THE EPOCHS OF GERMAN AGRARIAN HISTORY 235 



farming estates. This estate farming is, therefore, not an ideal 

 complex of rights, titles to rents, and the like, but a real terri- 

 in which the landed proprietor is also the highest authority, 

 and its tenants his private subjects, who must cultivate his estate 

 for him. 



With the completion of this process, which we find in the 

 Mittelmark as early as the second half of the fifteenth century, 

 there begins in these regions the decline of the peasantry. They 

 are gradually eliminated from the sphere of public jurisdiction 

 and completely given over to the lord. The state has no longer 

 any interest in them, since it relies on the lord for the taxes. 

 The personal legal status of the peasant deteriorates ; he is bound 

 to the lord. If he owns a farm within the territory of the lord, 

 he is in subjection for his services ; and the period of the Refor- 

 mation affects adversely his right of possession and his economic 

 condition. In consequence of the changes in the military regime, 

 and the rise of mercenary armies, the knight, who cannot become 

 ruler of the country, nor, except in rare cases, an urban patrician, 

 turns farmer and immediately sets about adding to the land 

 properly belonging to the manor by annexing lands hitherto held 

 by the peasant-. ! I. :v begins the strangling of the peasants, and 

 the formation of the large farming estates. Since the land, thus 

 increased, is still cultivated by the compulsory sen-ices of the 

 now numerically fewer, the labor is proportionally 

 ; and to prevent the peasants from running away, their 

 MS are made subject, the subjection being heredit. 



The government, here much weaker than in the Noir 

 tempted in vain in the sixteenth ccnturv to stay this process. Alter 

 vulari/ation it applied the same methods in its new domains. 

 The introduction of the Roman law also contributed to the depre- 

 ciation df the personal and property rights of the peasants, although, 

 st be said, not quite to the extent usually assm: 



It was the Thirty Years' War, m<>rr than all else, which ac- 

 complished this result. The war wrought here pariici.' 

 tat in ; and the civilization, being more recen ' with 



greater difficulty than in the ! ,e peasant 



farms were destroyed, and could be restored only with the help 



