[Sidenote: "Equality" under Napoleon]
With equality it was quite different. In all the lands annexed to
France or included within the radius of Napoleon's direct influence,
the forms and rights of feudalism and serfdom were abolished, and the
social equalities embodied _Code Napoleon_ were guaranteed.
Throughout southern Germany, the Netherlands, the Iberian peninsula,
and a great part of Italy, as well as in France, the social aspects of
the old regime underwent a thorough transformation; interior customs
lines, private roadways, toll-bridges, and internal trade restrictions
were swept away; in the place of large landed estates, with their old-
time noble owners and their wretched peasants attached to the soil and
suffering from burdensome tithes and dues and personal services,
appeared a numerous class of peasant proprietors, owning and tilling
their own fields, free to buy, sell, or exchange them, or to move away
to the growing towns. Outside of Napoleon's direct influence, the land
reforms of Baron vom Stein in Prussia reflected the same spirit of the
age.
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