Beggars, Peasants, and Soldiers in the Early Modern Age

The publication “Beggars, peasants and Soldiers in the Early Modern Age“ consists of two parts: 1. The papers of the “Paupers and Beggars“ section of the European Social Science History Conference which took place at Gent, Belgium in April 2010, 2. South-west German sources dealing with the relations between soldiers and civilians during the Thirty Years’ War. 1. The papers of the “Paupers and Beggars“ section of the European Social Science History Conference, Gent, Belgium, in April 2010 In the first paper Gerhard Fritz shows the percentage of beggars and vagrants of the population in the Swabian Kreis (i. e. South Western Germany) of the late 17th century and the 18th century. According to historian Carsten Küther the percentage was about 10 % or more. Fritz reduces these estimations – at least for times of peace. During peaceful times the percentage of vagrants seems to have been rather low (1 or 2 %) but during the very long times of war it could have reached 10, 20, 30 % or even more. Alfred Stefan Weiß uses a travel book dealing with the Duchy of Carinthia written by Franz Sartori around 1800 as his first main source. Sartori says that there have been “masses of beggars“ in Carinthia. Weiß shows that Sartori must have suffered from some kind of “beggar-phobia“ which led to an over-estimation of the number of Carinthian beggars during that time. Numbers of beggars too high can also be found in a source from Salzburg from 1819. Gerhard Ammerer focuses on the survival strategies of the wandering beggars in Austria and states that they survived by a combination of work and begging, legal and illegal activities. Ammerer discusses the concept of “adaptive family economy“ developed by Richard Wall and comes to the conclusion that this concept can also be applied to the unsettled population. 2. South-west German sources concerning the relations between soldiers and civilians during the Thirty Years’ War. Eberhard Fritz and Maria Würfel present facsimiles of sources, transcriptions into the German language of the 17th century, and translations to actual German and English. By means of the edition, the transcription, and the translations pupils and students have the possibility to see and learn how historians actually work. The first text is a list of the Empirial commander Schüller von Herdern “on how citizens and peasants shall behave towards high and non commissioned officers and common cavalrymen as well as foot soldiers“. The second text contains the military “Rates of food 1640“, the third and the fourth texts are “Reports concerning the quarterings“ in the villages of Mössingen and Talheim, and the last text is a report about “Resistance of mugged people“ against marauding soldiers near the village of Grötzingen