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The Social Side of the Reformation in Germany
GERMAN SOCIETY AT THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Aberdeen University Press.
GERMAN SOCIETY AT THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
by
E. BELFORT BAX
Author of "The Story of the French Revolution," "The Religion of
Socialism," "The Ethics of Socialism," "Handbook of the
History of Philosophy," etc., etc.
[Illustration: Logo]
London
Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
1894
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION, 1
I. FIRST SIGNS OF SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT, 43
II. THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT, 92
III. LITERATURE OF REFORMATION PERIOD, 114
IV. FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION, 139
V. THE GERMAN TOWN, 156
VI. THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD, 165
VII. COUNTRY AND TOWN AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 194
VIII. THE NEW JURISPRUDENCE, 219
APPENDIX A, 231
" B, 260
" C, 272
PREFACE.
The work, of which the present volume is the first instalment, aims
at giving English readers a general view of the social condition and
the popular movements of Germany during the period known as that of
the Reformation. In accordance with this plan, I have only touched
incidentally upon the theological disputes then apparently uppermost
in the thoughts of men, or upon the purely political side of things.
They are dealt with merely in so far as they immediately strike across
the path of social and internal affairs. The present volume, which
has a more general character than its successors, deals with a period
limited, roughly speaking, by the closing years of the fifteenth
century on the one side, and by 1525, the year of the great Peasant
rising, on the other. It contains a narrative of the earlier popular
revolutionary movements at the close of the Middle Ages, the precursors
of the Peasants' War; and it also deals with the underlying causes,
economic, social and juridical, of the general disintegration of the
time.
The next volume will treat more in detail the events of the years 1524
to 1526. The third will contain a history of the Anabaptist Movement in
Central Europe from its rise at Zwickau in 1522 to its decline after
the capture of Münster by the Archiepiscopal and Imperial troops in
1536. The reign of the Saints in Münster naturally forms the leading
feature of this portion of the work.
As to the sources for the history of the Germany of this period, I
have endeavoured to incorporate everything available that seemed to
me important for the proper understanding of the time. The three
chief general histories of the Reformation, Ranke's _Geschichte
Deutschlands während der Reformations-Zeit_, Janssen's _Geschichte des
Deutschen Volkes_, and Egelhaaf's _Deutsche Geschichte im sechszehnten
Jahrhundert_, have, it is scarcely necessary to say, been laid under
contribution. The standpoint of Ranke, whose history is detailed
and in certain respects exhaustive, is that of general bourgeois
Philistinism. Janssen represents the Ultramontane Catholic view; but,
apart from its tendency, every one must admire the brilliant and in
most cases accurate scholarship that characterises it. Egelhaaf's
work may be regarded as the counterblast to Janssen's. Its point of
view is that of "liberal," middle-class German Protestantism; but it
also contains many hints and clues which may be followed up by the
industrious historian.
To rewrite history in the light of the researches of the later decades
of the nineteenth century will be the great task of the next two or
three generations. History has to be presented afresh on the basis
of primitive communism with its tribal and village groups, with its
sexual relations based on the _gens_, with its totemistic religious
conceptions, and from the standpoint of a continuous development from
these beginnings up to the individualism of the present day founded on
the complete disruption of early society.
The average student of any historical period invariably reads into
his interpretation the intellectual, moral and social atmosphere that
lies nearest to him. He cannot strip away the intervening time-content
between himself and the period in question. It is the most difficult of
all exercises of the imagination, and to most men, indeed, impossible,
to realise that the same words, names, customs and institutions
connote totally different actualities in different stages of historic
evolution. People fail to conjure up the altered perspective, and the
unfamiliar background on which men lived, thought and felt in another
age. Agamemnon, "King of Men," is to them Kaiser Wilhelm differently
made up. Lykurgos is a cross between Pitt and Dr. Johnson. Cicero
is a Sir Charles Russell who happened to live in the first century
B.C. The formal continuity of names, notions or things hides
from them the "true inwardness" of the rupture between the old and the
new which has gradually accomplished itself. Change in human affairs is
of course ceaseless; but it is only when it has reached a certain stage
that it is borne in upon the consciousness of men in general, and,
even then, it is only the sharp summits above the changing horizon that
they recognise. The ground out of which these spring is not seen, and
hence the true bearing of the summits themselves is not understood.
