Note 247 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

We can easily understand that the lords designated these proletarians by the most contemptuous name they could devise. But were they really slaves? A slave, as opposed to a free labourer, is not allowed to leave his master. Now it is remarkable that Inama-Sternegg, describing the condition of the rural population in the different states of Germany, though he states that in the newly colonized eastern parts of Germany the peasants, who had been free, were restricted in their right of leaving their lords, mentions no such particulars of Western Germany247. And the chief aim of the peasants, in their revolts at the end of the 15th century, was not to acquire personal freedom, but to retain the use of the commons, which the lords were appropriating248.