All these changes from the original communal property conditions did not, of course, take place without friction, the opposition often taking shape in peasants’ revolts; hundreds of thousands of these being killed in their attempts to preserve their commons, forests and waters free to all, to re-establish their liberty to hunt, fish and cut wood, and to abolish tithes, serfdom and duties. 2. _Forest Treatment._ As stated, the German tribes which settled the country were herders and hunters, who only gradually developed into farmers while the country was being settled. At first, therefore, as far as the forest did not need to give way to farm lands, its main use was in the exercise of the chase and for pasture, and especially for the raising and fattening of hogs; the number of hogs which could be driven into a forest serving as an expression of the size of such a forest. Oak and beech furnishing the mast were considered the preferable species. It is natural, therefore, that, wood being plentiful and the common property of all, the first regulation of forest use had reference to these, now minor benefits of forest property, as for instance the prohibition of cutting mast trees, which was enforced in early times. The first extensive regulation of forest use came however, from the exercise of the royal right of the ban and merely for the avowed purpose of protecting the chase. Real forest management, however, did not exist, the _forestarii_ mentioned in these early times being nothing but policemen guarding the hunting rights of the kings or other owners. The conception that wood on the stump was of the same nature as other property and its removal theft had not yet become established: “_quia non res possessa sed de ligno agitur_” (wood not being a possessed thing), a conception which still pervades the laws of modern times to some extent. The necessity of clearing farm lands for the growing population continued, even in the western, more densely populated sections, into the 12th and 13th centuries. The cloisters were especially active in colonizing and making farm land with the use of axe and fire, such cloisters being often founded as mere land speculations. Squatters, as with us, were a frequent class of colonists, and in eastern Prussia continued even into the 17th and 18th centuries to appropriate forest land without regard to property rights. The disturbed ownership conditions, which we have traced, led also often to wasteful slashing, especially in the western territory, while colonization among the Slavs of the Eastern sections led to similar results. In the 12th century, however, here and there appear the first signs of greater necessity for regulating and restricting forest use in the Mark forest, and for improvement in forest conditions with the purpose of insuring wood supplies.