THE EPOCHS OF GERMAN AGRARIAN HISTORY 247 



The development of this region was, in consequence, most inde- 

 pendent. It was but indirectly influenced from abroad, while the 

 West, especially the Southwest, first adopted and applied the new 

 ideas from France, and was first and most profoundly shaken by 

 the storms of the three French revolutions. 



In spite of these differences two periods may be distinguished 

 everywhere in the history of the emancipation of the peasants : 

 the pre-Napoleonic and the post-Napoleonic, the eighteenth? and 

 the nineteenth century, separated by the great Revolution and the 

 Napoleonic wars. 



In the pre-Napoleonic period the enlightened absolute rulers, 

 in spite of comprehensive plans, succeeded in making reforms 

 only with their own peasants, the peasants of the domain, where 

 they were at once sovereign and proprietor, patrimonial judge, or 

 lord ; but a real emancipation on an extensive scale took place 

 only in the Northeast, in the old provinces of Prussia. Here the 

 peasants of the domain were gradually made free property owners 

 without obligatory services, not by the elimination of the large 

 estates, as in Austria in the reign of Maria Theresa, but in con- 

 sequence of the immediate financial assistance rendered by the 

 Royal Treasury to the leaseholders of these large farms for the 

 purchase of the necessary draught animals and of free labor. 

 This is the great accomplishment which the old state of Prussia 

 succeeded in making, at least in its essential features, before her 

 deepest humiliation in the year 1806. 



Again, in the post-Napoleonic period, it is the old Prussia 

 which first undertook, by the famous Stein-Hardenberg legislation, 

 the difficult task of personal as well as economic emancipation of 

 the peasants, as a means to their spiritual regeneration. The 

 kingdom wished, in the words of Hardenberg's memorial of 1 807, 

 " to adopt the aims of the Revolution while preserving morality 

 and religion, and to realize democratic principles in a monarchical 

 government." The abolition of hereditary subjection by the Edict 

 of 1807, and the Regulation of Relations between Proprietor 

 and Peasant (that is, the elimination of compulsory services and 

 the transformation of conditional property rights to property) by 

 the Edict of 181 1 and the Declaration of 18 16, made at least the 



