Undoubtedly those freemen were to be envied who felt the advantage of their better position, but only a small portion were so fortunate. Generally, even in the eighteenth century, freemen with little or no land of their own, preferred being received as villeins on some great landed property. When Frederick I. of Prussia, shortly after 1700, wished to free the serfs in Pomerania, they refused it, because they considered the new duties imposed upon them more severe than what they had hitherto borne. And in fact the free peasants were scarcely less burdened with new service than those who had been the villeins of the old time.
It is difficult to judge impartially of the human condition which developed itself under this oppression. For such a life looks very different in daily intercourse, to what it does in the statute-book. Much that appears insupportable to us was made bearable by ancient custom. Undoubtedly the kind-hearted benevolence of the nobles, of old families who had grown up with their country-people through many generations, mitigated the severity of servitude, and a cordial connexion existed between master and serfs. Still more frequently the brutal selfishness of the masters was softened and kept within bounds by that prudence which now influences the American slaveholders. The landed proprietor and his family passed their lives among the peasants, and if he endeavoured to instil fear, he also had cause for fear. Easily on a stormy night might the flames be kindled among his wooden farm buildings, and no province was without its dismal stories of harsh landlords or bailiffs who had been slain by unknown hands in field or wood. However much we may admit the goodness or prudence of masters, the position of the peasants still remains the darkest feature of the past time. For we find everywhere in the scanty records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an unhealthy antagonism of classes. And it was the larger portion of the German people which was ruined by this oppression.[29]
Men even of uncommon strength and intelligence seldom succeeded in extricating themselves from the proscribed boundaries by which their life was fenced in. Ever greater became the chasm which separated them from the smaller portion of the nation, who, by their perukes, bagwigs, and pigtails, showed from afar that they belonged to a privileged class. Up to the end of the seventeenth century these polished classes seldom entertained a friendly feeling towards the peasant; on all sides were to be heard complaints of his obduracy, dishonesty, and coarseness. At no period was the suffering portion of the people so harshly judged as in that, in which a spiritless orthodoxy embittered the souls of those who had to preach the gospel of love. None were more eager than the theologians in complaining of the worthlessness of the country people, among whom they had to live; they always heard hell-hounds howling round the huts of the villeins; their whole conception of life was, indeed, dark, pedantic, and joyless. A well-known little book, from the native district of Christopher von Grimmelshausen, is especially characteristic. This book, entitled "Des Bauerstands Lasterprob"--the exposure of the vices of the peasant class[30]--never ceased to point out from the deeds of the villagers, that the lives of the peasantry, from the village justice to the goose-herd, were worthless and godless; that they were in the habit of representing themselves as poor and miserable, and of complaining on all occasions; that they were rude and overbearing to those whom they did not fear; that they considered none as their friends, and ungratefully deceived their benefactors. This book is much more cruel than "The Lexicon of Deceit," by the hypochondriacal Coburger Hönn, which some centuries later analysed the impositions of all classes,--and amongst others, those of the peasants,--alphabetically, morosely, and with apt references.
To such defects, which are peculiar to the oppressed, others must, indeed, be added, the consequences of the long war and its demoralization. In the rooms of the village inns, about 1700, neither candlesticks nor snuffers were to be seen, for everything had been pilfered by the wayfarers; even the prayer-book had been stolen from the host; a small looking-glass was a thing not to be thought of, though 500 years earlier the village maiden, when she adorned herself for the dance, took her little hand-glass with her as an ornament; and if a householder lodged carriers, he was obliged to conceal all portable goods, and to lock up all barns and hay-lofts. It was even dangerous sometimes for a traveller to set foot in an inn. The desolate room was filled, not only with tobacco-smoke, but also with the fumes of powder; for it was a holiday amusement of the country people to play with powder, and to molest unlucky strangers by throwing squibs or small rockets before their feet or on their perukes; this was accompanied by railery and abuse.[31] We are frequently disposed to observe with astonishment, in these and similar complaints of contemporaries, how the German nature maintained, amidst the deepest degradation, a vital energy which, more than a hundred years after, made the beginning of a better condition possible; and we may sometimes doubt whether to admire the patience, or to lament the weakness, which so long endured such misery; for, in spite of all that party zeal has ever said in excuse of these servile relations, they were an endless source of immorality both to the masters, their officials, and to the people themselves. The sensuality of landed proprietors, and the self-interest of magistrates and stewards, were exposed to daily temptation at a period when a feeling of duty was weak in all classes. More than once did the sluggish provincial governments exert themselves to prevent bailiffs from compelling the peasant to feed cattle, sow linseed, and spin for them; and foresters were in ill repute who carried on traffic with the peasants, and winked at their proceedings when the stems of the lordly wood were felled.[32] What was the feeling of the country people against the landed proprietors, may be concluded from the wicked proverb which became current about 1700, and fell from the mouth of the rich Mansfeld peasant--"The young sparrows and young nobles should have their heads broken betimes."[33]
Slowly did the dawn of a new day come to the German peasant. If we would seek from whence arose the first rays of the new light, we shall find them, together with the renovation of the people, in the studies of the learned, who proclaimed the science, which was the most strange and most incomprehensible to the country-people, then called philosophy. After the teaching of Leibnitz and Wolff had found scholars in a larger circle of the learned, there was a sudden change in the views held about the peasant and his state. Everywhere began a more human conception of earthly things, the struggle against the orthodox errors. We find, again, in the scholars and proclaimers of the new philosophy, somewhat of the zeal of an apostle to teach, to improve, and to free. Soon after 1700 a hearty interest in the life of the peasant appears again in the small literature. The soundness of his calling, the utility and blessings of his labour, were extolled, and his good qualities carefully sought out; his old songs, in which a manly self-consciousness finds graceful expression, and which had once been polished by the single-minded theologians of the sixteenth century, were again spread in cheap publications. In these the poor countryman modestly boasts that agriculture was founded by Adam; he rejoices in "his falconry"; the larks in the field, the swallows in the straw of his roof, and the cocks in the farm-yard; and amidst his hard labour again seeks comfort in the "heavenly husbandman, Jesus."[34]
On the other hand, there was even help in the severity of a despotic State. The oppressed peasant gave, through his sons, to the ruler the greater part of his soldiers, and, through his taxes, the means of keeping up the new State. By degrees it was discovered that such material ought to be taken care of. About 1700 this may everywhere be perceived in the provincial laws. The Imperial Court, also, was influenced in its way by this awakening philanthropy. In 1704 it even gave a grand privilege to the shepherds, wherein it declared them and their lads honourable, and graciously advised the German nation to give up the prejudice against this useful class of men, and no longer to exclude their children from being artisans, on account of magic and plying the knacker's trade. A few years afterwards it gave armorial bearings; it also granted them the rights of a corporate body, with seal, chest, and banner, on which a pious picture was painted.[35] More stringent was the interference of the Hohenzollerns, who were themselves, during four generations, the princely colonists of Eastern Germany. Frederick II. made the most fundamental reforms in the conquered provinces; many examples are cited of the blessings resulting from them. When he took possession of Silesia, the village huts were block-houses, formed from the stems of trees, and roofed with straw or shingles, without brick chimneys; the baking ovens, joined on to the houses, exposed them to the danger of fires; the husbandry was in a pitiful plight; great commons and pastures covered with mole-hills and thistles, small weak horses, and lean cows; and the landed proprietors were