y in quarto, frequently also ornamented with woodcuts. They
gave information of every novelty; coronations, battles, and newly
discovered countries; by them every striking event flitted through the
country. After the Reformation, they increased enormously in number.
All printing-houses gave birth to them under the titles of newspapers,
advices, reports, and couriers. Besides these, there were the small
controversial writings of the Reformers, sermons, discourses, and
songs. Very soon also the Princes began to make use of the invention of
printing, to inform the public of their quarrels, and to gain
partisans. Private individuals whose rights were injured contended with
their opponents, whether city magistrates or foreign rulers, in
pamphlets. During the whole of the sixteenth century the aim of the
small, not theological, literature, was first to impart news, and
afterwards to serve the interests of individuals or princes, or to make
known the views of those in power. The opinions of individuals upon
political affairs were principally conveyed in a form which was then
considered particularly ingenious, as pasquinades or dialogues. These
small news sheets were innumerable, and their spread was rapid; after
the Reformation it became a separate branch of industry. The
booksellers, or as they were then called, stationers, who offered these
newspapers for sale in their shops and stalls, and introduced them to
the markets of foreign cities, made a dangerous competition with the
printers, bookbinders, and illuminators. Important newspapers were
everywhere pirated. Along the great trade and post roads, more
particularly of the Rhine and southern Germany, certain trading and
printing establishments made special gains from the communication of
the daily news; for example, Wendelin Borsch, at the Tiler's Hut in
Nuremberg, about 1571, Michael Enzinger at Cologne, at the end of the
century, and others. These sheets at first were published very
irregularly, but they already contained a correspondence from different
cities, in which not only political, but mercantile intelligence was
given.[32] At last, in 1612, appeared here and there separate newspaper
sheets in numbers, and in a certain degree of continuity. Meanwhile it
had been long the custom of the merchants to make such communications
to their mercantile friends with some regularity, so that there already
existed news-writers who were in the habit of forwarding written
newspape