To them the rapid and enormous rise in prices during the early years of the sixteenth century, the scarcity of money consequent on the increased demand for it, and the impoverishment of large sections of the population, were attributed by noble and peasant alike.

The whole trend of public opinion, in short, outside the wealthier burghers of the larger cities--the class immediately interested--was adverse to the condition of things created by the new world-market, and by the new class embodying it.

At present it was a small class, the only one that gained by it, and that gained at the expense of all the other classes.
Some idea of the class-antagonisms of the period may be gathered from the statement of Ulrich von Hutten about the robber-knights already spoken of, in his dialogue entitled "Predones," to the effect that there were four orders of robbers in Germany--the _knights_, the _lawyers_, the _priests_, and the _merchants_ (meaning especially the new capitalist merchant-traders or syndicates).

Of these, he declares the robber-knights to be the least harmful.

This is naturally only to be expected from so gallant a champion of his order, the friend and abettor of Sickingen.