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS OF THE GERMAN REFORMATION.
INTRODUCTION.
The close of the fifteenth century had left the whole structure of
mediæval Europe to all appearance intact. Statesmen and writers like
Philip de Commines had apparently as little suspicion that the state of
things they saw around them, in which they had grown up and of which
they were representatives, was ever destined to pass away, as Lord
Palmerston or any other statesman of the Cobden-Bright period had that
the existing system of society, say in 1860, was at any time likely
to suffer other changes than those of detail. Society was organised
on the feudal hierarchy of status. In the first place, a noble class,
spiritual and temporal, was opposed to a peasantry either wholly
servile or but nominally free. In addition to this opposition of noble
and peasant there was that of the township, which, in its corporate
capacity, stood in the relation of lord to the surrounding peasantry.
The township in Germany was of two kinds--first of all, there was the
township that was "free of the Empire," that is, that held nominally
from the Emperor himself (_Reichstadt_), and secondly, there was the
township that was under the domination of an intermediate lord. The
economic basis of the whole was still land; the status of a man or
of a corporation was determined by the mode in which they held their
land. "No land without a lord" was the principle of mediæval polity;
just as "money has no master" is the basis of the bourgeois world with
its self-made men. Every distinction of rank in the feudal system was
still denoted for the most part by a special costume. It was a world
of knights in armour, of ecclesiastics in vestments and stoles, of
lawyers in robes, of princes in silk and velvet and cloth of gold, and
of peasants in laced shoe, brown cloak, and cloth hat.
But although the whole feudal organisation was outwardly intact, the
thinker who was watching the signs of the times would not have been
long in arriving at the conclusion that feudalism was "played out,"
that the whole fabric of mediæval civilisation was becoming dry and
withered, and had either already begun to disintegrate or was on the
eve of doing so. Causes of change had within the past half-century
been working underneath the surface of social life, and were rapidly
undermining the whole structure. The growing use of fire-arms in war;
the rapid multiplication of printed books; the spread of the new
learning after the taking of Constantinople in 1453, and the subsequent
diffusion of Greek teachers throughout Europe; the surely and steadily
increasing communication with the new world, and the consequent
increase of the precious metals; and, last but not least, Vasco de
Gama's discovery of the new trade route from the East by way of the
Cape--all these were indications of the fact that the death-knell of
the old order of things had been struck.
Notwithstanding the apparent outward integrity of the system based
on land tenures, land was ceasing to be the only form of productive
wealth. Hence it was losing the exclusive importance attaching to it
in the earlier period of the Middle Ages. The first form of modern
capitalism had already arisen. Large aggregations of capital in the
hands of trading companies were becoming common. The Roman law was
establishing itself in the place of the old customary tribal law which
had hitherto prevailed in the manorial courts, serving in some sort as
a bulwark against the caprice of the territorial lord; and this change
facilitated the development of the bourgeois principle of private, as
opposed to communal, property. In intellectual matters, though theology
still maintained its supremacy as the chief subject of human interest,
other interests were rapidly growing up alongside of it, the most
prominent being the study of classical literature.
Besides these things, there was the dawning interest in nature,
which took on, as a matter of course, a magical form in accordance
with traditional and contemporary modes of thought. In fact, like
the flicker of a dying candle in its socket, the Middle Ages seemed
at the beginning of the sixteenth century to exhibit all their own
salient characteristics in an exaggerated and distorted form. The old
feudal relations had degenerated into a blood-sucking oppression; the
old rough brutality, into excogitated and elaborated cruelty (aptly
illustrated in the collection of ingenious instruments preserved in
the Torture-tower at Nürnberg); the old crude superstition, into a
systematised magical theory of natural causes and effects; the old love
of pageantry, into a lavish luxury and magnificence of which we have
in the "field of the cloth of gold" the stock historical example; the
old chivalry, into the mercenary bravery of the soldier, whose trade
it was to fight, and who recognised only one virtue--to wit, animal
courage. Again, all these exaggerated characteristics were mixed with
new elements, which distorted them further, and which fore-shadowed a
coming change, the ultimate issue of which would be their extinction
and that of the life of which they were the signs.
