Fist-Law
German, Faust Recht, in history, the law of "might makes right"--brute force. The term has reference to the Middle Ages. It denotes a want of strong central government, the existence of many petty princes, and a period of private warfare. It implies castles, strongholds, robber barons, forays, and feuds. The partition of Poland is an example of fist-law on a large scale; but, as employed by historians, the term designates a perpetual warfare carried on between petty rulers for spoils and territory. For instance, between the years 1254 and 1273, known as the "Great Interregnum," there was no emperor in Germany. Over three hundred petty fragments of the empire, including duchies, marks, counties, and free cities, had absolutely no central government. Fistlaw ruled supreme. We may know that the weak were plundered and dispossessed unmercifully.
Two strong influences were opposed to fist-law,--the church and a government by kings and emperors. The church exerted itself to check private warfare by two institutions known as "The Peace" and "The Truce of God." The Peace forbade warfare upon the holdings of the church, then large, and upon the weak,--including merchants, women, especially widows, pilgrims, and unarmed peasants. The Truce of God required all men to give over warfare from Thursday evening to Monday morning, and during seasons sacred to the church, as Advent, Lent, Whitsuntide. In districts--we cannot say countries, for fist-law implies a lack of nationality--where these institutions were accepted, the rigor of warfare was abated. Violations were punished by excommunication, and, indeed, there were large associations of members sworn to punish violators; but still the Peace and the Truce were but scantily observed. In case a greedy baron possessed himself of a neighbor's stronghold and proclaimed himself the "guardian" of a neighbor's orphan children, it was pretty difficult to get together a sufficient force of partisans to dispossess him. The need of a crown to suppress fist-law has led historians to trace with pleasure the development of monarchy. One fist is better than many. The advent of William the Norman and his Doomsday Book was a god-send to England. It put an end to all fist-law but his own. The struggle of the French house of Capet for centuries resulted not only in the welding of great duchies into a nation, but the gradual substitution of national law and order in lieu of fist-law and disorder.
Fist right lingered longer in Germany than elsewhere. The early emperors were vociferous in proclaiming public peace,--Land frieden--but Columbus had seen the New World before Germany saw the end of private warfare. A hundred years later "the president of the Parliament of Burgundy and envoy of Henry IV of France told the States-General" in full assembly, so states the historian Motley, "that there was no law in Christendom as between nations, but the good old fist-law, the code of brute force."
Nations have not yet given over entirely the theory that might is right. A desire to preserve the "balance of power" does something to create sentiment against the absorption of the weak by the strong. The progress of international law has raised protective barriers that civilized nations do not care to disregard.
From the middle of the thirteenth century Germany was merely an anarchical federation of principalities and republics. There was no longer any collective national life, no national army, finance, or judiciary. Everywhere war prevailed, and there was no longer any law save that of the fist. . .
Over this disorder a monarch presided who still called himself Emperor. But, under the trappings of his title, he was only a petty German prince, exploiting his high office to make the fortune of his house. Thus the Luxemburgs, poor squires of the county of Ardennes, and the Hapsburgs, small seigneurs of the county of Argovia, secured a family domain.--Lavisse, Political History of Europe.