THE CITIZEN AND HIS SHOOTING FESTIVALS.

(1300-1800.)

It is on the simple truth, that every man is only valuable to his nation and State in proportion to his work, that the power and pride of citizenship rests; that is to say, in so far as he contributes to the welfare of others. But eighteen hundred years were necessary to establish this principle, and to make it perceptible to Germans, and still does the struggle continue to realize it, to introduce into the cities free competition instead of the corporate privileges of guilds, and into the State the right of personal character against the rights of birth. And yet it is only since this truth has penetrated into society, morals and legislature, that a sure, and as far as man can judge, indestructible foundation has been formed for the vitality of the nation. So slow has been the progress here of modern development.

It was from the capacity and the pride of the working citizen that the conviction arose in the German mind of the value of work. It first made the serf a free labourer of the commonalty; then it created a wealthy citizen class which spread itself firmly between the other classes; then it helped to add science to the mechanical labour and art of the citizen, and thus made him the representative of intellect, the guardian of civilisation, and the centre of the national strength. By this he ceased to be one of a class, and formed the essential element of the nation.

Nothing is more instructive than to observe the way in which the power of the German citizen became effective. However great was the industry, and however much developed the technical skill of handicraft under the Roman supremacy, the collective industrial activity lay under the ban of disregard. In the cities indeed at the beginning of the great migration, the remains of a sumptuous life still continued amidst marble columns and the vaulted halls of costly baths; and the guilds of the old handicrafts, with their chapels and exchanges were not only the casual forerunners of the later guilds of the middle ages, but perhaps their real progenitors, from whom the Germans acquired numerous handicraft implements and technical dexterities; nay, even many noble customs. But a great portion of the handicraft of antiquity was not the work of freemen: at least where anything of the nature of manufactures paid well, slave labour increased. Nevertheless, many freed men entered the old guilds; having been furnished by their masters with a small capital, they bought themselves into a Roman corporation: but it must be observed, that not only was such handicraft held to a certain degree in contempt by the full citizens up to the latest time, but the artizans, according to Roman tradition, were allowed little share in the government of the city; they had, together with undeniable local patriotism, a deficiency of the political culture, the self-respect, and the capacity of self-defence of free-born citizens.

Even among the ancient Germans, who came with the great migration, manual labour was not considered the most honourable occupation of the warrior; the poor alone used to cultivate the fields or to forge weapons at the smithy; long did the feeling remain, that there was less honour in earning money than in taking the property of others, in the shape of imposts or booty. Under such a condition of insecurity and violence did the cities arise. They were surrounded by strong walls, and shut out from the country, as once were the cities of old Latium; they were the refuge of oppressed country people, not only from the incursions of enemies, but also from the numerous small tyrants of the open country. For centuries they were governed by privileged free-born citizens, merchants, and speculators, similar to the Roman Empire; but under the patricians, the guilds were strengthened in the course of long and often bloody struggles within the walls; they acquired a share in the government, with essentially equal rights and equal duties. As a free man capable of bearing arms, the German citizen found that he could obtain riches, consideration, and affluence by means of his handicraft and his art. At the end of the middle ages, it became clear that the intellectual life of Germany had taken root in the cities.

Undoubtedly handicraft was under different conditions to what it is now. Whilst the common produce of individual mechanical labour was accurately defined in respect to material, form, and price, and the creative energy of individuals was entirely restrained by the traditions of their city and guild, a creative tendency appeared in all that required more delicate handling. The painter still rubbed his colours himself, and melted the varnish, but he also carved in wood, and engraved copper-plates. Albert DÜrer still sold in the market stalls picture sheets with woodcuts, for which perhaps he himself made the letter-press, Whilst the arrangements of houses and churches frequently remained fixed, even in respect to size, in all fundamental points, the countless and often too florid details of the arabesques in the stonework showed the inward satisfaction with which the builder, when permitted the free exercise of his own fancy, followed the impulse to give expression to his own mind. The goldsmith was also designer and modeller; he took pleasure in making every article of value a work of art, into which he threw his whole soul. But it was just this union of restrictive tradition and free invention which was so beneficial to the handicraft of the cities, developing everywhere greater wealth, higher morality and culture. Throughout the whole country the cities became like the knots of a net of free societies, to which the gentry of the rural districts, far behindhand in civilisation, were in constant hostility. Long did an active hatred continue betwixt the money-getting citizen and the predatory landed proprietor; and on both sides there was bitter animosity. It is true that the noble order of Landowners were held in greater consideration; they were sustained by the pride of noble blood and of military skill, and by a multitude of prerogatives and privileges; but in fact the money-making citizen had already acquired the best rights, for so completely did he engross the whole culture and wealth of his time, that without him the country would have relapsed into barbarism.

Thus he became the aid of the Reformation, and the victim of the Thirty Years' War. But even after the devastation of that period, he, the weak and impoverished artizan of the city, felt himself a privileged man, whose prosperity depended on the superior rights he possessed. He endeavoured carefully to guard against strangers the privileges of his guild, of his patrician chamber, and of his community; he was only helpless in his relations with his sovereign. He was still an order in the new state, from which other orders were excluded. His work had lost much of its excellence, and this weakness has lasted up to the present day. Not only were trade and commerce impeded, but the technical skill of most of the artizans became less. Wood carvings and painted glass had almost perished, the arts of stone and wood carving were at the lowest ebb, and the houses were built small, tasteless, and bare. Printing and paper, which the small printing presses had deteriorated already before the war, continue poor even in our century. Equally so were the arts of the metal workers, goldsmiths, and armourers. The works of the cabinet-maker alone maintained their excellence through the rococco time, though even the chef d'oeuvres of the celebrated Meister von Neuwied could not compare with the artistic chests of the Augsburgers about 1600; the art of weaving also, especially damask, came into fashion soon after 1650, but not in the cities preeminently. The new trades which attained to great importance, like that of peruke-maker, were of doubtful value to the national industry.

Equally great was the change which took place after the Thirty Years' War in the social life of the citizens, in their intercourse with each other and with strangers. In a former volume it was shown to what an extent individuals withdrew into their families. It is worth the trouble of examining more nearly what they lost by this. First, that feeling of self-dependence which the most diffident man acquires by frequent intercourse with strangers, the capability of co-operating with others in a larger sphere, of representing a conviction, acting in a manly way, and not submitting to any affront or unjust treatment, but at the same time yielding up pride and pretensions to the common weal; added to this the skill to organise themselves in new positions and more extended society, and to accommodate themselves to these altered circumstances. Such a tone of mind, the groundwork of all man's political capacity, was to be found in abundance at an earlier period. The power of the Empire and of the princes having become very weak, the aptitude of individuals to act in masses was strongly developed, but after the war the laws of the newly-formed states pressed with such an iron hand, that all the art and practice of self-government was lost.

This change shall be here shown, in a single phase of citizen life--the great prize shooting festivals. They are more especially adapted to give a picture in detail of the stately and splendid public life of the German citizen in olden times, and to show that we are only now beginning--though certainly with higher aims--again to attain to what our ancestors had already found.

It has been a German custom, older than Christianity, to celebrate the awakening life of nature in May. This has always been a martial feast, in which the fundamental idea of the old heathen faith, the victory of the awakening divinities of nature over the demons of winter, was dramatically represented. In the rising cities it was the warlike youth of the freeborn citizens who lead the May sports, and in the Hohenstaufen time these sports assumed the form of fashionable knightly festivals. Thus in the year 1279, at Magdeburg, on the borders of the Rhine, where Saxon blood had formed one of the strongest fortresses of German life against the Sclavonian, the Whitsuntide feast was celebrated quite in knightly style. The young mounted yeomen arranged a great tournament in their Elbe island "the Marsh," under their Maigraf, Bruno von StÖvenbecke; the arrangements were all written down, and the merchants of Goslar, Hildesheim, Braunschweig, Halberstadt, and Quedlinburg invited. They came splendidly-equipped, and courteously broke a lance with two young comrades of Magdeburg in front of the city, and then rode festively through the gates to the island on which many tents were pitched. The prize settled by the Magdeburgers for this May tilt was, like the figure on their coat-of-arms, a maiden.^[58] An old merchant from Goslar won the beautiful Sophie; he took her with him and married her, giving her so good a dowry as to enable her to live ever afterwards honourably.

A century later, in May 1387, the Magdeburgers celebrated a great festival on the "Marsh," and again they contended for a maiden; but the combat was no longer in the style of a tournament, such as their bishop held at the same time on the other side of the city, but it was in a great archery court. To this archery meeting they again invited the friendly cities of Brunswick, Halberstadt, Quedlinburg, Aschersleben, Blackenberg, Kalbe, Salza, and Halle. A citizen of Aschersleben won the maiden.

During this century there was a great change in the life and constitution of the German cities; the patrician youth with their knightly customs were no longer the representatives of the power of the burgher class, the commonalty of the city already began to feel themselves masters, and their weapon, the cross-bow, gained the prizes. Soon after 1300, the societies of Archers arose in the German cities, with their regulations, archery houses, and yearly shooting festivals; as a brotherhood they erected an altar or built a chapel, and obtained from the Pope's Legate absolution for all who attended the mass, which they established on the day of their patron saint, the holy St. Sebastian. These guilds were favoured by the city magistrates, who helped to arrange the great prize shootings of their city. But however much the citizen bow superseded the knightly lance at the feasts of arms of the cities, some of the terms of knightly language continued long in use. The prizes were still in the sixteenth century called "ventures;" still longer did the term "tilting" denote the contention between individual marksmen who had shot into an equal number of circles, and a "course" signified a certain number of shots.

