insurgents. The famous Goetz von Berlichingen, finding his vassals
refuse to obey him, desired to flee to the Elector of Saxony; but his
wife, who was lying-in, wishing to keep him near her, concealed the
Elector's answer. Goetz, being closely pursued, was compelled to put
himself at the head of the rebel army. On the 7th of May the peasants
entered Wuerzburg, where the citizens received them with acclamations.
The forces of the princes and knights of Swabia and Franconia, which had
assembled in this city, evacuated it, and retired in confusion to the
citadel, the last bulwark of the nobility.
But the movement had already extended to other parts of Germany. Spires,
the Palatinate, Alsace, and Hesse accepted the twelve articles, and the
peasants threatened Bavaria, Westphalia, the Tyrol, Saxony, and
Lorraine. The Margrave of Baden, having rejected the articles, was
compelled to flee. The coadjutor of Fulda acceded to them with a smile.
The smaller towns said they had no lances with which to oppose the
insurgents. Mentz, Treves, and Frankfort obtained the liberties they had
claimed.
An immense revolution was preparing in all the empire. The
ecclesiastical and secular privileges, that bore so heavily on the
peasants, were to be suppressed; the possessions of the clergy were to
be secularized, to indemnify the princes and provide for the wants of
the empire; taxes were to be abolished, with the exception of a tribute
payable every ten years; the imperial power was to subsist alone, as
being recognized by the New Testament; all the other princes were to
cease to reign; sixty-four free tribunals were to be established, in
which men of all classes should have a seat; all ranks were to return to
their primitive condition; the clergy were to be henceforward merely the
pastors of the churches; princes and knights were to be simply the
defenders of the weak; uniformity in weights and measures was to be
introduced, and only one kind of money was to be coined throughout the
empire.
Meanwhile the princes had shaken off their first lethargy, and George
von Truchsess, commander-in-chief of the imperial army, was advancing on
the side of the Lake of Constance. On the 2d of May he defeated the
peasants at Beblingen; then marched on the town of Weinsberg, where the
unhappy Count of Helfenstein had perished, burned and razed it to the
ground, giving orders that the ruins should be left as an eternal
monument of the treason of its inhabitants. At Fairfeld he united with
the Elector Palatine and the Elector of Treves, and all three moved
toward Franconia.
The Frauenburg, the citadel of Wuerzburg, held out for the princes, and
the main army of the peasants still lay before its walls. As soon as
they heard of the Truchsess' march, they resolved on an assault, and at
nine o'clock at night on the 15th of May the trumpets sounded, the
tricolor flag was unfurled, and the peasants rushed to the attack with
horrible shouts. Sebastian von Rotenhan, one of the warmest partisans of
the Reformation, was governor of the castle. He had put the fortress in
a formidable state of defence, and, having exhorted the garrison to
repel the assault with courage, the soldiers, holding up three fingers,
had all sworn to do so. A most terrible conflict took place. To the
vigor and despair of the insurgents, the fortress replied from its walls
and towers by petards, showers of sulphur and boiling pitch and the
discharges of artillery. The peasants, thus struck by their unseen
enemies, were staggered for a moment; but in an instant their fury grew
more violent. The struggle was prolonged as the night advanced. The
fortress, lit up by a thousand battle-fires, appeared in the darkness
like a towering giant, who, vomiting flames, struggled alone amid the
roar of thunder, for the salvation of the empire against the ferocious
valor of these furious hordes. Two hours after midnight the peasants
withdrew, having failed in all their efforts.
They now tried to enter into negotiations, either with the garrison or
with Truchsess, who was advancing at the head of his army. But this was
going out of their path; violence and victory alone could save them.
