occur to them to unite with the Wuerttemberg
Gay Christian Troop, because previously the
peasants of Wuerttemberg and the Neckar valley refused to come to their assistance. When
Truchsess had moved far enough from their home country, they returned peacefully and
marched to Freiburg.
We left the Wuerttemberg peasants under the command of Matern Feuerbacher at
Kerchief below Teck, from where the observation corps left by Truchsess had withdrawn
towards Urach under the command of Dietrich Spaet. After an unsuccessful attempt to take
Urach, Feuerbacher turned towards Nuertingen, sending letters to all neighbouring
insurgent troops, calling reinforcements for the decisive battle. Considerable
reinforcements actually came from the Wuerttemberg lowlands as well as from Gaeu. The
Gaeu peasants had grouped themselves around the remnants
of the Leipheim Troop which
had withdrawn to West Wuerttemberg, and they aroused the entire valleys of Neckar and
Nagoldt up to Boetlingen and Leonberg. Those Gaeu peasants, on May 5, came in two
strong columns to join Feuerbacher at Nuertingen. Truchsess met the united troops at
Boetlingen. Their number, their cannon and their position perplexed him. As usual, he
started negotiations and concluded an armistice with the peasants. But as soon as he had
thus secured his position, he attacked them on May 12
during the armistice, and
forced a
decisive battle upon them. The peasants offered a long and brave resistance until finally
Boetlingen was surrendered to Truchsess owing to the betrayal of the middle-class. The left
wing of the peasants, deprived of its base of support, was forced back and encompassed.
This decided the battle. The undisciplined peasants were thrown into disorder and, later,
into a wild flight, those that were not killed or captured by the horsemen of the Union
threw away their weapons and went home. The Bright Christian Troop, and with it the
entire Wuerttemberg insurrection was gone. Theus Gerber fled to Esslingen, Feuerbacher
fled
to Switzerland, Jaecklein Rohrbach was captured and dragged in chains to
Neckargartach, where Truchsess ordered him chained to a post, surrounded by firewood
and roasted to death on a slow fire, while he, feasting with horsemen, gloated over this
noble spectacle.
From Neckargartach, Truchsess gave aid to the operations of the Elector Palatine by
invading Kraichgau. Having received word of Truchsess’ successes,
the Elector, who
meanwhile had gathered troops, immediately broke his agreement with the peasants,
attacked Bruchrain on May 23, captured and burned Malsch after vigorous resistance,
pillaged a number of villages, and garrisoned Bruchsal. At the same time Truchsess
attacked Eppingen and captured the chief of the local movement, Anton Eisenhut, whom
the Elector immediately executed with a dozen other peasant leaders. Bruchrain and
Kraichgau were thus subjugated and compelled to pay an indemnity of about 40,000
The Peasant War in Germany
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guilders. Both armies, that of Truchsess now reduced to 6,000
men in consequence of the
preceding battles, and that of the Elector (6,500 men), united and moved towards the
Odenwald.
Word of the Boetlingen defeat spread terror everywhere among the insurgents. The free
imperial cities which had come under the heavy hand of the peasants, sighed in relief. The
city of Heilbronn was the first to take steps towards reconciliation with the Suabian Union.
Heilbronn was the seat of the peasants’ main office and that of the delegates of the various
troops who deliberated over the proposals to be made to the emperor and the empire in the
name of all the insurgent peasants. In these negotiations which were to lay down general
rules for all of Germany, it again became apparent that none of the existing estates,
including the peasants, was developed sufficiently to be able to
reconstruct the whole of
Germany according to its own viewpoint. It became obvious that to accomplish this, the
support of the peasantry and particularly of the middle-class must be gained. In
consequence, Wendel Hipler took over the conduct of the negotiations. Of all the leaders of
the movement, Wendel Hipler had the best understanding of the existing conditions. He
was not a far-seeing revolutionary of Muenzer’s type; he was not a representative of the
peasants as were Metzler or Rohrbach; his many-sided experiences, his practical
knowledge of the position of the various estates towards each other prevented him from
representing one of the estates engaged in the movement in opposition to the other. Just as
Muenzer, a representative of the beginnings of the proletariat then outside of the existing
official
organisation of society, was driven to the anticipation of communism, Wendel
Hipler, the representative, as it were, of the average of all progressive elements of the
nation, anticipated modern bourgeois society. The principles that he defended, the demands
that he formulated, though not immediately possible, were the somewhat idealised,
logical
result of the dissolution of feudal society. In so far as the peasants agreed to propose laws
for the whole empire, they were compelled to accept Hipler’s principles and demands.
Centralisation demanded by the peasants thus assumed, in Heilbronn, a definite form,
which, however, was worlds away from the ideas of the peasants themselves on the subject.
Centralisation, for instance, was more clearly defined in the demands for the establishment
of uniform coins, measures and weights, for the abolition of internal customs, etc., in
demands, that is to say, which were much more in the interests
of the city middle-class than
in the interests of the peasants. Concessions made to the nobility were a certain approach to
the modern system of redemption and aimed, finally, to transform feudal land ownership
into bourgeois ownership. In a word, so far as the demands of the peasants were combined
into a system of “imperial reform,” they did not express the temporary demands of the
peasants but became subordinate to the general interests of the middle-class as a whole.
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