376 3Ir. A. W. Ward [March 8, 



tice of Bauernlegen — a rough and ready way of creatiug large estates 

 which was to exercise a lasting influence in parts of Germany, 

 notably in Mecklenburg. There was nothing to stop this practice 

 but the consequent want of laliour in the depopulated estates : but 

 it contributed very distinctly to the decrease of a starving peasantry, 

 while the landlords, who were left, if there was truth in the song, 

 had to fight it out with the soil themselves : 



" Of the German War what is the gain ? 

 ;\Iany counts, barons and noblemen. 

 German blood's very noble at present, 

 Because of the weakness of the peasant." * 



It needs no further illustration for us to understand ho^v in the 

 open country, even in the more fertile parts of Germany, the peasantry 

 very slowly recovered its numbers, and how in others the country 

 very long remained the desert, to which the war had reduced it. 

 The assertion that particular cultures were destroyed by the AVar, on 

 the other hand, seems to require more careful consideration here, 

 but I may direct attention to the probability that the supersession of 

 the culture of woad (due to the importation of indigo) was probably 

 only completed by the AVar ; whereas, the culture of the vine was 

 undoubtedly largely reduced and confined to those nobler sorts, which 

 can only gladden the hearts of a limited number of purchasers. 



In the general bankruptcy which prevailed after the War, when 

 the armies had to be disbanded, and the payments and compensations 

 of various sorts settled — though signs of financial collapse were per- 

 ceptible both during the War and even before its outbreak^ — it was 

 therefore not astonishing that the peasant should be the worst 

 sufferer. And this, to whatever section of his class he belonged : 

 whether to that bound to the domains of the several princes, or to 

 the estates of the nobility, or to the free peasants in their own hold- 

 ings. The peasants' holdings were largely mortgaged like the lands 

 of the nobles themselves, the mortgagees being for the most part the 

 capitalists, large or small, in the towns ; and now there was a general 

 stoppage of payment and fear of foreclosing, because of the profitless 

 condition of husbandry, on which I have already dwelt. Hence, a 

 general state of hopeless indebtedness, in which the peasant, unable 

 any longer to obtain the slightest advance of either money or materials, 

 was the earliest and most certain to go under. Within half-a-dozen 

 years from the Peace of Westphalia the problem had assumed such 

 dimensions that it was brought, as a matter of imperial interest, 

 before the Diet of Ratisbon. A sort of tabulse novse was proclaimed, 



* The Reidisritterschaft — once a very respectable body so far as its posses- 

 sion went — dwindled away during the War ; and the poverty in which it left 

 a few reigning houses forms a pitiable chapter in the history of the petty 

 principalities of Germany. 



