But in order that our dissertations may follow the succession of events, we shall here trace the reaction which necessarily followed upon the unnat ural condition of society.
The the flourishing period of the Middle Ages the nobility constituted, from a social standpoint, the highest class in the empire. They alone formed the mounted soldiery upon whom the success of every battle depended, and they thus came to regard themselves as the defenders of their country. After the emperor Conrad II. had made the smaller fiefs hereditary, all the nobles of every grade were enabled to give themselves up to the undisturbed enjoyment of their privileges. The higher instincts of the Teuton found in this freedom of rank an appropri ate basis upon which to attain complete development with undiminished creative power.
The distinction of this class into the higher and the lower nobility was modified by the consciousness of a common vocation, and by the prin ciples of honor therefrom developed, and in the higher community of an ideal knighthood those degrees of rank and power were lost sight of which divided the nobles holding immediately of the emperor, and having almost the dignity of princes, from the so-called "ministerial nobles," who held their fiefs under a prince of the empire or some member of the higher nobility. But when the nobles lost their sense of privileged position they also lost the highest incentive to action. The unfortunate period of the Interregnum, which loosened the bonds and disorganized all ranks of society, seriously shattered the institution of the nobility. Still more fatal to the nobility was the growing power of the princes of the empire built upon the ruins of the old national dukedoms; and this, together with the increasing importance of the cities, combined to throw the influence of the upper classes more and more into the shade.
But the severest blow fell upon the knightly class when the change in the military system assigned the most important part in war to the infantry, and when by the introduction of firearms the knightly lance had been rendered impotent. Thns, losing the solidarity of their class,
and becoming in many instances impoverished by the extravagance and display by which they had felt obliged to keep up their state, the nobles were compelled to occupy themselves with the ordinary concerns of life, and to sacrifice their ideal aims and romantic dreams of glory.
As the serfs or "poor people" (as they had long been officially termed) could no longer be oppressed, many of the nobles sought a share in the wealth of the cities by becoming burghers and engaging in trade. They did not, as has often been erroneously supposed, give rise to the class of "merchant princes," with whom, indeed, though sometimes allied in marriage, they were seldom united in legal equality. Others of them remained on their country estates and supported themselves by plunder ing or marauding, or, somewhat less dishonestly, by participating as leaders in the feuds of the wealthy city upstarts, for which service they demanded a heavy recompense. But when at last the cities had become sufficiently strong to carry on war, and, united in confederations, had succeeded in applying the torch to the robber castles, and especially when the stronger imperial polity initiated by Maximilian I. had put an end to the pursuit of rapine, the nobles betook themselves to the court of the sovereign, where various offices afforded them a sufficient recompense.
The morals of the nobility had become more and more corrupt; their ancient valor had degenerated into mere bravado; and drunkenness, the cardinal vice of the Germans, had wrought great havoc in their midst. The better elements among the nobility remained in the country, and attained prosperity by adopting a rational system of agriculture in place of the former exhaustive method of treating the soil, and they became the saviors of society when the courts, infected by French libertinism, and civic life, decaying under the restrictions of an obsolete state of society, had no aims or principles but such as were narrow and corrupt.