German Culture Past and Present

by Ernest Belfort Bax

The most interesting of the local movements was, however, in many respects that of Thomas Münzer in the town of Mülhausen, in Thuringia. Thomas Münzer is, perhaps, the best known of all the names in the peasants' revolt. In addition to the ultra-Protestantism of his theological views, Münzer had as his object the establishment of a communistic Christian Commonwealth. He started a practical exemplification of this among his own followers in the town itself.

Up to the beginning of May the insurrection had carried everything before it. Truchsess and his men of the Swabian League had proved themselves unable to cope with it. Matters now changed. Knights, men-at-arms, and free-lances were returning from the Italian campaign of Charles V after the battle of Pavia. Everywhere the revolt met with disaster. The Mülhausen insurgents were destroyed at Frankenhausen by forces of the Count of Hesse, of the Duke of Brunswick, and of the Duke of Saxony. This was on May 15th. Three days before the defeat at Frankenhausen, on May 12th, a decisive defeat was inflicted on the peasants by the forces of the Swabian League, under Truchsess, at Böblingen, in Würtemberg. Savage ferocity signalized the treatment of the defeated peasants by the soldiery of the nobles. Jäcklein Rohrbach was roasted alive. Truchsess with his soldiery then hurried north and inflicted a heavy defeat on the Franconian peasant contingents at Königshaven, on the Tauber. These three defeats, following one another in little more than a fortnight, broke the back of the whole movement in Germany proper. In Elsass and Lorraine the insurrection was crushed by the hired troops and the Duke of Lorraine; eastward, on the little river Luibas. In the Austrian territories, under the able leadership of Michael Gaismayr, one of the lesser nobility, it continued for some months longer, and the fear of Gaismayr, who, it should be said, was the only man of really constructive genius the movement had produced, maintained itself with the privileged classes till his murder in the autumn of 1528, at the instance of the Bishop of Brixen.

The great peasant insurrection in Germany failed through want of a well-thought-out plan and tactics, and, above all, through a want of cohesion among the various peasant forces operating in different sections of the country, between which no regular communications were kept up. The attitude of Martin Luther towards the peasants and their cause was base in the extreme. His action was mainly embodied in two documents, of which the first was issued about the middle of April, and the second a month later. The difference in tone between them is sufficiently striking. In the first, which bore the title, "An Exhortation to Peace on the Twelve Articles of the Peasantry in Swabia," Luther sits on the fence, admonishing both parties of what he deemed their shortcomings. He was naturally pleased with those articles that demanded the free preaching of the Gospel and abused the Catholic clergy, and was not indisposed to assent to many of the economic demands. In fact, the document strikes one as distinctly more favourable to the insurgents than to their opponents.

"We have," he wrote, "no one to thank for this mischief and sedition, save ye princes and lords, in especial ye blind bishops and mad priests and monks, who up to this day remain obstinate and do not cease to rage and rave against the holy Gospel, albeit ye know that it is righteous, and that ye may not gainsay it. Moreover, in your worldly regiment, ye do naught otherwise than flay and extort tribute, that ye may satisfy your pomp and vanity, till the poor, common man cannot, and may not, bear with it longer. The sword is on your neck. Ye think ye sit so strongly in your seats, that none may cast you from them. Such presumption and obstinate pride will twist your necks, as ye will see." And again: "God hath made it thus that they cannot, and will not, longer bear with your raging. If ye do it not of your free will, so shall ye be made to do it by way of violence and undoing." Once more: "It is not peasants, my dear lords, who have set themselves up against you. God Himself it is who setteth Himself against you to chastise your evil-doing."

He counsels the princes and lords to make peace with their peasants, observing with reference to the "Twelve Articles" that some of them are so just and righteous that before God and the world their worthiness is manifested, making good the words of the psalm that they heap contempt upon the heads of the princes. Whilst he warns the peasants against sedition and rebellion, and criticizes some of the Articles as going beyond the justification of Holy Writ, and whilst he makes side-hits at "the prophets of murder and the spirits of confusion which had found their way among them," the general impression given by the pamphlet is, as already said, one of unmistakable friendliness to the peasants and hostility to the lords.

