FOOTNOTES:[14]The Cæsars proper end with Nero, and then begin the emperors of various families and even nationalities.[15]See speech of Senator Mason of Virginia.[16]So to-day no law creates or gives a definition of "sand-hillers," "clay-eaters," and other brutalized poor whites in the South, who are rapidly approaching slavery.
[14]The Cæsars proper end with Nero, and then begin the emperors of various families and even nationalities.
[14]The Cæsars proper end with Nero, and then begin the emperors of various families and even nationalities.
[15]See speech of Senator Mason of Virginia.
[15]See speech of Senator Mason of Virginia.
[16]So to-day no law creates or gives a definition of "sand-hillers," "clay-eaters," and other brutalized poor whites in the South, who are rapidly approaching slavery.
[16]So to-day no law creates or gives a definition of "sand-hillers," "clay-eaters," and other brutalized poor whites in the South, who are rapidly approaching slavery.
XIV.
CHRISTIANITY: ITS CHURCHES AND CREEDS.
AUTHORITIES:
General History, Ecclesiastical History, Councils, Bulls, etc.
Christianity appeared for the purpose of effecting a regeneration in man's moral nature; this necessarily included also his social regeneration.
The primitive Christians, apostles, and martyrs, by their words, actions, and death, taught charity, brotherly love, and equality before God; and thus slowly but powerfully undermined slavery. They consoled in every possible way their lowly and suffering brethren, and tried to inspire the slaveholders with feelings of charity and benevolence toward their bondmen; but as the apostles did not attack any prevalent social or political evil, nay, even seemed to countenance, by their silent recognition or their advice, the existing imperial despotism, so, for obvious reasons, they could not directly attack domestic slavery nor proclaim universal emancipation. They preached to slaves and slaveholders, made converts from both, and considered and treated both as equal before God and the law. The few words of apostolic consolation which have been transmitted to us as referring especially to chattels, logically and morally contain a condemnation of slavery, for it is only misfortune and evil that inspire pity or require consolation. So that the apostles and primitive Christians, by advising slaves to bear their yoke patiently, thereby proclaimed slavery to be an evil, like any of the sufferings, losses, or misfortunes of life.
When, under Constantine, Christianity was embodied in a national ecclesiasticism, the Church watched more directly over the condition of the slaves. In various ways it tried to alleviate their condition and effect their manumission; and this it urged the more earnestly as the Christians belonged mostly to the poorer classes, and also numerous serfs and slaves.
But the Church had now become a material fact, and henceforward, beside its legitimate moral aims, it had also worldly and selfish desires. It received imperial and private donations, became a large proprietor of lands, and therefore also a holder of slaves and serfs. It could therefore take no distinct interest in emancipation, but nevertheless still continued to inspire slaveholders with a milder spirit, and tried to prevent, as far as possible, the slave traffic, at least in Christian chattels.
None of the apostles, fathers, confessors, or martyrs of the Church ever affirmed slavery to be a moral and divine institution, or ever attempted to justify it in any way. These primitive Christians and holy fathers never once thought to refer to the curse of Noah as a justification of slavery. The Biblical storyof Noah and his curse was first dragged into this question by the feudalized mediæval clergy, to justify the enslavement, not of black Africans but of white Europeans, among whom, undoubtedly, were the ancestors of many blatant American supporters of the divine origin, on Biblical authority, of slavery.
When the Roman empire was broken in pieces by the northern invaders, the body of the Roman Church and clergy belonged to the subdued and enslaved race. The Franks, Northmen, and Anglo-Saxons were then altogether heathen; but many of the invaders—as the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, the Vandals, Burgundians, Heruli, and Longobards—were Christians; but, being Arians (Unitarians), they were enemies of the Trinitarians, and treated the Roman clergy as they did the rest of the subdued population. The Roman clergy, however, finally succeeded in superseding the Arian dogmas by their own, and they then constituted the sole expounders of Christian doctrine. Moved then by the Christian spirit, as well as by consanguinity with the enslaved population, they never failed to impress on the conquerors, whether heathen or Christian, their duties toward their slaves. They also continued to promote manumissions by declaring them meritorious before God. These manumissions were performed at the sacred altar with all the pomp and impressive rites of the Church, and were often extorted from the slaveholding barbarian in his last agonies.
