namely, Judica Sunday (April 2). In the meantime, he was able
to proceed against Duke
Ulrich, to besiege Stuttgart, compelling him to leave Wuerttemberg as early as March 17.
Then he turned against the peasants, but the Lansquenets revolted in his own army and
refused to proceed against the peasants. Truchsess succeeded in placating the disgruntled
soldiers and moved towards Ulm, where new reinforcements were being gathered. He left
an observation post at Kerchief under the supervision of Teck.
At last the Suabian Union, with free hands and in command of the first contingents,
threw off its mask, declaring itself “to be ready, with arms in hand and with the aid of God,
to change that which the peasants wilfully ventured.”
The peasants adhered strictly to the armistice. On Judica Sunday they submitted their
demands,
the famous Twelve Articles, for consideration. They demanded the election and
removal of clergymen by the communities; the abolition of the small tithe and the
utilisation of the large tithe, after subtraction of the priests’ salaries, for public purposes;
the abolition of serfdom, of fishing and hunting rights, and of death tolls; the limitation of
excessive bonded labour, taxes and ground rents; the
restitution of the forests, meadows
and privileges forcibly withdrawn from the communities and individuals, and the
elimination of willfulness in the courts and the administration. It is obvious that the
moderate conciliatory section still had the upper hand among the peasant troops. The
revolutionary party had formulated its programme earlier, in the
Letter of Articles. It was
an open letter to all the peasantry, admonishing them to join “the Christian Alliance and
Brotherhood” for the purpose of removing all burdens either by goodness, “which will
hardly happen,” or by force, and threatening all those who refuse to join with the “lay
anathema,” that is, with expulsion from the society and from any intercourse with the
Union members. All castles, monasteries and priests’
endowments were also, according to
the Letter, to be placed under lay anathema unless the nobility, the priests and the monks
relinquished them of their own accord, moved into ordinary houses like other people, and
joined the Christian Alliance. We see that this radical manifesto which obviously had been
composed
before the Spring insurrection of 1525, deals in the first place with the
revolution, with complete victory over the ruling classes, and that the “lay anathema” only
designates those oppressors and traitors that were to be killed, the castles that were to be
burned, and the monasteries and endowments that were to be confiscated, their jewels to be
turned into cash.
Before the peasants succeeded in presenting their Twelve
Articles to the proper courts
of arbitration, they learned that the agreement had been broken by the Suabian Union and
that its troops were approaching. Steps were taken immediately by the peasants. A general
meeting of all Allgaeu, Baltringen and Lake peasants was held at Geisbeuren. The four
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divisions were combined and reorganised into four columns. A decision was made to
confiscate the church estates, to sell their jewels in favour of the war chest, and to burn the
castles. Thus, aside from the official Twelve Articles, the Letter of the Articles became the
rule
of warfare, and Judica Sunday, designated for the conclusion of peace negotiations,
became the date of
general uprising.
The growing agitation everywhere, the continued local conflicts of the peasants with
the nobility, the news of a growing revolt in the Black Forest for the preceding six months
and of its spread up to the Danube and the Lech, are sufficient to explain the rapid
succession of peasant revolts in two-thirds of Germany. The fact, however, that the partial
revolts took place simultaneously, proves that there were men
at the head of the movement
who had organised it through Anabaptists and other emissaries. Already in the second half
of March, disorders broke out in Wuerttemberg, in the lower regions of the Neckar and the
Odenwald, and in Upper and Middle Franconia. April 2, Judica Sunday, however, had
already been named everywhere as the day of the general uprising, and everywhere the
decisive blow, the revolt of the masses, fell in the first week of April. The Allgaeu, Hegau
and Lake peasants sounded the alarm bells on April 1, calling into the camp a mass
meeting of all able-bodied men, and together with the Baltringen peasants, they
immediately opened hostilities against the castles and monasteries.
In Franconia, where the movement was
grouped around six centres, the insurrection
broke out everywhere in the first days of April. In Noerdlingen two peasant camps were
formed about that time, and the revolutionary party of the city under Anton Forner, aided
by the peasants, gained the upper hand, appointing Forner the Mayor, and completing a
union between the city and the peasants. In the region of Anspach, the peasants revolted
everywhere between April 1 and 7, and from here the revolts spread as far as Bavaria. In
the region of Rottenburg, the peasants were already under arms on March 22. In the city of
Rottenburg the rule of the honourables was overthrown by the
lower middle-class and
plebeians under Stephan of Menzingen, but since the peasant dues were the chief source of
revenue for the city, the new government was able to maintain a vacillating and equivocal
attitude towards the peasants. In the Grand Chapter of Wurzburg there was a general
uprising, early in April, of the peasants and the small cities. In the bishopric of Bamberg, a
general insurrection compelled the bishop to yield within five days. In the North, on the
border of Thuringia, the strong Bildhausen Peasant Camp was organised.
In the Odenwald, where Wendel Hipler, a noble and former
chancellor of the Count of
Hohenlohe, and Georg Metzler, an innkeeper at Ballenberg near Krautheim, were at the
head of the revolutionary party, the storm broke out on March 26. The peasants marched
from all directions towards the Tauber. Two thousand men from the Rottenburg camp
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