Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

and give up a little of your tyranny and oppression, so that poor

people get air and room to live. The peasants for their part should

let themselves be instructed, and give over and let go some of the

Articles that grasp too far and too high. `061721

-

The peasant leaders, however, felt that it was now too late to

retrace their steps; in any conciliation they would sooner or later be

punished. They mourned Luther as a traitor, and went on with the

revolt. Some of them took quite literally the dream of equality: the

nobles were to dismantle their castles, and live like peasants and

burghers; they were no longer to ride on horseback, for that raised

them above their fellow men. Pastors were to be informed that they

were henceforth servants, not masters, of their congregations, and

would be expelled if they did not adhere strictly and only to the

Scriptures. `061722 Corresponding demands came from the workmen of the

towns. They denounced the monopoly of city offices by the rich, the

embezzlement of public funds by corrupt officials, the perpetually

rising prices while wages stood almost still. "It would be better

for the salvation of the soul," said one radical, "if the lord

prelates were not so rich and luxurious, and if their possessions were

divided among the poor." `061723 Wendel Hipler and Friedrich Weigant

proposed that all Church property should be confiscated to secular

needs; that all transport tolls and tariff duties should be removed;

that there should be throughout the Empire one coinage and one

system of weights and measures. `061724

The movement had a colorful assortment of leaders: the innkeepers

George Metzler and Metern Feuerbacher, the jolly roisterer Jacklein

Rohrbach, some ex-soldiers and priests, and two knights from

Sickingen's defeated band- Florian Geyer and Gotz von Berlichingen "of

the Iron Hand"; Hauptmann and Goethe would later choose these two as

heroes for vivid plays. Each leader was sovereign over his own

group, and rarely concerted his action with the others.

Nevertheless, in the spring of 1525, the revolt flared up in a dozen

scattered localities about the same time. At Heilbronn, Rothenburg,

and Wurzburg a commune of labor representatives captured the municipal

administration. At Frankfurt-am-Main the victorious commune

announced that it would thereafter be council, burgomaster, pope,

and emperor all in one. At Rothenburg the priests were driven from the

cathedral, religious images were demolished, a chapel was smashed to

the ground (March 27, 1525), and clerical wine cellars were emptied

with triumphant gaiety. `061725 Towns subject to feudal lords

renounced their fealty, episcopal towns called for an end to

clerical privileges, and agitated for the secularization of

ecclesiastical property. Nearly the whole duchy of Franconia joined

the revolt. Many lords and bishops, unprepared to resist, swore to

accept the reforms demanded of them; so the bishops of Speyer and

Bamberg, and the abbots of Kempten and Herzfeld. Count William of

Henneberg freed his serfs. Counts George and Albrecht of Hohenlohe

were summoned before peasant leaders and were initiated into the new

order: "Brother George and brother Albrecht, come hither and swear

to the peasants to be as brothers to them, for you are now no longer

lords but peasants." `061726 Most of the towns received the rural

rebels with a hearty welcome. Many of the lower clergy, hostile to the

hierarchy, supported the revolt.

The first serious encounter took place at Leipheim on the Danube

near Ulm (April 4, 1525). Under an energetic priest, Jakob Wehe, 3,000

peasants captured the town, drank all discoverable wine, pillaged

the church, smashed the organ, made themselves leggings from

sacerdotal vestments, and paid mock homage to one of their number

seated on the altar and robed as a priest. `061727 An army of

mercenaries hired by the Swabian League and led by an able general,

Georg von Truchsess, laid siege to Leipheim, and frightened the

undisciplined peasants into surrender. Wehe and four other leaders

were beheaded, the rest were spared, but the League's troops burned

many peasant cottages.

