This aristocratic love of the forest, however, went hand in hand with the forest-tyranny of the Middle Ages.  The forest-trees and the game were treated with more consideration than the corn-fields and the peasants.  When a cruel master wished to punish a peasant sorely he chased the game into his fields, and the hunt which was to slay the game trampled down what the latter had not devoured.  The war about the forest violently forced upon the peasant the question as to whether or not the ancient privileges of the aristocracy could be justified before God and man.  We possess a poem by G.A.  Buerger which contrasts the naked rights of labor with the historic rights of rank in so sharp a fashion that, if it should be published today, it would undoubtedly be confiscated as communist literature.  This ancient specimen of modern social-democratic poetry, characteristically, for those times, takes its theme from the “War about the Forest;” it bears the title:  The Peasant to His Most Serene Tyrants.  Because the princely huntsman has driven the peasant through the latter’s own down-trodden corn-field, followed by the halloo of the hunt, the peasant in the poem suddenly hits upon the dangerous question, “Who are you, Prince?”

The horrible punishments with which poachers and trespassers against the forest were threatened in the Middle Ages can be explained only when we see in them an outlet to the bitterness of two parties at war about the forest.  In this war martial law was declared.  The poacher felt that he was acting within his rights, like the pirate; neither of them wished to be considered a common thief.  Above, I compared the forest with the sea; the former barbarous punishment of pirates likewise runs parallel with the cruel chastisement of trespassers against the forest.  The latter still frequently thinks he is only getting back again by cunning and force a proprietorship that was snatched from him by force.  There are in Germany whole villages, whole districts, where, even at the present day, poaching and trespassing against the forest are sharply distinguished from common crimes which disgrace the perpetrator.  To catch a hare in their traps is, for these peasants, no more dishonorable than it is for a student to cudgel the night-watchman.  Therein lurks the ancient hidden thought of the “War about the Free Forest.”  In the forest the turbulent country-folk in times of excitement can attack the state or the individual large landholder in his most sensitive spot.  We saw how, in the year 1848, extensive tracts of forest were laid waste—­not plundered—­in accordance with a well concocted plan.  The trees were hewn down and the trunks were intentionally left to lie and rot, or the forest was burnt down in order, with each day’s quota of burned forest, to extort the concession of a new “popular demand.”  The old legend of the “War about the Forest” had become, once more, really live history.