Part 478

"A political ferment, very different from that produced by the Gospel, had long been troubling the empire. The people, weighed down under civil and ecclesiastical oppression, attached in many places to the lands belonging to the lords, and sold with them, threatened to rise, and furiously burst their chains. In Holland, at the end of the preceding century, the peasants had mustered around standards inscribed with the words 'bread' and 'cheese,' to them the two necessaries of life. In 1503 the 'Cobblers' League' ['Bundschuh'—see GERMANY: A. D. 1492-1514] had burst forth in the neighbourhood of Spires. In 1513 this was renewed in Brisgau, and encouraged by the priests. In 1514 Wurtemburg had witnessed 'the League of poor Conrad,' the object of which was to uphold 'the justice of God' by revolt. In 1515 terrible commotions had taken place in Carinthia and Hungary. These insurrections were stifled by torrents of blood, but no relief had been given to the peoples. A political reform was as much wanted as a religious one. The people had a right to it, but they were not ripe to enjoy it. Since the commencement of the Reformation these popular agitations had been suspended, the minds of men being absorbed with other thoughts. … But everything showed that peace would not last long. … The main dykes which had hitherto kept the torrent back were broken, and nothing could restrain its fury. Perhaps it must be admitted that the movement communicated to the people by the Reform gave new force to the discontent which was fermenting in the nation. … Erasmus did not hesitate to say to Luther: 'We are now reaping the fruits of the seed you have sown.' … The evil was augmented by the pretensions of certain fanatical men, who laid claim to celestial inspirations. … The most distinguished of these enthusiasts was Thomas Münzer. … His first appearance was at Zwickau. He left Wittenberg after Luther's return [from his concealment at Wartburg, 1522], dissatisfied with the inferior part he had played, and he became pastor of the little town of Alstadt in Thuringia. There he could not long be at rest, and he accused the reformers of founding a new papacy by their attachment to the letter, and of forming churches which were not pure and holy. He regarded himself as called of God to bear a remedy for so great an evil. … He maintained that to obey princes, 'destitute of reason,' was to serve God and Belial at the same time. Then, marching at the head of his parishioners, to a chapel which was visited by pilgrims from all quarters, he pulled it to the ground. After this exploit he was obliged to quit the country, wandered over Germany, and came to Switzerland, spreading as he went, wherever people would hear him, his plan for a universal revolution. In every place he found elements ready for his purpose. He threw his powder upon the burning coals, and a violent explosion soon followed. … The revolt commenced in those regions of the Black Forest, and the sources of the Danube, which were so often the scene of popular disturbances. On the 19th of July, 1524, the Thurgovian peasantry rose against the Abbot of Reichenau, who would not grant them an evangelical preacher. Thousands soon gathered around the little town of Tengen, to liberate an ecclesiastic who was imprisoned there. The revolt spread, with inconceivable rapidity, from Suabia to the Rhine countries, to Franconia, to Thuringia, and to Saxony. In January, 1525, the whole of these countries were in insurrection. Towards the end of that month the peasants published a declaration in twelve articles, asking the liberty to choose their own pastors, the abolition of petty tithes, serfdom, the duties on inheritance, and liberty to hunt, fish, cut wood, &c., and each demand was supported by a passage of Scripture."

_J. H. Merle D'Aubigné, The Story of the Reformation, part 3, chapter 8, (History of the Reformation, book 10, chapters 10-11)._