On Good Friday, April 15, 1525, three rebel contingents under

Metzler, Geyer, and Rohrbach laid siege to the town of Weinsberg (near

Heilbronn), whose ruling Count Ludwig von Helfenstein was especially

hated for his severities. A delegation of peasants approached the

walls and asked for a parley; the Count and his knights made a

sudden sortie and massacred the delegation. On Easter Sunday the

attackers, helped by some citizens of the town, broke through the

walls, and cut down the forty men-at-arms who cared to resist. The

Count, his wife (a daughter of the late Emperor Maximilian), and

sixteen knights were taken prisoner. Rohrbach, without consulting

Metzler or Geyer, ordered the seventeen men to run the gantlet between

rows of peasants armed with pikes. The Count offered all his fortune

in ransom; it was refused as a temporizing expedient. The Countess,

prostrate and delirious, begged for her husband's life; Rohrbach

bade two men hold her up so that she could witness the orgy of

revenge. As the Count walked to his death amid a volley of daggers and

pikes, the peasants recalled to him his own brutalities. "You thrust

my brother into a dungeon," one cried, "because he did not bare his

head as you passed by." "You harnessed us like oxen to the yoke,"

shouted others; "you caused the hands of my father to be cut off

because he killed a hare on his own field.... Your horses, dogs, and

huntsmen have trodden down my crops.... You have wrung the last

penny out of us." During the next half-hour the sixteen knights were

similarly laid to rest. The Countess was allowed to retire to a

convent. `061728

In nearly every section of Germany peasant bands were running

riot. Monasteries were sacked, or were compelled to pay high

ransoms. "Nowhere," says a letter of April 7, 1525, "do the insurgents

make a secret of... their intention to kill all clerics who will not

break with the Church, to destroy all cloisters and episcopal palaces,

and to root the Catholic religion utterly out of the land." `061729

This is probably an exaggeration, but we may note that in Bavaria,

Austria, and Tirol, where Protestantism had apparently been

suppressed, the rebels captured many towns, and compelled Archduke

Ferdinand to agree that all preaching should henceforth be according

to Scripture- a characteristic Protestant demand. At Mainz

Archbishop Albrecht fled before the storm, but his deputy saved the

see by signing the Twelve Articles and paying a ransom of 15,000

guilders. On April 11 the townsfolk of Bamberg renounced the

bishop's feudal sovereignty, pillaged and burned his castle, and

plundered the houses of the orthodox. In Alsace the revolt spread so

rapidly that by April's end every Catholic or rich landlord in the

province was in terror of his life. On April 28 an army Of 20,000

peasants attacked Zabern, seat of the bishop of Strasbourg, and

despoiled his monastery; on May 13 they took the town, forced every

fourth man to join them, renounced all payment of tithes, and demanded

that thereafter all officials except the emperor should be elected

by popular suffrage, and be subject to recall. `061730 At Brixen in

Tirol a former episcopal secretary, Michael Gasmaier, organized a

revolt that attacked all orthodox clergymen, sacked the local

monastery (May 12), and remained rampant and unsubdued for a year.

In all the valleys of the Inn and Etsch rivers, says an

unsympathetic chronicler of the time, "there was such a concourse,

cry, and tumult that hardly might a good man walk in the streets.

Robbing and plundering... became so common that even pious men were

tempted thereto." `061731 At Freiburg-im-Breisgau the peasants

looted castles and monasteries, and forced the city to join the

"Evangelical Brotherhood" (May 24). In that same month a peasant

band drove the bishop of Wurzburg out of his palace, and feasted on

his stores. In June the powerful and warlike Archbishop Matthias

Lang was chased from his palace in Salzburg into his castle fortress

overlooking the city. In Neustadt in the Palatinate Elector Ludwig,

surrounded by 8,000 armed peasants, invited their leaders to dinner,

and cheerfully complied with their demands. "There," said a

contemporary, "one saw villeins and their lord sit together, eat and

drink together. He had, as it seemed, one heart to them, and they to

him." `061732

Amid this torrent of events Luther issued from the press of

Wittenberg, toward the middle of May 1525, a pamphlet "Against the

Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants." Its vehemence startled

prince and peasant, prelate and humanist, alike. Shocked by the

excesses of the infuriated rebels, dreading a possible overturn of all

law and government in Germany, and stung by charges that his own

teachings had loosed the flood, he now ranged himself unreservedly

on the side of the imperiled lords.