The manifesto may be summed up in the following terms: Both sides are, strictly speaking, in the wrong, but the princes and lords have provoked the "common man" by their unjust exactions and oppressions; the peasants, on their side, have gone too far in many of their demands, notably in the refusal to pay tithes, and most of all in the notion of abolishing villeinage, which Luther declares to be "straightway contrary to the Gospel and thievish." The great sin of the princes remains, however, that of having thrown stumbling-blocks in the way of the Gospel—bien entendu the Gospel according to Luther—and the main virtue of the peasants was their claim to have this Gospel preached. It can scarcely be doubted that the ambiguous tone of Luther's rescript was interpreted by the rebellious peasants to their advantage and served to stimulate, rather than to check, the insurrection.

Meanwhile, the movement rose higher and higher, and reached Thuringia, the district with which Luther personally was most associated. His patron, and what is more, the only friend of toleration in high places, the noble-minded Elector Friedrich of Saxony, fell ill and died on May 5th, and was succeeded by his younger brother Johann, the same who afterwards assisted in the suppression of the Thuringian revolt. Almost immediately thereupon Luther, who had been visiting his native town of Eisleben, travelled through the revolted districts on his way back to Wittenberg. He everywhere encountered black looks and jeers. When he preached, the Münzerites would drown his voice by the ringing of bells. The signs of rebellion greeted him on all sides. The "Twelve Articles" were constantly thrown at his head. As the reports of violence towards the property and persons of some of his own noble friends reached him his rage broke all bounds. He seems, however, to have prudently waited a few days, until the cause of the peasants was obviously hopeless, before publicly taking his stand on the side of the authorities.

On his arrival in Wittenberg, he wrote a second pronouncement on the contemporary events, in which no uncertainty was left as to his attitude. It is entitled, "Against the Murderous and Thievish Bands of Peasants."[24] Here he lets himself loose on the side of the oppressors with a bestial ferocity. "Crush them" (the peasants), he writes, "strangle them and pierce them, in secret places and in sight of men, he who can, even as one would strike dead a mad dog!" All having authority who hesitated to extirpate the insurgents to the uttermost were committing a sin against God. "Findest thou thy death therein," he writes, addressing the reader, "happy art thou: a more blessed death can never overtake thee, for thou diest in obedience to the Divine word and the command of Romans xiii. 1, and in the service of love, to save thy neighbour from the bonds of hell and the devil." Never had there been such an infamous exhortation to the most dastardly murder on a wholesale scale since the Albigensian crusade with its "Strike them all: God will know His own"—a sentiment indeed that Luther almost literally reproduces in one passage.

The attitude of the official Lutheran party towards the poor countryfolk continued as infamous after the war as it had been on the first sign that fortune was forsaking their cause. Like master, like man. Luther's jackal, the "gentle" Melanchthon, specially signalized himself by urging on the feudal barons with Scriptural arguments to the blood-sucking and oppression of their villeins. A humane and honourable nobleman, Heinrich von Einsiedel, was touched in conscience at the corvées and heavy dues to which he found himself entitled. He sent to Luther for advice upon the subject. Luther replied that the existing exactions which had been handed down to him from his parents need not trouble his conscience, adding that it would not be good for corvées to be given up, since the "common man" ought to have burdens imposed upon him, as otherwise he would become overbearing. He further remarked that a severe treatment in material things was pleasing to God, even though it might seem to be too harsh. Spalatin writes in a like strain that the burdens in Germany were, if anything, too light. Subjects, according to Melanchthon, ought to know that they are serving God in the burdens they bear for their superiors, whether it were journeying, paying tribute, or otherwise, and as pleasing to God as though they raised the dead at God's own behest. Subjects should look up to their lords as wise and just men, and hence be thankful to them. However unjust, tyrannical, and cruel the lord might be, there was never any justification for rebellion.

A friend and follower of Luther and Melanchthon—Martin Butzer by name—went still farther. According to this "reforming" worthy a subject was to obey his lord in everything. This was all that concerned him. It was not for him to consider whether what was enjoined was, or was not, contrary to the will of God. That was a matter for his feudal superior and God to settle between them. Referring to the doctrines of the revolutionary sects, Butzer urges the authorities to extirpate all those professing a false religion. Such men, he says, deserve a heavier punishment than thieves, robbers, and murderers. Even their wives and innocent children and cattle should be destroyed (ap. Janssen, vol. i. p. 595).