After some little hesitation they resolved to march against the imperial
forces, but the cavalry and artillery made terrible havoc in their
ranks. At Koenigshofen, and afterward at Engelstadt, those unfortunate
creatures were totally defeated. The princes, the nobles, and bishops,
abusing their victory, indulged in the most unprecedented cruelties. The
prisoners were hanged on the trees by the wayside. The Bishop of
Wuerzburg, who had run away, now returned, traversed his diocese
accompanied by executioners, and watered it alike with the blood of the
rebels and of the peaceful friends of the Word of God. Goetz von
Berlichingen was sentenced to imprisonment for life. The margrave
Casimir of Anspach put out the eyes of eighty-five insurgents who had
sworn that their eyes should never look upon that Prince again; and he
cast this troop of blinded individuals upon the world, to wander up and
down, holding each other by the hand, groping along, tottering, and
begging their bread. The wretched boy who had played the dead-march on
his fife at the murder of Helfenstein, was chained to a post, a fire was
kindled around him, and the knights looked on, laughing at his horrible
contortions.
Public worship was now everywhere restored in its ancient forms. The
most flourishing and populous districts of the empire exhibited to those
who travelled through them nothing but heaps of dead bodies and smoking
ruins. Fifty thousand men had perished, and the people lost nearly
everywhere the little liberty they had hitherto enjoyed. Such was the
horrible termination of this revolt in the south of Germany.
But the evil was not confined to the south and west of Germany. Munzer,
after having traversed a part of Switzerland, Alsace, and Swabia, had
again directed his steps toward Saxony. A few citizens of Muelhausen, in
Thuringia, had invited him to their city and elected him their pastor.
The town council having resisted, Munzer deposed it and nominated
another, consisting of his friends, with himself at their head. Full of
contempt for that Christ, "sweet as honey," whom Luther preached, and
being resolved to employ the most energetic measures, he exclaimed,
"Like Joshua, we must put all the Canaanites to the sword." He
established a community of goods and pillaged the convents. "Munzer,"
wrote Luther to Ansdorff on the 11th of April, 1525, "Munzer is not only
pastor, but king and emperor of Muelhausen." The poor no longer worked;
if anyone needed corn or cloth, he went and demanded it of some rich
man; if the latter refused, the poor man took it by force; if the owner
resisted, he was hanged. As Muelhausen was an independent city, Munzer
was able to exercise his power for nearly a year without opposition. The
revolt in the south of Germany led him to imagine that it was time to
extend his new kingdom. He had a number of heavy guns cast in the
Franciscan convent, and endeavored to raise the peasantry and miners of
Mansfeld. "How long will you sleep?" said he to them in a fanatical
proclamation: "Arise and fight the battle of the Lord! The time is come.
France, Germany, and Italy are moving. On, on, on! (_Dran, Dran, Dran!_)
Heed not the groans of the impious ones. They will implore you like
children, but be pitiless. _Dran, Dran, Dran!_ The fire is burning: let
your sword be ever warm with blood. _Dran, Dran, Dran!_ Work while it is
yet day." The letter was signed, "Munzer, servant of God against the
wicked."
The country people, thirsting for plunder, flocked round his standard.
Throughout all the districts of Mansfeld, of Stolberg, and Schwarzburg
in Hesse, and the duchy of Brunswick the peasantry rose in insurrection.
The convents of Michelstein, Ilsenburg, Walkenfied, Rossleben, and many
others in the neighborhood of the Hartz, or in the plains of Thuringia,
were devastated. At Reinhardsbrunn, which Luther had visited, the tombs
of the ancient landgraves were profaned and the library destroyed.
Terror spread far and wide. Even at Wittenberg some anxiety was felt.
Those doctors, who had feared neither the Emperor nor the Pope, trembled
in the presence of a madman. They were always on the watch for news;
every step of the rebels was counted. "We are here in great danger,"
said Melanchthon. "If Munzer succeeds, it is all over with us, unless
Christ should rescue us. Munzer advances with a worse than Scythian
cruelty, and it is impossible to repeat his dreadful threats."
The pious Elector had long hesitated what he should do. Munzer had
exhorted him and all the princes to be converted, because, said he,
their hour was come; and he had signed these letters: "Munzer, armed
with the sword of Gudeon." Frederick would have desired to reclaim these
misguided men by gentle measures. On the 14th of April, when he was
dangerously ill, he had written to his brother John: "We may have given
these wretched people more than one cause for insurrection. Alas! the
poor are oppressed in many ways by their spiritual and temporal lords."
And when his attention was directed to the humiliation, the revolutions,
the dangers to which he would expose himself unless he promptly stifled
the rebellion, he replied: "Hitherto I have been a mighty elector,
having chariots and horses in abundance; if it be God's pleasure to take
them from me now, I will go on foot."
