The Peasant War in Germany

opinion, with the collapse of the German nation. Added to it was the fact that the nobility,
especially that section of it which was under the empire, by virtue of its military occupation
and its attitude towards the princes, directly represented the empire and the imperial power.
The  nobility  was  the  most  national  of  the  estates,  and  it  knew  that  the  stronger  were  the
imperial power and the unity of Germany, and the weaker and less numerous the princes,
the  more  powerful  would  the  nobility  become.  It  was  for  that  reason  that  the  knighthood
was  generally  dissatisfied  with  the  pitiful  political  situation  of  Germany,  with  the
powerlessness of the empire in foreign affairs, which increased in the same degree as, by
inheritance,  the  court  was  adding  to  the  empire  one  province  after  the  other,  with  the
intrigues  of  foreign  powers  inside  of  Germany  and  with  the  plottings  of  German  princes
with foreign countries against the power of the empire. It was for that reason, also, that the
demands  of  the  nobility  instantly  assumed  the  form  of  a  demand  for  the  reform  of  the
empire, the victims of which were to be the princes and the higher clergy. Ulrich of Hutten,
the theoretician of the German nobility, undertook to formulate this demand in combination
with Franz von Sickingen, its military and diplomatic representative.
The  reform  of  the  empire  as  demanded  by  the  nobility  was  conceived  by  Hutten  in  a
very  radical  spirit  and  expressed  very  clearly.  Hutten  demanded  nothing  else  than  the
elimination of all princes, the secularisation of all church principalities and estates, and the
restoration of a democracy of the nobility headed by a monarchy – a form of government
reminiscent  of  the  heyday  of  the  late  Polish  republic.  Hutten  and  Sickingen  believed  that
the empire would again become united, free and powerful, should the rule of the nobility, a
predominantly military class, be reestablished, the princes, the elements of disintegration,
removed,  the  power  of  the  priests  annihilated,  and  Germany  torn  away  from  under  the
dominance of the Roman Church.
Founded  on  serfdom  this  democracy  of  the  nobility,  the  prototype  of  which  could  be
found in Poland and, in the empires conquered by the Germanic tribes, at least in their first
centuries,  is  one  of  the  most  primitive  forms  of  society,  and  its  normal  course  of
development  is  to  become  an  extensive  feudal  hierarchy,  which  was  a  considerable
advance. Such a powerful democracy of the nobility had already become an impossibility
in  Germany  of  the  Sixteenth  Century,  first  of  all  because  there  existed  at  that  time
important  and  powerful  German  cities  and  there  was  no  prospect  of  an  alliance  between
nobility  and  the  cities  such  as  brought  about  in  England  the  transformation  of  the  feudal
order  into  a  bourgeois  constitutional  monarchy.  In  Germany,  the  old  nobility  survived,
while  in  England  it  was  exterminated  by  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,
[17]
 only  twenty-eight
families remaining, and was superseded by a new nobility of middle-class derivation and
middle-class tendencies. In Germany, serfdom was still the common practice, the nobility
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drawing  its  income  from  feudal  sources,  while  in  England  serfdom  had  been  virtually
eliminated,  and  the  nobility  had  become  plain  middle-class  land  owners,  with  a  middle-
class source of income – the ground rent. Finally, that centralisation of absolute monarchial
power  which  in  France  had  existed  and  kept  growing  since  Louis  XI  due  to  the  clash  of
interests between nobility and middle-class, was impossible in Germany where conditions
for national centralisation existed in a very rudimentary form, if at all.
Under these conditions, the greater was Hutten’s determination to carry out his ideals in
practice,  the  more  concessions  was  he  compelled  to  make,  and  the  more  clouded  did  his
plan  of  reforming  the  empire  become.  Nobility,  alone,  lacked  power  to  put  the  reform
through. This was manifest from its weakness in comparison with the princes. Allies were
to be looked for, and these could only be found either in the cities, or among the peasantry
and  the  influential  advocates  of  reform.  But  the  cities  knew  the  nobility  too  well  to  trust
them, and they rejected all forms of alliance. The peasants justly saw in the nobility, which
exploited and mistreated them, their bitterest enemy, and as to the theoreticians of reform,
they  made  common  cause  with  the  middle-class,  the  princes,  or  the  peasants.  What
advantages,  indeed,  could  the  nobility  promise  the  middle-class  or  the  peasants  from  a
reform  of  the  empire  whose  main  task  it  was  to  lift  the  nobility  into  a  higher  position?
Under these circumstances Hutten could only be silent in his propaganda writings about the
future  interrelations  between  the  nobility,  the  cities  and  the  peasants,  or  to  mention  them
only briefly, putting all evils at the feet of the princes, the priests, and the dependence upon
Rome, and showing the middle-class that it was in their interests to remain at least neutral
in the coming struggle between the nobility and the princes. No mention was ever made by
Hutten of abolishing serfdom or other burdens imposed upon the peasants by the nobility.
The attitude of the German nobility towards the peasants of that time was exactly the
same as that of the Polish nobility towards its peasants in the insurrections since 1830. As
in  the  modern  Polish  upheavals,  the  movement  could  have  been  brought  to  a  successful
conclusion  only  by  an  alliance  of  all  the  opposition  parties,  mainly  the  nobility  and  the
peasants. But of all alliances, this one was entirely impossible on either side. The nobility
was  not  ready  to  give  up  its  political  privileges  and  its  feudal  rights  over  the  peasants,
while  the  revolutionary  peasants  could  not  be  drawn  by  vague  prospects  into  an  alliance
with  the  nobility,  the  class  which  was  most  active  in  their  oppression.  The  nobility  could
not  win  over  the  German  peasant  in  1522,  as  it  failed  in  Poland  in  1830.  Only  total
abolition  of  serfdom,  bondage  and  all  privileges  of  nobility  could  have  united  the  rural
population with it. The nobility, like every privileged class, had not, however, the slightest
desire to give up its privileges, its favourable situation, and the major parts of its sources of
income.
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