ct between the two main elements
in their composition plays an important part in the events which
follow. Something has already been said on this head in the
Introduction. We have there pointed out that the Rath or Town Council,
that is, the supreme governing body of the municipality, was in all
cases mainly, and often entirely, composed of the heads of the town
aristocracy, the patrician class or "honorability" (_Ehrbarkeit_), as
they were termed, who on the ground of their antiquity and wealth laid
claim to every post of power and privilege. On the other hand were the
body of the citizens enrolled in the various guilds, seeking, as their
position and wealth improved, to wrest the control of the town's
resources from the patricians. It must be remembered that the towns
stood in the position of feudal over-lords to the peasants who held
land on the city territory, which often extended for many square miles
outside the walls. A small town like Rothenburg, for instance, which
we have described above, had on its lands as many as 15,000 peasants.
The feudal dues and contributions of these tenants constituted the
staple revenue of the town, and the management of them was one of the
chief bones of contention.

Nowhere was the guild system brought to a greater perfection than in
the free Imperial towns of Germany. Indeed, it was carried further in
them, in one respect, than in any other part of Europe, for the guilds
of journeymen (_Cesellenverbaende_), which in other places never
attained any strength or importance, were in Germany developed to the
fullest extent, and of course supported the craft-guilds in their
conflict with the patriciate. Although there were naturally numerous
frictions between the two classes of guilds respecting wages, working
days, hours, and the like, it must not be supposed that there was that
irreconcilable hostility between them which would exist at the present
time between a trade-union and a syndicate of employers. Each
recognized the right to existence of the other. In one case, that of
the strike of bakers towards the close of the fifteenth century, at
Colmar in Elsass, the craft-guilds supported the journeymen in their
protest against a certain action of the patrician Rath, which they
considered to be a derogation from their dignity.

Like the masters, the journeymen had their own guild-house, and their
own solemn functions and social gatherings. There were, indeed, two
kinds of journeymen-g