The chief aim of the sketch given in Chapters IX and X is to bring into sharp relief those events which, in the Author's view, represent more or less crucial stages in the development of modern Germany.
For the earlier portion of the present volume an older work of the Author's, now out of print, entitled _German Society at the Close of the Middle Ages_, has been largely drawn upon.

Reference, as will be seen, has also been made in the course of the present work to two other writings from the same pen which are still to be had for those desirous of fuller information on their respective subjects, viz.

_The Peasants' War_ and _The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists_ (Messrs.
George Allen & Unwin).
German Culture Past and Present INTRODUCTORY The close of the fifteenth century had left the whole structure of mediaeval Europe to all appearance intact.

Statesmen and writers like Philip de Commines had apparently as little suspicion that the state of things they saw around them, in which they had grown up and of which they were representatives, was ever destined to pass away, as others in their turn have since had.

Society was organized on the feudal hierarchy of status.