After the time of that archery court of the Magdeburgers, mutual shooting festivals are mentioned by the chronicles of other cities. They were quite common, at least in southern Germany, about 1400; for example, Munich sent its archers almost every second year to contend in the neighbouring cities, and the "customs" of the public shootings were already at that period firmly established. Thenceforward they spread over the whole of Germany, increasing in magnitude and splendour. They, as well as the German burgher-class, were at their highest acme about 1500; in the century of the Reformation they became more extensive and costly, and more diversified in customs and characteristics, but shortly before the Thirty Years' War they showed many symptoms of decline. The increasing power of the princes, and the commencement of modern court splendour, were mixed up with the old customs--the festivals became very costly, and a refined love of pleasure began to appear.

Prize-meetings were not only established in the cities, they were held sometimes by the princes and wealthy nobles, as early as the fifteenth century, and still more frequently when in the century of the Reformation armour and lances declined in importance. The great landed proprietors of the neighbourhood, or the princes of the country, were received as honoured guests at these meetings of the cities. Still the archers were for the most part citizens, and the occasional princes and nobles were placed under their banners. At an early period even free peasants were allowed to enter the lists, but this became rare in Germany after the Peasant War, though they continued to do so in Switzerland, where a powerful peasantry have never ceased to exist. The equal right of all, without distinction of ranks, both as to prizes and penalties, is a citizen characteristic, and by far the greatest number of associations, as well as the most important, came from the cities.

During so long a period many of their usages altered, and others were developed in different provinces, but yet the unity of their proceedings from the Oder to the Rhine, from the Alps to the Vistula, is very striking. They represent during this whole period a brilliant phase of German life, the noble hospitality exercised by martial city communities towards other friendly cities. The self-respect of the citizen found in them its most powerful expression. Many characteristic qualities of our forefathers are more especially perceptible in them; pride in their own city, a lively and sensitive feeling of honor even with respect to friends, satisfaction in appearing in processions, whether on serious occasions or in sport, and in representing with dignity, and above all, pleasure in showing, on public occasions, among many thousands, their manliness, worth, and charity in word and deed.

If a prize shooting was determined upon in a city, messengers bore the proclamation of the council, and frequently also of the archery association, to their good neighbours far in the country. The number of cities invited was sometimes very great. In 1601, 156 cities were invited to one shooting festival, held at Halle, and archers came from fifty, though the weather was bad and the prizes not high. At Strasburg seventy places were represented in 1576, in 1573 there were 187 cross-bow men sent from thirty-nine places to Zwickau, amongst them were three Swabian peasants from GÖppingen, all of whom, to the great vexation of the proud citizens, won prizes. At the cross-bow shooting at Ratisbon, in 1586, thirty-five towns were represented by 210 cross-bow men. At the costly prize-shooting in 1614, at Dresden, twenty-one of the invited cities sent representatives, but eleven did not. But the hospitality was not limited to those alone who were invited: at an earlier period special prizes were, assigned to those who came from greater distances; thus the Augsburgers, in 1508, rejoiced that a German marksman came even from Paris, and another time a marksman, who came from Striegau, in Silesia, obtained a golden ring, the prize for strangers. Sometimes it was expressly denoted in the invitation that every qualified man was welcome, or the places invited were requested to spread the notice among the nobles and archers of their neighbourhood. When the feasts became very costly, the uninvited guests were, though allowed to shoot, not entitled to a share in the chief prizes which had been assigned by the giver of the feast. That such limitations were, however, not usual is shown by the grief of the two AmstÄdters, who, at the cross-bow shooting at Coburg in 1614,^[59] were excluded by the Duke Johann Casimir from his principal prizes; they wished to return home, and were with difficulty persuaded to remain.

In the programme all the conditions of the prize-shooting were accurately enumerated; with fire-arms the weight of the ball, and with the cross-bow the length of the bolt was accurately defined; for the latter the size was generally established by a parchment ring, the distance from the stand to the target was given in feet, and the length of the usual foot was expressed by black lines in the programme. Sometimes they measured by paces, in that case two of the stranger competitors, a neighbour from the nearest city, and one from the most distant, stepped the distance and settled it together.

The number of shots also allowed to each was affixed on the butt and target. At the smaller meetings in ancient times, they were about twelve, fifteen, or sixteen; later, at the great meetings, they rose to thirty, forty, or even more shots. With fire-arms the shooter sometimes fired three shots in succession from his place, but with the cross-bow only one, and they shot in divisions, quarters, and standards, sometimes arrayed under banners according to the towns. At the grand cross-bow shooting at Ratisbon, in 1586, a pattern meeting of moderate size, the Protestant and Catholic places were carefully divided. Then each of the three, four or five standards had to shoot in a definite time; when all the standards had shot once, it was called one shot, or one course, the best shot of each standard of each course was called the bull's eye.

The most ancient weapon was the cross-bow, with steel bow and bolt, which was stretched by a pulley; it began to supplant the hand bow and arrow shortly before 1400, but the latter was still used in the army for some time, for example, in the Burgundian War, nay, it was sometimes used in the sixteenth century, at the shooting games.^[60] The cross-bow, after 1400, became shorter and more handy, and at the end of the prize-shooting festivals, a smaller one was used with a trigger for amusement. The cross-bow was drawn in braces, or secured in a network, so that no accident might arise if it sprung; the bolt with an iron point and a feather shaft was provided for the popinjay, with filed iron teeth, which, in hitting, split the joints of the wood; the pointed or, later, the blunt bolt served for target practice; the archer shot without a rest. The cross-bow, up to the Thirty Years' War, was considered by the prize-shooters as the most distinguished weapon, and continued so, even long after it had been supplanted by fire-arms in war and in the chase; it was more especially retained by the aristocratic party, the princes and patricians. If a prize-shooting with crossbow and fire-arms was announced, the competition between the cross-bow and the arbalat was at the beginning, the fire-arms at the conclusion with inferior prizes; much of the fun of the festival was attached to the cross-bow shooting. But at the beginning of the sixteenth century, at all the prize shootings, the use of fire-arms had increased at least twofold.

About the year 1400, fire-arms began to be heard at the prize-shooting festivals. At Ausgburg, in 1429, hand-guns and muskets were used, and guns with small lead balls. In 1446 the first prize shooting with arquebuses and muskets was held; afterwards the hand-gun in its various forms always prevailed. The practical Swiss were among the first to give the preference to fire-arms. As early as 1472, at the great prize shooting at Zurich, only guns were announced; after that, at important festivals, both weapons had prizes assigned to them, but at smaller ones frequently only fire-arms. The gun of the prize-shooter, up to 1600, was the smooth hand-gun for one ounce balls, with a straight or crooked stock,--all grooves were forbidden.^[61] The shooter fired without a rest; the gun when fired was not to rest upon the shoulder; it was not to be supported by any strap in the sleeve or round the neck; it was only to be loaded with one ball; the gun was only to have a small round sight at the end. After 1600 rifled weapons, for the first time, received prizes at special meetings. At Basle, in 1605, a prize shooting for arquebuses was announced, the distance 570 feet, the target two and a half feet round the nail; and for muskets with crooked or straight grooves and balls of one ounce--distance, 805 feet; target, three and a half feet. It must be mentioned, by the way, that sometimes at great shooting festivals heavy guns were also used, such as arquebuses, falconets and serpents, as in Strasburg 1590, at Breslau in 1609, and frequently at Leipsic, where these exercises were preferred; however splendidly these festivals, after the pattern of the old prize shootings, were appointed, they had more especially a practical aim, and were not generally attended by strangers.

Different as the weapons so was the mark. The bird on the pole was very ancient. But when guests began to appear in numbers the bird was inconvenient. The duration of the shooting could not be reckoned upon; a violent wind easily diverted the course of the bolts. At last the pole fell altogether, or the bird broke off, before it was shot into splinters; the falling splinters also gave occasion to much quarrelling and discontent. The consequence was, that in the greater part of Germany, the more convenient shooting butt very soon supplanted the bird at all large cross-bow meetings; this was the case in Switzerland and Suabia. On the other hand, the Thuringians, Meisseners and Silesians, long adhered to the bird. In Breslau the popinjay shooting was practised in great perfection; there, after 1491, a heavy bird of silver, richly gilded, with gold chains and golden shield, and the city arms on the breast, was carried before the king of the shooters. But at the prize shooting of the Silesians many birds were set up of different colours and with prizes of different value. Thus in Breslau, in 1518, they set up three birds--red, green, and black; each person who knocked off one of the forty joints of the birds gained a silver spoon; but, besides this, there was also cross-bow shooting at a mark, a small square target. In the year 1560 there were again three at Breslau; and at the grand shooting at LÖwenberg, in 1615, there were five birds. The fallen splinters which had not brought special prizes were weighed, and only those of half an ounce were of value.

But the butt targets, also for cross-bows and fire-arms, were various. For the cross-bow a small circular plate, sometimes plated, and the outer circle painted with a garland, was fixed on the dark shooting butt, and after each course exchanged for a new one; for the fire-arms there was almost always a hanging target, and in 1518 at Breslau a shield--that is to say, a painted wooden table. The distance from the shooting stand to the mark for the cross-bows was 340, and later 300 feet; for the fire-arms from 650 to 750 feet. These are wide distances for weapons so imperfect in comparison with our times. On special occasions, when any young princes attended the festival, nearer marks were prepared for them--a half distance,--and other prizes. At such shooting feasts the whole of the adjoining Court took part.