As before, so during the first centuries of the Germanic settlements of Western and Southern Europe,the Church never recognized the right of one man to enslave another; but rather through the voice of Gregory the Great, bishop, pope, or saint, reaffirmed the ancient axiom of the Roman jurist: "Homines quos ab initio natura creavit liberos—et jus gentium jugo substituit servitutis." The efforts of Gregory the Great, as also those of his predecessors and successors, were directed toward stopping the infamous slave traffic, first in Christian slaves, and then in Jews, Mussulmans, and all heathen. The Roman Church and its leaders unceasingly condemned the slave-trade, and the popes menaced with excommunication the traffickers in Mussulman prisoners in Rome, Lyons, Venice, etc., as also those Germans who afterward, in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, enslaved the prisoners of war which they made among the Slavonic tribes, Christian and heathen. The popes have likewise perpetually condemned the African or negro slave-trade, from its beginning down to the present day. Gregory XVI. interdicts "all ecclesiastics from venturing to maintainthat this traffic in blacksis permitted under any pretext whatsoever;" and prohibits "teaching in public or in private, in any way whatever, any thing contrary to this apostolic letter." Explicit words of this tenor, coming from the pope, were generally considered as expressing the spirit of the Papal Church. In the Roman, as in all other churches and sects, however, both clergy and laity were wont to interpret all such mandates according to their own convenience.
For reasons formerly alluded to, the various nationalecclesiastical councils held in countries politically reconstructed by German invaders—as Spain, France, and England—repeatedly and explicitly legislated on slavery. These councils had it constantly in view to moderate the general treatment of slaves and bondmen, and to prevent mutilation and other cruel modes of punishment. The churches were proclaimed inviolable places of refuge for fugitive slaves, and while emancipation was urged as meritorious, the enslavement of freemen was visited with excommunication.
Soon, however, the Church, that is, the priesthood and hierarchy, came to form an integral part of the feudal system. The higher clergy shared the public spoils, and had fiefs and other estates stocked with serfs and chattels. Then the fervor for emancipation abated; nevertheless, the clergy generally recommended a humane treatment of the enslaved. The Irish clergy and councils perhaps proved themselves the most disinterested at that early mediæval epoch: they were the "underground railroad" of the period—assisting in the escape of slaves from bondage; and a council held in Armagh in 1172, gavelibertyto allEnglish(that is, Saxon) slaves in Ireland. Nowadays, on the contrary, the immense majority of the Irish Roman clergy on this continent support and sanction chattel slavery.
In the course of time the clerical hierarchies, monasteries, etc., inoculated with the feudal and baronial spirit, became as zealous for the preservation of eventhe most revolting forms of servitude imposed upon the bondmen, as the most rapacious lay barons could possibly have been. Nowhere did the clergy raise its voice for either a total or a partial abolition of bondage.
Serfdom, which had long previously vanished from Italy, was, at the appearance of Luther, on the point of dissolution in England. The father of the religious reformation of Germany rather avoided blending social with spiritual reform; but the French and Swiss reformers, as well as the anabaptists and other sects, kept especially in view the amelioration of the condition of the oppressed masses. In general, the great movements for a freer spiritual activity which characterized the sixteenth century, contributed to promote the emancipation of serfs: and this first by purifying and elevating the public conscience, and then by bringing about the secularization of church property. The state, on becoming the heir of the clergy, was everywhere foremost in abolishing servitude: the ecclesiastical corporation, on the other hand, never labored for its abolition.
Among the various religious bodies—the Quakers and the modern Unitarians excepted—the absoluteness of Christian doctrine and morals has always been greatly modified by worldly interests. Not the Episcopal nor Scottish churches, nor indeed any other denomination, can claim the merit of having begotten the noble sentiment so universal in England on the subject of human bondage. The Roman clergycontinues, as it always has done, to oscillate between duty and interest; and the various Protestant sects do the same. And it is a significant feature that in the American Union almost every religious denomination has its pro-slavery and its anti-slavery factions.
XV.
GAULS.
AUTHORITIES:
Cæsar, Dieffenbach, Picot, Amadee Thierry, etc.
The Gauls (Gadhels,GaelsorGals), a branch of the Aryas, were the first historic race which peopled Central and Western Europe. It is supposed that the Gauls (afterward wrongly called Kelts) emigrated from Asia to Europe before the Greeks, Latins, or Slavonians, as undoubtedly they did long previous to the Teutons or Germans. Already, in prehistoric times, from the regions of the Danube to the Atlantic, on the Alps and the Pyrenees as well as on the British and Irish islands, these first wanderers left their marks in the names of rivers and mountains. Gallia (Gaul) finally became their home, and from thence they repeatedly issued forth and shook the ancient world, ravaged Greece and extended their empire to Asia Minor on the east, and Italy on the south. They burnt republican Rome in its very infancy, and for centuries the Roman republic struggled for life and death with them, until they were finally subdued by Cæsar.
