--thus
he gave half of the working time of his life. Whoever was bound to keep
beasts of burden on his property was obliged to perform soccage, in the
working hours, with the agricultural implements and tools till sunset;
the poorer people had to do the same with hand labour--nay, according
to the obligations of their tenure, with two, four, or more hands, and
even the days were appointed by the landlords: they were well off if
during such labour they received food. These obligations of ancient
times were, in many cases, increased after the war by the encroachments
of the masters--chiefly in Eastern Germany. These soccage days were
arbitrarily divided into half or even quarter days, and thereby the
hindrance to the countryman and the disorder to his own farm were
considerably increased. The number of the days was also increased. Such
was the case even in the century which we, with just feelings of pride,
call the humane. In the year 1790, just when Goethe's "Torquato Tasso"
made its first appearance in the refined court of Saxony, the peasants
of Meissen rose against the landowners, because they had so
immoderately increased the service that their villeins seldom had a day
free for their own work.[24] Again in 1799, when Schiller's
"Wallenstein" was exciting the enthusiasm of the warlike nobility of
Berlin, Frederick William III. was obliged to issue a cabinet order,
enjoining on his nobility not to lay claim to the soccage of the
peasants more than three days in the week, and to treat their people
with equity.

The second burden on the villeins was the tax on change of property by
death or transfer; the heriot and fine on alienation. The best horse
and the best ox were once the price which the heir of a property had to
pay to the landowner for his fief. This tax was long ago changed into
money. But though in the sixteenth century, even in countries where the
peasant was heavily oppressed, the provincial ordinances allowed that
peasant's property might be bought and sold, and that the lord of the
peasant who sold could take no deduction upon it,[25] yet in the same
province in 1617, before the Thirty Years' War, it was established that
landlords might compel their villeins against their will to sell their
property, and that in case no purchaser should be found they themselves
might buy it at two-thirds of the tax. It was under Frederick the Great
that the inheritance and rights of property of villeins were first
secure