sufficient strength or insight to win the country people really to them. This came to light when Sickengen was overpowered by the neighbouring princes. The peasants became the most zealous assistants of the princes in persecuting the junkers of the Sickengen party and burning their castles; this warfare may, indeed, be considered as the prelude to the present war. It had unshackled the country people in the neighbouring provinces, and accustomed them to the pulling down of castles. A dialogue of the year 1524 has been preserved to us, in which the fury of the country people against the nobles already breaks forth.[17] From that period the decided demagogues gained the ear of the peasants, and the moderate amongst the popular leaders lost their supremacy. Eberlin had once more, at Erfurt, an opportunity of showing, as a mediator, the power of his eloquence over the revolted peasant hosts; under its influence the assembled populace fell on their knees, pious and penitent; but the weakness of his advice made this last endeavour fruitless. He died the following year, and with him passed away most of the poetry of the Reformation. Cruelly was the revolt against the terrified princes punished, and the smaller tyrants were the most eager to bring the conquered again under their yoke. Yet in South Germany and Thuringia there was a real improvement in the condition of the country people; for it happened at a period in which a learned class of jurists spread over the country, and the working of Roman law in Germany became everywhere perceptible. The point of view taken by the jurists of the Roman school, of the relations between the landed proprietors and their villeins, was indeed not always favourable to the latter; for the lawyers were inclined to fix every kind of subjection upon the peasant from the deficiency in his right of property in his holding; but they were equally ready to recognise his personal freedom. Thus, in the first half of the sixteenth century, the old serfdom which still existed in a very harsh form in many provinces was mitigated, and villeinage substituted. Besides this, a more patriarchal feeling began to prevail among the higher German Sovereigns, and in the new ordinances which they projected in conjunction with their clergy, the welfare of the peasantry was taken into consideration. This was the case above all with the Wettiner princes in Franconia, Thuringia, and Meissen; and, lastly, with Elector August. The authority, also, of the Saxon chancery, which had been established in Germany since the fifteenth century, contributed essentially to this, by making the Saxon laws a pattern for the rest of Germany.