In the beginning of the sixteenth century we find the names of the German nobles, Fronsperg, Hutten, and Sickingen, conspicuous in the three different ways in which the nobles then employed themselves,--the Army, the Church, and State, and the representation and maintenance of the rights and interests of the landed proprietors. But it appears strange that even up to the middle of the seventeenth century, men like these should have had so few of their own class following in their footsteps. From the time of Fronsperg to that of the Bohemian Junker Albrecht of Waldstein, and the wild cavalry leader Pappenheim, the whole of Germany produced no General of more than average skill from among the nobility. There were a few Landsknechte leaders of citizen extraction like Schaertlin, and some German princes, all however with more pretension than capacity, and it was principally to Spaniards and Italians that the family of the Emperor Charles V. and their opponents owed their most important victories. As to the intellectual life of Germany, there was still less of that amongst the nobility after the time of Hutten. How few noble names do we find in the long list of reformers, scholars, poets, architects, and artists! The first occur in the seventeenth century, when we find those of the members of the _Palmenordens_, the author of the 'Simplicissimus,' and of some noble rhymers belonging to the Silesian school of poetry or to the Saxon court. One may well ask how it happened that an order so numerous, holding such an advantageous position with respect to the people, should have accomplished so little in this great field of action, which up to the time of the Hohenstaufen was especially in the possession of the nobility. And even with the most favourably disposed judgment, it would be difficult to ascribe to the landed nobility of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, any beneficial influences on any one of the great currents of life in Germany.