"Had the feudal lords granted proper and fair reforms long ago, they would never have heard of these twelve articles. But they had refused reform, and they now had to meet revolution. And they knew of but one way of meeting it, namely, by the sword. The lords of the Swabian League sent their army of foot and horsemen, under their captain, George Truchsess. The poor peasants could not hold out against trained soldiers and cavalry. Two battles on the Danube, in which thousands of peasants were slain, or drowned in the river, and a third equally bloody one in Algau, near the Boden See, crushed this rebellion in Swabia, as former rebellions had so often been crushed before. This was early in April 1525. But in the meantime the revolution had spread further north. In the valley of the Neckar a body of 6,000 peasants had come together, enraged by the news of the slaughter of their fellow peasants in the south of Swabia." They stormed the castle of the young Count von Helfenstein, who had recently cut the throats of some peasants who met him on the road, and put the Count to death, with 60 of his companions. "A yell of horror was raised through Germany at the news of the peasants' revenge. No yell had risen when the Count cut peasants' throats, or the Swabian lords slew thousands of peasant rebels. Europe had not yet learned to mete out the same measure of justice to noble and common blood. … The revolution spread, and the reign of terror spread with it. North and east of the valley of the Neckar, among the little towns of Franconia, and in the valleys of the Maine, other bands of peasants, mustering by thousands, destroyed alike cloisters and castles. Two hundred of these lighted the night with their flames during the few weeks of their temporary triumph. And here another feature of the revolution became prominent. The little towns were already … passing through an internal revolution. The artisans were rising against the wealthier burghers, overturning the town councils, and electing committees of artisans in their place, making sudden changes in religion, putting down the Mass, unfrocking priests and monks, and in fact, in the interests of what they thought to be the gospel, turning all things upside down. … It was during the Franconian rebellion that the peasants chose the robber knight Goetz von Berlichingen as their leader. It did them no good. More than a robber chief was needed to cope with soldiers used to war. … While all this was going on in the valleys of the Maine, the revolution had crossed the Rhine into Elsass and Lothringen, and the Palatinate about Spires and Worms, and in the month of May had been crushed in blood, as in Swabia and Franconia. {1460} South and east, in Bavaria, in the Tyrol, and in Carinthia also, castles and monasteries went up in flames, and then, when the tide of victory turned, the burning houses and farms of the peasants lit up the night and their blood flowed freely. Meanwhile Münzer, who had done so much to stir up the peasantry in the south to rebel, had gone north into Thuringia, and headed a revolution in the town of Mülhausen, and became a sort of Savonarola of a madder kind. … But the end was coming. The princes, with their disciplined troops, came nearer and nearer. What could Münzer do with his 8,000 peasants? He pointed to a rainbow and expected a miracle, but no miracle came. The battle, of course, was lost; 5,000 peasants lay dead upon the field near the little town of Frankenhausen, where it was fought. Münzer fled and concealed himself in a bed, but was found and taken before the princes, thrust into a dungeon, and afterwards beheaded. So ended the wild career of this misguided, fanatical, self-deceived, but yet, as we must think, earnest and in many ways heroic spirit. … The princes and nobles now everywhere prevailed over the insurgent peasants. Luther, writing on June 21, 1525, says:—'It is a certain fact, that in Franconia 11,000 peasants have been slain. Markgraf Casimir is cruelly severe upon his peasants, who have twice broken faith with him. In the Duchy of Wurtemberg, 6,000 have been killed; in different places in Swabia, 10,000. It is said that in Alsace the Duke of Lorraine has slain 20,000. Thus everywhere the wretched peasants are cut down.' … Before the Peasants' War was ended at least 100,000 perished, or twenty times as many as were put to death in Paris during the Reign of Terror in 1793. … Luther, throughout the Peasants' War, sided with the ruling powers. … The reform he sought was by means of the civil power; and in order to clear himself and his cause from all participation in the wild doings of the peasantry, he publicly exhorted the princes to crush their rebellion."

_F. Seebohm, The Era of the Protestant Revolution, part 2, chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _L. von Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, book 3, chapter 6 (volume 2)._

_P. Bayne, Martin Luther: His Life and Work, book 11 (volume 2)._

_J. Köstlin, Life of Luther, part 4, chapter 5._

_C. W. C. Oman, The German Peasant War of 1525 (English History Review, volume 5)._

GERMANY: A. D. 1525-1529. League of Torgau. The Diets at Spires. Legal recognition of the Reformed Religion, and the withdrawal of it. The Protest which gave rise to the name "Protestants."

See PAPACY: A. D.1525-1529.

GERMANY: A. D. 1529. Turkish invasion of Austria. Siege of Vienna.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1526-1567.

GERMANY: A. D. 1530. The Diet at Augsburg. The signing and reading of the Protestant Confession of Faith. The condemnatory decree. Breach between the Protestants and the emperor.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1530-1531.

GERMANY: A. D. 1530-1532. The Augsburg Decree. Alarm of the Protestants. Their League of Smalkalde and alliance with the king of France. Pacification of Nuremberg with the emperor. Expulsion of the Turks from Hungary.