The growing tendency towards centralisation and the consequent
suppression or curtailment of the local autonomies of the Middle Ages
in the interests of some kind of national government, of which the
political careers of Louis XI. in France, of Edward IV. in England, and
of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain were such conspicuous instances, did
not fail to affect in a lesser degree that loosely connected political
system of German States known as the Holy Roman Empire. Maximilian's
first Reichstag in 1495 caused to be issued an imperial edict
suppressing the right of private warfare claimed and exercised by the
whole noble class from the princes of the Empire down to the meanest
knight. In the same year the Imperial Chamber (_Reichskammer_) was
established, and in 1501 the Imperial Aulic Council. Maximilian also
organised a standing army of mercenary troops, called _Landesknechte_.
Shortly afterwards Germany was divided into imperial districts called
circles (_Kreise_), ultimately ten in number, all of which were under
a _Reichsregiment_, which had at its disposal a military force for
the punishment of disturbers of the peace. But the public opinion of
the age, conjoined with the particular circumstances, political and
economic, of central Europe, robbed the enactment in a great measure of
its immediate effect. Highway plundering and even private war was still
going on, to a considerable extent, far into the sixteenth century.
Charles V. pursued the same line of policy; but it was not until after
the suppression of the lower nobility in 1523, and finally of the
peasants in 1526, that any material change took place; and then the
centralisation, such as it was, was in favour of the princes, rather
than of the imperial power, which, after Charles V.'s time, grew weaker
and weaker. The speciality about the history of Germany is, that it has
not known till our own day centralisation on a national or racial scale
like England or France.
At the opening of the sixteenth century public opinion not merely
sanctioned open plunder by the wearer of spurs and by the possessor of
a stronghold, but regarded it as his special prerogative, the exercise
of which was honourable rather than disgraceful. The cities certainly
resented their burghers being waylaid and robbed, and hanged the
knights whenever they could; and something like a perpetual feud always
existed between the wealthier cities and the knights who infested
the trade routes leading to and from them. Still, these belligerent
relations were taken as a matter of course; and no disgrace, in the
modern sense, attached to the occupation of highway robbery.
In consequence of the impoverishment of the knights at this period,
owing to causes with which we shall deal later, the trade or
profession had recently received an accession of vigour, and at the
same time was carried on more brutally and mercilessly than ever
before. We will give some instances of the sort of occurrence which
was by no means unusual. In the immediate neighbourhood of Nürnberg,
which was _bien entendu_ one of the chief seats of the imperial power,
a robber-knight leader, named Hans Thomas von Absberg, was a standing
menace. It was the custom of this ruffian, who had a large following,
to plunder even the poorest who came from the city, and, not content
with this, to mutilate his victims. In June, 1522, he fell upon a
wretched craftsman, and with his own sword hacked off the poor fellow's
right hand, notwithstanding that the man begged him upon his knees to
take the left, and not destroy his means of earning his livelihood. The
following August he, with his band, attacked a Nürnberg tanner, whose
hand was similarly treated, one of his associates remarking that he
was glad to set to work again, as it was "a long time since they had
done any business in hands". On the same occasion a cutler was dealt
with after a similar fashion. The hands in these cases were collected
and sent to the Bürgermeister of Nürnberg, with some such phrase as
that the sender (Hans Thomas) would treat all so who came from the
city. The princes themselves, when it suited their purpose, did not
hesitate to offer an asylum to these knightly robbers. With Absberg
were associated Georg von Giech and Hans Georg von Aufsess. Among
other notable robber-knights of the time may be mentioned the Lord of
Brandenstein and the Lord of Rosenberg. As illustrating the strictly
professional character of the pursuit, and the brutally callous nature
of the society practising it, we may narrate that Margaretha von
Brandenstein was accustomed, it is recorded, to give the advice to
the choice guests round her board that when a merchant failed to keep
his promise to them, they should never hesitate to cut off _both_ his
hands. Even Franz von Sickingen, known sometimes as the "last flower of
German chivalry," boasted of having among the intimate associates of
his enterprise for the rehabilitation of knighthood many gentlemen who
had been accustomed to "let their horses on the high road bite off the
purses of wayfarers". So strong was the public opinion of the noble
class as to the inviolability of the privilege of highway plunder that
a monk, preaching one day in a cathedral and happening to attack it
as unjustifiable, narrowly escaped death at the hands of some knights
present amongst his congregation, who asserted that he had insulted the
prerogatives of their order. Whenever this form of knight-errantry was
criticised, there were never wanting scholarly pens to defend it as a
legitimate means of aristocratic livelihood; since a knight must live
in suitable style, and this was often his only resource for obtaining
the means thereto.