The whole of Gaul was occupied by tribes more or less consanguineous, and their internal social organization was in many respects similar. Cæsar, in hisbird's-eye view, says that the two dominant classes were the druids and nobles, while under them were the "plebs, pœne servorem habetur loco, quæ per nihil audet et nullo adhibitur consiglio." This only explains the absence or perhaps dormancy of political rights. "Plerique(notall, it will be noticed, butmany, and these mainly such as had suffered reverses of fortune)sesse in servitutemDICANTnobilibus—in hos eadem omnia sunt jura quæ dominis in servis." This latter phrase only means that certain relations between the chief and his dependents were similar to those of master and chattel—being the only form of servitude known to Cæsar, who did not understand the tribal organization on which the authority of the chief was based.
Parke Godwin, in his highly elaborate and valuable History of France, says very justly that "the Gallic society was a mere conglomeration of chieftains and followers." After giving a picture of Gallic family life and exhibiting the nature of the chieftain's power and functions, that eminent writer thus continues: "The other members of the clan consisted of a number of dependents in various degrees of subordination, and of adherents whose ties were more or less voluntary." Among the dependents were "bondmen (attached to the soil), debtor-bondmen,obaerati, strangers found in the country without a protector or lord, and slaves, captives of war or purchased in the open market." Thus far Parke Godwin.
Slaves, if indeed such existed among the Gauls atthe time of Cæsar, were certainly exceedingly limited in number, and chattelhood was not an inherent condition of any part of the people. In his history of his long wars with the Gauls, Cæsar makes no allusion to a slave-element in the population—an omission which shows how insignificant it must have been.
The commercial relations of the Gauls with the Phœnicians and with the Greek colony of Massilia, or Marseilles, probably tended to encourage slavery among them. But although our knowledge of their internal relations and domestic economy is very scanty, there are a few facts which prove that domestic slavery was hardly even in an embryonic stage at the epoch when the Gauls, by their contact with Rome and Cæsar, entered the general current of history. The Massaliotes (or colonists established at Marseilles), trafficked in slaves. They also had them in their houses, but did not employ them on lands situated beyond the precincts of the city. For field laborers they hired the Ligurians, who, at given seasons, descended with their wives from the mountains and worked for wages. Lands belonging to Gallic clans or districts were no more worked by slave labor than were the fields of the Massaliotes. Even in the households of the chieftains or nobles, domestic slavery, if it existed, must have been hidden from sight. Possidonius, tutor of Pompey, Cicero, and other eminent Romans, gives a description of the mode of life and domestic customs of the Gauls, in whose country he travelled. He observed, that at their luxurious feaststhe guests were served by the children of the family, instead of domestic slaves; which fact authorizes the conclusion that the number of chattels was very small, and that they had no place in family life.
Gallic slaves consisted of criminals, vagabonds, foreigners imported from Massilia, and prisoners of war principally made from nations beyond the Alps and the Rhine. Even after the invasion of the Kimbri and Belgæ, Gaul was inhabited by tribes more or less akin to each other. It was therefore the theatre of almost uninterrupted domestic war between tribes and federations. But when one tribe was conquered by another, the subject people and those who escaped the fury of battle were not reduced to slavery, but simply became tributary, and received their laws from the conqueror. Exceptions to this rule must have been exceedingly rare. If an invading tribe was subdued, it received lands and was obliged to settle among the conquerors. The founders of Rome, as we saw (see "Romans: Republicans"), acted in a similar manner. Prisoners of war were absorbed into the clan, and were held, perhaps exclusively by the chieftain, in the condition of serfs bound to the soil, but not as chattels or marketable objects; and they were neither deprived of personality nor the rights of family.
The arable lands, forests, and pasturages were owned by the clan collectively—the chiefs, of course, receiving the lion's share when distributed for cultivation; and each clan lived on its own lands. Theseagricultural clansmen it was who constituted the terrible armies which, under various Brenni (chiefs, leaders, kings), so often terrified and scourged almost the whole known world.
With the increase of the wealth and power of the chieftains, their relations with the poorer clansmen became more aggressive, and the lands were held by the latter under conditions more and more onerous. But when Cæsar invaded Gaul, no large estates (latifundia) existed, and the soil was in the hands of a numerous peasantry inspired with patriotism and love of independence. This peasantry flocked to the standard of Vercingetorix, and, to the last, sustained him in his deadly struggle against Cæsar.
