Aristocracy: The Constituted Bodies 31
the population into five estates, or Stande, each to be marked by the kind of cloth-
ing it was entitled to wear. The top category was reserved for hereditary nobles
who had sat in the town council for at least a hundred years—as people said.^14
Among the German princely states there were some, like the Mecklenburgs,
where assemblies of serf- owning nobles in effect ruled with little interference from
the duke, and others, notably Württemberg, where the middle class was strong.
The diet of Württemberg consisted of a single house, attended by fourteen Lu-
theran prelates and the delegates of some sixty towns. No nobles came at all; they
had withdrawn from the diet as long ago as 1514, setting up as independent impe-
rial knights and recognizing no authority in the diet. Since the Lutheran prelates
had little influence, the diet represented the interests of the towns only, or rather of
their several local magistracies, for it was the various burgomasters and town coun-
cillors, or persons named by them, who sat in the diet. In a population of 600,000
there were perhaps 1,500 men who chose the deputies. Yet there was at times a
fairly active parliamentary life. Württemberg was often compared to England, and
Charles James Fox once said that they were the only two countries in Europe to
enjoy constitutional government. The philosopher Hegel made his debut, in 1797,
by attacking the oligarchic character of the Württemberg estates.^15
Of the Dutch government more will be said later. Its complexities baffle brief
description. The towns were little republics, which along with nobles sent deputies
to estates of the seven provinces; deputies of the provinces constituted their High
Mightinesses the Estates General of the United Provinces, which, together with
the stadtholder, presumably ruled the country, or at least represented it in foreign
affairs. Before 1748 there had been a period of almost half a century without a
stadtholder, called the Age of Freedom or ware vrijheid (as in Sweden), during
which the town oligarchies became thoroughly entrenched. “Everything tended to
the domination of the few.”^16 Ruling families, those holding office from generation
to generation, were called regents. Each town had its regents, but those of Amster-
dam were the most powerful, and had a general influence throughout the country.
Their stronghold was the vroedschap or council of Amsterdam, a body of thirty- six
men who sat for life. This council coopted its own members, chose the burgomas-
ters of the city, and elected the deputies to the estates of Holland, which in turn
preponderated in the Estates General of the union. “An alienation developed be-
tween rulers and ruled. The former became a class by itself, in which the admission
of homines novi became very rare.”^17 Government became a source of income for
this upper class. The Amsterdam regents had no less than 3,600 offices at their
disposal; one made 22,820 guilders by the sale of offices in seven years.
14 “Voelcker, ed., Die Stadt Goethes: Frankfurt- am- Main im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Frankfurt,
1932), 83–101.
15 E. Holzle, Das alte Recht und die Revolution: eine politische Geschichte Wiirttembergs in der Revo-
lutionszeit, 1789–1805 (Munich and Berlin, 1931); J. Droz, L’Allemagne et la Révolution française
(Paris, 1949), 112, 125.
16 I. H. Gosses and N. Japikse, Handboek tot die staatkundige geschiedenis van Nederland (The
Hague, 1947), 637.
17 Ibid., 635. See also J. E. Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam 1578–1795, 2 vols. (Haarlem,
1905), and the histories of the Netherlands in English by Blok and Edmundson.