Already in the fourteenth century (in 1358 in France and 1381 in England) two great similar movements had taken place. Two powerful revolts, that of the Jacquerie and that of Wat Tyler, had shaken society to its foundations. Both, however, had been principally directed against the feudal lords. Both were defeated; but the peasant revolt in England completely put an end to serfdom, and the Jacquerie in France so checked it in its development that henceforth the institution of serfdom could only vegetate, without ever attaining the development it subsequently attained in Germany and in eastern Europe.
Now, in the sixteenth century a similar movement took place in central Europe. Under the name of "Hussite" in Bohemia, "Anabaptist" in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and of "Troubled Times" in Russia (at the beginning of the next century), it was over and above a struggle against feudal lords—it was a complete revolt against Church and State, against Canonic and Roman law, in the name of primitive Christianity.
This movement, which is only just beginning to be understood, was for many years travestied by State and ecclesiastical historians.
The absolute liberty of the individual—who must only obey the commandments of his conscience—and Communism were the watchwords of this revolt. And it was only later, when Church and State succeeded in exterminating its most ardent defenders, and juggled with it to their own profit, that this movement, diminished and deprived of its revolutionary character, became Luther's Reformation.
It began by Communist Anarchism, preached and in some places practised. And if we set aside the religious formulæ, which are a tribute to that epoch, we find in it the very essence of the current of ideas which Anarchism represents today: the negation of all law. State or divine, the conscience of each individual being his one and only law; the commune, absolute master of its destinies, retaking its lands from feudal lords, and refusing all personal or monetary service to the State; in fact. Communism and equality put into prac-
