t of burden, the peasant, with moderation,
he was so much the more eager to make use of his landed rights in other
directions. The highroads, the river that ran by his castle, afforded
him the opportunity of laying hold of the goods of strangers; he levied
imposts upon goods and travellers; he obtruded his protecting escort
upon them, and robbed such as considered this escort unnecessary; he
built a bridge where there was no river, in order to raise a toll; he
designedly kept the roads in bad condition, because he chose to
consider that the goods of travelling merchants, though under the
Emperor's protection, so long as they were in waggons or in vessels
afloat; if the waggons were upset or vessels ran aground, belonged,
according to manorial right, to the possessor of the land. Finally he
became himself a robber, and with his comrades seized whatever he could
lay hands on; he took the goods to his house, plundered the travellers,
and kept them prisoners till they could free themselves by ransom.
Nevertheless there were certain regulated observances accompanying
these robberies, according to which the conscientious Junker
distinguished between honourable and dishonourable plunder. But this
moral code had very little to justify it. In the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries there were very few noblemen's houses which did not
deserve the name of robber-holds, and still fewer out of which
plundering attacks were not made.

But this life was most of all detrimental to the nobles themselves;
their love of plunder, and their pugnacity, made them turn as much
against their fellow-nobles as against the cities, and through the
whole of the middle ages led to innumerable feuds. When the feud was
notified by letter, some days previous to the beginning of hostilities,
it was considered honourable. Any trifle was sufficient to occasion a
feud: never-ending boundary disputes, encroachments on the chase, or
the flogging of a servant, caused discord, even between old comrades
and friendly neighbours. Then both parties strengthened themselves by
the assistance of relations and dependents; they enlisted troopers, and
endeavoured to learn through the medium of spies how they could gain an
advantage over the property, house, or person of their adversary. The
opulence of the cities, and the rancour entertained by the nobles
against the rising independence of the citizens, gave an agreeable
excitement to their feuds with the latter. Whoever w