PURSUIT OF ALBION 239freedom of movement. Eastward lay the lands of estate bondage ( Guts-
unUrtànigkeit) and personal (bodily) servitude (Leibeijjenschaft); so,
no movement except at the pleasure or order of the lord.
Political events accentuated the difference. The lands west of the
Rhine were absorbed for a moment (until 1815) into Revolutionary
France, and came and stayed under the new emancipatory dispensa
tion. East of the Rhine, however, the French came and went. They left
a memory of foreign oppression that served as justification for the later
reimposition of servile obligations. Even so, war and the pursuit of
power had their own surprising logic. The most important German po
litical unit east of the Rhine was the kingdom of Prussia, a modern
Sparta, an overmilitarized kingdom not given to romantic ideals. Yet
Prussia emancipated the serfs in 1809—not because of enlightened at
titudes, but rather because it had suffered grievous defeats at the hands
of the French army and recognized that serfs will not fight so hard and
well as free men.
In other German states, the taste of freedom had created an instant
addiction; reactionaries found litde support. The solution, which tried
to please everybody, was to free the peasants and buy the landowners
off; nothing like cash in the hand to overcome scruples and regrets.
Where to find the money? The landowners were generally indemnified
by state bonds, which the state then amortized by levies on the peas
ants over a period of years. (The one issue where reaction was accept
able, even popular, was the status of Jews. There disabilities were
restored, and decades were to pass before full emancipation was grudg
ingly conceded. Even then, public gains were spoiled by private ha
tred.)
The other great barrier to mobility in German lands was the division
of society into status groups (Stdnde) of reserved vocation and privi
lege. The lords had their land, ruled over their serfs and tenants, ad
ministered low if not high justice, led soldiers into battie. Merchants
held a monopoly of trade but were not permitted to own rural land.
The industrial crafts were reserved to properly trained journeymen and
masters in the cities and towns. The countryside was peasant and
seigneurial turf. The relationship of all this to medieval concepts of the
three orders (lords, peasants, clergy), now with urban traders and ar
tisans thrown in, will not have escaped the reader.*
* One finds similar social schémas in India: brahmins, warriors, merchants, peasants;
and in Tokugawa Japan: samurai, peasants, merchants. These are attempts to give
functional order and stability to society, thus protecting elites from change. The