The decree issued by the Diet at Augsburg was condemnatory of most of the tenets peculiar to the protestants, "forbidding any person to protect or tolerate such as taught them, enjoining a strict observance of the established rites, and prohibiting any farther innovation, under severe penalties. All orders of men were required to assist with their persons and fortunes in carrying this decree into execution; and such as refused to obey it were declared incapable of acting as judges, or of appearing as parties in the imperial chamber, the supreme court of judicature in the empire. To all which was subjoined a promise, that an application should be made to the pope, requiring him to call a general council within six months, in order to terminate all controversies by its sovereign decisions. The severity of this decree, which was considered as a prelude to the most violent persecution, alarmed the protestants, and convinced them that the emperor was resolved on their destruction." Under these circumstances, the protestant princes met at Smalkalde, December 22, 1530, and there "concluded a league of mutual defence against all aggressors, by which they formed the protestant states of the empire into one regular body, and, beginning already to consider themselves as such, they resolved to apply to the kings of France and England, and to implore them to patronise and assist their new confederacy. An affair not connected with religion furnished them with a pretence for courting the aid of foreign princes.'" This was the election of the emperor's brother, Ferdinand, to be King of the Romans, against, which they had protested vigorously. "When the protestants, who were' assembled a second time at Smalkalde [February, 1531], received an account of this transaction, and heard, at the same time, that prosecutions were commenced in the imperial chamber against some of their number, on account of their religious principles, they thought it necessary, not only to renew their former confederacy, but immediately to despatch their ambassadors into France and England." The king of France "listened with the utmost eagerness to the complaints of the protestant princes; and, without seeming to countenance their religious opinions, determined secretly to cherish those sparks of political discord which might be afterwards kindled into a flame. For this purpose he sent William de Bellay, one of the ablest negotiators in France, into Germany, who, visiting the courts of the malecontent princes, and heightening their ill-humour by various arts, concluded an alliance between them, and his master, which, though concealed at that time, and productive of no immediate effects, laid the foundation of a union fatal on many occasions to Charles's ambitious projects. … The king of England [Henry VIII.], highly incensed against Charles, in complaisance to whom, the pope had long retarded, and now openly opposed, his divorce [from Catharine of Aragon], was no less disposed than Francis to strengthen a league which might be rendered so formidable to the emperor. But his favourite project of the divorce led him into such a labyrinth of schemes and negotiations, and he was, at the same time, so intent on abolishing the papal jurisdiction in England, that he had no leisure for foreign affairs. This obliged him to rest satisfied with giving general promises, together with a small supply in money, to the confederates of Smalkalde. Meanwhile, many circumstances convinced Charles that this was not a juncture" in which he could afford to let his zeal for the church push him to extremities with the protestants. {1461} "Negotiations were, accordingly, carried on by his direction with the elector of Saxony and his associates; after many delays … terms of pacification were agreed upon at Nuremberg [July 23], and ratified solemnly in the diet at Ratisbon [August 3]. In this treaty it was stipulated: that universal peace be established in Germany, until the meeting of a general council, the convocation of which within six months the emperor shall endeavour to procure; that no person shall be molested on account of religion; that a stop shall be put to all processes begun by the imperial chamber against protestants, and the sentences already passed to their detriment shall be declared void. On their part, the protestants engaged to assist the emperor with all their forces in resisting the invasion of the Turks. … The protestants of Germany, who had hitherto been viewed only as a religious sect, came henceforth to be considered as a political body of no small consequence. The intelligence which Charles received of Solyman's having entered Hungary, at the head of 300,000 men, brought the deliberations of the diet at Ratisbon to a period. … The protestants, as a testimony of their gratitude to the emperor, exerted themselves with extraordinary zeal, and brought into the field forces which exceeded in number the quota imposed on them; and the catholics imitating their example, one of the greatest and best-appointed armies that had ever been levied in Germany assembled near Vienna. … It amounted in all to 90,000 disciplined foot, and 30,000 horse, besides a prodigious swarm of irregulars. Of this vast army … the emperor took the command in person; and mankind waited in suspense the issue of a decisive battle between the two greatest monarchs in the world. But each of them dreading the other's power and good fortune, they both conducted their operations with such excessive caution, that a campaign for which such immense preparations had been made ended without any memorable event. Solyman, finding it impossible to gain ground upon an enemy always attentive and on his guard, marched back to Constantinople towards the end of autumn. … About the beginning of this campaign, the elector of Saxony died, and was succeeded by his son John Frederick. … Immediately after the retreat of the Turks, Charles, impatient to revisit Spain, set out, on his way thither, for Italy."

_W. Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles V., book 5._

ALSO IN: _L. von Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, book 6, chapters 1-8 (volume 3)._

_H. Stebbing, History of the Reformation, chapters 12-13 (volume 2)._

GERMANY: A. D. 1532-1536. Fanaticism of the Anabaptists of Münster. Siege and capture of the city.

See ANABAPTISTS OF MÜNSTER.

GERMANY: A. D. 1533-1546. Mercenary aspects of the Reformation. Protestant intolerance. Union with the Swiss Reformers. The Catholic Holy League. Preparations for war.