Next to Luther, no individual before the war exercised so powerful an influence on the dispositions of the country people of Southern Germany, as a barefooted Franciscan, who came among the people at Ulm from the cloisters of the Franciscan monastery, Johann Eberlin von Günzburg. He had many of the qualities of a great agitator, and was one of the most amiable among those that figure in the early period of the Reformation. More than any other, he took up the social side of the movement. In the year 1521, he published, anonymously, in the national form of a small popular flying sheet, his ideal of a new state and a new social life. The old claims which were subsequently drawn up by a preacher, in twelve articles, for the peasantry, are to be found, with many others, collectively in the fifteen "Bundesgenossen."[16] The eloquence of Eberlin irresistibly influenced the listening multitudes; a flow of language, a poetical strain, a genial warmth, and at the same time a vein of good humour and of dramatic power, made him a favourite wherever he appeared. To that was added a harmless self-complacency, and just sufficient enjoyment of the present moment, as was necessary to make his success valuable and the persecutions of his opponents bearable. And yet he was only a dexterous demagogue. When he left his order from honourable convictions, with a heart passionately excited by the corruption of the church and the distress of the people, he could hardly pass, even according to the standard of the time, for an educated man; it was only by degrees that he became clear on certain social questions; then he conscientiously endeavoured to recal his former assertions; with whatever complacency he may speak of himself, there is always a holy earnestness in him concerning the truth. He had, withal, a quiet, aristocratic bias; he was the child of a citizen; his connections were people of consideration, and even of noble origin; coarse violence was contrary to his nature, in which a strong common sense was incessantly at work to control the ebullition of his feelings. He clung with great devotion to all his predecessors who had advanced his education, especially to the Wittemberg reformers. After he had restlessly roamed about the South of Germany for many years, he went to Wittemberg; there Melancthon powerfully influenced the fiery southern German; he became quieter, more moderate, and better instructed. But later he belonged--like his monastic companion, Heinrich von Kettenbach--to the preachers who collected round Hutten and Sickengen. This personal union, which lasted up to Sickengen's catastrophe, kept the national movement in a direction which could not last. For a short time it appeared as if the religious and social movement of South Germany, even if not led, could be made use of, by the noble landed proprietors; it was an error into which both the knights and their better friends fell; neither Hutten nor Sickengen had sufficient strength or insight to win the country people really to them. This came to light when Sickengen was overpowered by the neighbouring princes. The peasants became the most zealous assistants of the princes in persecuting the junkers of the Sickengen party and burning their castles; this warfare may, indeed, be considered as the prelude to the present war. It had unshackled the country people in the neighbouring provinces, and accustomed them to the pulling down of castles. A dialogue of the year 1524 has been preserved to us, in which the fury of the country people against the nobles already breaks forth.[17]
From that period the decided demagogues gained the ear of the peasants, and the moderate amongst the popular leaders lost their supremacy. Eberlin had once more, at Erfurt, an opportunity of showing, as a mediator, the power of his eloquence over the revolted peasant hosts; under its influence the assembled populace fell on their knees, pious and penitent; but the weakness of his advice made this last endeavour fruitless. He died the following year, and with him passed away most of the poetry of the Reformation.
Cruelly was the revolt against the terrified princes punished, and the smaller tyrants were the most eager to bring the conquered again under their yoke. Yet in South Germany and Thuringia there was a real improvement in the condition of the country people; for it happened at a period in which a learned class of jurists spread over the country, and the working of Roman law in Germany became everywhere perceptible. The point of view taken by the jurists of the Roman school, of the relations between the landed proprietors and their villeins, was indeed not always favourable to the latter; for the lawyers were inclined to fix every kind of subjection upon the peasant from the deficiency in his right of property in his holding; but they were equally ready to recognise his personal freedom. Thus, in the first half of the sixteenth century, the old serfdom which still existed in a very harsh form in many provinces was mitigated, and villeinage substituted. Besides this, a more patriarchal feeling began to prevail among the higher German Sovereigns, and in the new ordinances which they projected in conjunction with their clergy, the welfare of the peasantry was taken into consideration. This was the case above all with the Wettiner princes in Franconia, Thuringia, and Meissen; and, lastly, with Elector August. The authority, also, of the Saxon chancery, which had been established in Germany since the fifteenth century, contributed essentially to this, by making the Saxon laws a pattern for the rest of Germany.
But some ten years before the Thirty Years' War, an advance in the pretensions of the nobles became apparent, at least in the provinces beyond the Elbe; for example, in Pommerania and Silesia. Under weak rulers the courtly influence of the nobility increased, the constant money embarrassments of the princes raised the independence of the States, which granted the taxes; and the peasants had no representatives in the States, except in the Tyrol, East Friesland, the old Bailiwick of Swabia, and a few small territories. The landed proprietors indemnified themselves for the concessions made to the princes by double exactions on the peasantry. Serfdom was formally re-established in Pommerania in 1617.
It was just at this period of reaction that the Thirty Years' War broke out. It devastated alike the houses of the nobles and the huts of the peasants. It brought destruction on man and beast, and corrupted those that were left.[18]
After the great war--in the period which will be here portrayed--a struggle began on the part of the landed proprietors and the newly established Government against the wild practices of the war time. The countryman had learned to prefer the rusty gun to handling the plough. He had become accustomed to perform court service, and his mind was not rendered more docile by disbanded soldiers having settled themselves on the ruins of the old village huts. The peasant lads and servants bore themselves like knights, wearing jack-boots, caps faced with marten's fur, hats with double bands, and coats of fine cloth; they carried rifles and long-handled axes when they came together in the cities, or assembled on Sundays. At one time perhaps these had been useful against robbers and wild beasts; but it had become far more dangerous to the nobles and their bailiffs, and still more insupportable to their villeins,--it was always rigorously forbidden.[19] The settlement of disbanded soldiers, who brought their prize money into the village, was welcome; but whoever had once worn a soldier's dress revolted against the heavy burdens of the bondsman. It was, therefore, established that whoever had served under a banner became free from personal servitude; only those who had been camp-followers continued as bondsmen. The inhabitants of the different States had been interspersed during the war; subjects had wilfully changed their dwellings, and established themselves on other territories, with or without the permission of the new lords of the manor. This was insupportable, and a right was given to the landed proprietor to fetch them back; and if the new lord of the manor thought it his interest to protect them, and refused to give them up, force might be used to recover them. Thus the noblemen rode with their attendants into a district to catch such of their villeins as had escaped without pass-tickets.[20]--The opposition of the people must have been violent, for the ordinances even in the provinces, where villeinage was most strict--as, for example, in Silesia--were obliged to recognise that the villeins were free people, and not slaves. But this remained a theoretical proposition, and was seldom attended to in the following century. The depopulation of the country, and the deficiency in servants and labourers, was very injurious to the landowner. All the villagers were forbidden to let rooms to single men or women; all such lodgers were to be taken before the magistracy, and put into prison in case they should refuse domestic service, even if they maintained themselves by any other occupation--such as labouring for the peasant for daily hire, or carrying on business with money or corn.[21] Through a whole generation