In
the Tyrol, the Reformation doctrines had also found adherence. Here even more than
in the other Alpine regions of Austria, Muenzer’s emissaries had been successfully active.
Archbishop Ferdinand persecuted the preachers of the new doctrines here as elsewhere, and
impinged the rights of the population by arbitrary financial regulations. In consequence, an
uprising took place in the Spring of 1525. The insurgents, whose commander was a
Muenzer man named Geismaier, the only noted military talent among all the peasant
chiefs, took a great number of castles, and proceeded energetically against the priests,
particularly in the south and the region of Etsch. The Vorarlberg peasants also arose and
joined the Allgaeu peasants.
The Archbishop,
pressed from every side, now began to make concession after
concession to the rebels whom a short time before he had wished to annihilate by means of
burning, scourging, pillaging and murdering. He summoned the Diets of the hereditary
lands, and pending their assembling, concluded an armistice with the peasants. In the
meantime he was strenuously arming, in order, as soon as possible, to be able to speak to
the ungodly ones in a different language.
Naturally, the armistice was not kept long. Dietrichstein, having run short of cash,
began to levy contributions in the duchies; his Slavic
and Magyar troops allowed
themselves, besides, the most shameful atrocities against the population. This brought the
Styrians to new rebellion. The peasants attacked Dietrichstein at Schladming during the
night of July 3rd and slaughtered everybody who did not speak German. Dietrichstein
himself was captured.
On the morning of July 4, the peasants organised a jury to try the captives, and forty
Czech and Croatian noble prisoners were sentenced to death. This was effective. The
Archbishop immediately consented to all the demands of the estates of the five duchies
(Upper and Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola).
In Tyrol, the demands of the Diet were also granted, and thereby the North was quieted.
The South, however, insisting on its original demands as against the much more moderate
decisions of the Diet, remained under arms. Only in December was the Archbishop in a
position to restore order by force. He did not fail to execute a great number of instigators
and leaders of the upheaval who fell into his hands.
Now 10,000 Bavarians
moved against Salzburg, under Georg of Frundsberg. This
imposing military power, as well as the quarrels that had broken out among the peasants,
induced the Salzburg peasants to conclude an agreement with the Archbishop, which came
into being September 1, and was also accepted by the Archduke. In spite of this, the two
princes, who had meanwhile considerably strengthened their troops, soon broke the
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agreement and thereby drove the Salzburg peasants to a new uprising. The insurgents held
their own throughout the winter. In the Spring, Geismaier came to them to open a splendid
campaign against the troops which were approaching from every side.
In a series of
brilliant battles in May and June, 1526, he defeated the Bavarian, Austrian and Suabian
Union troops and the Lansquenets of the Archbishop of Salzburg, one after another, and for
a long time he prevented the various corps from uniting. He also found time to besiege
Radstadt. Finally, surrounded by overwhelming forces, he was compelled to withdraw. He
battled his way through and led the remnants of his corps through the Austrian Alps into
Venetian territory. The republic of Venice and Switzerland offered the indefatigable peasant
chief starting points for new conspiracies. For a whole year he was still attempting to
involve them in a war against Austria, which would have offered
him an occasion for a
new peasant uprising. The hand of the murderer, however, reached him in the course of
these negotiations. Archbishop Ferdinand and the Archbishop of Salzburg could not rest as
long as Geismaier was alive. They therefore paid a bandit who, in 1527, succeeded in
removing the dangerous rebel from among the living.
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Chapter 7
Significance of the Peasant War
After Geismaier’s withdrawal into Venetian territory, the epilogue of the Peasant War was
ended. The peasants were everywhere brought again under the sway of their ecclesiastical,
noble or patrician masters. The agreements that were concluded with them here and there
were broken, and heavy burdens were augmented by the enormous
indemnities imposed by
the victors on the vanquished. The magnificent attempt of the German people ended in
ignominious defeat and, for a time, in greater oppression. In the long run, however, the
situation of the peasants did not become worse. Whatever the nobility, princes and priests
could wring out of the peasants had been wrung out even before the war. The German
peasant of that time had this in common with the modern proletarian, that his share in the
products of the work was limited to a subsistence minimum necessary for his maintenance
and for the propagation of the race. It is true that peasants of some little wealth were
ruined. Hosts of bondsmen
were forced into serfdom; whole stretches of community lands
were confiscated; a great number of peasants were driven into vagabondage or forced to
become city plebeians by the destruction of their domiciles and the devastation of their
fields in addition to the general disorder. Wars and devastations, however, were every-day
phenomena at that time, and in general, the peasant class was on too low a level to have its
situation made worse for a long time through increased taxes. The subsequent religious
wars and finally the Thirty Years’ War with its constantly repeated mass devastations and
depopulations pounded the peasants much more painfully than did the Peasant War. It was
notably the Thirty Years’ War which annihilated the most important parts of the productive
forces
in agriculture, through which, as well as through the simultaneous destruction of
many cities, it lowered the living standards of the peasants, plebeians and the ruined city
inhabitants to the level of Irish misery in its worst form.
The class that suffered most from the Peasant War was the
clergy. Its monasteries and
endowments were burned down; its valuables plundered, sold into foreign countries, or
melted; its stores of goods consumed. They had been, least of all capable of offering
resistance, and at the same time the weight of the people’s old hatred fell heaviest upon
them.
The other estates, princes, nobility and the middle-class, even experienced a secret
joy at the sufferings of the hated prelates. The Peasant War had made popular the
secularisation of the church estates in favour of the peasants. The lay princes, and to a
certain degree the cities, determined to bring about secularisation in their own interests,
and soon the possessions of the prelates in Protestant countries were in the hands of either
the princes or the honourables. The power and authority of the ecclesiastical princes were
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