COMMOTION IN BASLE.
On Wednesday the 23d December, two days before Christmas, three hundred citizens from all the companies, pious and worthy men, assembled in the hall of the Gardeners' Company, and there drew up a petition to the senate. During this time the friends of Popery, who resided for the most part in Little Basle and the suburb of St. Paul, took up arms, brandishing their swords and lances against the Reformed citizens at the very moment that these were bearing their petition to the council, and endeavoured, although ineffectually, to bar their road. Meltinger haughtily refused to receive the petition, and charged the burghers, on the faith of their civic oath, to return to their homes. The burgomaster Meyer, however, took the address, and the senate ordered it to be read.
"Honoured, wise, and gracious Lords," it ran, "we, your dutiful fellow-citizens of the companies, address you as well-beloved fathers, whom we are ready to obey at the cost of our goods and of our lives. Take God's glory to heart; restore peace to the city; and oblige all the Pope's preachers to discuss freely with the ministers. If the Mass be true, we desire to have it in our churches; but if it is an abomination before God, why, through love for the priests, should we draw down His terrible anger upon ourselves and upon our children?"
Thus spoke the citizens of Basle. There was nothing revolutionary either in their language or in their proceedings. They desired what was right with decision, but also with calmness. All might still proceed with order and decorum. But here begins a new period: the vessel of Reform is about to enter the port, but not until it has passed through violent storms.
V. It was the bishop's partisans who first departed from the legal course. Filled with terror on learning that mediators were expected from Zurich and Berne, they ran into the city, crying that an Austrian army was coming to their aid, and collected stones in their houses. The Reformed did the same. The disturbance increased hourly, and in the night of the 25th December the Papists met under arms: priests with arquebuse in hand were numbered among their ranks.
Scarcely had the Reformed learnt this, when some of them running hastily from house to house, knocked at the doors and awoke their friends, who, starting out of bed, seized their muskets and repaired to the Gardeners' Hall, the rendezvous of their party. They soon amounted to three thousand.
HALF-MEASURES REJECTED.
Both parties passed the night under arms. At every moment a civil war, and what is worse, "a war of hearths," might break out. It was at last agreed that each party should nominate delegates to treat with the senate on this matter. The Reformed chose thirty men of respectability, courage, faith, and experience, who took up their quarters at the Gardeners' Hall. The partisans of the ancient faith chose also a commission, but less numerous and less respectable: their station was at the Fishmongers' Hall. The council was constantly sitting. All the gates of the city, except two, were closed; strong guards were posted in every quarter. Deputies from Lucerne, Uri, Schaffhausen, Zug, Schwytz, Mulhausen, and Strasburg, arrived successively. The agitation and tumult increased from hour to hour.
It was necessary to put an end to so violent a crisis. The senate, faithful to its ideas of half-measures, decreed that the priest should continue to celebrate the Mass; but that all, priests and ministers, should preach the Word of God, and for this purpose should meet once a-week to confer upon the holy Scriptures. They then called the Lutherans together in the Franciscan church, and the Papists in that belonging to the Dominicans. The senate first repaired to the former church, where they found two thousand five hundred citizens assembled. The secretary had hardly read the ordinance before a great agitation arose. "That shall not be," cried one of the people.[952] "We will not put up with the Mass, not even with a single one!" cried another; and all repeated, "No Mass,—no Mass,—we will die sooner!"[953]