These landowners dwelt in buildings of clay and wood, roofed with straw or shingles,--a sufficient number of casual descriptions and drawings have been preserved to us; across the roof lay the great fire-ladders; the front and back doors of the hall were provided with crossbars for closing them at night. On the ground-floor was the large sitting-room; near it the spacious kitchen, which was a warm abode for the servants; next the sitting-room there was a walled vault, with iron gratings to the window, and if possible with iron doors, as a protection against thieves and fire,--whatever valuables a landowner possessed were kept there, and if a sum of money was deposited there, a special watchman was placed before the house. Above this vault, in the upper floor, was the bedroom of the master of the house; there was the marriage-bed, and there also was a concealed safe, either in the wall or floor, wherein some plate and the jewellery of the women were kept. The children, the tutor, and the housekeeper slept in small closets, which could not be warmed, divided by trellis-work. Sometimes a wooden gallery was attached to the upper floor, the "little pleasure walk;" there the linen was dried, the farmyard inspected, and the work of the women done. The house was under the special care of some old trooper, or poor cousin, who slept within as watcher. Wild dogs roamed about the farmyard and round the house during the night; these were specially intended to guard against beggars and vagrants. But all these measures of precaution could not entirely hinder the inroads of armed bands. Even a good-sized estate was an unsatisfactory possession. Most of the landowners were deeply in debt; ruinous lawsuits, which had begun during the war, were pending over hearth and hill. The farm was carried on wretchedly under the superintendence of a poor relation or untrustworthy bailiff; the farm-buildings were bad and falling into ruins, and there was no money, and frequently no good wood wherewith to renew them. For the woods had suffered much from the war; where there was an opportunity of sale, the foreign commanders had caused large forests to be felled and sold. In the neighbourhood of fortified places the stems were employed for fortifications, which then required large quantities of wood; and after the peace much was felled for the necessary erection of villages and suburbs. The farm also bore little produce. Not only teams, but hands, were wanting for the tillage; and the average price of corn, after the war, was so low that the product hardly paid for the carriage, and in consequence they kept few horses. New capital was difficult to acquire; money was dear, and mortgages on the properties of nobles were not considered an advantageous investment. They, undoubtedly, gave a certain amount of security; but the interest was too often irregularly payed, and the capital could not easily be recovered. The acquisition of mortgaged goods, also, by the creditor, was possible only in certain cases, and by tedious proceedings; it was sometimes even dangerous, for the friends and neighbours of the debtor would threaten the new possessor with their hatred. In the eastern frontier countries the dissatisfied creditors endeavoured to indemnify themselves by selling their bonds to Polish nobles. These procured the money by making reprisals on travellers from the district of the debtor, and taking the sum from the first comers. This had, indeed, happened before the great war; and repeated prohibitions show how much commerce suffered from those deeds of violence.[50] By such evils even a sensible landed proprietor was soon easily thrown into a desperate position. A bad harvest, or a mortality among the cattle, would probably ruin him. But the chief evil was that a great number had not sense enough to occupy themselves perseveringly with their farming, and to limit their expenses within the certain income of the property. Thus few were prosperous. Most of them passed their lives amidst embarrassments, lawsuits, and endless debts; even those who had entered on the possession of their property with better hopes, became at last, like the greater number of those of their own class, members of the great association which the people nicknamed "Krippenreiter."
These impoverished gentlemen rode in bands from farm to farm; they invaded the neighbourhood like troublesome parasites whenever a feast was celebrated, whenever they scented the provisions in the kitchen and cellar. Woe to the new acquaintance whom they picked up at the houses of others; they immediately volunteered to accompany him home for a day or week. Where they had once quartered themselves it was very difficult to get rid of them. Not select in their intercourse, they drank and brawled with the peasants at the tavern; when drunk, they would do a citizen, with a full purse, the honour of receiving him into their brotherhood. Then kneeling amid broken glasses and flasks, the brotherhood was sealed, eternal fidelity sworn, and generally, he, was denounced as the worst scoundrel, who did not preserve unbroken friendship. Such brotherhood did not, however, prevent a great fight the very next hour. But, common as they made themselves on these occasions, they never forgot that they were "wild noblemen of ancient family." Citizens, and those who had patents of nobility from the Emperor might, indeed, become brothers. This kind of familiarity was after the way of the world, but he could not obtain the acknowledgment of family association conveyed by the terms "uncle" and "cousin;" and even if allied to them by marriage, he was not admitted to their relationship unless he were of noble race. Their children went about in tatters; their wives sometimes collected provisions from relations, and they themselves trotted over the stubble on shaggy horses, in old greatcoats, with a bit of carved wood instead of a second pistol in the old holster. Their usual place of rest was at the village tavern, or, if they came to a town, in the worst inn. Their language was coarse, full of stable expressions and oaths. They had adopted many of the usages of the rogues, both in language and habits; they smelt of "finckeljochen" (a bad kind of spirit) more than was agreeable to others. They were, indeed, ragamuffins; and, with all their pugnacity, without real courage. They were considered the pest of the country, and those who had anything to lose compared them to bluebottle-flies; more than once sharp decrees[51] were issued against them by the different rulers, and even from the Imperial court, but they were, notwithstanding, haughty and thoroughly aristocratic-minded fellows. Their genealogy, their escutcheons, and their family connection were to them the highest things upon earth. Unbounded was the hate and contempt with which they regarded the rich citizens; they were always ready to begin a quarrel with the newly ennobled, if they did not give them their full titles, or presumed to bear a coat of arms similar to their own.
The following account will make us better acquainted with these fellows, and their mode of intercourse. It carries us to the right bank of the Oder in Silesia, a corner of Germany where "Krippenreiterei" was particularly bad. There, according to an old popular jest, the devil burst the sack when he endeavoured to carry off in the air a number of "Krippenreiters," and thus emptied out the whole rubbish on this district.
The following description is taken from the narrative entitled "The Nobleman," written a few years before his death, by Paul Winckler, a Silesian, political agent and councillor at Breslau of the great Elector; he died 1686. The narrative was first published after his death in two editions, and finally at Nüremberg, 1697–8. There is no great skill or invention in it, but it is the more useful here on that account. Winckler was a well-educated man of the world, and an eminent jurist, and his numerous travels and alliances, and accurate knowledge of the condition of the German landed proprietors, made him particularly capable of forming a sound judgment. He possessed also qualities which are not rarely found in a Silesian; he knew how to accommodate himself easily to the world, was a cheerful companion, impartial in judgment, and a lively narrator. His being a member of the "Fruchtbringende," or literary society, probably contributed to keep alive his interest in German literature, and encouraged him to modest attempts at authorship. But he was too sensible a man not to regard with contempt the purist pedantry with which the associates of his society endeavoured to raise the German poetry. "They sit behind the kitchen of Parnassus, and satisfy themselves with the odour of the roast." He was about fifty when he wrote his narrative, confined to his room by the gout. His object was to point out by a portraiture, what a right sort of nobleman ought to be; for it had been his fate, throughout his whole life, to live in business relations and personal intercourse with the nobles of different provinces. His wife was a descendant of the poet Von Logau, and he himself was nephew of Andreas Gryphius. His own experience undoubtedly gave him a peculiarly sharp eye for the absurdities of the privileged classes, but he was the true son of his time, and preserved at heart a deep respect for genuine nobility. His narrative, therefore, is not by any means a satire, though it has indeed been called so, and the delineations here imparted give a peculiar impression of being accurate portraits. That which has been a hindrance to modern narrators who