hey all turned against Helmbrecht. 'Now take care
of your hood.' The embroidery which the hangman had left untouched was
now torn, and scattered on the road with his hair. They allowed the
miserable wretch to make his confession, and one of them broke a
fragment from the ground and gave it to the worthless man as gate money
for hell fire. Then they hung him to a tree.

"If there be still any children living with their father and mother who
feel disposed to be jovial knights, let them take warning from the fate
of Helmbrecht."

Thus ends the story of young Helmbrecht, who was desirous of becoming a
knight. And such on the whole we may consider was the condition and
disposition of the free peasantry at the beginning of the long period
of decline, which loosened the connection of the German Empire, founded
the power of the great princely houses, made the burgher communities of
fortified cities rich and powerful, and which was also the beginning of
that wild time of self-help and free fraternization of cities, as of
nobles. But the details of the changes which the German peasant
underwent from 1250 to 1500, can no longer be accurately discerned by
us. The wild deeds of violence and oppression of the robber-nobles,
drove the helpless into the cities, and the enterprising into foreign
countries. There were always opportunities of fighting under the sign
of the cross against Sclavonians, Wends, and Poles, and on the east of
the Elbe, broad countries were opened for the weapons and the plough of
the German countryman. There was agitation also in the minds of men.
The new despotism of the Roman papacy and of the fanatical Mendicant
friars, drove the Katharers on the Rhine, and the Stedingers in Lower
Saxony, to apostacy from the church. Where the free peasants were
thickly located and favoured by the nature of their country, they rose
in arms against the oppression of feudal lords. In the valleys of
Switzerland and in the marsh lands on the German ocean, the associated
country people gained victories over the mailed knights, which still
belong to the glorious reminiscences of the people. But in the interior
of Germany, the peasantry under the increasing oppression of the nobles
and a degenerate church, became weaker, more incapable, and coarser;
ever more powerfully did the barons lord it over them. Even the
resident free peasant of Lower Saxony was cast down from the place of
honour, which he once maintained above the knightly