The living acoustic telegraph used by the Gauls during the wars with Cæsar is another proof that great estates did not exist in Gaul, and that the soil was tilled by freemen possessed of homesteads: for each peasant, from the limit of his homestead, shouted the news to his next neighbor, he to the next, and so on; and thus intelligence was swiftly carried hundreds of miles even during the shortest day of the year. An important event occurring in any one tribe was thus spread in a twinkling all over Gaul. Now, if the country had been divided into large estates worked by slaves, such a mode of communication would of course have been impossible.
As the clans and their land were governed by chieftains and nobles, so also were the cities under oligarchic rule. The free population in the cities hadno independent rights, and was obliged to have patrons. The poor, the defenceless, and even the artisans, willingly enrolled themselves for life under the clientship of the powerful nobility, depending on them as the rural clansmen depended upon the chieftains or rural nobles. But the condition of a client in the city was not hereditary or transmissible, as was clanship in the country. Thefamilyof the client held no relations of dependency upon the patron; and a son was not bound by obligations contracted by his father. When the patron died, the bonds of his clients were severed, and they were free to select another patron.
Such were the relations between the chieftains and clansmen, between the nobility and the people, between the soil and its tiller, between client and patron, when the Romans commenced the conquest of Gaul. Impoverishment, debts contracted to their chiefs, and exactions of one kind and another, may have transformed many independent clansmen into partial bondmen; but they always preserved their family and village rights.
After the numerous evidences already pointed out in the history of the Greeks and Romans, it is unnecessary here to show how similar morbid causes produced correspondingly destructive effects in the crude civilization and social condition of the Gauls. The development of these germs brought the Gauls almost to serfdom, if not yet to chattelhood, at the same time degrading the character of the oligarchs—future slaveholders—to the extent described by Cæsar.This perversion of the internal economy of the Gauls prepared them for domestic slavery. Thus often an insignificant derangement in the human economy, or a trifling lesion in its organism, may find its ultimate result only in permanent disorganization or indeath.
The Roman conquest and the subsequent oppressive administration, contributed to establish the same relations between the population in Gaul as existed in Italy and Spain, and which have been already described. The city (municipium) became all and every thing; the clan, the district, the country nothing. The former chiefs of the clans became the senators of their respective centres. The imperial Roman administration favored the concentration of landed estates into a few hands, and consequently the impoverishment of small landholders and free laborers and operatives of every kind; and thereby greatly increased the growth of slavery. The collective ownership of the land by the clan and its chiefs became wholly transformed into the individual property of the chief, who was now also a municipal senator or magnate. A striking analogy to this is found in the Highlands of Scotland, which, in the same way have become the property of a few powerful families. The Gallic clansmen before being transformed into chattels, first became tenants (coloni)—similar to those in imperial Italy—of their chiefs (ortierns), who, on becoming senators, lived in the cities, and were surrounded, not by clients and clansmen, but by slaves. The estates now began to be worked by bondmen andchattels, and thus a servile population succeeded to the free and sturdy yeomanry of ancient times.
Not without a struggle, however, was this accomplished. The oppressive taxation, the tyranny of the domestic oligarchs, and the devastations committed by barbarians—the vanguards of the future destroyers of the Roman empire—generated in the third century the repeated insurrections of theBagaudes(the Gallic name forinsurgent), that is, of the peasantry against the cities. All the oppressed small land-owners, tenants, serfs and slaves united in these insurrections.
The slave traffic was now very brisk. The Roman prefects, tribunes, etc., sold the prisoners of war made in the German invasions; while the Germans, in their turn, when successful, carried away or sold their booty to the human traffickers from various regions. Thus Aurelian, who was a military tribune previous to becoming emperor, sold several hundred Franks, Suevians, etc., probably in the city of Maguncia (Mayence). Soon the forays became more and more destructive, and for several centuries invasion succeeded invasion until the impoverishment and ruin of the people were accomplished. The issue of a long train of interacting social circumstances was the same in Gaul as in Italy: senators and oligarchs owned the lands and the cities, and proudly domineered, while the rest of the population sank into tenants, serfs, and bondmen, and most of them into chattels. These last had, of course, nothing to defend against the invaders, who even at times in many ways alleviated their condition: therefore the invaders were often received with open arms by the enslaved populations. When the destroyers of the Roman rule over Gaul finally settled therein, many of the nobles and rich magnates understood how to ingratiate themselves with their new masters, and thus shared in their spoils of lands and slaves. By far the greater number, however, were themselves ruined and enslaved.
In Gaul, as over the whole ancient and Roman world, not the slaveholders but their slaves survived the general destruction, nay, finally stepped into the places once occupied by their enslavers and masters.
XVI.
GERMANS.
