ble
conditions; great obligations therefore were undertaken on all sides.
Thus a powerful stream carried away the people to destruction.

But a counter stream arose, first gentle, then continually stronger.
Those were first to complain who had to live on a fixed income, the
parish priests most loudly, the schoolmasters and poor misanthropes
most bitterly. Those who had formerly lived respectably on two hundred
gulden, good Imperial coin, now only received two hundred light gulden,
and if, as often undoubtedly happened, the salary of some were raised
about a quarter in amount, they could not even with this addition
defray half, nay even the fourth part, of the necessary expenses. Upon
this unprecedented occasion the ecclesiastics referred to the Bible,
and found there an indisputable objection to all hedge minting, and
began to preach from their pulpits against light money. The
schoolmasters starved in the villages as long as they could, then ran
away and increased the train of vagabonds, beggars, and soldiers; the
servants next became discontented. The wages, which averaged ten gulden
a year, hardly sufficed to pay for their shoes. In every house there
were quarrels between them and their masters and mistresses. Men and
maid servants ran away, the men enlisted and the maids endeavoured to
set up for themselves. Meanwhile the youths dispersed from the schools
and universities, few parents among the citizens being sufficiently
well off to be able to support their sons entirely during the period of
education. There were however a multitude of scholarships founded by
benevolent people for poor students. The value of these now suddenly
vanished, the credit of the poor scholars in foreign towns was soon
exhausted, many found it impossible to maintain themselves; they sank
under poverty and the temptations of that bloody period. We may still
read in the autobiographies of many respectable theologians, what
distress they then suffered. One supported life in Vienna, by cutting
daily his master's tallies for a four-penny loaf; another was able to
earn eighteen batz[35] in the week, by giving lessons, the whole of
which he was obliged to spend on dry bread.

There was increasing discontent. First among the capitalists who lived
on the interest of the money which they had lent, which was then in
middle Germany five, or occasionally six, per cent. For a time they
were much envied as wealthy people, but now their receipts were often