acquired corresponding influence. After afew months Hoffmann seems to have left Strassburg for a propagandisttour along the Rhine. The tour, apparently, had great success, theBaptist communities being founded in all important towns as far asHolland, in which latter country the doctrines spread rapidly. TheAnabaptism, however, taught by Melchior and his disciples did notinclude the precept of patient submission to wrong which was such aprominent characteristic of its earlier phase. 

Some time after his reception into the Anabaptist body at Strassburg, Hoffmann, while in most other points accepting the prevalent doctrinesof the Brethren, broke entirely loose from the doctrine ofnon-resistance, maintaining, in theory at least, the right of theelect to employ the sword against the worldly authorities, "thegodless, " "the enemies of the saints. " It was predicted, hemaintained, that a two-edged sword should be given into the hands ofthe saints to destroy the "mystery of iniquity, " the existingprincipalities and powers, and the time was now at hand when thisprophecy should be fulfilled. The new movement in the North-west, inthe lower Rhenish districts, and the adjacent Westphalia sprang up andextended itself, therefore, under the domination of this idea of thereign of the saints in the approaching millennium and of the notionthat passive non-resistance, whilst for the time being a duty, onlyremained so until the coming of the Lord should give the signal forthe saints to rise and join in the destruction of the kingdoms ofthis world and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God on earth. Hoffmann's whole learning seems to have been limited to the Bible, butthis he knew from cover to cover. A diffusion of Luther's translationof the Bible had produced a revolution. The poorer classes, who wereable to read at all, pored over the Bible, together with such populartracts or pamphlets commenting thereon, or treating current socialquestions in the light of Biblical story and teaching, as came intotheir hands. The followers of the new movement in question acquiredthe name of Melchiorites. Hoffmann now published a book explanatory ofhis ideas, called _The Ordinance of God_, which had an enormouspopularity. It was followed up by other writings, amplifying anddefending the main thesis it contained. 

Outwardly the Melchiorite communities of the North-west had the samepeaceful character as those of South Germany and Moravia, holding asthey did in the main the same doctrines. It was ominous, however, thatMelchior Hoffmann was proclaimed as the prophet Elijah returnedaccording to promise. Up to 1533 Strassburg continued to be regardedas the chief seat of Anabaptism, especially by Melchior and hisdisciples. It was, they declared, to be the New Jerusalem, from whichthe saints should march out to conquer the world. Melchior, on hisreturn journey to Strassburg from his journey northwards, proclaimedthe end of 1533 as the date of the second advent and the inaugurationof the reign of the saints. Owing to the excitement among the poorerpopulation of the town consequent upon Hoffmann's preaching, theprophet was arrested and imprisoned in one of the towers of the citywall. But 1533 came and went without the Lord or His saints appearing, while poor Hoffmann remained confined in the tower of the city wall. 

Meanwhile the new Anabaptism spread and fermented along the Rhine, andespecially in Holland. In the latter country its chief exponent was amaster baker at Harleem, by name Jan Matthys, who seems to have been aborn leader of men. While preaching essentially the same doctrines asHoffmann, with Matthys a Holy War, in a literal sense, was placed inthe forefront of his teaching. With him there was to be no delay. Itwas the duty of all the Brethren to show their zeal by at once seizingthe sword of sharpness and mowing down the godless therewith. In thissense Matthys completed the transformation begun by Hoffmann. Melchiorhad indeed rejected the non-resistance doctrine in its absolute form, but he does not appear in his teaching to have uniformly emphasizedthe point, and certainly did not urge the destruction of the godlessas an immediate duty to be fulfilled without delay. With him wasalways the suggestion, expressed or implied, of waiting for the signalfrom heaven, the coming of the Lord, before proceeding to action. WithMatthys there was no need for waiting, even for a day; the time wasnot merely at hand, it had already come. His influence among theBrethren was immense. If Melchior Hoffmann had been Elijah, JanMatthys was Elisha, who should bring his work to a conclusion. 

Among Matthys' most intimate followers was Jan Bockelson, from Leyden. Bockelson was a handsome and striking figure. He was the illegitimateson of one Bockel, a merchant and Bürgermeister of Saevenhagen, by apeasant woman from the neighbourhood of Münster, who was in hisservice. After Jan's birth Bockel married the woman and bought her herfreedom from the villein status that was hers by heredity. Jan wastaught the tailoring handicraft at Leyden, but seems to have receivedlittle schooling. His natural abilities, however, were considerable, and he eagerly devoured the religious and propagandist literature ofthe time. Amongst other writings the pamphlets of Thomas Münzerespecially fascinated him. He travelled a good deal, visiting Mechlinand working at his trade for four years in London. Returning home, hethrew himself into the Anabaptist agitation, and, scarcely twenty-fiveyears old, he was won over to the doctrines of Jan Matthys. The latterwith his younger colleague welded the Anabaptist communities inHolland and the adjacent German territories into a well-organizedfederation. They were more homogeneous in theory than those ofSouthern and Eastern Germany, being practically all united on thebasis of the Hoffmann-Matthys propaganda. 

The episcopal town of Münster, in Westphalia, like other places in thethird decade of the sixteenth century, became strongly affected by theReformation. But that the ferment of the time was by no means whollythe outcome of religious zeal, as subsequent historians have persistedin representing it, was recognized by the contemporary heads of theofficial Reformation. Thus, writing to Luther under date August 29, 1530, his satellite, Melanchthon, has the candour to admit that theImperial cities "care not for religion, for their endeavour is onlytoward domination and freedom. " As the principal town of Westphalia atthis time may be reckoned the chief city of the bishopric of Münster, this important ecclesiastical principality was held "immediately ofthe empire. " It had as its neighbours Ost-Friesland, Oldenburg, thebishopric of Osnabrück, the county of Marck, and the duchies of Bergand Cleves. Its territory was half the size of the present province ofWestphalia, and was divided into the upper and lower diocese, whichwere separated by the territory of Fecklenburg. The bishop was aprince of the empire and one of the most important magnates ofNorth-western Germany, but in ecclesiastical matters he was under theArchbishop of Köln. The diocese had been founded by Charles the Great. 

Owing to a succession of events, beginning in 1529, which for thoseinterested we may mention may be found discussed in full detail in_The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists_ (124-71), by the presentwriter, the extreme wing of the Reformation party had early gained theupper hand in the city, and subsequently became fused with the nativeAnabaptists, who were soon reinforced by their co-religionists fromthe country round, as well as from the not far distant Holland; for itshould be said that the Dutch followers of Hoffmann and Matthys hadbeen energetic in carrying their faith into the towns of Westphalia aselsewhere. Without entering in detail into the events leading up toit, it is sufficient for our purpose to state that by a perfectlylawful election, held on February 23, 1534, the Government of Münsterwas reconstituted and the Anabaptists obtained supreme politicalpower. Hearing of the way things were going in Münster, Matthys andhis followers had already taken up their abode in the city a littletime before. The cathedral and other churches were stormed and sackedduring the following days, while all official documents and chartersdealing with the feudal relations of the town were given to the flamesduring the ensuing month. Both the moderate Protestant (Lutheran) andthe Catholic burghers who had remained were indignant at the acts ofdestruction committed, and openly expressed their opposition. Theresult was their expulsion from the city; the condition of beingallowed to remain became now the consent to rebaptism and the formaladoption of Anabaptist principles. 

Münster now took the place Strassburg had previously held as therallying point of the Anabaptist faithful, whence a crusade againstthe Powers of the world was to issue forth. The Government of Münster, though it officially consisted of the two Bürgermeisters and the newCouncil, to a man all zealous Anabaptists, left the real power andinitiative in all measures in the hands of Jan Matthys and of hisdisciple, Jan Bockelson, of Leyden. The reign of the saints was nowfairly begun. Various attempts at an organized communism were made, but these appear to have been only partially successful. One day JanMatthys with twenty companions, in an access of fanatical devotion, made a sortie from the town towards the bishop's camp. Needless tosay, the party were all killed. The great leader dead, Jan Bockelsonbecame naturally the chief of the city and head of the movement. 

Bockelson proved in every way a capable successor to Matthys. A newConstitution was now given by Bockelson and the Dutchmen, acting ashis prophets and preachers. It was embodied in thirty-nine articles, and one of its chief features was the transference of power to twelveelders, the number being suggested by the twelve tribes of Israel. Theidea of reliving the life of the "chosen people, " as depicted in theOld Testament, showed itself in various ways, amongst others by thenotorious edict establishing polygamy. This measure, however, as KarlKautsky has shown, there is good reason for thinking was probablyinduced by the economic necessity of the time, and especially by theenormous excess of the female over the male population of the city. Otherwise the Münsterites, like the Anabaptists generally, gaveevidence of favouring asceticism in sexual matters. 