AUTHORITIES:
Tacitus, Codex Legum Antiquorum Barbarorum, Jacob Grimm, Mentzel, Wirth, Puetter, Zimmerman, etc.
The Germans, in all probability, were the last of the Aryan stock who immigrated into Europe. History first discovers them finally settled in central Europe; and for how long a time they had previously roamed in the primitive forests of these regions it is impossible to conjecture. With the exception of the left bank of the Rhine, Switzerland, and the northern slopes of the Tyrolean Alps—which regions, in the course of centuries were conquered from various Keltic tribes—the Germany proper of to-day is about the same as when Cæsar met the barbarians on the Rhine. Then the Germans were rude savages, with but little agriculture; living on milk, cheese, and flesh; and their condition was in many respects similar, perhaps even inferior, to that of the Tartars, Kalmucks, and Bashkirs, who still rove over northern and central Asia.
Neither clanship nor patriarchate existed among the Germans, but the rule of individual will strengthened by the family ties. Divided into numerous tribes, the Germans seem to have spent many centuries in hunting the wild beasts of their primitive forests, and inmaking war upon each other. Most probably these almost uninterrupted domestic wars created and developed aristocracy and slavery, both of which were firmly established among the Germans when they first appear on the record of history. Among the European descendants of the Aryas, the primitive Germans reflect most strikingly the Euphratic story of Nimrod, "the strong," "the hunter," subduing the feeble and preying on his person and labor. A bitter hatred between the tribes prevailed from time immemorial; and consequently feuds and wars were perpetual. The conquered was compelled to labor for the conqueror; and thus originated, very probably, bondage and domestic slavery, as well as the aristocratic contempt which the fighting part of the population had for the subdued and enslaved laborers of a tribe. When one German tribe subdued another, the victors either seized on the lands of the conquered and settled thereon, transforming the former occupants into bondmen; or, if they did not settle among the subdued, they made them tributaries, carrying away a certain portion of the population as slaves. Thus the Germans, in their wild forests, were mainly divided into two great social elements—the freemen, or nobles, possessed of all rights, and the bondmen possessed of none. But all, free and slave, were of kindred race and lineage.
All the German dialects have a specific denomination for the chattel.Schalch,scalch,schalk, is the word for slave, andseneschalkfor the overseer. Afterward, in mediæval times,seneschalkwas an office, dignity, or title.
Besides wars and conquests, there were other sources which fed and sustained slavery: thus certain crimes were punished with slavery, and even freemen gambled away their liberty—a custom found among no other race or nation; a freeman, likewise, could at any time sell himself into slavery. Any one condemned to compound in money for murder or any other offence, if he had no money, gave himself as a slave into the hands of the family or individual whom he had offended, or to the man who loaned him money to pay the composition. Theschalkswere more absolutely in the power of their master than were the Roman slaves under the empire, or even, if possible, than the chattels of the American slave states. Although Tacitus says that masters killed their slaves only when intoxicated or otherwise maddened with passion, the barbarian codes and other historic evidence show that theschalkswere treated with the utmost cruelty, and even subject to be maimed in various ways. Some historians who hold up the Germans as models of social and civic virtue, attribute this cruelty to their contact with the Romans, whose example they followed. But the influence of Roman polity on Germany began only toward the end of the fourth century; and many of the northern tribes, as the Saxons, Frisians, etc., did not come under the influence of Roman, Christian, or any foreign civilization till about the eighth century. Some of these barbarian codeswere written when the barbarians had settled on the Roman ruins; then, undoubtedly, they incorporated some Roman ideas, and contained laws bearing on existing relations; but still they were principally the embodiment of their own immemorial usages. The Visigothic code, for instance, was written very soon after they settled in Gaul and Spain, long before the destruction of the Western empire, and consequently could not have been seriously influenced by the legal conceptions or customs of Rome.
Tacitus says that little difference existed between the mode of life of masters and slaves:Inter eadem pecora in eadem humo degunt.At the time of Diodorus Siculus, youthful male and femaleschalksserved at the tables of masters, who were always willing to sell them for a jug of wine.
