entury, the old serfdom which still existed in a very harsh
form in many provinces was mitigated, and villeinage substituted.
Besides this, a more patriarchal feeling began to prevail among the
higher German Sovereigns, and in the new ordinances which they
projected in conjunction with their clergy, the welfare of the
peasantry was taken into consideration. This was the case above all
with the Wettiner princes in Franconia, Thuringia, and Meissen; and,
lastly, with Elector August. The authority, also, of the Saxon
chancery, which had been established in Germany since the fifteenth
century, contributed essentially to this, by making the Saxon laws a
pattern for the rest of Germany.

But some ten years before the Thirty Years' War, an advance in the
pretensions of the nobles became apparent, at least in the provinces
beyond the Elbe; for example, in Pommerania and Silesia. Under weak
rulers the courtly influence of the nobility increased, the constant
money embarrassments of the princes raised the independence of the
States, which granted the taxes; and the peasants had no
representatives in the States, except in the Tyrol, East Friesland, the
old Bailiwick of Swabia, and a few small territories. The landed
proprietors indemnified themselves for the concessions made to the
princes by double exactions on the peasantry. Serfdom was formally
re-established in Pommerania in 1617.

It was just at this period of reaction that the Thirty Years' War broke
out. It devastated alike the houses of the nobles and the huts of the
peasants. It brought destruction on man and beast, and corrupted those
that were left.[18]

After the great war--in the period which will be here portrayed--a
struggle began on the part of the landed proprietors and the newly
established Government against the wild practices of the war time. The
countryman had learned to prefer the rusty gun to handling the plough.
He had become accustomed to perform court service, and his mind was not
rendered more docile by disbanded soldiers having settled themselves on
the ruins of the old village huts. The peasant lads and servants bore
themselves like knights, wearing jack-boots, caps faced with marten's
fur, hats with double bands, and coats of fine cloth; they carried
rifles and long-handled axes when they came together in the cities, or
assembled on Sundays. At one time perhaps these had been useful against
robbers and wild beasts; but it had become far more danger