Considerations of space prevent us from going into further detail ofthe inner life of Münster under the Anabaptist regime during the siegeat the hands of its overlord, the prince-bishop. This will be foundgiven at length in the work already mentioned. As time went on faminebegan to attack the city. 

It is sufficient for our purpose to state that on the night of June 24, 1535, the city was betrayed and that in a few hours the free-lances ofthe bishop were streaming in through all the gates. The street fightingwas desperate; the Anabaptists showed a desperate courage, even womenjoining in the struggle, hurling missiles from the windows upon theirfoes beneath. By midday on the 25th the city of Münster, the New Zion, passed over once more into the power of its feudal lord, Franz vonWaldeck, and the reign of the saints had come to an end. The vengeanceof the conquerors was terrible; all alike, irrespective of age or sex, were involved in an indiscriminate butchery. The three leaders, Bockelson, Krechting, and Knipperdollinck, after being carried roundcaptives as an exhibition through the surrounding country, were, somemonths afterwards, on January 22, 1536, executed, after being mosthorribly tortured. Their bodies were subsequently suspended in threecages from the top of the tower of the Lamberti church. The three cageswere left undisturbed until a few years ago, when the old tower, havingbecome structurally unsafe, was pulled down and replaced, withquestionable taste, by an ordinary modern steeple, on which, however, the original cages may still be seen. A papal legate, sent on a missionto Münster shortly after the events in question, relates that as he andhis retinue neared the latter town "more and more gibbets and wheelsdid we see on the highways and in the villages, where the falseprophets and Anabaptists had suffered for their sins. "

The Münster incident was the culmination of the Anabaptist movement. After the catastrophe the militant section rapidly declined. It didnot die out, however, until towards the end of the century. The lastwe hear of it was in 1574, when a formidable insurrection took placeagain in Westphalia, under the leadership of one Wilhelmson, the sonof one of the escaped Anabaptist preachers of Münster. The movementlasted for five years. It was finally suppressed and Wilhelmson burnedalive at Cleves on March 5, 1580. Meanwhile, soon after the fall ofMünster, the party split asunder, a moderate section forming, whichshortly after came under the leadership of Menno Simon. This section, which soon became the majority of the party, under the name ofMennonites, settled down into a mere religious sect. In fact, towardsthe end of the sixteenth century the Anabaptist communities on thecontinent of Europe, from Moravia on the one hand to the extremeNorth-west of Germany on the other, showed a tendency to develop intolaw-abiding and prosperous religious organizations, in many casesbeing officially recognized by the authorities. 

The Anabaptist revolt of the fourth decade of the sixteenth century, though it may be regarded partly as a continuation or recrudescence, showed some differences from the peasant revolt of some yearspreviously. The peasant rebellion, which reached its zenith in 1525, was predominantly an agrarian movement, notwithstanding that it hadhad its echo among the poorer classes of the towns. The Anabaptistmovement proper, which culminated in the Münster "reign of the saints"in 1534-5, was predominantly a townsman's movement, notwithstandingthat it had a considerable support from among the peasantry. TheAnabaptists' leaders were not, as in the case of the Peasants' War, in the main drawn from the class of the "man that wields the hoe" (toparaphrase the phraseology of the time); they were tailors, smiths, bakers, shoemakers, or carpenters. They belonged, in short, to theclass of the organized handicraftsmen and journeymen who worked withincity walls. A prominent figure in both movements was, however, theex-priest or teacher. The ideal, or, if you will, the Utopian, elementin the movement of Melchior Hoffmann, Jan Matthys, and JanBockelson--the element which expressed the social discontent of thetime in the guise of its prevalent theological conceptions--nowoccupied the first place, while in the earlier movement it was merelysporadic. 

After the close of the sixteenth century Anabaptism lost all politicalimportance on the continent of Europe. It had, however, a certainafterglow in this country during the following century, which lastedover the times of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, and may betraced in the movements of the "Levellers, " the "Fifth Monarchy men, "and even among the earlier Quakers. 

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Those interested will find the events briefly sketched in thepresent chapter exhaustively treated, with full elaboration of detail, in the two previous volumes of mine, _The Peasant's War in Germany_ and_The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists_ (Messrs. George Allen & Unwin). 

[24] Amongst the curiosities of literature may be included thetranslation of the title of this manifesto by Prof. T. M. Lindsay, D. D. , in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 9th edition (Article, "Luther"). TheGerman title is "Wider die morderischen und rauberischen Rotten derBauern. " Prof. Lindsay's translation is "_Against the murdering, robbingRats [sic] of Peasants_"!

CHAPTER IX

POST-MEDIÆVAL GERMANY

We have in the preceding chapters sought to give a general view of thesocial life, together with the inner political and economic movements, of Germany during that closing period of the Middle Ages which isgenerally known as the era of the Reformation. With the definiteestablishment of the Reformation and of the new political and economicconditions that came with it in many of the rising States of Germany, the Middle Ages may be considered as definitely coming to an end, notwithstanding that, of course, a considerable body of mediævalconditions of social, political, and economic life continued tosurvive all over Europe, and certainly not least in Germany. 

We have now to take a general and, so to say, panoramic view embracingthree centuries and a half, dating from approximately the middle ofthe sixteenth century to the present time. Our presentation, owing toexigencies of space, will necessarily take the form of a mere sketchof events and general tendencies, but a sketch that will, we hope, besufficient to connect periods and to enable the reader to understandbetter than before the forces that have built up modern Germany andhave moulded the national character. In this long period of more thanthree centuries there are two world-historic events, or rather seriesof events, which stand out in bold relief as the causes which havemoulded Germany directly, and the whole of Europe indirectly, up tothe present day. These two epoch-making historical factors are (1) theThirty Years' War and (2) the Rise of the Prussian Monarchy. 

Owing to the success of Protestantism, with its two forms ofLutheranism and Calvinism in various German territories, the frictionbecame chronic between Catholic and Protestant interests throughoutthe length and breadth of Central Europe. The Emperor himself waschosen, as we know, by three ecclesiastical electors, the Archbishopsof Köln, Trier, and Mainz, and by four princes, the Pfalzgraf, calledin English the Elector Palatine, the Markgraves of Saxony andBrandenburg, and the King of Bohemia. The princes and otherpotentates, owing immediate allegiance to the empire alone, werepractically independent sovereigns. The Reichstag, instituted in thefifteenth century, attendance at which was strictly limited to theseimmediate vassals of the empire, had proved of little effect. This wasshown when in the middle of the sixteenth century Protestantism hadestablished itself in the favour of the mass of the German peoples. Itwas vetoed by the Reichstag, with its powerful contingent ofecclesiastical members. Of course here the economic side of thequestion played a great part. The ecclesiastical potentates and thosefavourable to them dreaded the spread of Protestantism in view of thesecularization of religious domains and fiefs. This, notwithstandingthat there were not wanting bishops and abbots themselves who were notindisposed, as princes of the empire, to appropriate the Church lands, of which they were the trustees, for their own personal possessions. After a short civil war an arrangement was come to at the Treaty ofPassau in 1552, which was in the main ratified by the Reichstag heldat Augsburg in 1555 (the so-called Peace of Augsburg); but thearrangement was artificial and proved itself untenable as a permanentinstrument of peace. 

During the latter part of the sixteenth century two magnates of theempire, the Duke of Bavaria on the Catholic side and the Calvinist, Christian of Anhalt, on the Protestant, played the chief rôle, theLutheran Markgrave of Saxony taking up a moderate position asmediator. Of the Reichstag of Augsburg it should be said that it hadignored the Calvinist section of the Protestant party altogether, onlyrecognizing the Lutheran. In 1608 the Protestant Union, which embracedLutherans and Calvinists alike, was founded under the leadership ofChristian of Anhalt. It was most powerful in Southern Germany. Thiswas countered immediately by the foundation under Maximilian, Duke ofBavaria, of a Catholic League. The friction, which was now becomingacute, went on increasing till the actual outbreak of the ThirtyYears' War in 1618. The signal for the latter was given by theBohemian revolution in the spring of that year. 