-

In the former book I did not venture to judge the peasants, since

they had offered to be set right and be instructed.... But before I

look around they, forgetting their offer, betake themselves to

violence, and rob and rage and act like mad dogs.... It is the Devil's

work they are at, and in particular it is the work of the archdevil

[Munzer] who rules at Mulhausen.... I must begin by setting their sins

before them.... Then I must instruct the rulers how they are to

conduct themselves in these circumstances....

Any man against whom sedition can be proved is outside the law of

God and the Empire, so that the first who can slay him is doing

right and well.... For rebellion brings with it a land full of

murder and bloodshed, makes widows and orphans, and turns everything

upside down.... Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab,

secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous,

hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just when one must kill a mad

dog; if you do not strike him he will strike you, and a whole land

with you....

-

He rejected the supposed Scriptural warrant for communism:

-

The Gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those

who do of their own free will what the Apostles and disciples did in

Acts iv. They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their

raging, that the goods of others- of a Pilate or a Herod- should be

common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, would have

other men's goods common, and keep their own goods for themselves.

Fine Christians these! I think there is not a devil left in hell; they

have all gone into the peasants.

-

To Catholic rulers he offered his forgiveness if they smote the

rebels without trial. To Protestant rulers he recommended prayer,

contrition, and negotiation; but if the peasants remain obdurate,

-

then swiftly grasp the sword. For a prince or lord must remember

in this case that he is God's minister and the servant of His wrath

(Romans, xiii), to whom the sword is committed for use upon such

fellows.... If he can punish and does not- even though the

punishment consist in the taking of life and the shedding of blood-

then he is guilty of all the murder and all the evil which these

fellows commit.... The rulers, then, should go on unconcerned, and

with a good conscience lay about them as long as their hearts still

beat.... If anyone think this too hard, let him remember that

rebellion is intolerable, and that the destruction of the world is

to be expected every hour. `061733

-

It was Luther's misfortune that this outburst reached its readers

just about the time that the forces of the propertied classes were

beginning to subdue the revolt; and the Reformer received undue credit

for the terrorism of the suppression. It is unlikely that the

endangered masters were influenced by the pamphlet; it was in their

temper to handle the insurgents with a severity that would serve as

a deterrent in unforgettable memory. For a time they had bemused the

simple peasants with parleys and promises, and had thereby persuaded

many of the bands to disperse; meanwhile the masters organized and

armed their levies.

At the height of the turmoil Elector Frederick died (May 5, 1525),

himself calm and at peace, admitting that he and other princes had

wronged the peasant, refusing to join in extreme measures of

retaliation, and leaving to his successor, Duke John, urgent

counsels of moderation. But the new Elector felt that his brother's

policy had been unwisely lenient. He joined his forces with those of

Duke Henry of Brunswick and Philip Landgrave of Hesse, and together

they moved against Munzer's encampment outside Muhlhausen. The opposed

armies were matched only in number- each some 8,000 strong; but the

ducal troops were mostly trained soldiers, while the peasants, despite

Munzer's home-made artillery, were indifferently armed, poorly

disciplined, and disordered with natural fright Munzer relied on his

eloquence to restore morale, and led the peasants in prayer and hymns.

The first barrage of the princely cannon slaughtered hundreds, and the

terrified rebels fled into the town of Frankenhausen (May 15, 1525).

The victors followed, and massacred 5,000. Three hundred prisoners

were condemned to death; their women pleaded mercy for them; it was

granted, on condition that the women should beat out the brains of two

priests who had encouraged the revolt; it was so done, while the

triumphant dukes looked on. `061734 Munzer hid, was captured, was

tortured into confessing the error of his ways, and was beheaded

before the headquarters of the princes. Pfeiffer and his 1,200

soldiers defended Muhlhausen; they were overcome; Pfeiffer and other

leaders were put to death, but the citizens were spared on paying a

total ransom Of 40,000 guilders ($ 1,000,000?).