In this primitive epoch of German historical existence, the pride of blood and descent seems to have been deeply ingrained in the German mind; and there was a strong aversion against corrupting the lineage by intermarriage with aschalkman or woman, even although they were of the same race and family. Among the Saxons immemorial custom even punished amesalliancewith death. Thus the very ancestors of many American slaveholders, now so proud of their Saxon blood, were considered unworthy of marriage with their masters. But concubinage with slave women was then common (as it now is in the South), whatever Tacitus may say concerning German conjugal fidelity. The bastards of parents one free theother slave, became serfs to the soil. If a freeman married a slave woman, their children wereschalks, and sometimes the father even was reduced to slavery. A free woman marrying a slave, might be killed by her parents or became a slave of the king—when the Germans had kings in their new, post-Roman monarchies. Most of these cruel legal customs, and many others found in the codes, belong to the heathen epoch, to the period of pure Germanic existence unadulterated by contact with the corruptions of civilized life. They prove how deep was the Germanic contempt for the ignoble or unfortunate among their own brethren; they show also the very ancient appearance of slavery among them, and its violent and criminal origin, like that of slavery always and everywhere.
Ancient usages and laws regulating inheritance perpetuate themselves remarkably among peoples and nations. From their forests the Germans transplanted the right of primogeniture over Europe. The land was given to the males, while the daughters received the movables,mancipia, and the schalks—a conclusive evidence that not alone bondage to the soil, but positive chattelhood, prevailed in the primitive forests of Germany.
Cities and organized industry had then no existence. Freemen,i.e., masters, had but a few crude wants, and these were supplied by the work of the schalks in the dwelling or in thehof(court) of the master. In primitive prehistoric times, as in the time of Tacitus and afterward, all the male andfemale household menials, peasants and workmen, wereschalks.
Manumissions were common, but depended wholly on the will of the master. They could be obtained in various ways—might be bought with labor, produce, money, etc. The manumitted did not, however, enter at once into full enjoyment of the rights of freeman or master; indeed, only his descendants of the third generation became fully purified and capable of entering into the noble class. They then constituted, probably, the inferior nobility or freemen, who were followers and companions of the first class; and perhaps from them sprang the free yeomanry, who originally possessed but small property and a small number of schalks and serfs.
The fighting-men, or warriors, who subdued and enslaved other tribes, or transformed into schalks the weaker members of their own tribe, frequently located some of them on lands or homesteads which they permitted them to cultivate for their own use, on condition of paying a rent, generally in kind, and performing various other acts of servitude. Such was the origin of the Germanliti, who afterward constituted the common people.
The free, that is originally thestrong, thesubduer, was at the summit of the whole German social structure. He was free because he was absolute master over the weak, who had no power or strength in himself or family, and therefore was rightless. The genuine meaning of the wordfrow(from which isderivedfri,free,freedom,) is "the right to own" land,litiandschalks. Fromfrowcomes thefrowen"freemen," "rulers," "masters,"—the caste for which all others existed. Land and schalks constituted the wealth offrowenor nobleman, and to acquire them the German tribes exerted all their warlike energies. All the remote Teutonic invasions, as well as those of the mediæval times, were made principally for the acquisition of land and slaves. The lands, conquered by the swords of thefrowen, were worked by theschalks.
The slave traffic existed and was highly developed among the primitive Germans. It was carried on at the time of Tacitus, and some investigators maintain that for long centuries it was the only traffic known among the barbarous Germans; and slavery in its worst form was in full blast in Germany when her tribes dashed themselves against the Western empire. The slaves constituted more than half of the whole Germanic population. Wirth, the most conscientious investigator of the primitive social condition of the Germanic race, estimates the proportion of freemen to slaves as one to twenty-four. All of them—frowen,adelings, nobles of all degrees, followers, vassals,litiandschalks, lived the same simple, agrestic life. Rude in mind and of vigorous bodies, in comparatively small numbers they shattered in pieces the rotting Roman empire.
First the incursions, then the definite invasions and conquests—Attila's forays from one end of Europe tothe other—gave a vigorous impulse to slavery, both abroad and at home. Abroad, the invaders enslaved all that they reached—destroying, burning, devastating, impoverishing the population, and increasing the number of those forced to seek in chattelhood a remedy against starvation. At home, immense tracts of land were depopulated and abandoned, and old and newfrowen, masters, seized upon them. Of courseschalkswere in demand, and were supplied by traffic and kidnapping.
The wars among the Germanic tribes, which were continued more or less vigorously, and the wars with neighboring populations, increased the number of slaves thrown upon the market.
The transition of a great part of Europe from the Roman to what may be called the German world, was so terrible that for several centuries the most unparalleled destruction, desolation, and slavery constituted the principal characteristics of the first mediæval epoch.
But Europe, the Christian world, and humanity were not to be submerged in the foul mire of chattelism. The awful crisis lasted through many generations, and bloodshed and superhuman suffering were their lot. But finally, the turning-point of the disease was reached: the disorder began to yield. Often after such a crisis the malignant symptoms do not abate at once, nay, they sometimes reappear with renewed force, and a long period is needed for a complete recovery. So in the evolution of Europe, overflowed bythe German tribes, the most malignant symptoms of chattelhood continued and reappeared for a long time in their worst characteristics, before the social body entered the stage of convalescence.
