ὃ 75. THE PEASANTS’ WAR. 447
useless to reason with rebels, except by the fist and the sword.!
Cruel as this conduct appears to every friend of the poor peasants, it would be unjust to regard it as an accommodation, and to derive it from selfish considerations. It was his sincere conviction of duty to the magistrate in temporal matters, and to the cause of the Reformation which was threatened with destruction.
Defeat of the Rebellion.
The advice of the Reformer was only too well executed by the exasperated princes, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who now made common cause against the common foe. The peasants, badly armed, poorly led, and divided among themselves, were utterly defeated by the troops of the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Duke Henry of Brunswick, the Elector John, and the Dukes George and John of Saxony. In the decisive battle at Frankenhausen, May 25, 1525, five thousand slain lay on the field and in the streets; three hundred were beheaded before the court-house. Miinzer fled, but was taken prisoner, tortured, and executed. The peasants in South Germany, in the Alsace and Lorraine, met with the same defeat by the imperial troops and the forces of the electors of the Palatinate and Treves, and by treachery. In the castle of Zabern, in the Alsace (May 17), eighteen thousand peasants fell. In the Tyrol and Salzburg, the rebellion lasted longest, and was put down in part by arbitration.
The number of victims of war far exceeded a hundred thousand.? The surviving rebels were beheaded or mutilated.
1 Tbid., 298, 303, 307. See preceding note.
2 Bishop Georg of Speier estimated the number of the killed at a hundred and fifty thousand. This does not include those who were made prisoners, beheaded, and hanged, or dreadfully mutilated. A hangman in the district of Wurzburg boasted that he had executed by the sword three hundred and fifty in one month. Margrave George of Brandenburg had to remind his
brother Casimir, that, unless he spared some peasants, they would have nothing to live on. Janssen, II. 563,
448 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
Their widows and orphans were left destitute. Over a thousand castles and convents lay in ashes, hundreds of villages were burnt to the ground, the cattle killed, agricultural implements destroyed, and whole districts turned into a wilderness. ‘Never,’ said Luther, after the end of the war, “has the aspect of Germany been more deplorable than now.” }
The Peasants’ War was a complete failure, and the victory of the princes an inglorious revenge. The reaction made their condition worse than ever. Very few masters had sufficient humanity and self-denial to loosen the reins. Most of them followed the maxim of Rehoboam: “ My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions” (1 Kings 12:14). The real grievances remained, and the prospect of a remedy was put off to an indefinite future.
The cause of the Reformation suffered irreparable injury, and was made responsible by the Romanists, and even by Erasmus, for all the horrors of the rebellion. The split of the nation was widened; the defeated peasantry in Roman Catholic districts were forced back into the old church; quiet citizens lost their interest in politics and social reform ; every attempt in that direction was frowned down with suspicion. Lutber had once for all committed himself against every kind of revolution, and in favor of passive obedience to the civil rulers who gladly accepted it, and appealed again and again to Rom. 13:1, as the popes to Matt. 16:18, as if they contained the whole Scripture-teaching on obedience to authority. Melanchthon and Bucer fully agreed with Luther on this point; and the Lutheran Church has ever since been strictly conservative in politics, and indifferent to the progress of civil liberty. It is only in the nineteenth century that
1 Letter of Aug. 16, 1525, to Brismann (in De Wette, III. 22): “‘ Rusticorum res quievit ubique, cesis ad centum millia, tot orphanis factis, reliquis vero in vita sic spoliatis, ut Germanic facies miserior nunquam fuerit. Ita seviunt victores, ut impleant suas iniquitates.”’