Meanwhile Truchsess took the town of Boblingen by negotiation, and

from within its walls turned his guns upon a rebel camp outside (May

12). Those of the peasants who survived this cannonade were cut down

by his cavalry; this ended the revolt in Wurttemberg. Turning next

to Weinsberg, Truchsess burned it to the ground, and slowly roasted

Jacklein Rohrbach, who had directed the "Massacre of Weinsberg."

Truchsess marched on to rout peasant forces at Konigshofen and

Ingolstadt, recaptured Wurzburg, and beheaded eighty-one chosen rebels

as a memento for the rest (June 5) Florian Geyer escaped from Wurzburg

into obscurity, and remained a cherished legend. Gotz von Berlichingen

surrendered in apt time, lived to fight for Charles V against the

Turks, and died in his own bed and castle at eighty-two (1562).

Rothenberg was taken on June 20, Memmingen soon afterward. The

revolt in Alsace was crushed by the slaughter of from 2,000 to 6,000

men at Lipstein and Zabern (May 17-18). By May 27 some 20,000 peasants

had been killed in Alsace alone, in many cases after surrender; the

air of the towns was fetid with the stench of the dead. `061735

Markgraf Casimir had some of his surrendering peasants beheaded,

some hanged; in milder cases he chopped off hands or gouged out

eyes. `061736 Saner princes finally intervened to reduce the barbarism

of the retaliation, and at the end of August the Diet of Augsburg

issued a rescript urging moderation in punishments and fines. "If

all the rebels are killed," one philosophic noble asked, "where

shall we get peasants to provide for us?" `061737

In Austria the revolt continued for a year. In January 1526, Michael

Gasmaier proclaimed throughout Tirol the most radical of the

revolutionary programs. All "godless" (i.e., non-Protestants) who

persecuted the true Word of God, or who oppressed the common man, were

to be put to death. All pictures and shrines were to be removed from

the churches, and no Masses were to be said. Town walls, towers, and

fortresses were to be demolished; there should now be only villages,

and all men were to be equal. Officials and judges were to be chosen

by universal adult male suffrage. Feudal rents and dues were to end at

once; tithes were to be collected, but were to be given to the

Reformed Church and the poor. Monasteries were to be converted into

hospitals or schools. Mines were to be nationalized. Prices were to be

fixed by the government. `061738 For a time Gasmaier, with clever

strategy, defeated the troops sent against him, but he was finally

outwitted, and fled to Italy. The Archduke Ferdinand set a price on

his head, and two Spanish cutthroats earned the sum by assassinating

him in his room in Padua (1528).

The losses of German life and property in the Peasants' Revolt

were to be exceeded only in the Thirty Years' War. Of peasants alone

some 130,000 died in battle or in expiation. There were 10,000

executions under the jurisdiction of the Swabian League; Truchsess'

executioner boasted that he had killed 1,200 condemned men with his

own practiced hand. The peasants themselves had destroyed hundreds

of castles and monasteries. Hundreds of villages and towns had been

depopulated or ruined, or impoverished by huge indemnities. Over

50,000 homeless peasants roamed the highways or hid in the woods.

Widows and orphans were legion, but charity was heartless or

penniless. The rebels had in many instances burned the charters that

recorded their feudal dues; new charters were now drawn up, renewing

the obligations, sometimes more leniently, sometimes more

rigorously, than before. Concessions were made to the peasants in

Austria, Baden, and Hesse; elsewhere serfdom was strengthened, and

would continue, east of the Elbe, till the nineteenth century.

Democratic beginnings were aborted. Intellectual developments were

stunted; censorship of publications increased, under Catholic and

Protestant authorities alike. Humanism wilted in the fire; the

Renaissance joy in life and literature and love gave way to

theology, pietism, and meditations on death.

The Reformation itself almost perished in the Peasants' War. Despite

Luther's disclaimers and denunciations, the rebellion had flaunted

Protestant colors and ideas: economic aspirations were dressed in

phrases that Luther had sanctified; communism was to be merely a

return to the Gospel. Charles V interpreted the uprising as "a

Lutheran movement." `061739 Conservatives classed the expropriation of

ecclesiastical property by Protestants as revolutionary actions on a

par with the sacking of monasteries by peasants. In the south the

frightened princes and lords renewed their fealty to the Roman Church.