The bloody throes of the German world redounded to the benefit of the nobles abroad and at home.Litiand schalks increased, and land rapidly accumulated in the hands of the few during the first centuries of the German Christian era. Thus Saxony belonged to twenty, some say to twelve nobles, who kept thereon half-free vassals,liti, and schalks.
As the oligarchs of Greece and Rome and Gaul, so the Germanfrowen, the powerful, the rich, in all possible ways,per fas et nefas, seized upon the homesteads of the poor; and the impoverished freemen orahrimen, smaller nobles, and vassals, becamelitiand schalks. Analogous conditions produce analogous results in usages as in institutions and laws; and often that which appears to have been borrowed by one nation or people from another, is only a domestic outgrowth germinating from similar circumstances.
When the German lay and clerical founders of the feudal system possessed more land than they could cultivate, and when the iron hand of Charlemagne prevented domestic feuds and the supply of slaves from that source, then they kidnapped right and left, heathen and Christian, poor freeman or schalk. Some of the feudal barons of the time of Charlemagne owned as many as twenty thousandlitiand schalks.
Karl, Karle (the correct name), or Charlemagne(the more common one), in one of his numerous edicts or capitularies, prescribes as follows to those who received lands, baronies, abbeys, etc., as fiefs or grants: "Et qui nostrum habet beneficium diligentissime prevideat quantum potest Deo donante, ut nullus ex mancipiis (chattels) ad illum pertinentes beneficium fame moriatur, quod superest ultra illius familiæ necessitatem, hoc libere rendat jure prescripto."
Manumissions were promoted, in various ways, by the civil and clerical authorities. Many free yeomen were created from manumitted slaves, as well as from poor vassals or followers. But such were soon impoverished by wars and devastations, and were, from various causes, reduced to the condition oflitiand chattels.
Serfdom and slavery were generally more severe in the northern portion of Germany, as Saxony, etc., than in the southern; but in both, the peasantry were crushed, oppressed, and, when it was feasible, enslaved. When Lothair I., grandson of Charlemagne, revolted against his father, Louis the Pious, he appealed for help to the oppressed peasantry, tenants, and chattels.
The centuries of thefaustrecht—"right of the fist," that is of the sword, of brute force—soon succeeding all over Germany to Charlemagne's orderly rule, the strongholds of dynasts, barons, nobles and robbers, shot out everywhere like mushrooms; and from them radiated oppressions and exactions of every kind. The ancient practice of ruining the poor freemen and tenants, then transforming them into serfs,and then the serfs into chattels, went on as of old. In proportion as the forests were cleared, however, the baron found he could not profitably work the extensive estates with schalks alone, and that it would be more economical to transform these chattels into serfs, tenants, etc., and establish them on small parcels of his property. This was the first feeble sign of amelioration. Villages formed in this way by dynasts, or princes, and by barons, then received some rudiments of communal, rural organization.
A more powerful engine of emancipation, however, were the cities. In the course of the tenth century, dynasts, princes and emperors began everywhere to found cities, endowing them with various franchises and privileges. The legitimate flow of events, the necessities created by a settled organic existence which could only be supplied by the regular movements of industry and commerce, together with the influence of Gaul, and above all, of Italy, stimulated the German rulers. To the emperor Henry I., of the house of Saxony, belongs the glory of having given the first impulse to commerce, and thus the first blow to chattelhood and serfdom.
The population of the newly-founded cities consisted of inferior people of all kinds—laborers, operatives, small traders, poor freemen, and persons manumitted on condition of residing in the cities—the founders of the cities originally peopling them with their own retainers and with vagabonds of all kinds. Of course no nobles even of the lowest kind becameburghers, and thus the first municipal patricians were of very inferior birth. Thus antagonism to barons and feudal nobles generally formed the very cornerstone of the cities.
Among the privileges granted to the first cities was that a serf, schalk, or, in a word, any bondman, seeking refuge in the precincts of a city, became free if not claimed within a year. This respite to the fugitive soon became a common law all over Germany, even between nobles in relation to their fugitive serfs; and the hunter of a fugitive lost caste even among the free masters—freiherrn. When a legal prosecution was attempted, every difficulty, legal and illegal, was thrown in the way of the claimant—the cities willingly resorting to arms for the defence of their right of refuge.