The youthful Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, was the first of the princes
who took up arms. His knights and soldiers swore to live and die with
him. After pacifying his own states, he directed his march toward
Saxony. On their side, Duke John, the Elector's brother, Duke George of
Saxony, and Duke Henry of Brunswick advanced and united their troops
with those of Hesse. The peasants, terrified at the sight of this army,
fled to a small hill, where, without any discipline, without arms, and
for the most part without courage, they formed a rampart with their
wagons. Munzer had not even prepared ammunition for his large guns. No
succors appeared; the rebels were hemmed in by the army; they lost all
confidence. The princes, taking pity on them, offered them propositions
which they appeared willing to accept. Upon this Munzer had recourse to
the most powerful lever that enthusiasm can put in motion. "To-day we
shall behold the arm of the Lord," said he, "and all our enemies shall
be destroyed." At this moment a rainbow appeared over their heads; the
fanatical host, who carried a rainbow on their flags, beheld in it a
sure prognostic of the divine protection. Munzer took advantage of it:
"Fear nothing," said he to the citizens and peasants: "I will catch all
their balls in my sleeve." At the same time he cruelly put to death a
young gentleman, Maternus von Geholfen, an envoy from the princes, in
order to deprive the insurgents of all hope of pardon.
The Landgrave, having assembled his horsemen, said to them: "I well know
that we princes are often in fault, for we are but men; but God commands
all men to honor the powers that be. Let us save our wives and children
from the fury of these murderers. The Lord will give us the victory, for
he has said, 'Whosoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of
God.'" Philip then gave the signal of attack. It was the 15th of May,
1525. The army was put in motion; but the peasant host stood immovable,
singing the hymn, "Come, Holy Ghost," and waiting for heaven to declare
in their favor. The artillery soon broke down their rude rampart,
carrying dismay and death into the midst of the insurgents. Their
fanaticism and courage at once forsook them; they were seized with a
panic-terror, and ran away in disorder. Five thousand perished in the
flight.
After the battle the princes and their victorious troops entered
Frankenhausen. A soldier who had gone into a loft in the house where he
was quartered, found a man in bed. "Who art thou?" said he; "art thou
one of the rebels?" Then, observing a pocket-book, he took it up, and
found several letters addressed to Thomas Munzer, "Art thou Munzer?"
demanded the trooper. The sick man answered, "No." But as the soldier
uttered dreadful threats, Munzer, for it was really he, confessed who he
was. "Thou art my prisoner," said the horseman. When Munzer was taken
before Duke George and the Landgrave, he persevered in saying that he
was right to chastise the princes, since they opposed the Gospel.
"Wretched man!" replied they, "think of all those of whose death you
have been the cause." But he answered, smiling in the midst of his
anguish, "They would have it so!" He took the sacrament, and was
beheaded at the same time with Pfeiffer, his lieutenant. Mulhausen was
taken, and the peasants were loaded with chains.
A nobleman having observed among the crowd of prisoners a peasant of
favorable appearance, went up and said to him: "Well, my man, which
government do you like best--that of the peasants or of the princes?"
The poor fellow made answer with a deep sigh, "Ah, my lord, no knife
cuts so deep as the rule of the peasant over his fellows."
The remnants of the insurrection were quenched in blood; Duke George, in
particular, acted with the greatest severity. In the states of the
Elector, there were neither executions nor punishment. The Word of God,
preached in all its purity, had shown its power to restrain the
tumultuous passions of the people.
From the very beginning, indeed, Luther had not ceased to struggle
against the rebellion, which was, in his opinion, the forerunner of the
Judgment-day. Advice, prayers, and even irony had not been spared. At
the end of the articles drawn up at Erfurth by the rebels he had
subjoined, as a supplementary article: "_Item._ The following article
has been omitted. Henceforward the honorable council shall have no
power; it shall do nothing; it shall sit like an idol or a log of wood;
the commonalty shall chew its food, and it shall govern with its hands
and feet tied; henceforth the wagon shall guide the horses, the horses
shall hold the reins, and we shall go on admirably, in conformity with
the glorious system set forth in these articles."