In several places, as at Bamberg and Wurzburg, men even of the

propertied class were executed for having accepted

Lutheranism. `061740 The peasants themselves turned against the

Reformation as a lure and a betrayal; some called Luther Dr. Lugner -

"Dr. Liar"- and "toady of the princes." `061741 For years after the

revolt he was so unpopular that he seldom dared leave Wittenberg, even

to attend his father's deathbed (1530). "All is forgotten that God has

done for the world through me," he wrote (June 15, 1525); "now

lords, priests, and peasants are all against me, and threaten my

death." `061742

It was not in his character to yield ground or apologize. On May 30,

1525, he wrote to Nicholas Amsdorf: "My opinion is that it is better

that all peasants be killed than that the princes and magistrates

perish, because the rustics took the sword without divine

authority." `061743 In July 1525, he published An Open Letter

Concerning the Hard Book against the Peasants. His critics, he

said, deserved no answer; their criticisms showed them to be rebels at

heart, like the peasants, and no more deserving of mercy; "the

rulers ought to seize these people by the cap and make them hold their

tongues." `061744

-

If they think this answer is too hard, and that this is talking

violence and only shutting men's mouths, I reply that this is right. A

rebel is not worth answering with arguments, for he does not accept

them. The answer for such mouth is a fist that brings blood from the

nose. The peasants would not listen... their ears must be unbuttoned

with bullets, till their heads jump off their shoulders. Such pupils

need such a rod. He who will not hear God's Word when it is spoken

with kindness must listen to the headsman when he comes with his

axe.... Of mercy I will neither hear nor know anything, but give

heed to God's will in His Word.... If He will have wrath and not

mercy, what have you to do with mercy? Did not Saul sin by showing

mercy upon Amalek when he failed to execute God's wrath as he had been

commanded?... You who are praising mercy so highly because the

peasants are beaten, why did you not praise it when the peasants

were raging, smiting, robbing, burning, and plundering, until they

were terrible to men's eyes and ears? Why were they not merciful to

the princes and lords, whom they wanted to wipe out entirely?

-

Mercy, Luther argued, is the duty of Christians in their private

capacity; as officers of the state, however, they must normally follow

justice rather than mercy, for since Adam and Eve's sin man has been

so wicked that government, laws, and penalties are needed to control

him. We owe more consideration to the community endangered by crime

than to criminals endangering the community.

-

If the intentions of the peasants had been carried out, no honest

man would have been safe from them, but whoever had a pfennig more

than another would have had to suffer for it. They had already begun

that, and they would not have stopped there; women and children

would have been put to shame; they would have taken to killing one

another too, and there would have been no peace or safety anywhere.

Has anything been heard of more unrestrained than a mob of peasants

when they are fed full and have gotten power?... The ass will have

blows, and the people will be ruled by force. `061745

-

Luther's extreme statements about the Peasants' War shock us today

because social order has been so well established that we presume on

its continuance, and can treat with lenience those few who would

violently disturb it. But Luther faced the harsh reality of peasant

bands transforming their just grievances into indiscriminate

pillage, and threatening the complete overturn of law, government,

production, and distribution in Germany. Events justified his

premonition that the religious revolution for which he had risked

his life would be gravely imperiled by the conservative reaction

that was bound to follow an unsuccessful revolt. He may have felt some

personal debt to the princes and nobles who had protected him in

Wittenberg and Worms and the Wartburg, and he might well wonder who

would save him against Charles V and Clement VII if princely power

ceased to shield the Reformation. The one freedom that seemed to him

worth fighting for was the freedom to worship God, to seek salvation

according to one's conscience. What difference did it make whether, in

this brief Vorspiel to eternal life, one was a prince or a slave? We

should accept our state here without complaint, bound in body and

duty, but free in soul and the grace of God.

And yet the peasants had a case against him. He had not only

predicted social revolution, he had said he would not be displeased by

it, he would greet it with a smile, even if men washed their hands

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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