The Thirty Years' War, as it is termed, which was really a series ofwars, naturally falls into five distinct periods, each representing inmany respects a separate war in itself. The first two years of the war(1618-20) is occupied with the Bohemian revolt against the attempt ofthe Emperor to force Catholicism upon the Bohemian people and with itsimmediate consequences. It was accentuated by the attempt of theEmperor Matthias to compel them to accept the Archduke Ferdinand asKing. This attempt was countered through the election by the Bohemiansof the Pfalzgraf, Friedrich V (the son-in-law of James I of England), who was called the Winter King from the fact that his reign lastedonly during the winter months; for though the Protestant Union, led byCount Thurn, had won several victories in 1618 and even threatenedVienna, the Austrian power was saved by Tilly and the Catholic Leaguewhich came to its rescue. Many of the Protestant States, moreover, were averse to the Palatine Friedrich's acceptance of the Bohemiancrown. The Bohemian movement was ultimately crushed by a force sentfrom Spain, under the Spanish general Spinola. The final defeat tookplace at the battle of the White Hill, near Prague, November 8, 1620. 

The second period of the war was concerned with the attempt of theCatholic Powers to deprive Friedrich of his Palatine dominions. HereCount Mansfeld, with his mercenary army of free-lances, aided byChristian of Brunswick and others on the side of Friedrich and theProtestants, defeated Tilly in 1622. But later on Tilly and theImperialists by a series of victories conquered the Palatinate, whichwas bestowed upon Maximilian of Bavaria. Mansfeld, notwithstandingthat he had some successes later in the year 1622, could noteffectually redeem the situation, Brunswick's army being entirelyrouted by Tilly in the following year at the battle of Stadtlohn, which virtually ended this particular campaign. 

The third period of the war, from 1624 to 1629, is characterized bythe intervention of the Powers outside the immediate sphere of Germanor Imperial interests. France, under Richelieu, became concerned atthe growing power of the Hapsburgs, while James I of England began toshow anxiety at his son-in-law's adverse fortunes, though withoutachieving any successful intervention. The chief feature of thiscampaign was the entry into the field of Christian IV of Denmark witha powerful army to join Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick ininvading the Imperial and Austrian territories. But the savageries andexcesses of Mansfeld's troops had disgusted and alienated all sides. It was at this time that Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, was appointedgeneral of the Imperial troops, and soon after succeeded in completelyrouting Mansfeld at the battle of Dessau Bridge in 1626. Four monthslater Tilly completely defeated Christian IV and his Danes at Lutter. Wallenstein, on his side, followed up his success, driving Mansfeldinto Hungary. Mansfeld, in spite of some fugitive successes in theAustrian dominions in the course of his retreat, was compelled byWallenstein to evacuate Hungary, shortly after which he died. Thecampaign ended with the Peace of Lubeck in 1629. 

The action of the Emperor Ferdinand in attempting to enforce therestitution of Church lands in North Germany was the proximate causeof the next great campaign, which constitutes the fourth period of theThirty Years' War (1630-36). The immediate occasion was, however, Wallenstein's seizure of certain towns in Mecklenburg, over which heclaimed rights by Imperial grant two years before. This, which may beregarded as the greatest period of the Thirty Years' War, wascharacterized by the appearance on the scene of Gustavus Adolphus, theSwedish King. He was not in time, however, to prevent the sacking ofMagdeburg by the troops of Tilly and Poppenheim. The former, nevertheless, was defeated by the Swedes at the important battle ofBreitenfeld in 1631. The following year the Imperial army was againdefeated on the Lach. Thereupon Gustavus occupied München, though hewas subsequently compelled by Wallenstein to evacuate the city. Thelast great victory of Gustavus was at Lützen in 1632, at which battlethe great leader met his death. Wallenstein, who was now in favour ofa policy of peace and political reconstruction, was assassinated in1634 with the connivance of the Emperor. On September 6th of the sameyear the Protestant army, under Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, sustained anoverwhelming defeat at Nördlingen, and the Peace of Prague thefollowing year ended the campaign. 

The fifth period, from 1636 to 1648, has, as its central interest, theactive intervention of France in the Central European struggle. TheSwedes, notwithstanding the death of their King, continued to havesome notable successes, and even approached to within strikingdistance of Vienna. But Richelieu now became the chief arbiter ofevents. The French generals Condé and Turenne invaded Germany and theNetherlands. Victories were won by the new armies at Rocroi, Thionville, and at Nördlingen, but Vienna was not captured. TheImperial troops were, however, again defeated at Zumarshauen by Condé, who also repelled an attempted diversion in the shape of a Spanishinvasion of France at the battle of Lens in the spring of 1648. TheThirty Years' War was finally ended in October of the same year atMünster, by the celebrated Treaty of Westphalia. 

The above is a skeleton sketch in a few words of the chief features ofthat long and complicated series of diplomatic and military eventsknown to history as the Thirty Years' War. [25]

The Thirty Years' War had far-reaching and untold consequences onGermany itself and indirectly on the course of modern civilizationgenerally. For close upon a generation Central Europe had been ravagedfrom end to end by hostile and plundering armies. Rapine anddestruction were, for near upon a third of the century, the common lotof the Germanic peoples from north to south and from east to west. Populations were as helpless as sheep before the brutal, criminalsoldiery, recruited in many cases from the worst elements of everyEuropean country. The excesses of Mansfeld's mercenary army in theearlier stages of the war created widespread horror. But the defeatand death of Mansfeld brought no alleviation. The troops ofWallenstein proved no better in this respect than those of Mansfeld. On the contrary, with every year the war went on its horrorsincreased, while every trace of principle in the struggle fell moreand more into the background. Everywhere was ruin. 

The population became by the time the war had ended a mere fraction ofwhat it was at the opening of the seventeenth century. Some idea ofthe state of things may be gathered from the instance of Augsburg, which during its siege by the Imperialists was reduced from 70, 000 to10, 000 inhabitants. What happened to the great commercial city of theFuggers was taking place on a scale greater or less, according to thedistrict, all over German territory. We read of towns and villagesthat were pillaged more than a dozen times in a year. This terrificdepopulation of the country, the reader may well understand, had vastresults on its civilization. The whole great structure of Mediæval andRenaissance Germany--its literature, art, and social life--was inruins. At the close of the seventeenth century the old German culturehad gone and the new had not yet arisen. But of this we shall havemore to say in the next chapter. For the present we are chieflyconcerned to give a brief sketch of the second great epoch-makingevent, or rather train of events, which conditioned the foundation anddevelopment of modern Germany. We refer, of course, to the rise of thePrussian monarchy. 

We should premise that the Prussians are the least German of all thepopulations of what constitutes modern Germany. They are more thanhalf Slavs. In the early Middle Ages the Mark of Brandenburg, thecentre and chief province of the modern Prussian State, was anoutlying offshoot of the mediæval Holy Roman Empire of the Germannation, surrounded by barbaric tribes, Slav and Teuton. The chief Slavpeople were the Borussians, from which the name "Prussian" was acorruption. The first outstanding historic fact concerning theseBaltic lands is that a certain Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, at the endof the tenth century went north on a mission of enterprise forconverting the Prussian heathen. The neighbouring Christian prince, the Duke of Poland, who had presumably suffered much from incursionsof these pagan Slavs, offered him every encouragement. The adventureended, however, before long in the death of Adalbert at the hands ofthese same pagan Slavs. 

The first indication of the existence of a Mark of Brandenburg withits Markgraves is in the eleventh century. There is, however, littledefinite historical information concerning them. The first of theseMarkgraves to attract attention was Albrecht the Bear, one of theso-called Ascanian line, the family hailing from the Harz Mountains. Albrecht was a remarkable man for his time in every way. Under him theMarkgravate of Brandenburg was raised to be an electorate of theempire. The Markgrave thus became a prince of the empire. It wasAlbrecht the Bear who first introduced a limited measure of peace andorder into the hitherto anarchic condition of the Mark and itsadjacent territories. The Ascanian line continued till 1319, and wasfollowed by a period of political anarchy and disturbance, untilfinally Friedrich, Count of Hohenzollern, acquired the electorate, andbecame known as the Elector Friedrich I. Meanwhile the Order of theTeutonic Knights, who earlier began their famous crusade against theBorussian heathens, had established themselves on the territories nowknown as East and West Prussia. In spite of this fact and of the forlong time dominant power of their Polish neighbours, the Hohenzollernrulers continued to acquire increased power and fresh territories. 

