Among the privileges granted to the first cities was that a serf, schalk, or, in a word, any bondman, seeking refuge in the precincts of a city, became free if not claimed within a year. This respite to the fugitive soon became a common law all over Germany, even between nobles in relation to their fugitive serfs; and the hunter of a fugitive lost caste even among the free masters--_freiherrn_. When a legal prosecution was attempted, every difficulty, legal and illegal, was thrown in the way of the claimant--the cities willingly resorting to arms for the defence of their right of refuge. The first Crusades emancipated large numbers of persons, as the taking of the cross was the sign of liberty for serf and for slave. But in Germany as in France, the great and permanent influence of the Crusades on emancipation consisted in their strengthening the cities and impoverishing the nobles, and thus producing a salutary change in internal economic relations. The wars of the Germans with their neighbors, and above all with the Slavonians, Maghyars, etc., in the tenth and eleventh centuries, again gave vitality to the slave traffic; and war prisoners and captives, not now of their own kindred, but of foreign birth, were brought to the markets for sale. Nevertheless, chattelhood was slowly dying out, and about the twelfth century but few traces of it remained: prisoners of war began to be ransomed or exchanged, and villeinage, with various services attached, altogether superseded domestic slavery. The villein possessed the rights of family, of village, and partially of communal organization. But many of the galling characteristics of chattelhood were transfused into serfdom and villeinage. The nobles became, if possible, more insolent, exacting and oppressive. But the villeins and peasants began to feel their power, and to combine and act in common in the villages, and afterward in the communes.