The preparations in the city began some months before the feast. The lodgings were prepared for the guests; the safety of the city was provided for; the goldsmiths worked in silver the prize cups and vases, and struck also medals and show specimens; the tailors stitched incessantly at new festival dresses for halberdiers, pages of honour, and motley personages; the shield painters drew arms, garlands, and ciphers, on more than a hundred standards. On the shooting ground the lists were marked; wooden boards brightly coloured, and adorned with representations of fir-trees, garlands, and colonnades; the interior of the shooting-house was newly painted, and later carpeted; shooting-stands and pavilions erected for the shooters, and clerks booths; outside the lists there were kitchens, bowling-grounds and booths; also a spring for the water-drinkers, which, in case of need, was newly dug. Especial care was taken, at these cross-bow meetings, of the small target where the bull's-eye was. As these cross-bow meetings were in all respects arranged in the most finished style, and were a pattern for other similar shooting-meetings, we will describe many of their usages. The target place was a large wooden building, that represented the front of a house with doors and many stories, or looked like a triumphal arch, or a temple with cupola towers, or sometimes like the high wooden altar of the sixteenth century, all beautifully painted with the colours of the city or country, ornamented with coats of arms and figures. At Strasburg, in 1576, there stood great sculptures, a griffin and a lion keeping watch on each side; beneath, in the middle of the building, was the butt, either covered with some dark colour or canvas. It could be turned round by mechanism, in order that after each course the bolts might be drawn out without danger, and the butt provided with a new circular plate, for the next shooting meeting of the society. Sometimes the whole heavy building which rose above it was movable, and turned to face the rows of seats for the different divisions of shooters. Beside the butt itself, there were in the building sometimes small projecting guard-houses, or little turrets, for the markers, from which they could watch the target without being hit. At the top of the building there was a complicated clock, with the ciphers from one to four on the dial-plate, and over it a bell. On the highest point stood generally a movable carved figure, often Fortune on a ball (for example, in 1576, at Strasburg; 1586, at Ratisbon; in 1614, at Dresden), which after a bad shot turned her back on the shooter; or as at Coburg, in 1614, a mannikin on a tower, who after a good shot waved a banner, or for a bad shot mockingly bit his thumb.

When these preparations of the honest citizens approached their completion, it became necessary for the council to search out some of those minor officials of the festivities whose occupation is not what can be called very noble, but was quite indispensable, the Pritschmeister.^[62] For a great festival, four, five, or more of these fellows were desirable; but they were not to be found in every city. If they were not at the place, they were sent for to NÜremberg and Augsburg, or wherever else in the country they happened to be wandering. It was a very ancient vocation that they followed At the same time that the fantastic city tournaments of the young patrician were transformed into the useful shooting exercises of the martial citizen, this tomfoolery had changed into a peaceful civic occupation, which retains something of the duties of the old herald, and not less of the old festive jesting of the roving fool. They were criers, improvisatori, police-officers, and buffoons of the prize shooters; they understood accurately the convenance, manners, and every ceremonial of the shooting-ground; gave good counsel to hesitating regulators of the festival; delivered the poetical festival speeches; punished light transgressions against the rules of the shooting-ground with the fool's baton; and even helped at the festive banquet, when necessary, by a rough joke, or even by serving. They had come from far, and knew how to deal with proud princes and strict councillors. When it was not festival time, they carried on a modest trade that did not require much perseverance. But sieve-making or the wool trade did not please them in the long run: at least they describe themselves, in the numerous verses they have left behind them, as poor devils,^[63] who eagerly looked out for the rumour of some great festival at Court, and went many days' journey, speculating whether perhaps they might have an opportunity to exercise their office at some prize shooting. If they did not succeed in that, there still remained to them the pleasure, during the festival, of waiting upon old patrons among the shooters, and, by dint of toadying, of obtaining wherewith to fill their hungry stomachs; finally, they had the old consolation of poets, to describe in verses the occupation they had no longer the pleasure of joining in, and collecting remuneration for these verses. It is true that their descriptions of friendly and distinguished prize shootings are almost always in very bad rhyme; but they are very valuable to us, because they introduce us to the smallest details of those festivals. The office, too, of pritschmeister is worthy of observation.

It is only in accordance with German nature to make the fool the police-officer of the festival. The blow of his baton strikes the lord as well as the peasant boy, and his irony lashes the arrogant prince's son, and brings the colour into the cheeks of the most impudent. The sensitive pride of the Junker,--every offence to which, from a yeoman of the guard, would have been resented as a deadly affront,--unresistingly suffered the pritschmeister, in the exercise of his office, to seize and drag him to the place of punishment. But even the jests of the pritschmeister are deserving of observation, for they are lasting; an endless variety of tricks and pleasantries, a definite hereditary art of being merry, typical forms of foolery many hundred years old; and they were earned on with a certain earnestness,--nay, even pedantry. Undoubtedly these stale tricks had their irresistible effect only when men were disposed to be in a merry humour, but their antiquity makes them to us like woodcuts, in the angular lines of which there lies a certain charm. When, for example, at the end of the shooting, the unfortunate shooter, who had won the last prize, received this prize,--a sow with six young ones,--from the pritschmeister, who wished him happiness, and calculated at length the increase of the porcine family in his house from year to year, and that he would after three years become master of 2401 head, the hearers of the joke were not the less amused because they had heard the same reckoning made ever since their childhood on similar occasions; for it acts like a melody, that exercises its greatest magic on the hearer when it has become familiar to him.

The pritschmeister knew well that it was his duty to be a fool. It is true, there were some proud fellows among them who were ashamed of their cap; but they were derided by their own companions. Thus in 1573, the pritschmeister of Zwickau was serious and haughty; but he suffered for it under the contemptuous shrugging of the shoulders of his colleague, Benedict Edelbeck, who had wandered from Bohemia to the prize shooting, and knew better what became a pritschmeister. They bore also certain tokens of the fool,--the cap, and a striking variegated dress, in the colours of the city, which they kept as a festival present. At particularly distinguished shooting feasts they were very grandly attired; for example, at Coburg in 1614, there were five of them who wore the colours of the royal house,--yellow silk waistcoat, black hosen, yellow English stockings, long black and yellow knee ribands, beautiful Cordova shoes with silk ribands, a Spanish velvet hat with yellow feathers, a kasseke with loose sleeves, red, yellow, and black embroidery before and behind, with coats of arms; besides all this, the large club, and round the knee a string of bells, which rattled loud.

Their batons, often preposterously large, of leather or of split clacking wood, and sometimes gilded, had much to do on the shooting-ground. With them they cleared the lists of the thronging people, and punished those who transgressed the rules. Anyone who ran between the shooter and his mark after the clock was set, anyone who disturbed the shooters at their stand, who misbehaved from drunkenness or insolence, or who injured the weapons of strangers from wantonness or spite, fell under their jurisdiction without respect of rank; and this jurisdiction was exercised in a remarkable way. Far on one side of the shooting-ground was erected a conspicuous scaffold, on which were two coloured benches. This building was called, according to an old bitter jest, "the gallows;" and later, the "pritschmeister's pulpit;" to it the culprit was led with many grotesque ceremonies, there laid upon the bench, and belaboured with the baton in a way which was neatly expressed in the old technical language by this sentence, "His head was cut off at the tail." At the same time the pritschmeister delivered a discourse, which did not make his position more agreeable. One may conceive how attractive this practice of the law was to all who did not partake of it. The custom was carried on through the whole of Germany, most moderately by the serious Swiss, and decorously and impartially in the cities. At a later period, when great princes arranged shooting festivals, traces of royal humour are to be found, which enjoined the performance of this scene on minor personages for insignificant misdemeanours. Thus, after the prize shooting in 1614, Elector Johann Georg diverted himself by having not only some scullions, but even one of his bears cudgelled; the bear had to be chained to the bench. The pritschmeister obeyed his Electoral Grace, but in his inward heart he felt that such things were not in his office.

As assistants to the pritschmeister, some of the most idle boys of the city were chosen, and they also were put in fool's attire. Among this insolent brood the most zealous guardians of the law were to be found; they easily learnt some of the tricks of their master, and they carried goose wings, wooden clappers, and short pipes. They fell like a pack of hounds on any peasant child that ran across the shooting-ground, and greeted such as had shot ill with grimaces and monkey gestures. At Coburg they went in procession in a great band, dressed in black linen with white seams and patches, following a tall dark man, who wore a similar dress, and trousers after the old Landsknecht fashion. He was the head shoemaker, Martin Pauker, a gloomy, haggard fellow, who never spoke a word, but during the whole shooting was incessantly assuming grotesque disguises. In the procession he trailed along an enormous linen banner, the doubtful badge of honour for those who had shot worst of all; but on the return home he bore the great kettle drum, which he allowed to be beat upon his back; on the shooting-ground he appeared as a wild man, enveloped in straw and brushwood; then as a monk or nun; but soon he came in a splendid dress, riding on an ass, and at last waddled about in bearskin; he was always disguising himself, always drunk and dismal, but he had his own quiet enjoyment in the whole affair.^[64]

If pritschmeisters were engaged by the givers of the feast, and the city was in repute for doing its duty, possessed good friends, and had announced grand prizes, there was sure to be a great concourse. The invited cities had the festival announced to their citizens by affixing public notices, or by proclamations. It was with them an affair of honour to be represented by good marksmen, and these frequently received money for their journey out of the city coffers, in return for which, when they went home, they handed over the silk banners they had won to the council or shooting society. These deputies were generally men of distinction; but besides these there were other citizens who went to the meeting at their own cost. Thus at Coburg in 1614, besides the four shooters who were sent by the city of Schweinfurt, one Hans SchÜssler, a small, insignificant man, had come on his own account. His fellow-citizens looked askance at him and excluded him from their society, but he hit the bull's-eye at the first shot: then he jumped for joy, and exclaimed, "I was not good enough for my country people to bring me with them; now, God willing, I will do better still." He made the most bull's-eye shots, and won a beautiful goblet.