At the Reformation Albrecht, a scion of the Hohenzollern family, whohad been elected Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, adoptedProtestantism and assumed the title of Duke of Prussia. Finally, in1609, the then Elector of Brandenburg, John Sigismund, through hismarriage with Ann, daughter and heiress of Albrecht Friedrich, Duke ofPrussia, came into possession of the whole of Prussia proper, togetherwith other adjacent territories. The Prussian lands suffered muchthrough the Thirty Years' War during the reign of John Sigismund'ssuccessor, George Wilhelm. But the latter's son, Friedrich Wilhelm, the so-called Great Elector, succeeded by his ability in repairing theravages the war had made and raising the electorate immensely inpolitical importance. He left at his death, in 1688, the financialcondition of the country in a sound state, with an effective army of38, 000 men. Friedrich I, who followed him, held matters together andgot Prussia promoted to the rank of a kingdom in 1701. His son, Friedrich Wilhelm I, by rigid economies succeeded in raising thefinancial condition of the kingdom to a still higher level. Themilitary power of the monarchy he also developed considerably, and isfamous in history for his mania for tall soldiers. 

We now come to the real founder of the Prussian monarchy as a greatEuropean Power, Friedrich Wilhelm I's son, who succeeded his father in1740 as Friedrich II, and who is known to history as Friedrich theGreat. 

Friedrich no sooner came to the throne than he started on anaggressive expansionist policy for Prussia. The opportunity presenteditself a few months after his accession by the dispute as to thePragmatic Sanction and Maria Theresa's right to the throne of Austria. In the two wars which immediately followed, the Prussian army overranthe whole of Silesia, and the peace of 1745 left the Prussian King inpossession of the entire country. East Friesland had already beenabsorbed the year before on the death of the last Duke without issue. In spite of the exhaustion of men and money in the two Silesian wars, Friedrich found himself ready with both men and money eleven yearslater, in 1756, to embark upon what is known as the Seven Years' War. Though without acquiring fresh territory by this war, the gain inprestige was so great that the Prussian monarchy virtually assumed thehegemony of North Germany, becoming the rival of Austria for thedomination of Central Europe, the position in which it remained formore than a century afterwards. Nevertheless, after this succession ofwars the condition of the country was deplorable. It was obvious thatthe first thing to do was the work of internal resuscitation. Theextraordinary ability and energy of the King saved the internalsituation. Agriculture, industry, and commerce were re-established andreorganized. It was now that the cast-iron system of bureaucraticadministration, where not actually created, was placed on a firmfoundation. But in external affairs Prussia continued to earn itscharacter as the robber State of Europe _par excellence_. 

In 1772 Friedrich joined with Austria in the first partition ofPoland, acquiring the whole of West Prussia as his share. A few yearslater Friedrich formed an anti-Austrian league of German princes, under Prussian leadership, which was the first overt sign of theconflict for supremacy in Germany between Prussia and Austria, whichlasted for wellnigh a century. By the time of his death--August 7, 1786--Friedrich had increased Prussian territory to nearly 75, 000square miles and between five and six millions of population. 

Under Friedrich's nephew, Friedrich Wilhelm II, while the rigour ofbureaucratic administration, controlled by a monarchical absolutism, continued and was even accentuated, the absence of the able hand ofFriedrich the Great soon made itself apparent. As regards externalpolicy, however, Prussia, while allowing territories on the left bankof the Rhine to go to France, eagerly saw to the increase of her owndominions in the east to the extent of nearly doubling her superficialarea by her participation in the second and third partitions ofPoland, which took place in 1783 and 1795 respectively. These externalsuccesses, or rather acts of spoliation, were, notwithstanding, counter-balanced at home by a degeneracy alike of the civilbureaucracy and of the army. The country internally, both as regardsmorale and effectiveness, had sunk far below its level under Friedrichthe Great. This showed itself during the great Napoleonic wars, whenPrussia had to undergo more than one humiliation at the hands ofBuonaparte, culminating in October 1806 with the collapse of thePrussian armies at Jena and Auerstädt. The entry of Napoleon intriumph into Berlin followed. At the Peace of Tilsit, in 1807, Friedrich-Wilhelm had to sign away half his kingdom and to consent tothe payment of a heavy war indemnity, pending which the French troopsoccupied the most important fortresses in the country. 

Following upon this moment of deepest national humiliation comes theperiod of the Ministers Stein and Hardenberg, of the enthusiasticadjurations to patriotism of Fischer and others, and of the activityof the "League of Virtue" (_Tugendbund_). It is difficult tounderstand the enthusiasm that could be aroused for the rehabilitationof an absolutist, bureaucratic, and militarist State, such as Prussiawas--a State in which civil and political liberty was conspicuous byits absence. But the fact undoubtedly remains that the men in questiondid succeed in pumping up a strong patriotic feeling and desire tofree the country from the yoke of the foreigner, even if that onlymeant increased domestic tyranny. It must be admitted, however, thatas a matter of fact not inconsiderable internal reforms were owing tothe leading men of this time. Stein abolished serfdom, and in somerespects did away with the legal distinction of classes, therebypaving the way for the rise of the middle class, which at that timemeant a progressive step. He also conferred rights of self-governmentupon municipalities. Hardenberg inaugurated measures intended toameliorate the condition of the peasants, while Wilhelm von Humboldtestablished the thorough if somewhat mechanical education system whichwas subsequently extended throughout Germany. He also helped to foundthe University of Berlin in 1809. 

But at the same time the curse of Prussia--militarism--was riveted onthe people through the reorganization of the Prussian army by thosetwo able military bureaucrats, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. In 1813Prussia concluded at Kalicsh an alliance with Russia, which Austriajoined. In the war which followed Prussia was severely strained bylosses in men and money. But at the Congress of Vienna the Prussiankingdom received back nearly, but not quite, all it lost in 1807. Theacquirement, however, of new and valuable territories in Westphaliaand along the Rhine, besides Thuringia and the province of Saxony, more than compensated for the loss of certain Slav districts in theeast, as thereby the way was prepared for the ultimate despotism ofthe Prussian King over all Germany. The success of Prussian diplomacyin enslaving these erstwhile independent German lands in 1815 wascrucial for the subsequent direction of Prussian policy. 

It is time now to return once more to the internal conditions in thePrussian State now dominant over a large part of Northern Germany. AConstitution had been more than once talked of, but the despotism withits bureaucratic machinery had remained. Now, after the conclusion ofthe Napoleonic wars and the re-drawing of the Prussian frontier linesby the peace of 1815, the matter assumed an urgency it had not hadbefore. Following upon proclamations and promises, a patent wasaddressed to the new Saxon provinces granting a national _Landtag_, orDiet, for the whole country. The drawing up of the Constitution thusproclaimed in principle gave rise to heated conflicts. There was, asyet, no proletariat proper in Prussia, and for that matter hardly anyin the rest of Germany. The handicraft system of production, and eventhe mediæval guild system, slightly modified, prevailed throughout thecountry. The middle class proper was small and unimportant, and henceLiberalism, the theoretical expression of that class, only foundarticulate utterance through men of the professions. 

The new Prussian territories in the west were largely tinctured withprogressive ideas originating in the French Revolution, while the eastwas dominated by reactionary feudal landowners, the notorious Junkerclass--a class special to East Prussian territories, including theeastern portion of the Mark of Brandenburg--whom the moderateConservative Minister Stein himself characterized as "heartless, wooden, half-educated people, only good to turn into corporals orcalculating-machines. " This class then, as ever since, opposed anincrease of popular control and the progress of free institutions withmight and main. Friction arose between the Government and Liberalgymnastic societies and students' clubs. This culminated in thefestival on the Wartburg in October 1818, when a bonfire was made of abook of police laws and Uhlan stays and a corporal's stick. It wasfollowed the next year by the assassination of the dramatist andpolitical spy Kotzebue by the student Sand. 