Luther did not confine himself to writing. While the disturbance was
still at its height, he quitted Wittenberg and went through some of the
districts where the agitation was greatest. He preached, he labored to
soften his hearers' hearts, and his hand, to which God had given power,
turned aside, quieted, and brought back the impetuous and overflowing
torrents into their natural channels.
In every quarter the doctors of the Reformation exerted a similar
influence. At Halle, Brentz had revived the drooping spirits of the
citizens by the promise of God's Word, and four thousand peasants had
fled before six hundred citizens. At Ichterhausen, a mob of peasants
having assembled with an intent to demolish several castles and put
their lords to death, Frederick Myconius went out to them alone, and
such was the power of his words that they immediately abandoned their
design.
Such was the part taken by the reformers and the Reformation in the
midst of this revolt; they contended against it with all their might,
with the sword of the Word, and boldly maintained those principles which
alone, in every age, can preserve order and subjection among the
nations. Accordingly, Luther asserted that, if the power of sound
doctrine had not checked the fury of the people, the revolt would have
extended its ravages far more widely, and have overthrown both church
and state. If the reformers thus contended against sedition, it was not
without receiving grievous wounds. That moral agony which Luther had
first suffered, in his cell at Erfurth, became still more serious after
the insurrection of the peasants. No great change takes place among men
without suffering on the part of those who are its instruments. The
birth of Christianity was effected by the agony of the Cross; but He who
hung upon that cross addressed these words to each of his disciples,
"Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be
baptized with the same baptism that I am baptized with?"
On the side of the princes, it was continually repeated that Luther and
his doctrine were the cause of the revolt, and, however absurd this idea
may be, the reformer could not see it so generally entertained without
experiencing the deepest grief. On the side of the people, Munzer and
all the leaders of the insurrection represented him as a vile hypocrite,
a flatterer of the great, and these calumnies easily obtained belief.
The violence with which Luther had declared against the rebels had
displeased even moderate men. The friends of Rome exulted; all were
against him, and he bore the heavy anger of his times. But his greatest
affliction was to behold the work of heaven thus dragged in the mire and
classed with the most fanatical projects. Here he felt was his
Gethsemane: he saw the bitter cup that was presented to him; and,
foreboding that he would be forsaken by all, he exclaimed: "Soon,
perhaps, I shall also be able to say, 'All ye shall be offended because
of me this night.'"
Yet in the midst of this deep bitterness he preserved his faith: "He who
has given me power to trample the enemy under foot," said he, "when he
rose up against me like a cruel dragon or a furious lion, will not
permit this enemy to crush me, now that he appears before me with the
treacherous glance of the basilisk. I groan as I contemplate those
calamities. Often have I asked myself whether it would not have been
better to have allowed the papacy to go on quietly, rather than witness
the occurrence of so many troubles and seditions in the world. But no!
it is better to have snatched a few souls from the jaws of the devil
than to have left them all between his murderous fangs."
Now terminated the revolution in Luther's mind that had begun at the
period of his return from the Wartburg. The inner life no longer
satisfied him: the Church and her institutions now became most important
in his eyes. The boldness with which he had thrown down everything was
checked at the sight of still more sweeping destructions; he felt it his
duty to preserve, govern, and build up; and from the midst of the
blood-stained ruins with which the peasant war had covered all Germany,
the edifice of the new Church began slowly to arise.
These disturbances left a lasting and deep impression on men's minds.
The nations had been struck with dismay. The masses, who had sought in
the Reformation nothing but political reform, withdrew from it of their
own accord, when they saw it offered them spiritual liberty only.
Luther's opposition to the peasants was his renunciation of the
ephemeral favor of the people. A seeming tranquillity was soon
established, and the noise of enthusiasm and sedition was followed in
all Germany by a silence inspired by terror.
Thus the popular passions, the cause of revolution, the interests of a
radical equality, were quelled in the empire; but the Reformation did
not yield. These two movements, which many have confounded with each
other, were clearly marked out by the difference of their results. The
insurrection was from below; the Reformation, from above. A few horsemen
and cannon were sufficient to put down the one; but the other never
ceased to rise in strength and vigor, in despite of the reiterated
assaults of the empire and the Church.