A day or two before the festivities, the strangers who came to shoot arrived from all parts. The council had to provide them with cheap quarters, and it was enjoined on the citizens that they were to abstain from annoying them. Many of the strangers met with a hospitable reception from some of the cities. If royal persons were invited, their arrival was announced by a courier; they were received by the council, lodged, and provided with the usual gift of honour,--wine, beer, and fish. Sometimes a preliminary shooting trial took place with the guests who had arrived before the first day of the festival; on such an occasion at Ratisbon in 1586, a beautiful large goat, covered with red Lund cloth, together with a beautiful banner, was presented by the council to the best shot. In Suabia and Bavaria a goat thus attired was often given at these smaller shooting trials.

On the morning of the festival the pritschmeister, with the city band, went through the streets, calling the strangers to the meeting at the shooting-ground. The givers of the festival marched in solemn procession, the pritschmeister in front; behind, the markers, equally in new dresses and the colours of the city, their marking rods in their hands; then the trumpeters and fifers; next the dignitaries and marksmen of the city, followed by a train of young boys of the city, all dressed alike in festal attire, sons of families of distinction, who bore the small target banners; after them perhaps, led by a pritschmeister or some other jovial personage, the boys with the contumelious banners, the derisive distinction of the bad shots. Then came other boys, who bore coloured chests, in which were the bolts and the principal prizes of the shooting. The large and small goblets were either brought out during the procession, or placed in a special pavilion on the shooting-ground, under the care of the city police.

On the shooting-ground the drum was again beat, and the marksmen called together by the pritschmeister. The deputy of the city then delivered a solemn address of greeting, in which he called to mind the old friendship of the invited cities, and expressed his best wishes for the festival. The pritschmeisters went again with music round the shooting-ground, and one of them proclaimed aloud once more the programme of the invitation, and admonished the marksmen to collect together by cities, and choose their "siebeners" or "neuners." These were magistrates of the shooting-ground, the higher judges of shooting law; they were chosen out of the most distinguished men of the town, some by the givers of the feast, others by the shooters according to their districts. If the larger cities, NÜremberg, Augsburg, or Magdeburg, were among the guests at the beating of the drum, it was decided by them which should be chosen as representatives of the strangers. The free Imperial cities were more particularly designated for this, equally so any royal personages present, who often even undertook the wearisome task of "neuner." These were treated with particular distinction at the entertainment. Among them were the secretaries, frequently three, who noted down in special tents the announcements of the shooting. Every marksman had to show beforehand his bolts and bullets, cross-bow and gun; each bolt was examined, whether its iron point could pass through the opening of the parchment ring, for the thicker bolts made a larger opening in the target, and the measurement being taken from the edge of the hole to the centre point, the difference of thickness in one bolt would be prejudicial to the others. If the bolt was proof-worthy, the name of the possessor was written on the shaft, and only bolts so inscribed could be used. Every shooter had, besides, to make his money deposit before he was allowed to shoot. These preparations occupied many hours, often the greater part of the first day. The time was frequently filled up by a collation, given by the city council to the strangers who shot: in the earlier and more moderate period it consisted of wine, good beer, and simple food, fruit, cakes, butter and cheese. When the marksmen were inscribed and had made their deposits, they were divided into "quarters" or banners,--three, five, and more banners; frequently each "quarter" had its special stand.

Now at last began the great shooting in "courses," or "shots with the cross-bow," so that the "quarter" shot one after the other, each shooter one shot.

Opposite to the place of the target, in a special wooden building, were the stands of the shooters. But their method of shooting appears striking to us. Before the beginning of the course, a pritschmeister went over the shooting-ground with fifes and drums, and called the marksmen by divisions to their stands. They pressed forward to it in haste, and sat in rows, according to regulation, by lot, each in the stand to which his name was affixed. As long as the division was shooting, no one left his stand, and none of the neighbours must disturb them by word or movement. Thus they sat, cross-bow in hand; then the pritschmeister called out, "Marker, set the clock going." At the signal the hand was set in motion, each "quarter" being signified by the striking of the clock. During this time each marksman was to shoot; he shot sitting, at least such was the custom in the interior of Germany after the middle of the sixteenth century, but they were not allowed to support either themselves or their crossbows. When the hand had finished its circuit round the clock, the bell sounded, a steel mirror was lowered by a hempen cord, and covered the dial-plate, and a grating either rose from the earth, or descended from the wooden building in front of the butt, in order to guard it from the eager shooters. Then began the labours of the neuner, secretaries and markers. If the butt was movable, it was turned round. Behind it stood a table for the secretaries, the inscribed bolts were drawn out, the bull's-eye shot and those in the circles were transcribed, the farthest shot also was noted down. But the marker filled up the holes made by the bolts, blackened the injured places in the butt, and put on a new plate. In this way the collective divisions of marksmen having fired one shot, the bolts were borne in solemn procession with the pritschmeister, fifes and drums, to the shooting-house: there the less successful bolts were placed in the box of their owner, but those which had been distinguished shots were laid in an ornamental wooden Attrape; in Zwickau, in 1573, it was a large white swan, the city arms. The bolt of the bull's-eye had a place of honour, and the most distant had also a distinguished place. After this first course the distribution of prizes began.

They endeavoured to give marks of distinction in every direction, and to provide as many marksmen as possible with prizes; but our ancestors did not object to humiliate by bitter jests those who had performed ill. Prizes were awarded to those who hit the bull's-eye, also to those who had shot oftenest near it, and if his remaining shots were not near enough for him to gain a chief prize, he had a special present. But the great prizes were for the marksmen who, at the end of the shooting, scored the greatest number of shots in the circles. All who could not obtain a prize within the prescribed number of shots, had the right, before the end of the meeting, to contend among themselves for smaller prizes. All the prizes of the festival, were settled by the givers of the feast, and they were reckoned in the programme collectively with their worth in silver. Every shooter at the beginning of the festival before his name was inscribed, had to make a deposit of money; this deposit was not insignificant, and became higher in proportion to the pretensions of the festival. Whilst at a former period two gulden had been deposited, it rose to six and eight Imperial gulden in the last fifty years of the prize shootings; indeed they deposited as much as twelve Imperial thalers at the cross-bow shooting given by the elector Johann Georg at Dresden in 1614, which, according to the value of silver and corn, would answer to about thirty thalers of our money. But undoubtedly all prize shootings were not so aristocratic. A portion often of the deposits at these festivals was voluntary. The obligatory deposits were turned into secondary prizes, and these were distributed in small sums among as many of the shooters as possible. With the voluntary deposits, small articles of plate were frequently bought for an after-shooting. Sometimes also the giver of the feast spent something for this; in that case these deposits of the shooters were employed as small money prizes for the after-shooting.

With all the prizes at the great shooting feasts large and small banners were presented, with the colours of the town or country, and the arms or garlands, painted on them, and often also the value of the prize. To bear away such a banner was a great honour. The strangers took them proudly to their homes, and delivered them to the council of their city, or to their shooting brotherhood, who had paid the costs of their journey. Very modest at first were the prizes of the victors: they were long designated as "ventures:" a romantic charm still attached to the foreign word, which originated in the jargon of the old tournaments. A fine ram was the first prize at Munich about 1400, and at Kelheim in 1404. Soon afterwards an ox, a horse, or a bull, and the animals often covered with a valuable cloth: thus, in 1433, at NÜremberg, a horse covered with a red cloth was the best. The secondary prizes were small goblets, silver vases, girdles, cross-bows, swords, or a prize which has always been a special object of preference with the inferior shooters, and everywhere, up to modern times, has clung to shooting societies--material for a beautiful pair of small-clothes. He who came from the greatest distance to the shooting, received, at Augsburg, in 1425, a golden ring. But at the same place, in 1440, the first prize was already a sum of money, forty gulden; and the horses and cattle were the last. They rose rapidly in value at Augsburg in 1470; 101 gulden was the best, and about 1500 this sum became usual: in 1504, at Zurich, 110 gulden was the chief prize, 90 the second, and so in succession down to one gulden, all doubled for cross-bows and guns, and, which is not rare at the Swiss shooting meetings, all in money. The prizes continued to rise in value; at Leipzig, in 1550, for the cross-bow 300 gulden; at the great shooting meeting at Strasburg, in 1576, the first prize for rifle and gun was 210 Imperial gulden; at Basle, in 1603, for muskets (with rifled barrels), a goblet worth 300 gulden. This sum, according to the value of silver and corn, answers to 666 thalers of our money.

