"Hear how his father greeted him: 'Dieu salue, monsieur Blindman, go from hence, monsieur Blindman; if you delay, I will have you driven away by my servant; away with you from the door!'
"'Sir, I am your child.'
"'Is the boy become blind, who called himself Schlingdengau? Now do you not fear the threats of the hangman or all the magistrates in the world! Heigh! how you 'ate iron' when you rode off on the steed for which I gave my cattle. Begone, and never return again!'
"Again the blind man spoke. 'If you will not recognise me as your child, at least allow a miserable man to crawl into your house, as you do the poor sick; the country people hate me; I cannot save myself if you are ungracious to me.'
"The heart of the host was shaken, for the blind man who stood before him was his own flesh and blood--his son; yet he exclaimed with a scornful laugh, 'You went out daringly into the world; you have caused many a heart to sigh, and robbed many a peasant of his possessions. Think of my dream. Servant, close the door and draw the bolt; I will betake me to my rest. As long as I live, I had rather take in a stranger whom my eyes never beheld, than share my loaf with you.' Thus saying, he struck the servant of the blind man. 'I would do so to your master, if I were not ashamed to strike a blind man; take him, whom the sun hates, from before me!' Thus did the father exclaim, but the mother put a loaf in his hand as to a child. So the blind man went away, the peasants hooting and scoffing at him.
"For a whole year he endured great hardships. Early one morning when he was going through the forest to beg bread, some peasants who were gathering wood saw him, and one of them from whom he had taken a cow called to the others to help him. All of them had been injured by him, he had broken into the hut of one and stripped it; he had dishonoured the daughter of another; and a fourth, trembling like a reed with passion, said, 'I will wring his neck; he thrust my sleeping child into a sack, and when it awoke and cried, he tossed it out into the snow, so that it died.' Thus they all turned against Helmbrecht. 'Now take care of your hood.' The embroidery which the hangman had left untouched was now torn, and scattered on the road with his hair. They allowed the miserable wretch to make his confession, and one of them broke a fragment from the ground and gave it to the worthless man as gate money for hell fire. Then they hung him to a tree.
"If there be still any children living with their father and mother who feel disposed to be jovial knights, let them take warning from the fate of Helmbrecht."
Thus ends the story of young Helmbrecht, who was desirous of becoming a knight. And such on the whole we may consider was the condition and disposition of the free peasantry at the beginning of the long period of decline, which loosened the connection of the German Empire, founded the power of the great princely houses, made the burgher communities of fortified cities rich and powerful, and which was also the beginning of that wild time of self-help and free fraternization of cities, as of nobles. But the details of the changes which the German peasant underwent from 1250 to 1500, can no longer be accurately discerned by us. The wild deeds of violence and oppression of the robber-nobles, drove the helpless into the cities, and the enterprising into foreign countries. There were always opportunities of fighting under the sign of the cross against Sclavonians, Wends, and Poles, and on the east of the Elbe, broad countries were opened for the weapons and the plough of the German countryman. There was agitation also in the minds of men. The new despotism of the Roman papacy and of the fanatical Mendicant friars, drove the Katharers on the Rhine, and the Stedingers in Lower Saxony, to apostacy from the church. Where the free peasants were thickly located and favoured by the nature of their country, they rose in arms against the oppression of feudal lords. In the valleys of Switzerland and in the marsh lands on the German ocean, the associated country people gained victories over the mailed knights, which still belong to the glorious reminiscences of the people. But in the interior of Germany, the peasantry under the increasing oppression of the nobles and a degenerate church, became weaker, more incapable, and coarser; ever more powerfully did the barons lord it over them. Even the resident free peasant of Lower Saxony was cast down from the place of honour, which he once maintained above the knightly serving man. The consciousness of a higher civilisation and more refined manners caused the citizen also to despise the countryman,--his love of eating, his rough simplicity, and his crafty shrewdness were treated with endless derision.
And yet the countryman in the fifteenth century still retained much of his good old habits and somewhat of his old energy. He still continued to extol his own calling in his songs, and was inclined to view with ridicule the unstable life of others. In a well-known popular song, three sisters married--one a nobleman, another a musician, and the third a peasant. Both brothers-in-law came with their wives to pay a visit at the peasant's farm. "There the gay musician played, the hungry nobleman danced, and the peasant sat and laughed." At the end of the fifteenth century a dancing scene in a Hessian village is described in a city poem, the same customs as in the time of Neidhart, only wilder and coarser. The proud labourers come from different villages, armed with halberds and pikes, to dance under the Linden tree; the parties are divided by distinctive marks, willow and birch twigs and hop leaves on the shoulder and on the cap. From one village the whole four-and-twenty labourers are clothed in red plush, with yellow waistcoat and breeches. A gaily-attired maiden, a favourite dancer, will only dance with one party, sharp words follow, and weapons are drawn, the citizen, being a clerk, is persecuted with such forcible, pungent words, that he is obliged to withdraw himself by ignominious flight from the wild company.[13]
The life of the countryman within the village gates was still rich in festivals and poetical usages, his privileges--so far as they were not interfered with by deeds of violence--were valuable, and interwoven with his life; and all his occupations were established by customs and etiquette, by ceremonies and dramatic co-operation with his village association.
But the oppression under which he lived became insupportable. After the end of the fifteenth century he began to make a powerful resistance to his masters.
It is probable that the great agitation in the European money-market contributed to the excitement of the countryman. The sinking of the value of metal since the discovery of America, was considered by producers at first as a lasting rise in the price of corn. To the peasant every sheffel of corn, and his labour also, became of higher value; and, in the same measure, both were of higher importance to the landed proprietor. It was natural, therefore, that the peasant should take a proportionate view of his freedom, and here and there think of relief from his burdens, whilst it became the interest of the landed proprietor to maintain his servitude--nay, even to increase it. Yet, one need not ascribe the great movement to such reasons. The pride of victory of the Swiss who had prostrated the Knights of Burgundy, the self-dependence of the new Landsknechts, and, above all, the religious movement, and the social turn which it took in South Germany, made a deep impression on the mind of the peasant. For the first time his condition was viewed by the educated with sympathy. The countryman was almost suddenly introduced into the literature as a judge and associate. His grievances against the priesthood, and also against the landed proprietors, were ever brought forward in popular language with great skill. A few years before, he had played the standing rôle of a clown in the shrove-tide games of the Nürembergers, but now even Hans Sachs[14] wrote dialogues full of hearty sympathy with his condition, and the portraiture of the simple, intelligent, and industrious peasant, called Karsthans,[15] was repeatedly assumed, in order to show the sound judgment and wit of the people against the priests.
But, dangerous as the great peasant insurrection appeared for many weeks, and manifold as were the characters and passions which blazed forth in it, the peasants themselves were little more than an undulating mass; the greater part of their demagogues and leaders belonged to another class; on the whole, it appears to us that the intelligence and capacity of the leaders, whether peasants or others, was but small, and equally small the warlike capacity of the masses. Therefore here where the peasant for the first time is powerfully influenced by the literary men of the period, more pleasure is experienced in the contemplation of the minds that roused up his soul. It was the case here, as it always is in popular insurrections, that the masses were first excited