6 - The decline of the feud

Summary

In 1574 Emperor Maximilian II received from Lazarus von Schwendi, his councillor and military commander, a report on the political situation in Germany. It must have created mixed feelings in him to learn that

The emperors and even the popes and church councils had to look on and to permit the internal daily private wars and feuding (die innerlichen täglichen Privat-Krieg und befehdung) of the Germans; likewise the old law and custom of the judicial duel; likewise the disturbances of the peace and the robberies. And [they] could not restrain them because of their traditionally violent nature and disposition, until now, in the past hundred years, through … manners of living (Manier zu leben) and through the introduction of teaching and schools, but especially through the invention and usefulness of the printing press and of books, and then also through very wise assistance of former emperors, such harsh and all too impudent German nature has been softened, and everything brought to greater peace, better Policey, and more orderly life and circumstances.

Schwendi provides a stunningly original account of the decline of the knightly feud in Germany, all the more so since what is considered as the last feud had ended only a few years earlier. The account is also impressively precocious, its terms flashing up toward our own world: probably for the first time the feud is branded (and de-legitimised) as ‘private war’ – a distinctly modern perspective. And yet the praise for ‘eradicating’ the feud does not go to the intentional actions of public authorities.