In short, the peasantry and
labouring classes generally were oppressed and impoverished in countless
different ways.
In Germany, as indeed in most other parts of Feudal Europe, the
peasantry of the period were of three different kinds. Serfs
(_Leibeigener_), who were little better than slaves, and who were bought
and sold with the land they cultivated; villeins (_Hoeriger_), whose
services were assumed to be fixed and limited; and the free peasant
(_die Freier_), whose counterpart in England was the mediaeval
copyholder, who either held his land from some feudal lord, to whom he
paid a quit-rent in kind or in money, or who paid such a rent for
permission to retain his holding in the rural community under the
protection of the lord. To appreciate the state of mind of such folk in
the times of which we are writing, we should remember that "the good old
times" of the fifteenth century were still green in their minds, from
which, indeed, the memory of ancient freedom and primitive communism,
though little more than a tradition, had never been entirely banished:
which sufficiently accounts, not only for their impatience of their new
burdens, but also for their tendency to regard all feudal dues as direct
infringements of their ancient rights and privileges.
"We will that you free us for ever, us and our lands; and that we be
never named and held as serfs!" was the demand of the revolting English
peasant in 1381; and the same words practically summarise the demands of
the German peasantry in 1525.
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