The Cambridge modern history. Vol. IV, The Thiry Years' War / planned by the late Lord Acton ; edited by A.W. Ward, G.W. Prothero, Stanley Leathes.

Date:: 1906

Credit: The Cambridge modern history. Vol. IV, The Thiry Years' War / planned by the late Lord Acton ; edited by A.W. Ward, G.W. Prothero, Stanley Leathes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$1600-18] Economic depression. To the pervading spirit of religious discord and moral disquietude there was in this age of decline added the general consciousness of a continuous decrease of material prosperity throughout the Empire. During a long period, in which neither war nor epidemics had prevailed on a large scale (although from 1570 onwards several parts of Germany had, in consequence of a succession of years of dearth, been subject to visitations of the plague), the population seems on the whole to have gradually increased, notwithstanding the fall in longevity to which already Luther bore regretful testimony. The great and often sudden rise of prices was due not only to a lessening of the productive powers of the country and its inhabitants, but also to violent derangements in the monetary system of the Empire, largely brought about by the constant deterioration of the silver currency, due in part to the decrease in the native production of the metal, but mainly to the steady debasement of the smaller silver coins issued by every potentate, large or small. Hence a most active speculation in coins both by the great bank at Niirnberg (the clearing-house of Germany) and by less honest enterprise. In 1603 the Diet allowed the Turkish aid to be paid in foreign coin, and ten years later it sanctioned the acceptance of money at its current value. Clipping of the coin became a common abuse; and the Kippers and Wippers, as they were called, grew into one of the pests of the national life. So terrible was the distress caused by the systematic deterioration of the monetary medium, that in the decade preceding the Thirty Years’ War a very different war seemed on the eve of breaking out—an insur- rection of the lower classes at large in both town and country, not only impoverished but frenzied by their utter uncertainty as to the value of the money with which they had to purchase their hard-earned bread. Inasmuch as among the middle and higher classes intemperance in both eating and drinking—the national vice so largely accountable for the shot tli\ edness deplored by Luther—as well as extravagance in dress, were on the increase, indebtedness had spread in every social sphere; and it had become common to depend on loans which usury, and Jewish usury in particular, was ready to supply, though at the usual nsk of infuriating the population against its supposed despoilers. Any sudden pressure such as that of a great war was certain to entail a financial crisis; yet, as capital grew in the hands of neither rulers nor ruled, while foreign trade continued to diminish, no restraining influence of commercial or industrial prosperity made for the maintenance of peace. The home trade was sinking at the same time, probably less on account of the detested foreign pedlars than of the rings which bought up wares and artificially raised prices. The native industries, too, were rapidly falling, more especially the great mining industry, ™nT°Z ^eaSOns1’ includlnS Peculation on a large scale, and with results which partly accounted for the lamentable decrease in the production of silver.$