Panic seized the reactionists, and the Austrian Minister Metternich, one of the chief pillars of absolutist principles in Europe, inducedthe King to commit himself to the Austrian system of repression. In1821 the Reactionary party succeeded in getting the projectedConstitution abandoned and the bureaucratic system of provincialestates established by royal warrant two years later (1823). ThePrussian police with their spies then became omnipotent, and aremorseless persecution of all holding Liberal or democratic viewsensued, the best-known writers on the popular side no less than therank and file being arbitrarily arrested and kept in prison on any orno pretext. The amalgamation of the new districts into the Prussianbureaucratic system was not accomplished without resistance. The Rhineprovinces especially, accustomed to easy-going government and lighttaxation under the old ecclesiastical princes, kicked vigorouslyagainst the Prussian jack-boot. The discontent was so widespreadindeed that some concessions had to be made, such as the retention ofthe Code Napoléon. What created most resentment, however, was theenactment of 1814, which enforced compulsory universal militaryservice throughout the monarchy. Friedrich Wilhelm also undertook todragoon his subjects in the matter of religion, amalgamating theLutherans with other reformed bodies, under the name of the"Evangelical Church. "

In foreign politics, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, during the Napoleonic wars, Prussia, as yet hardly recovered from herdefeats under Buonaparte, almost entirely followed the lead ofAustria. But perhaps the most important measure of the PrussianGovernment at this time was the foundation of the famous Zollverein orCustoms Union of various North German States in 1834. The far-reachingcharacter of this measure was only shown later, being, in fact, themeans and basis by and on which the political and military ascendancyof Prussia over all Germany was assured. Friedrich Wilhelm III, whodied on June 7, 1840, was succeeded by his son, Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The new reign began with an appearance of Liberalism by a generalamnesty for political offences. Reaction, however, soon raised itshead again, and Friedrich Wilhelm IV, in spite of his varnish ofphilosophical and literary tastes, was soon seen to be _au fond_ asreactionary as his predecessors. The conflict between the reaction ofthe Government and the now widely spread Liberal and democraticaspirations of the people resulted in Prussia (as it did under similarcircumstances in other countries) in the outbreak of the revolution of1848. 

It is necessary at this stage to take a brief survey of the politicalhistory of the Germanic States of Europe generally from the time ofthe Peace of Vienna, in 1815, onwards, in order to understand fullythe rôle played by the Prussian monarchy in German history since 1848;for from this time the history of Prussia becomes more and more boundup with that of the German peoples as a whole. During the Napoleonicwars Germany, as every one knows, was, generally speaking, in the gripof the French Imperial power. To follow the vicissitudes andfluctuations of fortune throughout Central Europe during these yearslies outside our present purpose. We are here chiefly concerned withthe political development from the Treaty of Vienna, as signed on June9, 1815, onward. The Treaty of Vienna completed the work begun byNapoleon--represented by the extinction of the mediæval "Holy RomanEmpire of the German nation" in 1806--in making an end of thepolitical configuration of the German peoples which had grown upduring the Middle Ages and survived, in a more or less decayedcondition, since the Peace of Westphalia, which concluded the ThirtyYears' War. The three hundred separate States of which Germany hadoriginally consisted were now reduced to thirty-nine, a number which, by the extinction of sundry minor governing lines, was before longfurther reduced to thirty-five. These States constituted themselvesinto a new German Confederation, with a Federal Assembly, meeting atFrankfurt-on-the-Main. The new Federal Council, or Assembly, however, soon revealed itself as but the tool of the princes and a bulwark ofreaction. 

The revolution of 1848 was throughout Germany an expression of populardiscontent and of democratic and even, to a large extent, ofrepublican aspirations. The princely authorities endeavoured to stemthe wave of popular indignation and revolutionary enthusiasm byrecognizing a provisional self-constituted body, and sanctioning theelection of a national representative Parliament at Frankfurt in placeof the effete Federal Council. The Archduke of Austria, who waselected head of the new, hastily organized National Government, wasnot slow to use his newly acquired power in the interests of reaction, thereby exciting the hostility of all the progressive elements in theParliament of Frankfurt. When after some months it became obvious thatthe anti-Progressive parties had gained the upper hand alike inAustria and Prussia, the friction between the Democratic andConstitutional parties became increasingly bitter. 

The Prussian Government meanwhile took advantage of the state ofaffairs to stir up the Schleswig-Holstein question, so-called, drivingthe Danes out of Schleswig, an insurrectionary movement in Holsteinhaving been already suppressed by the Danish King. Prussia, alarmedby the attitude of the Powers, agreed to withdraw her troops from theoccupied territories without consulting the Frankfurt Parliament, anact which involved Friedrich Wilhelm in conflict with the latter. Theissues arising out of this dispute made it plain to every one that theParliament of all Germany was impotent to enforce its decrees againstone of the German Powers possessed of a preponderating militarystrength. By the end of 1848 the revolution in Vienna was completelycrushed and a strongly reactionary Government appointed by the newEmperor. Meanwhile in Berlin the Junkers and the reactionariesgenerally had already again come into power, a crisis having beencaused by the attempt of the democratic section of the PrussianNational Assembly, convened by the King in March, to reorganize thearmy on a popular democratic basis. We need scarcely say the Prussianarmy has been the tool of Junkerdom and reaction ever since. 

The last despairing attempt of the Frankfurt Parliament to give effectto the national Germanic unity, which all patriotic Germans professedto be eager for, was the offer of the Imperial crown to the King ofPrussia. Against this act, however, nearly half the members--i. E. Allthe advanced parties in the Assembly--protested by refusing to takeany part in it They had also declined to be associated with a previousmotion for the exclusion of German Austria from the new nationalunity, in the interest of Prussian ascendancy. Both these reactionaryproposals, as we all know, at a later date became the corner-stones ofthe new Prusso-German unity of Bismark's creation. On this occasion, however, the Prussian King refused to accept the office at the handsof the impotent Frankfurt Assembly, which latter soon afterwards brokeup and eventually "petered out. " Meanwhile Prussian troops, led by thereactionary military caste, were employed in the congenial task ofsuppressing popular movements with the sword in Baden, Saxony, andPrussia itself. 

The two rival bulwarks of reaction, Prussia and Austria, were now soalarmed at the revolutionary dangers they had passed through that, forthe nonce forgetting their rivalry, they cordially joined together inreviving, in the interests of the counter-revolution, the oldreactionary Federal Assembly, which had never been formally dissolved, as it ought to have been on the election of the Frankfurt Parliament. Reaction now went on apace. Liberties were curtailed and rights gainedin 1848 were abolished in most of the smaller States. Henceforth theFederal Assembly became the theatre of the two great rival powers ofthe Germanic Confederation. Both alike strove desperately for thehegemony of Germany. The strength of Prussia, of course, lay generallyin the north, that of Austria in the south. Austria had the advantageof Prussia in the matter of prestige. Prussia, on the other hand, hadthe pull of Austria in the possession of the machinery of the CustomsUnion. In general, however, the dual control of the GermanicConfederation was grudgingly recognized by either party, and onoccasion they acted together. This was notably the case in theSchleswig-Holstein question, which had been smouldering ever since1848, and which came to a crisis in the Danish war of 1864, in whichAustria and Prussia jointly took part. 

Among the most reactionary of the Junker party in the PrussianParliament of 1848 was one Count Otto Bismarck von Schönhausen, subsequently known to history as Prince Bismarck (1815-98). This manstrenuously opposed the acceptance of the Imperial dignity by the Kingof Prussia at the hands of the Frankfurt Parliament in 1849, on theground that it was unworthy of the King of Prussia to accept anyoffice at the hands of the people rather than at those of his peers, the princes of Germany. In 1851 Count von Bismarck was appointed aPrussian representative in the revived princely and aristocraticFederal Assembly. Here he energetically fought the hegemony hithertoexercised by Austria. He continued some years in this capacity, andsubsequently served as Prussian Minister in St. Petersburg and againin Paris. In the autumn of 1862 the new King of Prussia, Wilhelm I, who had succeeded to the throne the previous year, called him back totake over the portfolio of Foreign Affairs and the leadership of theCabinet. Shortly after his accession to power he arbitrarily closedthe Chambers for refusing to sanction his Army Bill. His army schemewas then forced through by the royal fiat alone. On the reopening ofthe Schleswig-Holstein question, owing to the death of the King ofDenmark, German nationalist sentiment was aroused, which Bismarck knewhow to use for the aggrandisement of Prussia. The Danish war, in whichthe two leading German States collaborated and which ended in theirfavour, had as its result a disagreement of a serious nature betweenthese rival, though mutually victorious, Powers. 

