himself mainly to negotiations with
the princes and the cities, especially with Rottenburg
and Margrave Casimir of Anspach, urging them to join the peasant fraternity, was suddenly
recalled in consequence of word of the Koenigshofen defeat. His troops were joined by
those of Anspach under the command of Gregor von Burg-Bernsheim. The latter troops
had been only recently formed. Margrave Casimir had managed, in true Hohenzollern
style, to keep in check the peasant revolt in his region, partly by promises and partly by the
threat of amassing troops. He maintained complete neutrality towards all outside troops as
long as they did not include Anspach subjects. He tried to direct the hatred of the peasants
mainly towards
the church endowments, through the ultimate confiscation of which he
hoped to enrich himself. As soon as he received word of the Boetlingen battle, he opened
hostilities against his rebellious peasants, pillaging and burning their villages, and hanging
or otherwise killing many of them. The peasants, however, quickly assembled, and under
the command of Gregor von Burg-Bernsheim defeated him at Windsheim, May 29. While
they were still pursuing him, the call of the hard-pressed Odenwald peasants reached them,
and they turned towards Heidingsfeld and from
there with Florian Geyer, again towards
Wuerzburg (June 2). Still without word from the Odenwald, they left 5,000 peasants there,
and with the remaining 4,000 – many had run away – they followed the others. Reassured
by false rumours of the outcome of the Koenigshofen battle, they were attacked by
Truchsess at Sulzdorf and completely defeated. The horsemen and servants of Truchsess
perpetrated, as usual, a terrible massacre. Florian Geyer kept the remainder of his Black
Troop, 600 in number, and battled his way through the village of Ingolstadt. He placed 200
men in the church and cemetery and 400 in the castle. He had been pursued by the Elector
Palatine’s forces, of whom a column of 1,200 men captured the village and set fire to the
church. Those who did not perish in the flames were slaughtered. The Elector’s
troops then
fired on the castle, made a gap in the ancient wall, and attempted to storm it. Twice beaten
back by the peasants who stood hidden behind an internal wall, they shot the wall to pieces,
and attempted a third storming, which was successful. Half of Geyser’s men were
massacred; with the other 200 he managed to escape. Their hiding place, however, was
discovered the following day (Whit-Monday). The Elector Palatine’s soldiers surrounded
the woods in which they lay hidden, and slaughtered all the men. Only seventeen prisoners
were taken during those two days. Florian Geyer again fought his way through with a few
of his most intrepid fighters and turned towards
the Gaildorf peasants, who had again
assembled in a body of about 7,000 men. Upon his arrival, he found them mostly
dispersed, in consequence of crushing news from every side. He made a last attempt to
assemble the dispersed peasants in the woods on June 9, but was attacked by the troops,
and fell fighting.
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Truchsess, who, immediately after the Koenigshofen victory, had sent word to the
besieged Frauenberg, now marched towards Wuerzburg. The council came to a secret
understanding with him so that, on the night of June 7, the Union army was in a position to
surround the city where 5,000
peasants were stationed, and the following morning to march
through the gates opened by the council, without even lifting a sword. By this betrayal of
the Wuerzburg “honourables” the last troops of the Franconian peasants were disarmed and
all the leaders arrested. Truchsess immediately ordered 81 of them decapitated. Here in
Wuerzburg the various Franconian princes appeared, one after the other, among them the
Bishop of Wuerzburg himself, the Bishop of Bamberg and the Margrave of Brandenburg-
Anspach. The gracious lords distributed the roles among themselves. Truchsess marched
with the Bishop of Bamberg, who presently broke the agreement
concluded with his
peasants and offered his territory to the raging hordes of the Union army, who pillaged,
massacred and burned. Margrave Casimir devastated his own land. Teiningen was burned,
numerous villages were pillaged or made fuel for the flames. In every city the Margrave
held a bloody court. In Neustadt, on the Aisch, he ordered eighteen rebels beheaded, in the
Buergel March, forty-three suffered a similar fate. From there he went to Rottenburg where
the honourables, in the meantime, had made a counter revolution and arrested Stephan von
Menzingen. The Rottenburg lower middle-class and plebeians were now compelled to pay
heavily for the fact that they behaved towards the peasants in such an equivocal way,
refusing to help them to the very last moment and in their local
narrow-minded egotism
insisting on the suppression of the countryside crafts in favour of the city guilds, and only
unwillingly renouncing the city revenues flowing from the feudal services of the peasants.
The Margrave ordered sixteen of them executed, Menzingen among them. In a similar
manner the Bishop of Wuerzburg marched through his region, pillaging, devastating and
burning everywhere. On his triumphal march he ordered 256 rebels to be decapitated, and
upon his return to Wuerzburg he crowned his work by decapitating thirteen more from
among the Wuerzburg rebels.
In the region of Mainz the viceroy, Bishop Wilhelm von Strassburg, restored order
without resistance. He ordered only four men executed. Rheingau,
where the peasants had
also been restless, but where, nevertheless, everybody had long before gone home, was
subsequently invaded by Frowen von Hutten, a cousin of Ulrich, and finally “pacified” by
the execution of twelve ringleaders. Frankfurt, which also had witnessed revolutionary
movements of a considerable size, was held in check first by the conciliatory attitude of the
council, then by recruited troops in the Rhenish Palatinate. Eight thousand peasants had
assembled anew after the breach of agreement by the Elector,
and had again burned
monasteries and castles, but the Archbishop of Trier came to the aid of the Marshal of
The Peasant War in Germany
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