THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD We have already pointed out in more than one place the position to which the smaller nobility, or the knighthood, had been reduced by the concatenation of causes which was bringing about the dissolution of the old mediaeval order of things, and, as a consequence, ruining the knights both economically and politically--economically by the rise of capitalism as represented by the commercial syndicates of the cities; by the unprecedented power and wealth of the city confederations, especially of the Hanseatic League; by the rising importance of the newly developed world-market; by the growing luxury and the enormous rise in the prices of commodities concurrently with the reduction in value of the feudal land-tenures; and by the limitation of the possibilities of acquiring wealth by highway robbery, owing to Imperial constitutions, on the one hand, and increased powers of defence on the part of the trading community, on the other--politically, by the new modes of warfare in which artillery and infantry, composed of comparatively well-drilled mercenaries (_Landsknechte_), were rapidly making inroads into the omnipotence of the ancient feudal chivalry, and reducing the importance of individual skill or prowess in the handling of weapons, and by the development of the power of the princes or higher nobility, partly due to the influence which the Roman civil law now began to exercise over the older customary Constitution of the empire, and partly to the budding centralism of authority--which in France and England became a national centralization, but in Germany, in spite of the temporary ascendancy of Charles V, finally issued in a provincial centralization in which the princes were _de facto_ independent monarchs.

The Imperial Constitution of 1495, forbidding private war, applied, it must be remembered, only to the lesser nobility and not to the higher, thereby placing the former in a decidedly ignominious position as regards their feudal superiors.

And though this particular enactment had little immediate result, yet it was none the less resented as a blow struck at the old knightly privilege.
The mental attitude of the knighthood in the face of this progressing change in their position was naturally an ambiguous one, composed partly of a desire to hark back to the haughty independence of feudalism, and partly of sympathy with the growing discontent among other classes and with the new spirit generally.

In order that the knights might succeed in recovering their old or even in maintaining their actual position against the higher nobility, the princes, backed as these now largely were by the Imperial power, the co-operation of the cities was absolutely essential to them, but the obstacles in the way of such a co-operation proved insurmountable.

The towns hated the knights for their lawless practices, which rendered trade unsafe and not infrequently cost the lives of the citizens.