In all these events the hand of Bismarck was to be seen. He it was whodominated completely Prussian policy from 1862 onwards. Full of hisschemes for the aggrandisement of Prussia at the expense of Austria, he stirred up and worked this quarrel for all it was worth, theupshot being the Prusso-Austrian War (the so-called Seven Weeks' War)of the summer of 1866. The war was brought about by the arbitrarydissolution of the German Confederation--i. E. The Federal Assembly--inwhich, owing to the alarm created by Prussian insolence andaggression, Austria had the backing of the majority of the States. This step was followed by Bismarck's dispatching an ultimatum toHanover, Saxony, and Hesse Cassel respectively, all of which had votedagainst Prussia in the Federal Assembly, followed, on itsnon-acceptance, by the dispatch of Prussian troops to occupy theStates in question. Hard on this act of brutal violence came thedeclaration of war with Austria. 

At Königgratz the Prussian army was victorious over the Austrians, andhenceforth the hegemony of Central Europe was decided in favour ofPrussia. Austria, under the Treaty of Prague (August 20, 1866), wascompletely excluded from the new organization of German States, inwhich Prussia--i. E. Bismarck--was to have a free hand. The result wasthe foundation of the North German Confederation, under the leadershipof Prussia. It was to have a common Parliament, elected by universalsuffrage and meeting in Berlin. The army, the diplomaticrepresentation, the control of the postal and telegraphic services, were to be under the sole control of the Prussian Government. TheNorth German Confederation comprised the northern and central Statesof Germany. The southern States--Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, etc. --although not included, had been forced into a practical alliancewith Prussia by treaties. The Customs Union was extended until itembraced nearly the whole of Germany. Prussian aggression in Luxemburgproduced a crisis with France in 1867, though the growing tensionbetween Prussia and France was tided over on this occasion. ButBismarck only bided his time. 

The occasion was furnished him by the question of the succession tothe Spanish throne, in July 1870. By means of a falsified telegramBismarck precipitated war, in which Prussia was joined by all theStates of Germany. The subsequent course of events is matter of recenthistory. The establishment of the new Prusso-German empire by thecrowning of Wilhelm I at Versailles, with the empire made hereditaryin the Hohenzollern family, completed the work of Bismarck and thesetting of the Prussian jack-boot on the necks of the German peoples. The Prussian military and bureaucratic systems were now extended toall Germany--in other words, the rest of the German peoples were madevirtually the vassals and slaves of the Prussian monarch. This timethe King of Prussia received the Imperial crown at the hands of thekings, princes, and other hereditary rulers of the various GermanStates. Bismarck was graciously pleased to bestow unity and internalpeace--a Prussian peace--upon Germany on condition of its abasementbefore the Prussian corporal's stick and police-truncheon. Such wasthe united Germany of Bismarck. Germany meant for Bismarck and hisfollowers Prussia, and Prussia meant their own Junker and militarycaste, under the titular headship of the Hohenzollern. 

Yet, strange to say, the peoples of Germany willingly consented, underthe influence of the intoxication of a successful war, to have theirindependence bartered away to Prussia by their rulers. In this unitedGermany of Bismarck--a Germany united under Prussian despotism--theynaïvely saw the realization of the dream of their thinkers and poetssince the time of the Napoleonic wars--which had become more than everan inspiration from 1848 onwards--of an ideal unity of allGerman-speaking peoples as a national whole. It is unquestionable thatmany of these thinkers and poets would have been horrified at thePrusso-Bismarckian "unity" of "blood and iron, " It was not for this, they would have said, that they had laboured and suffered. 

As a conclusion to the present chapter I venture to give a shortsummary of the internal, and especially of the economic, developmentof Prussia since the Franco-German War from an article which appearedin the _English Review_ for December 1914, by Mr. H. M. Hyndman and thepresent writer:--

"From 1871 onwards Prussianized Germany, by far the best-educated, andindustrially and commercially the most progressive, country in Europe, with the enormous advantage of her central position, was, consciouslyand unconsciously, making ready for her next advance. The policy of agood understanding with Russia, maintained for many years, to such anextent that, in foreign affairs, Berlin and St. Petersburg were almostone city, enabled Germany to feel secure against France, while she wasdevoting herself to the extension of her rural and urban powers ofproduction. Never at any time did she neglect to keep her army in aposture of offence. All can now see the meaning of this. 

"Militarism is in no sense necessarily economic. But the strength ofGermany for war was rapidly increased by her success in peace. Fromthe date of the great financial crisis of 1874, and the consequentreorganization of her entire banking system, Germany entered upon thatdetermined and well-thought-out attempt to attain pre-eminence in thetrade and commerce of the world of which we have not yet seen the end. From 1878, when the German High Commissioner, von Rouleaux, stigmatized the exhibits of his countrymen as 'cheap and nasty, 'special efforts were made to use the excellent education and admirablepowers of organization of Germany in this field. The Governmentrendered official and financial help in both agriculture andmanufacture. Scientific training, good and cheap before, was madecheaper and better each year. Railways were used not to foster foreigncompetition, as in Great Britain, by excessive rates of home freight, but to give the greatest possible advantage to German industry inevery department. In more than one rural district the railways wereworked at an apparent loss in order to foster home production, fromwhich the nation derived far greater advantage than such apparentsacrifice entailed. The same system of State help was extended toshipping until the great German liners, one of which, indeed, wasactually subsidized by England, were more than holding their own withthe oldest and most celebrated British companies. 

"Protection, alike in agriculture and in manufacture, bound the wholeempire together in essentially Imperial bonds. Right or wrong intheory--which it is not here necessary to discuss--there can be nodoubt whatever that this policy entirely changed the face of Germany, and rendered her our most formidable competitor in every market. Emigration, which had been proceeding on a vast scale, almost entirelyceased. The savings banks were overflowing with deposits. The positionof the workers was greatly improved. Not only were German Coloniessecured in Africa and Asia, which were more trouble than they wereworth, but very profitable commerce with our own Colonies andDependencies was growing by leaps and bounds, at the expense of theout-of-date but self-satisfied commercialists of Old England. Hencearose a trade rivalry, against which we could not hope to contendsuccessfully in the long run, except by a complete revolution in ourmethods of education and business, to which neither the Government northe dominant class would consent. 

"This remarkable advance in Germany, also, was accompanied by theestablishment of a system of banking, specially directed to theexpansion of national industry and commerce, a system which was cleverenough to use French accumulations, borrowed at a low rate ofinterest, through the German Jews who so largely controlled Frenchfinancial institutions, in order still further to extend their owntrade. It was an admirably organized attempt to conquer theworld-market for commodities, in which the Government, the banks, themanufacturers and the shipowners all worked for the common cause. Meanwhile, both French and English financiers carefully played thegame of their business opponents, and the great English banks devotedtheir attention chiefly to fostering speculation on the StockExchange--a policy of which the Germans took advantage, just beforethe outbreak of war, to an extent not by any means as yet fullyunderstood. 

"Thus, at the beginning of the present year, in spite of thewithdrawal, since the Agadir affair, of very large amounts of Frenchcapital from the German market, Germany had attained to such aposition that only the United States stood on a higher plane in regardto its future in the world of competitive commerce. And this great andincreasing economic strength was, for war purposes, at the disposal ofthe Prussian militarists, if they succeeded in getting the upper handin politics and foreign affairs. "

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Works on the Thirty Years' War are numerous. Many scholarly andexhaustive treatises on various aspects of the subject are, as might beexpected, to be found in German. For general popular reading Schiller'sexcellent piece of literary hack work (translated in Bonn's Library) maystill be consulted, but perhaps the best short general history of thewar with its entanglement of events is that by the late Professor S. R. Gardiner, of Oxford, which forms one of the volumes of Messrs. Longman, Green & Co. 's series entitled "Epochs of Modern History. "

CHAPTER X

MODERN GERMAN CULTURE

It is important to distinguish between the meaning of the German term"Kultur" and that commonly expressed in English by the word "culture. "The word "Kultur" in modern German is simply equivalent to our word"civilization, " whereas the word "culture" in English has a specialmeaning, to wit, that of intellectual attainments. In this chapter weare chiefly concerned with the latter sense of the word. 

Germany had a rich popular literature during the Middle Ages from theredaction of the _Nibelungenlied_ under Charles the Great onwards. Prominent among this popular literature were the love-songs of theMinnesingers, the epics drawn from mediæval traditionary versions ofthe legend of Troy, of the career of _Alexander the Great_, and, tocome to more recent times, to legends of _Charles the Great and hisCourt_, of _Arthur and the Holy Grail_, the _Nibelungenlied_ in itspresent form, and _Gudrun_. The "beast-epic, " as it was called, wasalso a favourite theme, especially in the form of _Reynard the Fox_. In another branch of literature we have collections of laws datingfrom the thirteenth century and known respectively from the country oftheir origin as the _Sachsenspiegel_ and the _Schwabenspiegel_. Again, at a later date, followed the productions of the Meistersingers, andespecially of Hans Sachs, of Nürnberg. Then, again, we have the proseliterature of the mystics, Eckhart, Tauler, and their followers. 

