revolutionary pamphlets. The quiet instructive language of
the thinker which had been so
characteristic of him, appeared no more. Muenzer was now entirely a prophet of the
revolution. Incessantly he fanned the flame of hatred against the ruling classes. He spurred
the wildest passions, using forceful terms of expression the like of which religious and
nationalist delirium had put into the mouths of the Old Testament prophets. The style up to
which he worked himself reveals the level of education of that public which he was to
affect. The example of Muehlhausen and the propaganda of Muenzer had a quick and far-
reaching effect. In Thuringia, Eichsfeld, Harz, in the duchies of Saxony, in Hesse and
Fulda, in Upper Franconia and in Vogtland,
the peasants arose, assembled in armies, and
burned castles and monasteries. Muenzer was more or less recognised as the leader of the
entire movement, and Muehlhausen remained the central point, while in Erfurt a purely
middle-class movement became victorious, and the ruling party there constantly
maintained an undecided attitude towards the peasants.
In Thuringia, the princes were at the beginning just as helpless and powerless in
relation to the peasants as they had been in Franconia and Suabia. Only in the last days of
April, did the Landgrave of Hesse succeed in assembling a corps. It was that same
Landgrave Philipp, whose piety is being praised so much by the Protestant and bourgeois
histories
of the Reformation, and of whose infamies towards the peasants we will presently
have a word to say. By a series of quick movements and by decisive action, Landgrave
Philipp subdued the major part of his land. He called new contingents, and then turned
towards the region of the Abbot of Fulda, who hitherto was his lord. On May 3, he defeated
the Fulda peasant troop at Frauenberg, subdued the entire land, and seized the opportunity
not only to free himself from the sovereignty of the Abbot, but to make the Abbey of Fulda
a
vassalage of Hesse, naturally pending its subsequent secularisation. He then took
Eisenach and Langensalza, and jointly with the Saxon troops, moved towards the
headquarters of the rebellious Muehlhausen. Muenzer assembled his forces at
Frankenhausen, 8,000 men and several cannons. The Thuringian troops were far from
possessing that fighting power which the Suabian and Franconian troops developed in their
struggle with Truchsess. The men were poorly armed and badly disciplined. They counted
few ex-soldiers among them, and sorely lacked leadership. It appears that Muenzer
possessed no military knowledge whatsoever. Nevertheless, the princes found it proper to
use here the same tactics that so often helped Truchsess to victory – breach of faith. On
May 16,
they entered negotiations, concluded an armistice, but attacked the peasants before
the time of the armistice had elapsed.
Muenzer stood with his people on the mountain which is still called Mount Battle
(Schlachtberg), entrenched behind a barricade of wagons. The discouragement among the
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troops was rapidly increasing. The princes had promised them amnesty should they deliver
Muenzer alive. Muenzer assembled his people in a circle, to debate the princes’ proposals.
A knight and a priest expressed themselves in favour of capitulation. Muenzer had them
both brought inside the circle, and decapitated. This act of terrorist energy, jubilantly met
by the outspoken revolutionaries, caused a
certain halt among the troops, but most of the
men would have gone away without resistance had it not been noticed that the princes’
Lansquenets, who had encircled the entire mountain, were approaching in close columns,
in spite of the armistice. A front was hurriedly formed behind the wagons, but already the
cannon balls and guns were pounding the half-defenseless peasants, unused to battle, and
the Lansquenets reached the barricade. After a brief resistance, the line of the wagons was
broken, the peasants’ cannon captured, and the peasants dispersed. They fled in wild
disorder, and fell into the hands of the enveloping columns and the cavalry, who
perpetrated an appalling massacre among them. Out of 8,000
peasants, over 5,000 were
slaughtered. The survivors arrived at Frankenhaus, and simultaneously with them, the
princes’ cavalry. The city was taken. Muenzer, wounded in the head, was discovered in a
house and captured. On May 25, Muehlhausen also surrendered. Pfeifer, who had remained
there, ran away, but was captured in the region of Eisenach.
Muenzer was put on the rack in the presence of the princes, and then decapitated. He
went to his death with the same courage with which he had lived. He was barely twenty-
eight when he was executed. Pfeifer, with many others, was also executed. In Fulda, that
holy man, Philipp of Hesse, had opened his bloody court. He and the Prince of Hesse
ordered many others to be killed by the sword – in Eisenach,
twenty-four; in Langensalza,
forty-one; after the battle of Frankenhaus, 300; in Muehlhausen, over 100; at German,
twenty-six; at Tungeda, fifty; at Sangenhausen, twelve; in Leipzig, eight, not to speak of
mutilations and the more moderate measures of pillaging and burning villages and cities.
Muehlhausen was compelled to give up its liberty under the empire, and was
incorporated into the Saxon lands, just as the Abbey of Fulda was incorporated in the
Landgraviate of Hesse.
The prince now moved through
the forest of Thuringia, where Franconian peasants of
the Bildhaus camp had united with the Thuringians, and burned many castles. A battle took
place before Meiningen. The peasants were beaten and withdrew towards the city, which
closed its gates to them, and threatened to attack them from the rear. The troops, thus
placed in a quandary by the betrayal of their allies, capitulated before the prince, and
dispersed, while negotiations were still under way. The camp of Bildhaus had long
dispersed, and with this, the remnants of the insurgents of Saxony, Hesse, Thuringia and
Upper Franconia, were annihilated.
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