The original usufruct of a property held in common is explained in the Roman sense as a _precarium_ or servitude, and from being a right of the whole organization becomes a right of the single individual or group of individuals. In this way the socialistic basis of the Mark is destroyed. Through the exercise of the _Forsthoheit_, _i.e._, the superior right of the prince over all forest property, by the _appointment_ of the officials instead of their _election_, by issuance of ordinances, in short, by the usurpation of the legislative and police power, the political power of the Mark is broken and the Thirty Years’ War completes the breakdown; the pride of the burgher and the peasant is gone, their autonomy destroyed and their economic and political organizations sink into mere corporations based on land tenure, which, according to Roman doctrine come under the regulation of the State or Prince. The nobility move into the cities and leave the administration of their estates to officials who are constantly pressed to furnish the means for the extravagant life of their masters. These in turn harass and oppress the peasantry, who finally become bondsmen, _Gutshörige_ (bound to the glebe) and lose their independence entirely. These, briefly, are the steps by which the changes, social and economic, progressed. Reforms in this situation of the peasantry began first in Prussia in 1702, when bondage was abolished for all those who could purchase their houses and farms from the gentry. As few had the means to do so, the result was the creation of a proletariat, hitherto unknown because under the old feudal system the lord had to feed his impoverished bondsmen from which he was now absolved. * * * * * _Changes in forest property_ in particular were brought about by the increase of princely property through the various methods of exercising the seignorage. Especially after the Thirty Years’ War ownerless tracts falling under this right were plentiful. In addition, wherever waste lands grew up to wood, they were claimed by the princes: “Wenn das Holz dem Ritter reicht an den Sporn Hat der Bauer sein Recht verlorn.” When wood has grown up to the spur of the knight, the peasant has lost his right. Some additions came from the secularization of church and cloister property, and others by the slices which the princes as Obermärker secured from the Mark forests by various artifices. It is these properties, which in Prussia were turned over by the King to the State in 1713, and by other princes, not until the 19th century. The same means which the princes employed were used by the landed gentry to increase their holdings especially at the expense of the Mark from which in their capacity of Obermärker they secured portions by force or intrigue.