The chief prizes then, were money or plate, goblets and vases of all forms and sizes, of that elegance and taste which distinguished the work of the goldsmith in the sixteenth century. The deposits also were frequently paid in special coins and medals, which were coined for the festival, large and small, and also gilt,--often klippen.^[65] Sometimes a bull's-eye shot was rewarded by a klippe, which was hung to the victorious banner. At the costly cross-bow meeting at Dresden, for each bull's-eye shot was given on the banner a gilt medal, weighing five Imperial thalers--almost exactly a quarter of a pound of our customs weight. Smaller towns also coined medals and klippen; they continue as choice rarities in our collections of coins, and show the greatest diversity of emblems and devices, of size, form, and value. Small silver pieces were coined for children and the poor, and distributed in remembrance of the festivals.

But besides these good prizes, there were also tantalising prizes. The last shot who could make any pretence to a prize was honoured with a doubtful distinction,--he received, according to old custom, as has been already mentioned, amidst many derisive congratulations from the pritschmeisters the smallest money prize, and an animal of the pig tribe, great or small, sow or sucking-pig, according to the humour of the giver of the feast; besides that, a good prize banner, but with satirical figures on it. At the Coburg shooting, in the year 1614, it is reported that this banner was particularly and beautifully embroidered, but one may assume that its emblems did not occasion any great pleasure to the possessor. The banners and presents to the worst shots were a caricature of the prizes for the bull's-eye; and he who had made the worst shot of all was obliged, at least at the last period of the prize-shootings, to carry at the end of the festival, surrounded by the fools, a gigantic coarse banner of sackcloth. When the bolts of the bull's-eye shots and of the most distant shots were placed after the first course in their attrape, the pritschmeister went up to his pulpit; he then called forth with a loud voice the best shooter of the first course, and greeted him with a short extempore speech in doggerel rhyme, wherein he extolled his deserts and his prizes; he then announced to him that, as a memento of the shooting, he will receive a beautiful silk banner, to which was appended a silver klippe; besides this, a tin plate with a fried trout on it, a roll of bread, and a glass of wine, together with an orange. Skilful musicians, trumpeters or pipers, went before, and conducted him to his seat. Thus did the fortunate marksman march amidst music; the officials of the city delivered to him the banner and the coins, with the jovial plate of honour. Afterwards the pritschmeister distributed to the other circle shots, and finally he called to the unfortunate who had made the widest shot; he did not advance willingly; the pritschmeister bowed himself before him and said, "Look to it, you fine shot, that you learn your art better. I have here some lads who will teach you how to hit. You need pay them no money. Franz Floh, take the brush and sprinkle him with holy water; it is very possible that he is bewitched. Come, Hans Hahn, and ring your wooden bells about his ears! Yet I observe that you are a good Christian; you wish to leave something to others; therefore, dear tantalisers, take him under your protection; the man has deserved well of others; pipe a beautiful dance before him, and bite your thumbs at him, but be decorous, and do it behind his back. Bring him his gift of honour. First, a banner of the kind of satin in which peasants bring their oats to the city. The klippe which hangs on it is unfortunately only of tin; besides, there is a plate of wood, and on it a fine whey cheese; instead of the orange an apple, and in an earthen bowl a drink of light beer." Thus did the pritschmeister deride him, and at last presented him with a fool's cap and cock's feathers. Meanwhile the pritschmeister's boys yelled, rattled, and piped around the marksman, cut summersaults, and followed him with their grimaces up to his stand, whilst a bagpipe-player preceded him, and forced from his bags their most dissonant tones. It was afterwards seriously maintained by the marksmen that in this buffoonery those with the highest pretensions did not come off better than the rest. But to the person concerned it was very painful. He seldom succeeded in concealing beforehand the widest bolt, which always excited general displeasure. To princes who were present some consideration was shown: at least, the words of the pritschmeister to them, which are printed, sound very mild. If the sovereign himself had made the widest shot, one of his suite took it upon himself, as at Zwickau in 1573.

Thus was the festival carried on, round after round, each succeeded by the rewards. These interludes took not a little time; thus it happened that not more than seven or eight courses of shots took place in a day, still less at the great meetings.

At the end of the festival, in most of the districts in Germany, the shooting was interrupted by a pleasing custom which shall here be described as it took place, in the second half of the sixteenth century, in the cities of Suabia, Franconia, Thuringia, and Meissen. Many of the most distinguished maidens of the city went in procession, festively clad, accompanied by councillors, city pipers, and yeomen of the guard, to the shooting-ground. One of them carried, in an ornamental box, a costly garland--sometimes of silver and gold, with pearls and precious stones--another bore a beautiful banner. Their procession stopped on the ground; then the shooters of a friendly city were summoned, a herald of the city delivered an address, the maidens handed over to them, as a gift of honour from their city, the garland and banner, and invited them to a dance of honour. The invited thanked them in choice language in the name of their city; one of them placed the garland on his head, and they led the maidens in a stately dance over the shooting-ground. Such a garland imposed upon the city which received it the agreeable duty of giving the next prize-shooting. It was carefully kept, and mentioned in the programme of the garlanded city as the principal ground of the prize-shooting, in order that the garland might not wither. Afterwards, when the princes participated eagerly in the shooting, they also received garlands; if the prince was the giver of the feast, he bestowed the garland on one of the princesses. This old custom bound together the cities of a district in one great festive brotherhood. The dances on the open shooting-ground ceased about the year 1600.

But these great citizen festivals offered other opportunities of display of strength and art. When they were in their full vigour in the fifteenth century, there were public games arranged for the marksmen, and prizes appointed for the conquerors. In these games ancient traditions were maintained. They were prize contentions similar to that in the Niebelung, of Siegfried against Brunhild, hurling the stone, leaping, and running. They were in the programme in the prize-shooting of 1456; the Zuricher, Hans Waldmann, carried off the prize for leaping, who, later as Burgomaster, lost his proud head on the block. At the cross-bow shooting at Augsburg in 1470, a golden ring was prepared for him who could hurl furthest a stone of forty-five pounds weight, at an easy run, with three throws, according to the laws of the game; a knight, Wilhelm Zaunried, won the prize. Thus also at Zurich, in 1472, there were three prizes for hurling stones of fifteen, thirty, and fifty pounds. Christoph, Duke of Bavaria, won the golden ring at Augsburg in 1470, for leaping. The task was three springs on one leg with a run, afterwards a jump with both feet, then again three springs on the other leg, and a second jump. In Zurich, in 1472, leaps of three different kinds were prescribed: from the spot with both feet, in the run with both feet, and in a run three springs on one foot. All this was done with great earnestness, and was actually notified to the guests in the programme of the council. In prize races in 1470, at Augsburg, the course measured 350 paces; Duke Christoph, of Bavaria, won the gold ring also for running. At Zurich, in 1472, the length of the course was 600 paces. At Breslau, in 1518, the prizes for running were articles of the favourite pewter. Besides the men, sometimes horses ran: as at the rifle-shooting at Augsburg, in 1446, fourteen horses appeared in the lists; the prize was a piece of scarlet cloth; the conqueror was a horse of Duke Albrecht's, which he had sent from Munich for the races.^[66] At the races at the same place, in 1470, a horse of Duke Wolfgang's, of Bavaria, won a prize of forty-five gulden. Wrestling, and even dancing, obtained prizes, as in 1508 again, at Augsburg. And at the same place a whimsical prize was won by the person who could amuse the people with the greatest lies.

To these national popular amusements were added others not less old, but from the traditions of foreign life. The descendants of the Roman gladiators, whose rough struggles had once caused great scandal to strict Christians, led a despised life as roving fighters^[67] through the whole of the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth century they had taken refuge behind the city gates and in the guardrooms of the royal court, in various mercenary service, as fencing-masters, soldiers, police, valets, and messengers. Out of the secret brotherhoods which were formed by these strolling fighters had arisen associations which were openly tolerated; they were arranged in two societies, as MarxbrÜder (the fraternity of St. Mark), and Federfechter (champions of the feather), which cherished a violent antipathy to each other. The Federfechter displayed a winged griffin on their armorial shield; they boasted of having received privileges from a Duke of Mecklenburg, and found later a mild patron in the Elector of Saxony. At the lists, when they raised their swords, they called out, "Soar aloft, feather; mark what we do; write with ink which looks like blood."^[68] The MarxbrÜders, on the other hand, had for their armorial bearings a lion, and cheered themselves by the defiant rhyme, "Thou noble lion, elevate thy curly hair; thou perceivest the griffin; him shalt thou hew down and tear his feathers." They were privileged by King Maximilian in 1487. These masters of the long sword were under a captain, and their meetings were held at the harvest fair of Frankfort-on-the-Maine. Thither resorted any one who wished to receive the freedom of their company; he had to fence with four masters, then in public meeting to accept a challenge from any one who chose to fight with him. If he stood the trial, he was struck with the sword of ceremony crosswise over the loins; he then took the oath of fellowship, and laid two golden guldens on the sword; then he received the secret sign of recognition of the brotherhood, and the right to instruct others in his art, and to hold fencing schools, that is to say, to arrange public fights. For a long time these public fights were a pleasure to princes and citizens; after the battle of MÜhlberg, they enlivened the imprisoned Elector of Saxony during the great Imperial Diet at Augsburg. It was considered by the people an especial privilege for Frankfort, that it was the only town in which one could become a prize-fighter.^[69] The fighters made their way into the prize-shootings--already at Augsburg in 1508--especially when princes took a part in the civic pleasures. The procession, and many of the usages of the fighters, remind one strongly of the Roman gladiatorial games, though the combats seldom came to so bloody an end. The princes and cities hired whole bands of fighters, who attended at the prize-shootings and other great festivals. Thus at Stuttgardt, in 1560, the fighters strove in pairs on the shooting-ground; the royal ladies also drove out to see this combat; the first victor received a beautiful waistcoat of taffety; every other prize consisted of two thalers. At a cross-bow meeting at Zwickau, 1573, the Margrave of Anspach introduced a fighting band of forty men, against whom the Elector August of Saxony arranged his Federfechters. They contended for two days, in pairs, with the long sword, the wooden sword, the long spear, and the short lance, bareheaded, according to old custom, and some made many passes without conquering the other. There was much bravado in these combats, but they gave rise to great jealousy, violent blows, and bad wounds.