The first Crusades emancipated large numbers of persons, as the taking of the cross was the sign of liberty for serf and for slave. But in Germany as in France, the great and permanent influence of the Crusades on emancipation consisted in their strengthening the cities and impoverishing the nobles, and thus producing a salutary change in internal economic relations.
The wars of the Germans with their neighbors, and above all with the Slavonians, Maghyars, etc., in the tenth and eleventh centuries, again gave vitality to the slave traffic; and war prisoners and captives, not now of their own kindred, but of foreign birth, were brought to the markets for sale.
Nevertheless, chattelhood was slowly dying out,and about the twelfth century but few traces of it remained: prisoners of war began to be ransomed or exchanged, and villeinage, with various services attached, altogether superseded domestic slavery.
The villein possessed the rights of family, of village, and partially of communal organization. But many of the galling characteristics of chattelhood were transfused into serfdom and villeinage. The nobles became, if possible, more insolent, exacting and oppressive. But the villeins and peasants began to feel their power, and to combine and act in common in the villages, and afterward in the communes.
Partial insurrections followed each other in various parts of Germany; here against one baron or master, there against another. Every insurrection, even if suppressed, nevertheless gave an impulse, though sometimes imperceptible, to amelioration and emancipation. Insurrections of the down-trodden and oppressed classes are like feverish efforts of diseased physiology to resist the disorder, to throw out the virus, and restore the normal condition in the economy of life. The whole world admires the glorious insurrection of the Swiss-German peasantry againsttheirinsolent masters. Then the bondmen, villeins, etc., individually or in small bodies, by the axe, by fire, and in every possible manner, protested their imprescriptible right to liberty. So also did the celebrated Münzer when the reformation dawned over Germany and Europe. He firmly believed that religious reform, to be beneficial to the poor, must go hand in handwith social ameliorations. The most notable insurrection, however, was the great uprising of the German peasantry in the sixteenth century. From the Vosgese mountains, from the Alps to the Baltic, numerous isolated forces rose in arms, each inspired by the same great idea. They had no centres, no possibility of a combination of effort, but all of them recognized the same covenant: 1. The gospel to be preached in truth, but not in the interest of their masters—nobles and clergy. 2. Not to pay any kind of tithes. 3. The interest or rent from landed property to be reduced to five per cent. 4. Forests to be communal property. 5. All waters free. 6. Game free. 7. Serfdom to be abolished. 8. Election of communal authorities by the respective communes. 9. Lands robbed from the peasantry to be restored to the original owners.
This great war of the peasants was terrible, pitiless, bloody. More than one thousand strongholds, burghs, and monasteries were destroyed; but the peasants were finally overpowered, the nobility being aided by the forces of the empire. Luther, too, thundered against the poor peasants.[17]But not in vain did they shed their blood. The oppression by the oldfrowen, strengthened by feudality, was finally broken at the roots. The imperial German diet declared to the nobles, that if they did not cease their cruelties, at the next revolt they should be abandoned to their fate.
Serfdom was not yet abolished, but was moderated in various ways. The direct and indirect influence of the Reformation on the condition of the peasantry has been already mentioned. Mild reforms were introduced in the dominions of various German sovereigns. Certain liberties were granted to rural communes, and the number of free tenants slowly but uninterruptedly increased. The conditions of villeinage on private estates began to be regulated by the respective governments; and absolute serfdom was slowly dying out. The prosperity of Germany increased proportionally with the emancipation, though but partial, of rural labor, and the freedom of the soil. On an average, those regions were most prosperous which contained the greatest number of emancipated rural communities, or where the villeinage was reduced, systematized, and made more and more free from the arbitrary exactions of the master.
The peculiar political organization of Germany prevented any unity of action in the extinction of rural servitude. Many of its features—some relating to the person, but principally to the soil—survived even to the present century in certain parts of the smaller German states; and in Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, there is still room for infinite improvement in the condition of the peasantry. But the mortal disorder exists no more: the fundamental rights of man are recognized. Governmental maladministration, injustice, oppressive taxation, exactions by officials and landlords, are unhappily common; but all theseare in flagrant violation of established laws. And, bad though they are, they cannot for a moment compare with the blighting influences of chattel slavery.
For long centuries, and with persistent pertinacity, have slavery and the oppression of man and his labor gnawed at the German vitals; and centuries must elapse before the recovery of a normal condition. But the Germans of the present day—moralists, statesmen, savants and professional men, as well as artisans, mechanics and agriculturists—are unanimous in condemning human bondage, whatever may be the race enslaved. Few, indeed, are there of the great German race whose minds are inaccessible to the nobler promptings of freedom and humanity.