ABSTRACT
An initial warning is in order concerning the temptation to visualize the Old Regime as something that extended back to the Middle Ages more evenly, and ended abruptly and completely with the coming of the Revolution, than was the case. Europe's noblemen comprised several million individuals whose material circumstances ranged all the way from great affluence to genuine poverty, whose individual social prestige might be as high as that of a duke or as low as that of a rustic bumpkin. The Habsburgs' Slavic states - Bohemia and Moravia, Slovenia, Croatia, Polish Galicia - supported some of Europe's wealthiest landlords on the backs of some of its most miserable peasants. From the pirates and highwaymen of Scottish ballads and England's rediscovered Robin Hood to the defiant heroes of the Serbian epics, from the south German legends which inspired Schiller's William Tell and The Robbers, to the Greek klephtika or 'outlaw songs', this theme runs through the popular culture of Europe.