The society of fencers outlived the prize-shootings and the great war. They lost the old expressions for their art, but substituted French words, and maintained their position in the larger cities in spite of the foreign fencing-masters. In NÜremberg their public combats were forbidden shortly before 1700; but parties long ran high among the people for the two factions: there was no boy in the city who did not contend for the MarxbrÜder or Federfechter, who frequently gave their performances in private houses. The last great fencing match took place, in 1741, at Breslau, in the churchyard of Magdalena. On the day when the young King of Prussia, with careless mien and dishevelled hair, and his small parade sword, came to receive the homage of the conquered Silesia on the throne of the Emperor Matthias, when the dawn of a new time broke over Germany, the old fencers, like shadowy figures of a distant time, performed once more their antics over the graves of a past generation, and then passed away.

Other popular amusements intruded themselves into the prize-shootings; the pleasures became more noisy, more abundant, and excited; and whoever takes a view of the shooting-ground at the end of the sixteenth century will see, from the proceedings of spectators, that times had altered. Formerly the marksmen, among them princes and nobles, had taken part in the public gymnastics; the Wittelsbacher had hopped on one leg among the citizens of the imperial town, and had hurled the heavy stone. At the end of the sixteenth century the nobles looked on, so also did the already genteel citizen-marksmen; but the peasant lads came in their Sunday attire, with their lasses, and performed their country dance for the amusement of others. There was great pleasure in seeing the peasant maidens compete in running for a camisol or a stomacher; high springs, fluttering dresses, and sometimes a tumble in their haste, excited especial satisfaction, and their village demeanour contributed to increase the enjoyment of others. It was more particularly the princes who took pleasure in all this; there seldom failed to be grotesque processions and dances of the country people, when a prince made the programme of the festival. The pert waggery of the pritschmeister to the country people excited a laughter on the shooting-ground which would be offensive to us. The dancers, in couples, garlanded with the red berries of the mountain ash, or with carrots, advanced on the ground; men threw themselves on unsaddled horses, and galloped past a goose which was hung above them, and the joke was, that they slid off their nags, and the like.

The amusement of the children, also, was provided for. There was a jesting fool, who, armed with a shield and short leather club, challenged any one to assail him with a lance. If the challenge was accepted, the fool knew so well how to parry the lance, throw his opponent on his back, and belabour him with his club, that the laugh was always on his side. Beside him stood (as at Ratisbon, in 1586) a wild man, who threw balls into his open mouth, nine balls for a kreuzer. A little mannikin was set on a pony: they threw at him with a ball, and whoever hit oftenest won something. Spirited boys climbed up a smooth pole to fetch a cock out of the basket which was hung at the top.

The shooting-ground was fenced in by barriers or ropes, but alongside it stood the tents and booths, where goldsmiths laid out their goblets, vases, spoons, and chains. The pewter-booths were great favourites, before which they gambled for household utensils, throwing dice in the brente, which was painted red and white, similar to our backgammon board; anxious faces thronged round the gambling-booths; vagrants and vagabonds staked more on the game than their last stolen penny; but they were not unobserved, for the city police in their festal attire paced gravely along these booths to see that no offence was committed to disturb the peace of the shooting-ground. Special attention was paid by the giver of the feast to the bowling-ground, which was then not so frequently found in town or country, as now. There were often two, indeed three, prepared for the festival; here, also, there were prizes affixed. Thus, at Breslau, 1518, an ox and pewter utensils were bowled for, on two grounds. In Silesia, Saxony, and Thuringia, they were favourite additions to the festival.

But of all that made the festival agreeable to the people, and attained to the greatest development, was an entertainment of a most doubtful character,--the fortune's urn, the modest ancestor of the state and other lotteries. As early as 1467 it made its appearance at the cross-bow meeting at Munich. In 1470, at the great prize-shooting at Augsburg, it was a well-known part of the programme; the prizes were goblets, materials for dress, velvet girdles, and weapons; there were twenty-two prizes, and more than 76,000 tickets, at eight pfennigs each; a cook won the best prize, which was an agreeable evidence to the people that it had been carried on honourably. By means of the rifle-shooting at Zurich, in 1472, the urn was introduced into Switzerland; the tickets there cost one shilling each. The drawing was much the same as now. There was scaffolding erected in the public place, before the council-house, and thereon a booth, in which the prizes were placed; beside it, the secretaries and the urns. There were two urns, into one of which the names of those were thrown who had drawn a ticket, in the other were the prizes and blanks; a boy of sixteen, who was placed between the urns, drew from both at the same time. First, the name was called out, then the prize or blank. The first ticket and the last in the urn with the names, won something; at Zurich, a ram; those who took many tickets got them cheaper. In 1504, at Zurich, the prizes were already in money; but in Germany the pleasant custom still continued at the prize-shootings for another century, of playing for artistic objects of value; the love of gambling was great, the women especially thronged round the urn; and, if one may judge from the lists of prizes that have been preserved, the inferior clergy of the old church amused themselves with fortune's um. Seldom, in the sixteenth century, did the urn fail to appear at the greater prize-shootings; it was an important concern, and the chroniclers recorded assiduously the prizes and fortunate winners. Thus, only to mention one year, there were, in Central Germany alone, in 1540, two urns of fortune; for there were prize-shootings at Frankenhausen and Hof; at the latter the drawing lasted five days; in both cities the last prize from the urn was the jocose prize--a sow, which had been introduced from the shooting-ground into the urn of fortune. In 1575, at Strasburg, the urn of fortune was very considerable; there were 275 prizes--the first, value 115 gulden; the sale of the tickets was so rapid that they were obliged to increase the number and the prizes in equal proportion. Count Palatine Casimir, an enterprising prince, had bought 1100 tickets, but did not gain much. The Zuricher guests also, with their pot of porridge, took some thousand tickets--in the name of the fortunate ship and of their native city--which, together, cost 101 gulden; for this they won silver to about half the amount. The drawing lasted fourteen days, and the throng of people about the urn was so troublesome that at last they were obliged to use force to secure the urn.

From these beginnings arose the lottery in Italy and Holland, in the sixteenth century; first, they played for wares, but soon for money, and it was used as a source of income by individuals, and then by communities. The first money lottery at Hamburg was established in 1615.

Such was the course of the great feasts of arms of our ancestors. For weeks did the multitude buzz about the shooting-ground and booths, and in the streets of the hospitable city. When the society of marksmen had finished the prescribed number of shots, all those to whom an equal number of circle shots had been scored had to shoot for their prize at a special target, and he who made the worst shot had the smallest prize. In the same way all shot for the knightly prize who had carried away no prize from the great shooting. The chief and the knightly prizes were solemnly delivered with the banner; the money prizes were in coloured silk purses, which hung to the banner; prizes and banners were arranged beforehand in long rows for show, for in the olden days they knew well how to make a grand display of such distinctions. Then followed generally an after shooting for the voluntary deposits of the shooters, more simple and unrestrained, and sometimes at other distances. Last, on the shooting-ground, came the great farewell oration of thanks from the giver of the feast, expressing once more to the guests the pleasure it had given to the city. Finally, there was the great march from the shooting-ground to the city. This was an important ceremony. All the splendour of the festival was again displayed in the long procession. Trumpets and pipes were blown, the big drum and the kettle-drums thundered, the pritschmeisters clattered with their bats; the dignitaries of the festival, councillors, and neuners, marched in front with their long silk scarfs; behind them the fortunate winners of the great prizes, each with his prize borne before him, and accompanied by two men of distinction. The other shooters followed under the banner of their "quarter," and proudly did each carry his prize banner; but the mocking banners also were sometimes to be seen in the procession, and humbly were they carried by their bearers; behind them came the young tomfools. Our ancestors were right when they moved with a feeling of elation in such processions. The dress was already rich in colour; men of even moderate income endeavoured to wear rich materials, silk and velvet, on such occasions. All were accustomed to show themselves before others, and knew well how to maintain a stately pace. With a feather on the cap or hat, the weapon by the side, and one arm supported on the hip under the mantle, they strode along in march time, placing their feet wide apart, as is the custom now, thus moving the body in an easy way, now towards the right, now the left.

Thus they went to the last evening entertainment; those who were departing had often the escort of their friends, for protection and honour, far into the country.

There is something very attractive to our feelings in this hospitality given to the shooters. Not only were they frequently provided with drink on the shooting-ground during the shooting-hours, and refreshed by a collation, but they were at least once, and generally oftener, entertained in the city, sometimes daily, by the councillors; besides this, there were evening dances, in which the daughters of the most distinguished families partook. These hospitalities to the guests, in the fifteenth century, though very hearty, were also very simple; but at a later period they became sometimes profuse, and when such a festival lasted a fortnight, or, as at Strasburg, as much as five weeks, they must have been very expensive to the givers of the feast; more than once did critical chroniclers complain of the immoderate demands on their city coffers. Loud reproaches were made even at Strasburg, and it was reported of the LÖwenbergers, after their bird-shooting in 1615, that the city had exerted itself far beyond its powers; for all had been very costly and splendid. In the fifteenth century, they knew better how to calculate. The great cross-bow shooting at Augsburg, in 1470, cost the city more than 2200 gulden, a high sum according to the then value of corn; and yet the influx of strangers was so great that the Augsburgers afterwards said they had suffered no loss. But, indeed, the entertainment of the 466 stranger guests was very simple.

