THE EPOCHS OF GERMAN AGRARIAN HISTORY 233 



the patrimonial judge (who is here the more important element 

 of the two), conditions after the Peasants' War, in spite of the 

 defeat of the peasants, did not in general grow worse. The con- 

 trary, rather, took place. The wanton manipulation and augmen- 

 tation of those mainly personal tithes was somewhat discouraged. 

 Since the sixteenth century the condition of the peasantry in the 

 Southwest has, for the most part, not essentially deteriorated. 



Far different was the course of development in the Northeast, 

 in the regions east of the Elbe, which were not Germanized and 

 colonized until after the twelfth century. The real decline of the 

 peasants, the gradual deterioration of their condition that sprang 

 from colonization, dates from this very period, from the develop- 

 ment of the system of estate farming and the rise of the large 

 farming estates. 



These regions, won partly by the sword, partly by peaceful 

 means through the conversion of the native ruler, were, as a 

 result of a vast colonization that took place between the twelfth 

 and the fourteenth century, opened up to German civilization. 

 Everywhere the German monk and knight were followed by the 

 German peasant with the heavy German plough. He hewed out 

 new hamlets in the forests, or settled in the Slavic hamlets already 

 at hand and either drove out the Slav, who with his light hook- 

 plough practiced only primitive methods of agriculture, or tutored 

 him in tilling the soil. 



The salient characteristic of the agrarian policy created here 

 by German colonization is the undisputed presence everywhere 

 of a manorial system before the advent of the peasant, at least of 

 the German peasant ; indeed, it was a threefold landed proprietor- 

 ship, that of the reigning prince, of the German cloisters, which 

 received as gifts vast tracts of land for colonization with German 

 peasants, and of the great vassals constituting the high German 

 and native nobility. These three landowners together systemati- 

 cally colonized their domain with German peasants, who came, 

 for the most part, from Lower Saxony, in consequence of the 

 mobilization there of the country population. As already men- 

 tioned, they received here, first of all, the best personal and 

 proprietary rights : personal freedom and hereditary right of 



