The Peasant War in Germany

lives were granted to them only under this condition. The dispersed peasants, reassembled
by  Lawrence  and  Hosza,  were  defeated  again,  and  whoever  fell  into  the  hands  of  the
enemies were either impaled or hanged. The peasants’ corpses hung in thousands along the
roads  or  at  the  entrances  of  burned-down  villages.  According  to  reports,  about  60,000
either fell in battle, or were massacred. The nobility took care that at the next session of the
Diet, the enslavement of the peasants should again be recognised as the law of the land.
The peasant revolt in Carinthia, Carniola and Styria, the “windy marshes,” which broke
out at the same time, originated in a conspiracy akin to the Union Shoe, organised as early
as  1503  in  that  region,  wrung  dry  by  imperial  officers,  devastated  by  Turkish  invasions,
and tortured by famines. It was this conspiracy that made the insurrection possible. Already
in 1513, the Slovenian as well as the German peasants of this region had once more raised
the  war  banner  of  the  Stara  Prawa  (The  Old  Rights).  They  allowed  themselves  to  be
placated that time, and when in 1514 they gathered anew in large masses, they were again
persuaded  to  go  home  by  a  direct  promise  of  the  Emperor  Maximilian  to  restore  the  old
rights. Still, the war of vengeance by the deceived people broke out in the Spring of 1515
with  much  more  vigour.  Here,  as  in  Hungary,  castles  and  monasteries  were  destroyed,
captured  nobles  being  tried  and  executed  by  peasant  juries.  In  Styria  and  Carinthia,  the
emperor’s captain Dietrichstein soon succeeded in crushing the revolt. In Carniola, it could
be suppressed only through an attack from Rain (Autumn, 1516) and through subsequent
Austrian  atrocities  which  formed  a  worthy  counterpart  to  the  infamies  of  the  Hungarian
nobility.
It is clear why, after a series of such decisive defeats, and after these mass atrocities of
the  nobility,  the  German  peasants  remained  quiescent  for  a  long  time.  Still,  neither
conspiracies nor local uprisings were totally absent. Already in 1516 most of the fugitives
of the Union Shoe and Poor Konrad had returned to Suabia and to the upper Rhine. In 1517
the  Union  Shoe  was  again  in  full  swing  in  the  Black  Forest.  Joss  Fritz  himself,  who  still
carried  in  his  bosom  the  old  Union  Shoe  banner  of  1513,  traversed  the  Black  Forest  in
various directions, and developed great activity. The conspiracy was being organised anew.
Meetings  were  again  held  on  the  Kniebis  as  they  had  been  four  years  before.  Secrecy,
however,  was  not  maintained.  The  governments  learned  the  facts  and  interfered.  Many
were captured and executed. The most active and intelligent members were compelled to
flee, among them Joss Fritz, who, although still not captured, seems, however, to have died
in Switzerland a short time afterwards. At any rate, his name is not mentioned again.
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Chapter 4
Uprising of the Nobility
While  the  fourth  Union  Shoe  organisation  was  being  suppressed  in  the  Black  Forest,
Luther, in Wittenberg, gave the signal to a movement which was destined to draw all the
estates into its torrent, and to shake the whole empire. The theses of this Augustinian from
Thuringia  had  the  effect  of  lightning  in  a  powder  magazine.  The  manifold  and
contradictory strivings of the knights and the middle-class, the peasants and the plebeians,
the princes craving for sovereignty, the lower clergy secretly playing at mysticism, and the
learned  writer’s  opposition  of  a  satirical  and  burlesque  nature,  found  in  Luther’s  theses  a
common expression around which they grouped themselves with astounding rapidity. This
alliance  of  all  the  opposing  elements,  though  formed  overnight  and  of  brief  duration,
suddenly revealed the enormous power of the movement, and gave it further impetus.
But this very rapid growth of the movement was also destined to develop the seeds of
discord which were hidden in it. It was destined to tear asunder at least those portions of
the aroused mass which, by their very situation in life, were directly opposed to each other,
and  to  put  them  in  their  normal  state  of  mutual  hostility.  Already  in  the  first  years  of  the
Reformation,  the  assembling  of  the  heterogeneous  mass  of  the  opposition  around  two
central  points  became  a  fact.  Nobility  and  middle-class  grouped  themselves
unconditionally around Luther. Peasants and plebeians, yet failing to see in Luther a direct
enemy,  formed  a  separate  revolutionary  party  of  the  opposition.  This  was  nothing  new,
since  now  the  movement  had  become  much  more  general,  much  broader  in  scope  and
deeper  than  it  was  in  the  pre-Luther  times,  which  necessarily  brought  about  a  sharp
antagonism  and  an  open  struggle  between  the  two  parties.  This  direct  opposition  soon
became apparent. Luther and Muenzer, fighting in the press and in the pulpit, were as much
opposed to each other as were the armies of princes, knights and cities (consisting, as they
did, mainly of Lutherans or of forces at least inclined towards Lutherism), and the hordes
of peasants and plebeians routed by those armies.
The divergence of interests of the various elements accepting the Reformation became
apparent even before the Peasant War in the attempt of the nobility to realise its demands
as against the princes and the clergy.
The situation of the German nobility at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century has been
depicted above. The nobility was losing its independence to the ever-increasing power of
the lay and clerical princes. It realised that in the same degree as it was going down as a
group in society, the power of the empire was going down as well, dissolving itself into a
number  of  sovereign  principalities.  The  collapse  of  the  nobility  coincided,  in  its  own
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