The number of marksmen at the earlier cross-bow shootings was not large. At Augsburg, in 1425, there were only 130; in 1434, 300; and in 1470, 466. After fire-arms had been introduced, at the great country meetings, the number of marksmen was double. Thus, in 1485, at St. Gallen, there were collected 208 cross-bows and 445 guns; and in 1508, at Augsburg, there were 544 cross-bows and 919 guns. According to the old arrangements of the shooting, this large number of men protracted the festival to a great length; consequently, in the sixteenth century, we find efforts sometimes made to limit the number of invitations, but to increase the deposits of the shooters; and it appears that a festival, with from 200 to 300 shooting-guests, was considered most agreeable; in that case it lasted a week; the individual became of more importance, and the body of men was easier to guide. Even with a moderate number of marksmen, the concourse of strangers was incomparably greater than it would be now. Each marksman was accompanied by a lad, who waited upon him with cross-bow or gun; if princes or nobles were invited, they arrived with a large retinue of junkers, servants, halberdiers, and horses; a large rabble of beggars and rogues also flocked together, and the watchmen of the city had to guard against theft, robbery, and fire.

It was not always easy for the givers of the feast to keep order between the inhabitants and the strangers, for, together with a natural heartiness and wish to adapt themselves to their guests, there was in many haughty minds a very sensitive pride of home and self-confidence, which inclined them, more than would be the case now, to turn into ridicule the unusual dress, manners, and language of strangers. Betwixt certain districts there always floated, like small thunder-clouds, certain old satirical sayings and ironical stories. Swiss and Suabians, Thuringians and Franconians, Hessians and Rhinelanders, reported laughable things of each other. But a word spoken when drinking, or a mocking reminder, might disturb the peace of the festival, or excite parties to sudden anger; and words of conciliation and redoubled friendliness were not always successful. Thus the "Seehasen"^[70] and the "KÜhmelker" had a severe quarrel at the cross-bow shooting at Constance in 1458. A man from Constance, who was playing at dice with one from Lucerne, called the Bernese coin plappart, which he had won, a cow-plappart; the Lucerner fired up, blows and uproar followed. The Lucerne marksmen remained to the end of the festival; but they complained loudly that the laws of hospitality were broken, and their honour wounded. After their return home the people of Lucerne and Unterwalden raised the war-banner and fell on the territory of Constance, the inhabitants of which had to pay 5000 gulden as an expiation. Yet, in general, it was provided that such disturbances should be reconciled on the spot, or satisfaction given to the guests. Strictly were the shooting regulations administered by the chosen judges, and zealously did hosts and guests endeavour to enhance the feeling of duty in those belonging to them. Among the numerous specimens of city hospitality of that time the most pleasing is the kindly connection which existed for more than 100 years betwixt Zurich and Strasburg, frequently interrupted by many passionate ebullitions, but always renewed. In 1456, six years after the Swiss had established the first great shooting-feast at Sursee, in the country of Lucerne, some young Swiss, in the early dawn of morning, conveyed a large pot of hot millet porridge, in a vessel, from Zurich to Strasburg; they arrived in the evening; threw the famed Zurich rolls among the people, and delivered the still warm millet porridge to the council of the friendly city, as a token of how quickly their Swiss friends would come to their aid if they ever needed it in earnest; they danced the same night with the Strasburg maidens. After that, the excitement and sufferings of the Reformation knit new spiritual ties betwixt Zurich and the great imperial city. Bucer and the Swiss reformers, the literati and artists of both cities, had been in close alliance; though differences of confession had for a short time produced alienation. The Strasburgers had often experienced the hospitality of the Swiss. Now when, 150 years after the first journey of the porridge-pot, the city of Strasbourg had again announced a brilliant prize-shooting for crossbow and gun, and a strong detachment from Zurich had celebrated with them the first fortnight of the cross-bow shooting, then a number of young Zurichers, under the lead of some gentlemen of the council, determined to repeat the old voyage. Again, like their ancestors, they placed the great metal pot, weighing 120 pounds, filled with hot porridge, in the ship, and voyaged in the early dawn of morning, all dressed alike in rose and black, from the Limmat into the Aar, from the Aar into the Rhine, with trumpeters and drummers. The places by which the ship flew, in the sunny mid-day, greeted the jolly fellows with acclamations; in the evening they reached Strasburg, having been long before announced from the towers. The citizens thronged to meet them; delegates from the council greeted them; they carried the pot on shore and delivered it to the councillors; they scattered amongst the children of Strasbourg 300 strings of Zurich rolls, and again were the manly words spoken: "Quickly as we have come to-day in sport, we will come to help in earnest." And at the abundant supper the old homely dish, still warm, was enjoyed with pleasure. The Strasburger Fischart has described with hearty satisfaction the journey of the porridge-pot, and we find in his verses the warmth which then animated both hosts and guests. The course of the voyage of the porridge-pot, and even the sums which the Swiss deposited in the urn of fortune--"In the name of the fortunate ship and of the parent town"--were paid by the city of Zurich. In return they received the small silver utensils which were won in the urn by the Zurichers. The collective costs of the journey which Zurich then paid for its marksmen amounted to 1500 gulden.

It is of great interest to consider these brotherly festivals of the city communities, according to districts. In the middle of the sixteenth century, a journey from Nuremburg to Augsburg was neither so easy nor free from danger, as now from Leipsig to Zurich. The birds of prey of the country gladly flew from their castellated eyries into the woods which surrounded, in wide circles, the hospitable city; more than once was the fortunate marksman waylaid and robbed, by noble horsemen, of the beautiful purse with the guldens he had won, and his banner broken. Even to greater companies the road was insecure, and the travelling toilsome; the inns at small places were frequently very bad, without meat or drink. It is easily understood that at the largest prize-shooting, to which every unexceptional man was welcome, persons from a distance only took a part when accident had brought them into the neighbourhood. Therefore it is matter of surprise that the district to which cities sent their invitations was so large. The Wittenburghers were welcome guests at Ratisbon and the men of Stuttgart at Meissen. Sometimes accident or the friendship of distinguished citizens, knit these bonds of hospitality betwixt far-distant cities; then the invitations went forty, fifty, or one hundred miles. But, on the whole, we may divide these hospitable cities into groups. The Swiss, Suabians, and Bavarians were in close union. Augsburg, more than Nuremberg, was long the centre and pattern of these groups. To it belonged the Rhine as far as Strasbourg. The greatest and most splendid prize-shootings were for two centuries celebrated in this part of Germany. In Bavaria, about 1400, all the more powerful places were in firm intercommunion. There, the city whose marksmen, at one shooting, had won the first prize, was bound at the next shooting festival to produce the same first prize. Thus Kehlheim, which had won the ram at Munich, invited the Munichers, in 1404, to contend for it again.^[71] But smaller festivals also comprehended a wide circle. At Ratisbon, for example, the Bavarians and Suabians shot with the larger cities of Thuringia and Meissen; also with Lindau, Salzburg, and some places in Bohemia. The Tyrolese and Salzburghers collected more especially at small shooting meetings of their districts; so also the Franconians north of the Maine. A lasting union of middle-sized and smaller places existed there. This Franconian union comprehended in the sixteenth century, together with WÜrzburg and Schweinfurt, forty-one cities and forty-two villages with free peasants, particularly from the bishopric of WÜrzburg and the royal county of Henneberg.

The chief prize was a neck chain--"The Jewel of the Country"--which the victor wore round his neck for a year, and which imposed upon the victorious place the duty of giving the next shooting meeting. If the community of the union who had to give the feast was small and poor, the meeting was badly attended. Thus at Neustadt, on Saale, in 1568, only delegates from eighteen cities and three villages appeared. The small participation of the village communities, at this period, is a proof that their strength was diminished in comparison with the former period. Another group comprehended the possessions of the House of Saxony; the Thuringians and many Franconians and Meisseners who sent the garland to one another. These also zealously maintained the cross-bow at their prize-shootings; the popinjay was seldom erected, except at smaller meetings, where it was long upheld. At these festivals the Franconians, up to and beyond Nuremberg, were regular guests; some of the Suabians and more of the German Bohemians. But, on the frontiers of this group, at Halle, another association began, the centre of which was Magdeburg; here the popinjay was more frequent. Thus at the great prize-shooting at Halle, in 1601, the expression "shooting court" appears, and many special usages. This circle embraced the Harz cities up to Brunswick, and the Altmark, and reaches further to the east and north, for the people of Halle sent their invitations as far as Berlin, Brandenburg, and even Griefswald. Again, the cities of the great province of Silesia were in close union, with Breslau for their centre point; there the popinjay shooting attained to its highest development, and the festivals were very frequent. Competition was not unfrequent between two cities; thus, in 1504, between Liegnitz and Neisse, when the Breslauers said, in answer to the invitation of Neisse, that they had already accepted the invitation of Liegnitz, and therefore could not go. The chief places of meeting of the cities of middle Rhine were Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle; but the great prize-shootings of this country, which flourished at the end of the fifteenth century, were embittered by religious discord. It is remarkable that in the countries of Lower Saxony, on the North Sea and Baltic, where the old Hanse towns had founded such noble city unions, the prize-shootings were less frequent and distinguished. The most zealous supporters of them were the Swiss, Suabians, Thuringians, Meisseners, and Silesians. With the Swiss these great festivals attained the character of exercises of arms; they were practical and serious; the waggish humour and the tricks of the pritschmeister flourished in Middle Germany.^[72] It is not accidental that in the whole of the Protestant portion of the German empire, the power and comfort of the citizen have been most nobly developed.