Towards the close of the mediæval period we find an immense number ofnational ballads, of chap-books, not to mention the Passion Plays orthe polemical theological writings of the time leading up to theReformation. Luther's works, more especially his translation of theBible, powerfully helped to fix German as a literary language. TheReformation period, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, was rich inprose literature of every description--in fact, the output of seriousGerman writing continued unabated until well into the seventeenthcentury. But the Thirty Years' War, which devastated Germany from endto end, completely swept away the earlier literary culture of thenation. In fact, the event in question forms a dividing line betweenthe earlier and the modern culture of Germany. In prose literature, the latter half of the seventeenth century, Germany has only one workto show, though that is indeed a remarkable one--namely, Grimmelshausen's _Simplicissimus_, a romantic fiction under the guiseof an autobiography of wild and weird adventure for the most partconcerned with the Thirty Years' War. 

The rebirth of German literature in its modern form began early in theeighteenth century. Leibnitz wrote in Latin and French, and hisculture was mainly French. His follower, Christian Wolf, however, first used the German language for philosophical writing. But inpoetry, Klopstock and Wieland, and, in serious prose, Lessing andHerder, led the way to the great period of German literature. In thisperiod the name of Goethe holds the field, alike in prose and poetry. Goethe was born in 1749, and hence it was the last quarter of thecentury which saw him reach his zenith. Next to Goethe comes hisyounger contemporary, Schiller. It is impossible here to go evenbriefly into the achievements of the bearers of these great names. They may be truly regarded in many important respects as the foundersof modern German culture. Around them sprang up a whole galaxy ofsmaller men, and the close of the eighteenth century showed aliterary activity in Germany exceeding any that had gone before. 

Turning to philosophy, it is enough to mention the immortal name ofImmanuel Kant as the founder of modern German philosophic thought andthe first of a line of eminent thinkers extending to wellnigh themiddle of the nineteenth century. The names of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer and others will at once occur to the reader. 

Contemporaneously with the great rise of modern German literaturethere was a unique development in music, beginning with Sebastian Bachand continuing through the great classical school, the leading namesin which are Glück, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert, etc. The middle period of the nineteenth century showed a furtherdevelopment in prose literature, producing some of the greatesthistorians and critics the world has seen. At this time, too, Germanybegan to take the lead in science. The names of Virchow, Helmholtz, Häckel, out of a score of others, all of the first rank, are familiarto every person of education in the present and past generation. Thesame period has been signalized by the great post-classicaldevelopment in music, as illustrated by the works of Schumann, Brahms, and, above all, by the towering fame of Richard Wagner. 

From the last quarter of the eighteenth century onwards it may trulybe said of Germany that education is not only more generally diffusedthan in any other country of Europe, but (as a recent writer hasexpressed it) "is cultivated with an earnest and systematic devotionnot met with to an equal extent among other nations. " The presentwriter can well remember some years ago, when at the railway stationat Breisach (Baden) waiting one evening for the last train to take himto Colmar, he seated himself at the table of the small stationrestaurant at which three tradesmen, "the butcher, the baker, and thecandlestick-maker" of the place were drinking their beer. Broaching tothem the subject of the history of the town, he found the butcherquite prepared to discuss with the baker and the candlestick-maker thepolicy of Charles the Bold and Louis XI as regards the possession ofthe district, as though it might have been a matter of last night'sdebate in the House or of the latest horse-race. Where would you findthis popular culture in any other country?

Germany possesses 20 universities, 16 polytechnic educationalinstitutes, about 800 higher schools (gymnasia), and nearly 60, 000elementary schools. Every town of any importance throughout the GermanStates is liberally provided in the matter of libraries, museums, andart collections, while its special institutions, music schools, etc. , are famous throughout the world. The German theatre is well known forits thoroughness. Every, even moderately sized, German town has itstheatre, which includes also opera, in which a high scale of all-roundartistic excellence is attained, hardly equalled in any other country. In fact, it is not too much to say that for long Germany was foremostin the vanguard of educational, intellectual, and artistic progress. 

That the above is an over-coloured statement as regards the importanceof Germany for wellnigh a century and a half past in the history ofhuman culture, in the sense of intellectual progress in its widestmeaning, I venture to think that no one competent to judge willallege. Is then, it may be asked, the railing of public opinion andthe Press of Great Britain and other countries outside Germany andAustria, against the Germany of the present day, and the jeers at theterm "German culture" wholly unjustified and the result of national oranti-German prejudice? That there has been much foolish vituperativeabuse of the whole German nation and of everything Germanindiscriminately in the Press of this and some other countries isundoubtedly true. But, however, our acknowledgment of this fact willnot justify us in refusing to recognize the truth which findsexpression in what very often looks like mere foolish vilification. 

The truth in question will be apparent on a consideration of thechange that has come over the German people and German culture sincethe war of 1870 and the foundation of the modern German Empire. Thematerial and economic side of this change has been already indicatedin a short summary in the quotation which closes the last chapter. Butthese changes, or advances if you will, on the material side, havebeen accompanied by a moral and material degeneration which has beenonly very partially counteracted at present by a movement which, though initiated before the period named, has only attained its greatdevelopment, and hence influenced the national character, since thedate in question. 

It is a striking fact that in the last forty-four years--the period ofthe new German Empire--there has been a dearth of originality in alldirections. In the earlier part of the period in question thesurvivors from the pre-Imperial time continued their work in theirseveral departments, but no new men of the same rank as themselveshave arisen, either alongside of them or later to take their places. The one or two that might be adduced as partial exceptions to what hasbeen above said only prove the rule. We have had, it is true, amultitude of men, more or less clever _epigoni_, but little else. Again, it is, I think, impossible to deny that a mechanical hardnessand brutality have come over the national character which entirelybelie its former traits. It is a matter of common observation that inthe last generation the German middle class has become noticeablycoarsened, vulgarized, and blatant. 

Again, although I am very far from wishing to attribute the crimes andhorrors committed by the German army during the present war to thewhole German nation, or even to the _rank and file_ of those composingthe army, yet there is no doubt that some blame must be apportioned atleast to the latter. The contrast is striking between the conduct ofthe German troops during the present war and that of 1870, when theycould declare that they were out "to fight French soldiers and notFrench citizens. " Such were the military ethics of bygone generationsof German soldiers. They certainly do not apply to the German army ofto-day. The popularity of such writers as Von Treitschke andBernhardi, respecting which so much has been written, is indeedsignificant of a vast change in German moral conceptions. Thepractical influence of Nietzsche, who--with his corybantic whirl ofcriticism on all things in heaven above and on the earth beneath, acriticism not always coherent with itself--can hardly be termed aGerman Chauvinist in any intelligible sense, has, I think, been muchexaggerated. The importance of his theories, considered as aningredient in modern German Chauvinism, is not so considerable, Ishould imagine, as is sometimes thought. 

We come now to the movement already alluded to as a set-off and, within certain boundaries at least, a counteractive of the degeneracyexhibited in the German character since the foundation of the presentImperial system. The rise and rapid growth of the Social Democraticmovement is perhaps the most striking fact in the recent history ofGermany. The same may be said, of course, of the growth of Socialismeverywhere during the same period. But in Germany it has for ageneration past, or even more, occupied an exceptional position, alikeas regards the rapidity of its increase, its direct influence on themasses, and its party organization. Modern Socialism, as a partydoctrine, is, moreover, a product of the best period ofnineteenth-century German thought and literature. Its three greattheoretical protagonists, Marx, Engels, and their youngercontemporary, Lassalle, all issued from the great Hegelian movement ofthe first half of the nineteenth century. Their propagandistactivity, literary and otherwise, was in the German language. Theanalysis of the present capitalist system, forming the foundation ofthe demand for the communization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, as resulting in a _human_ society asopposed to a _class_ society, and ultimately in the extinction ofnational barriers in a world-federation of socialized humanity--theseprinciples were first appreciated, as a world-ideal, by theproletariat of Germany, and they have unquestionably raised thatproletariat to an intellectual rank as yet equalled by no otherworking-class in the world. 

