Thus was an iron yoke again bound slowly round the necks of the undisciplined country people, closer and harder than before the war. During the war small villages, and still more the single farms, which had been so favorable to the independence of the peasants, had vanished from the face of the earth; in the Palatinate, for example, and on the hills of Franconia, they had been numerous, and even in the present day their names cling to the soil. The village huts concentrated themselves in the neighbourhood of the manor house, and control over the weak community was easier when under the eye of the lord or his bailiff. What was the course of their life in the time of our fathers will be distinctly seen when one examines more closely the nature of their service. A cursory glance at it will appear to the youth of the present generation like a peep into a strange and fearful world. The conditions under which the German country people suffered were undoubtedly various. Special customs existed, not only in the provinces, but in almost every community. If the names by which the different services and imposts were designated were arranged they would form an unpleasant vocabulary.[23] But, notwithstanding the difference in the names and extent of these burdens, there was an unanimity throughout the whole of Europe on the main points, which is, perhaps, more difficult to explain than the deviations.
The tenths were the oldest tax upon the countryman--the tenth sheaf, the tenth portion of slaughtered beasts, and even a tenth of wine, vegetables and fruit. It was probably older in Western Germany than Christianity, but the early church of the middle ages cunningly claimed it on the authority of scripture. It did not, however, succeed in retaining it only for itself; it was obliged to share it with the rulers, and often with the noble landed proprietors. At last it was paid by the agricultural peasant, either as a tax to the ruler or to his landlord, and besides as the priest's tithe to his church. However low his harvest yield might be valued, the tenth sheaf was far more than the tenth share of his clear produce.
But the countryman had, in the first place, to render service to the landed proprietor, both with his hands and with his team; in the greatest part of Germany, in the middle ages, three days a week,--thus he gave half of the working time of his life. Whoever was bound to keep beasts of burden on his property was obliged to perform soccage, in the working hours, with the agricultural implements and tools till sunset; the poorer people had to do the same with hand labour--nay, according to the obligations of their tenure, with two, four, or more hands, and even the days were appointed by the landlords: they were well off if during such labour they received food. These obligations of ancient times were, in many cases, increased after the war by the encroachments of the masters--chiefly in Eastern Germany. These soccage days were arbitrarily divided into half or even quarter days, and thereby the hindrance to the countryman and the disorder to his own farm were considerably increased. The number of the days was also increased. Such was the case even in the century which we, with just feelings of pride, call the humane. In the year 1790, just when Goethe's "Torquato Tasso" made its first appearance in the refined court of Saxony, the peasants of Meissen rose against the landowners, because they had so immoderately increased the service that their villeins seldom had a day free for their own work.[24] Again in 1799, when Schiller's "Wallenstein" was exciting the enthusiasm of the warlike nobility of Berlin, Frederick William III. was obliged to issue a cabinet order, enjoining on his nobility not to lay claim to the soccage of the peasants more than three days in the week, and to treat their people with equity.
The second burden on the villeins was the tax on change of property by death or transfer; the heriot and fine on alienation. The best horse and the best ox were once the price which the heir of a property had to pay to the landowner for his fief. This tax was long ago changed into money. But though in the sixteenth century, even in countries where the peasant was heavily oppressed, the provincial ordinances allowed that peasant's property might be bought and sold, and that the lord of the peasant who sold could take no deduction upon it,[25] yet in the same province in 1617, before the Thirty Years' War, it was established that landlords might compel their villeins against their will to sell their property, and that in case no purchaser should be found they themselves might buy it at two-thirds of the tax. It was under Frederick the Great that the inheritance and rights of property of villeins were first secured to them in most of the provinces of the kingdom of Prussia. This ordinance helped to put an end to a burden on the country people which threatened to depopulate the country. For in the former century, after the landowners had resolved to increase the revenue of their estates, they found it advantageous to rid themselves of some of their villeins, whose holdings they attached to their own property. The poor people, thus driven from their homes, fell into misery; and the burdens became quite unbearable to the remaining villeins, for they were expected by the landed proprietor to cultivate those former holdings, whose possessors had hitherto by their labour assisted in the cultivation of the whole estate. This system of ejection had become particularly bad in the east of Germany. When Frederick II. conquered Silesia there were many thousand farms without occupiers; the huts lay in ruins, and the fields were in the hands of the landed proprietors. All the separate homesteads had to be reformed and reoccupied, furnished with cattle and implements, and given up to the farmer as his own heritable property. In Rügen this grievance occasioned a rising of the peasantry, in the youth of Ernst Moritz Arndt; soldiers were sent thither, and the rioters were put in prison; the peasants endeavoured to revenge themselves for this by laying in wait for and slaying individual noblemen. In the same way in Electoral Saxony as late as 1790 this grievance occasioned a revolt.
The children also of villeins were subject to compulsory service. If they were capable of work they were brought before the authorities, and, if these demanded it, had to serve some time, frequently three years, on the farm. To serve in other places it was necessary to have a permit, which must be bought. Even those who had already served elsewhere had once a year--frequently about Christmas--to present themselves to the lord of the manor for choice. If the child of a villein entered into a trade or any other occupation, a sum had to be paid to the authorities for a letter of permission. It was considered a mitigation of the old remains of feudalism, when it was decided that the daughters of peasants might marry on to other properties without indemnifying their lord. But then the new lord had to greet the other in a friendly letter in acknowledgment of this emancipation.[26] The price which the villein had to give for the emancipation of himself and his family varied extremely, according to the period and the district. Under Frederick II. it was reduced in Silesia to one ducat per head. But this was an unusually favourable rate for the villein. In Rügen, at a still later date, the emancipation was left to the valuation of the proprietor; it could even be refused: a fine-looking youth had there to pay full a hundred and fifty, and a pretty girl fifty or sixty, thalers.
But the peasant was employed in other ways by the landed proprietor. He was bound to aid, with his hands and teams, in the cultivation of the estate; he was also bound to act as messenger. Whoever wished to go to the town had first to ask the bailiff and lord of the manor whether they had any orders. No householder could, except in special cases, remain a night out of the village without the previous sanction of the magistrate of the place. He was obliged to furnish a night watch of two men for the nobleman's mansion. He had, when a child of the lord of the manor was to be married, to bring a contribution of corn, small cattle, honey, wax, and linen to the castle; finally, he had almost everywhere to carry to his lord his rent-hens and eggs, the old symbol of his dependence for house and farm.
But what was still more repugnant to the German peasant than many greater burdens, was the landlord's right of chase over his fields. The fearful tyranny with which the right of chase was practised by the German princes in the middle ages, was renewed after the Thirty Years' War. The peasant was forbidden to carry a gun, and poachers were shot down. Where the cultivated ground bordered on the larger woods, or where the lord of the manor held the supreme right