If these particulars give only a very imperfect picture of the splendour, the opulence, and the independence which were developed in these festivals by the German cities in ancient times, yet they will succeed in making the reader feel, that though we have gained much in comparison with those times, we have also lost something. Only very lately it would have appeared hazardous to the greatest city communities to arrange festivals which, according to our rate of money, would cost perhaps more than fifty thousand thalers; not to do honour to the visit of some sovereign, but for the pleasure of German fellow-citizens, and which would last three or even five weeks, and commit many hundreds, or even thousands of guests during this period to the friendly hospitality, partly of individuals and partly of the city community. It is true that time has become more valuable to us, life is enjoyed more rapidly, and we compress into days what would have employed our ancestors for weeks. It is true that modern men seek recreation in summer in ways which were almost unknown three centuries ago. They isolate themselves from the bustle and hard daily labour of the world among mountain woods and alpine valleys; whilst our ancestors, on the contrary, sought pleasure and refreshment in large societies of men, and left the narrow boundaries of their walls,--the guild room and the council hall,--for those great re-unions in which they could gain honour and prizes by their own exertions. But it must not be forgotten that it was just in those last two centuries in which the great civic festivals became impossible, that many general interests were developed in German citizen life, which, however unsatisfactory they may be, form an immeasurable step in advance of the olden time. There is also a fundamental difference in culture which distinguishes us from our ancestors; but this difference does not rest on the necessary progress of a later race. We feel that the old brotherhood of cities and districts had something noble in it, in which our life is very deficient. The joyful self-assertion of man in social intercourse with others, the facility with which common usages unite together hundreds and indeed thousands, and, above all, the imposing vigour with which cities asserted their position, all this has been too long wanting to us. If it was seldom granted to our forefathers to feel, on the great occasions of life, the unity of German interests in Church and State, and through a common action and great triumph to ennoble the life of every individual, yet they knew at least how to open, by their fellowship, a domain in which expression was given to the German nature, to human relations and to community of spirit.

It is only within a few years that it has become a necessity to Germans to expand their life in this direction. It was no mere accident that made German men of science, in their wandering meetings, the first to give significant expression to some of the noblest interests of the nation by national association. They were followed by the singers and others, then the gymnasts, finally the shooters. We are now, after more than two centuries of preparation, again treading in the same path in which our ancestors so grandly trod, but with a freer and nobler feeling. It has been a long-denied pleasure for us thus to be able to vaunt ourselves. But we should at the same time be mindful, and it is the object of these pages to remind us, that the citizen-class of Germany has striven, for more than two centuries since the Thirty Years' War, to become again as powerful and manly in this respect as their ancestors were.

But even of that time of weakness, the century that followed the great war, a picture shall be given. But it must be short. The hospitable prize-shootings of the cities had ceased; here and there a ruler gave a family festival, or, as a special act of grace, a large country shooting meeting, at which prizes were awarded, and their subjects allowed to participate. In the cities the old shooting associations still existed, though in many cases robbed of their prize cups, chains, and jewels; even the cautious Leipzigers had not preserved the silver statue of their holy Sebastian. Many old customs were maintained in their desolate shooting houses; the cross-bow, at the popinjay and target, had dragged on a miserable existence; it lasts in a few cities as a curiosity up to the present day; the rifled weapon became naturalised; in larger communities the new Imperial nobility favoured shooting guilds and their old "KÖnigsschiessen,"^[73] and these festivals acquired a stiff pretentious character of pedantic state action. This great change in the city festival,--the only meagre feast of arms which remained to the German citizen in the eighteenth century,--is apparent in a description of the Breslau shooting in the year 1738. It is found where one would hardly look for it, in the laborious work of the physician Johann Christian Kundmann, entitled "Beruhmte Schlesier in MÜntzen," 1738, i., p. 128, and is given as follows, literally, with few omissions:--

"At this time the following solemnities were observed at the 'KÖnigsschiessen.' On Whitsunday the king of the preceding year went with the elders, the Zwinger brotherhood, also with some invited friends, in some twenty carriages, out to the Zwinger.^[74] By the side of the carriage went the secretaries as servants, two outriders, the markers, and the king's own servant; they were received with kettle-drums and trumpets. After that, the perquisites of the king were read aloud to the shooters in the room, and those who wished to shoot for the kingdom were to sign their names with their own hand. Then appeared two gentlemen, commissaries of the worshipful and illustrious council, who are usually the two youngest councillors of the nobility; they wore Spanish mantles, trimmed with lace or fringe, and placed themselves opposite to the king in the room,--who stayed there in his kingly attire, bearing the great golden bird. The councillors state that they, as commissioners, have to be present at this shooting. After this the king goes to the shooting ground, accompanied by the commissioners, the elders, and shooters.

"As, according to old usages, a popinjay was to be the mark, a large carved bird with outspread wings was set up, instead of a target, and at this there were six courses, that is, each shooter fired six times. A small silver bird, or a large klippe, was attached to the king as a badge of honour, instead of the large gilt bird, which was too heavy and incommodious to carry. He kept the badge till one of the others had made the winning shot with a bullet. The king shoots always first, amidst the sounding of kettle-drums and trumpets. After these shots the new king is presented to the commissaries, by the zwinger-orator,--usually an advocate, with a well composed speech,--and the usual presents are presented to the king. The first gentleman of the council answers with a similar speech. After that they go to the zwinger repast, and when they rise from table the king is accompanied with kettle-drums and trumpets home. Or the king and the brotherhood march with music and wine round the city, and do honour thereby to their patrons and good friends. The Wednesday after, the king gives his usual silver shooting, at which there are six prizes of silver, that consist of cups and spoons. After the completion of this, the king gives his first entertainment.

"The Saturday following, early in the morning, about eight o'clock, the king is conducted, with his retinue, in his costly attire, before the illustrious and worshipful council in the council room, where the zwinger-orator again delivers an oration, and begs for the king all the immunities; the president answers with a similar speech, confirms him in his kingdom, conveys to him the regal dues, and concludes with congratulations. Then the day for the king's benefit is solicited, generally some Monday a few weeks later. This is a pleasure shooting of twelve courses. He who makes the best shot, and he who with gun and dice (the equally bad shots cast lots by dice), fails most, must both place themselves in front of the shooting-house. To the first a large orange will be delivered on a pewter plate, together with a glass of wine and a garland of roses, and some verses will be recited in his praise, when the kettle-drums and trumpets will sound. But he who has failed gets a whey cheese in a wreath of nettles on a wooden plate, together with a glass of beer, upon which the bagpipes and a small fiddle are played; the verses are generally very pungent, and the zwinger poets are frequently wont to recite truths in jest to their dear friends. Besides this, for each shot on the outer circle of the target in all the courses, a citron is given, and in like manner to every one who hits, a citron, an orange, or a curd cheese, which are painted on the target, together with other pictures characteristic of the time. Then they go to another meal, when the zwinger-orator and the first deputy of the council deliver speeches, and distribute the banners and prizes to the best shots and the victors in the twelve courses, with the sounding of kettle-drums and trumpets. Then the king gives a costly repast, which often lasts nearly till daybreak. Over the king hangs the great king's bird: he himself sits in a large arm chair. From thence the king is accompanied to the patrons and then home, and this solemnity generally finishes with some merriment. Finally, the king gives, the following day, a sausage shooting, and appoints a prize of silver and gold; this is again concluded by an entertainment, followed by dice playing for pewter."

Here ends the account of Kundmann. Of how little importance was such a "KÖnigsschiessen" of the seventeenth century may be gathered from the description. The popular festival of the olden time had become a pretentious solemnity. To do everything in a genteel way was the great desire; only the wealthy could become kings; to drive in carriages, to be accompanied by servants, to give costly meals and expensive prizes, were the main objects; the shooting was a minor point: and it was very significant that the king was no longer expected to speak publicly before his fellow-citizens; he represented in dumb show; the advocate spoke for the citizen at the festival also. Lastly, it may be perceived that the remnants of some of the old jovial customs had still been retained; they stand out in contrast to the prudery and susceptibility of the time; the improvisation of the pritschmeister had ceased, and even the ironical verses on bad shots had to be prepared; gradually the reminiscences of a more vigorous time were laid aside as obsolete and absurd.

It was not, however, the wretchedness of the people alone,--the bitter fruit of the war,--that destroyed the great brotherly feasts of the citizen, nor yet the ruling tendency to haughty exclusiveness against all who held a modest position in life, but equally injurious was the peculiar stamp impressed upon even the best and most highly cultivated, after that period of humiliation.

It is time now to observe the great change in the German popular mind, which turned the martial citizen, who knew how to use powder and shot and to direct a gun, into the shy, timid gentleman, who hastened his steps when he heard near him the thump of the butt end of a musket, and feared lest his son should grow too tall, and come into the horrible position of having to shoulder a weapon in rank and file.

This change was effected by the new polity of the princes.