FRANCE LOSES ITALY
BATTLE OF PAVIA
A.D. 1525
WILLIAM ROBERTSON
Close upon the election of Charles V as emperor of the Holy
Roman Empire came the first of a series of wars between that
sovereign and Francis I, King of France, who had been
Charles's rival for the imperial crown. The Emperor was at
this time, 1521, favored by Henry VIII of England, and a
secret treaty with Charles was finally concluded by Pope Leo
X, who from the first had hesitated between the two young
rivals, and who had already treated with Francis. The papal
support proved the foundation of future power for Charles in
Italy. The Pope and the Emperor agreed to unite their forces
for expulsion of the French from their seat in the duchy of
Milan.
In 1521 hostilities broke out in Navarre and in the
Netherlands, and finally in the Milanese, where the people
were tired of French government. The various allies drove
the French completely out of Italy, and Charles invaded
France, but was there repulsed. King Francis, elated by this
last success, determined upon another invasion of the
Milanese. He went in person to Italy, leaving his mother as
regent in France. With largely superior forces, he drove the
imperialists before him.
Instead, however, of pursuing the enemy, whom he might have
overtaken at an untenable position, Francis, against the
almost unanimous advice of his generals, laid siege to the
strongly fortified city of Pavia, only to meet before it the
crushing defeat which for centuries settled the fate of
Italy. Pavia was held by a strong imperialist force under
Lannoy.
Francis prosecuted the siege with obstinacy equal to the rashness with
which he had undertaken it. During three months everything known to the
engineers of that age, or that could be effected by the valor of his
troops, was attempted, in order to reduce the place; while Lannoy and
Pescara, unable to obstruct his operations, were obliged to remain in
such an ignominious state of inaction that a pasquinade was published at
Rome offering a reward to any person who could find the imperial army,
lost in the month of October in the mountains between France and
Lombardy, and which had not been heard of since that time.
Leyva, well acquainted with the difficulties under which his countrymen
labored, and the impossibility of their facing, in the field, such a
powerful army as formed the siege of Pavia, placed his only hopes of
safety in his own vigilance and valor. The efforts of both were
extraordinary, and in proportion to the importance of the place with the
defence of which he was intrusted. He interrupted the approaches of the
French by frequent and furious sallies. Behind the breaches made by
their artillery he erected new works, which appeared to be scarcely
inferior in strength to the original fortifications. He repulsed the
besiegers in all their assaults, and by his own example brought not only
the garrison, but the inhabitants, to bear the most severe fatigues, and
to encounter the greatest dangers, without murmuring. The rigor of the
season conspired with his endeavors in retarding the progress of the
French. Francis, attempting to become master of the town by diverting
the course of the Tessino, which is its chief defence on one side, a
sudden inundation of the river destroyed, in one day, the labor of many
weeks, and swept away all the mounds which his army had raised with
infinite toil as well as at great expense.
Notwithstanding the slow progress of the besiegers, and the glory which
Leyva acquired by his gallant defence, it was not doubted but that the
town would at last be obliged to surrender. Pope Clement, who already
considered the French arms as superior in Italy, became impatient to
disengage himself from his connections with the Emperor, of whose
designs he was extremely jealous, and to enter into terms of friendship
with Francis. As Clement's timid and cautious temper rendered him
incapable of following the bold plan which Leo had formed of delivering
Italy from the yoke of both the rivals, he returned to the more obvious
and practicable scheme of employing the power of the one to balance and
to restrain that of the other.
For this reason he did not dissemble his satisfaction at seeing the
French King recover Milan, as he hoped that the dread of such a neighbor
would be some check upon the Emperor's ambition, which no power in Italy
was now able to control. He labored hard to bring about a peace that
would secure Francis in the possession of his new conquests; and as
Charles, who was always inflexible in the prosecution of his schemes,
rejected the proposition with disdain, and with bitter exclamations
against the Pope, by whose persuasions, while Cardinal di Medici, he had
been induced to invade the Milanese, Clement immediately concluded a
treaty of neutrality with the King of France, in which the republic of
Florence was included.