It must be admitted, however, that with the colossal growth of theSocial Democratic party in Germany in numbers and the introductioninto it of elements from various quarters, a certain deterioration, one may hope and believe only temporary, has become apparent in itsquality. This applies, at least, to certain sections of the party. Asordid practicalism has made itself felt, due to a feverish desire toplay an important rôle in the detail of current politics. Personalambition and the mechanical working of the party system have also hadtheir evil influence in the movement in recent years. Nevertheless, wehave reason to believe that the core of the party is as sound and astrue to principle as ever it was, and that on the restoration ofinternational peace this will be seen to be the case. What interestsus, however, specially, at the moment of writing, is the lamentable, yet undeniable, fact that German Social Democracy has, on thisoccasion, disastrously failed to prevent the outbreak of war, notwithstanding the vigour of its efforts to do so during the lastweek of July; and still more that it has failed up to date to stem therising flood of militarism and jingoism in the German people. Thatbefore many months are over the scales will fall from the eyes of themasses of Germany I am convinced, and not less that a revolutionarymovement in Germany will be one of the signs that will herald the dawnof a better day for Germany and for Europe. But meanwhile we must holdour countenances in patience. 

If we inquire the cause of the degeneracy we have been considering inthe German character since the war of 1870 and the creation of the newempire--apart from those economic causes of change common to allcountries in modern civilization--the answer of those who havefollowed the history of the period can hardly fail to be--Bismarck andPrussia. We have already seen in the short historical sketch given inthe last chapter how the robber hand of Prussia, in violation of allnational treaty rights, had gradually succeeded in annexing wellnighall the neighbouring German territories. But, notwithstanding this, the greater part of Germany still remained outside the Prussianmonarchy. The policy of Bismarck was first of all to cripple the rivalclaimant for the hegemony of Central Europe, Austria. Her completesubjugation being unfeasible, she had to be shut up rigorously to herimmediate dominions on the eastern side of Central Europe, in order toleave the path clear for Bismarck, by war or subterfuge, to absorb, under a system of nominally vassal States, the whole of the rest ofGermany into the system of the Prussian monarchy. 

Now, as we know, from its very foundation the Hohenzollern-Prussianmonarchy has always been a more or less veiled despotism, based onworking through a military and bureaucratic oligarchy. The army hasbeen the dominant factor of the Prussian State from the beginning ofthe eighteenth century onwards. Prussia has been from the beginning ofits monarchy the land of the drill-sergeant and the barracks. It isthis system which the Junker Bismarck has riveted on the whole Germanpeople, with what results we now see. Badenese, Würtembergers, Franconians, Hanoverians, the citizens of the former free cities noless than the already absorbed Westphalians, Thuringians, Silesians, Mecklenburgers, were speedily all reduced to being the slaves of thePrussian military system and of the Prussian military caste. The naïveGerman peoples, as already pointed out, accepted this Prussiandomination as the realization of their time-honoured patriotic idealof German unity. 

The fact of their subservience was emphasized in every way. The law of_lèse-majesté_ (_majestätsbeleidigung_), by which all criticism of thedespotic head of the State or his actions is made a heinous criminaloffence, to which severe penalties are attached, it is not too much tosay is a law which brands the ruler who accepts it as a coward and acur, and the Legislature which passes it as a house, not ofrepresentative citizens, or even subjects for that matter, but ofrepresentative _slaves_. It must not be forgotten that the law inquestion strikes not only at public expressions of opinion in thepress or on the platform, but at the most private criticism made inthe presence of a friend in one's own room. The depths of undignifiedand craven meanness to which a monarch is reduced by being thusprotected from criticism by the police-truncheon and the gaoler struckme especially as illustrated by the following incident which happenedsome years ago: Shortly after the accession of the present Kaiser, aconjurer was giving his entertainment in a Swiss town. For one of thetricks he was going to exhibit he had occasion to ask the audience tosend him up the names of a few public men on folded pieces of paper. His reception of the names written down was accompanied by the"patter" proper to his profession. On coming to the name of KaiserWilhelm II he ventured the remark, "Ah! I'd rather it had been thepoor man just dead" (meaning the Emperor Frederick), "for I'm afraidthis one's not much good. " Will it be believed that the wholediplomatic machinery was set on foot to induce the Swiss Government toprosecute the unfortunate entertainer, abortively of course, since itcould not have been legally done? Surely the head of a State who couldallow his Government to descend to such contemptible pettiness must bedevoid of all sense of common self-respect, not to say personaldignity. And this is the fellow who claims to be hardly second inimportance to his "dear old God"! In this connection it is only fairto recall the very different behaviour of King Edward VII when anIrish paper published not a mere criticism but an unquestionablylibellous article reflecting on his private character. The policeseized the copies of the paper and were prepared to take steps toprosecute, when the late King interfered and stopped even theconfiscation of the paper. The least monarchical of us must, I think, admit that here we have a good illustration of the distinction betweena man sure of his reputation and a cur nervously alarmed for his. 

This severe law of _lèse-majesté_ in Bismarck's Prusso-German Empireis only an illustration of the way in which the German people havebeen made to grovel before the Prussian jack-boot. The Prussificationof Germany in matters military and in matters bureaucratic has gone onapace since 1870. Prussia, it is not too much to say, has hithertoconsisted in a nation of slaves and tyrants and nothing else. It isthe Prussian governing class which has everywhere and in alldepartments "set the pace" since the empire was established. No manknown to hold opinions divergent from those agreeable to the interestsof the Prussian governing class can hope for employment, be it themost humble, in any department of the public service. This isparticularly noticeable in its effects in the matter of education. Theinculcation of the brutal and blatant jingoism of Von Treitschke atthe universities by professors eager for approval in high places hasalready been sufficiently animadverted upon in more than one work onmodern Germany. The defeat of Prusso-German militarism will be aneven greater gain to all that is best in Germany herself than it willbe to Europe as a whole. 

_Delenda est Prussia_, understanding thereby not, of course, theinhabitants of Prussian territory as such, but Prussia as aState-system and as an independent Power in Europe, must be thewatchword in the present crisis of every well-wisher of Humanity, Germany included. A united Germany, if that be insisted upon, by allmeans let there be--a federation of all the German peoples with itscapital, for that matter, as of old, at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, butwith no dominant State and, if possible, excluding Prussia altogether, but certainly as constituted at present. Who knows but that a unitedStates of Germany may then prove the first step towards a unitedStates of Europe?

But it is not alone to the political reconstruction of Germany or ofEurope that those who take an optimistic view of the issue of thepresent European war look hopefully. The whole economic system ofmodern capitalism will have received a shock from which the beginningsof vast changes may date. Apart from this, however, the avowed aim ofthe war, the destruction of Prussian militarism and, indirectly, theweakening of military power throughout the world, should haveimmediate and important consequences. The brutalities and crimescommitted in Belgium and the North of France at the instigation of themilitary heads of this Prusso-German army do but indicateexaggerations of the military spirit and attitude generally. VonHindenburg is not the first who has given utterance to the devilishexcuse for military crime and brutality that it is "more humane in theend, since it shortens war. " To refute this transparent fallacy isscarcely necessary, since every historical student knows that militaryexcesses and inhumanity do not shorten but prolong war by raisingindignation and inflaming passions. The longest connected war known tohistory--the Thirty Years' War--is generally acknowledged to have beensignalized by the greatest and most continuous inhumanity of any onrecord. But whether military crime has the effect claimed for it ornot, we may fain hope that public opinion in Europe will insist upongiving the "humane" commanders who "mercifully" endeavour to "shorten"war by drastic methods of this sort a severe lesson. A few suchtreated to the utmost penalties the ordinary criminal law prescribesto the crimes of arson, murder, and robbery would teach them and theirlike that war, if waged at all nowadays, must be waged decently andnot "shortened" by such devices as those in question. 

If the present war with all its horrible carnage issues, even if onlyin the beginning of those changes which some of us believe mustnecessarily result from it--changes economical, political, andmoral--then indeed it will not have been waged in vain. With the greatintellectual powers of the Germanic people devoted, not to theorganization of military power and of national domination, but tofurthering the realization of a higher human society; with thedetermination on the part of the best elements among every Europeanpeople to work together internationally with each other, and not leastwith the new Germany, to this end, and the great European war of 1914will be looked back upon by future generations as the greatestworld-historic example of the proverbial evil out of which good, and alasting and inestimable good, has come for Europe and the world. 

UNWIN BROTHERS LIMITED THE GRESHAM PRESS WOKING AND LONDON. 

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