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- 

 tory, 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 peasants. Here 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 services of the 

 peasants, now numerically fewer, the labor is proportionally 

 increased ; and to prevent the peasants from running away, their 

 persons are made subject, the subjection being hereditary. 



The government, here much weaker than in the Northwest, at- 

 tempted in vain in the sixteenth century to stay this process. After 

 the secularization it applied the same methods in its new domains. 

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

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

 it must be said, not quite to the extent usually assumed. 



It was the Thirty Years' War, more than all else, which ac- 

 complished this result. The war wrought here particular devas- 

 tation ; and the civilization, being more recent, recovered with 

 greater difficulty than in the older Germany. Most of the peasant 

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



