rich von Kettenbach--to the preachers who collected round Hutten
and Sickengen. This personal union, which lasted up to Sickengen's
catastrophe, kept the national movement in a direction which could not
last. For a short time it appeared as if the religious and social
movement of South Germany, even if not led, could be made use of, by
the noble landed proprietors; it was an error into which both the
knights and their better friends fell; neither Hutten nor Sickengen had
sufficient strength or insight to win the country people really to
them. This came to light when Sickengen was overpowered by the
neighbouring princes. The peasants became the most zealous assistants
of the princes in persecuting the junkers of the Sickengen party and
burning their castles; this warfare may, indeed, be considered as the
prelude to the present war. It had unshackled the country people in the
neighbouring provinces, and accustomed them to the pulling down of
castles. A dialogue of the year 1524 has been preserved to us, in which
the fury of the country people against the nobles already breaks
forth.[17]

From that period the decided demagogues gained the ear of the peasants,
and the moderate amongst the popular leaders lost their supremacy.
Eberlin had once more, at Erfurt, an opportunity of showing, as a
mediator, the power of his eloquence over the revolted peasant hosts;
under its influence the assembled populace fell on their knees, pious
and penitent; but the weakness of his advice made this last endeavour
fruitless. He died the following year, and with him passed away most of
the poetry of the Reformation.

Cruelly was the revolt against the terrified princes punished, and the
smaller tyrants were the most eager to bring the conquered again under
their yoke. Yet in South Germany and Thuringia there was a real
improvement in the condition of the country people; for it happened at
a period in which a learned class of jurists spread over the country,
and the working of Roman law in Germany became everywhere perceptible.
The point of view taken by the jurists of the Roman school, of the
relations between the landed proprietors and their villeins, was indeed
not always favourable to the latter; for the lawyers were inclined to
fix every kind of subjection upon the peasant from the deficiency in
his right of property in his holding; but they were equally ready to
recognise his personal freedom. Thus, in the first half of the
sixteenth c