While in England, as well as in France, the rise of commerce and industry had brought about a linking of interests over the entire country, the political centralisation of Germany had succeeded only in the grouping of interests according to provinces and around purely local centres.This meant political decentralisation which later gained momentum through the exclusion of Germany from world commerce.In the degree as the purely feudal empire was falling apart, bonds of unity were becoming weakened, great feudal vassals were turning into almost independent princes, and cities of the empire on the one hand, the knights of the empire on the other, were forming alliances either against each other, or against the princes or the emperor.The imperial power, now uncertain as to its own position, vacillated between the various elements opposing the empire, and was constantly losing authority; the attempt at centralisation, in the manner of Louis XI brought about nothing but the holding together of the Austrian hereditary lands, this in spite of all intrigues and violent actions.The final winners, who could not help winning in this confusion, in this helter-skelter of numerous conflicts, were the representatives of centralisation amidst disunion, the representatives of local and provincial centralisation, the princes, beside whom the emperor gradually became no more than a prince among princes.
Under these conditions the situation of the classes emerging from mediaeval times had considerably changed.New classes bad been formed besides the old ones.
Out of the old nobility came the princes.Already they were almost independent of the emperor, and possessed the major part of sovereign rights.
They declared war and made peace of their own accord, they maintained standing armies, called local councils, and levied taxes.They had already drawn a large part of the lower nobility and cities under their lordly power;they did everything in their power to incorporate in their lands all the rest of the cities and baronies which still remained under the empire.
Towards such cities and baronies they appeared in the role of centralisers, while as far as the imperial power was concerned, they were the decentralising factor.Internally, their reign was already autocratic, they called the estates only when they could not do without them.They imposed taxes, and collected money whenever they saw fit.The right of the estates to ratify taxes was seldom recognised, and still more seldom practised.And even when they were called, the princes ordinarily had a majority, thanks to the knights and the prelates which were the two estates freed from taxes, participating, nevertheless, in their consumption.The need of the princes for money grew with the taste for luxuries, with the increase of the courts and the standing armies, with the mounting costs of administration.The taxes were becoming more and more oppressive.The cities being in most cases protected against them by privileges, the entire weight of the tax burden fell upon the peasants, those under the princes themselves, as well as the serfs and bondsmen of the knights bound by vassalage to the princes;wherever direct taxation was insufficient, indirect taxes were introduced;the most skilful machinations of the art of finance were utilised to fill the gaping holes of the fiscal system.When nothing else availed, when there was nothing to pawn and no free imperial city was willing to grant credit any longer, one resorted to coin manipulations of the basest kind, one coined depreciated money, one set a higher or lower rate of legal tender most convenient for the prince.Trading in city and other privileges, subsequently to be taken away by force, in order that they might again be sold, seizing every attempt at ,opposition as an excuse for incendiarism and robbery of every kind, etc., etc., were lucrative and quite ordinary sources of income for the princes of those times.The administration of justice was also a constant and not unimportant article of trade for the princes.In brief, the subjects who, besides the princes, had to satisfy the private appetites of their magistrates and bailiffs as well, were enjoying the full taste of the "fatherly" system.Of the medieval feudal hierarchy, the knighthood of moderate possessions had almost entirely disappeared;it had either climbed up to the position of independence of small princes, or it had sunk into the ranks of the lower nobility.The lower nobility, the knighthood, was fast moving towards extinction.A large portion of it had already become pauperised, and lived on its services to the princes, either in military or in civil capacity; another portion was bound by vassalage to the sovereignty of the prince; a very small portion was directly under the empire.The development of military science, the rising importance of infantry, the spread of firearms, had dwarfed their military importance as heavy cavalry, at the same time destroying the invincibility of their castles.The knights had become superfluous through the progress of industry, just As the artisans had become obviated by the same progress.The dire need of the knighthood for money added considerably to their ruin.The luxurious life in the castles, the competition in magnificence at tournaments and feasts, the price of armaments and of horses all increased with the progress of civilisation, whereas the sources of income of the knights and barons, increased but little, if at all.Feuds with accompanying plunders and incendiarism, lying in ambush, and similar noble occupations, became in the course of time too dangerous.The cash payments of the knights'