The free cities, which were subject only to imperial jurisdiction, were
practically independent republics. Their organisation was a microcosm
of that of the entire Empire. At the apex of the municipal society was
the Bürgermeister and the so-called "Honorability" (_Ehrbarkeit_),
which consisted of the patrician _gentes_, (in most cases) those
families which were supposed to be descended from the original
chartered freemen of the town, the old Mark-brethren. They comprised
generally the richest families, and had monopolised the entire
government of the city, together with the right to administer its
various sources of income and to consume its revenue at their pleasure.
By the time, however, of which we are writing the trading guilds had
also attained to a separate power of their own, and were in some cases
ousting the burgher-aristocracy, though they were very generally
susceptible of being manipulated by the members of the patrician
class, who, as a rule, could alone sit in the Council (_Rath_). The
latter body stood, in fact, as regards the town, much in the relation
of the feudal lord to his manor. Strong in their wealth and in their
aristocratic privileges, the patricians lorded it alike over the
townspeople and over the neighbouring peasantry, who were subject to
the municipality. They forestalled and regrated with impunity. They
assumed the chief rights in the municipal lands, in many cases imposed
duties at their own caprice, and turned guild privileges and rights
of citizenship into a source of profit for themselves. Their bailiffs
in the country districts forming part of their territory were often
more voracious in their treatment of the peasants than even the nobles
themselves. The accounts of income and expenditure were kept in the
loosest manner, and embezzlement clumsily concealed was the rule rather
than the exception.
The opposition of the non-privileged citizens, usually led by the
wealthier guildsmen not belonging to the aristocratic class, operated
through the guilds and through the open assembly of the citizens. It
had already frequently succeeded in establishing a representation
of the general body of the guildsmen in a so-called Great Council
(_Grosser Rath_), and in addition, as already said, in ousting the
"honorables" from some of the public functions. Altogether the
patrician party, though still powerful enough, was at the opening
of the sixteenth century already on the decline, the wealthy and
unprivileged opposition beginning in its turn to constitute itself
into a quasi-aristocratic body as against the mass of the poorer
citizens and those outside the pale of municipal rights. The latter
class was now becoming an important and turbulent factor in the life
of the larger cities. The craft-guilds, consisting of the body of
non-patrician citizens, were naturally in general dominated by their
most wealthy section.
We may here observe that the development of the mediæval township from
its earliest beginnings up to the period of its decay in the sixteenth
century was almost uniformly as follows:[1] At first the township, or
rather what later became the township, was represented entirely by the
group of _gentes_ or group-families originally settled within the mark
or district on which the town subsequently stood. These constituted
the original aristocracy from which the tradition of the _Ehrbarkeit_
dated. In those towns founded by the Romans, such as Trier, Aachen, and
others, the case was of course a little different. There the origin of
the _Ehrbarkeit_ may possibly be sought for in the leading families
of the Roman provincials who were in occupation of the town at the
coming of the barbarians in the fifth century. Round this nucleus there
gradually accreted from the earliest period of the Middle Ages the
freed men of the surrounding districts, fugitive serfs, and others who
sought that protection and means of livelihood in a community under the
immediate domination of a powerful lord, which they could not otherwise
obtain when their native village-community had perchance been raided by
some marauding noble and his retainers. Circumstances, amongst others
the fact that the community to which they attached themselves had
already adopted commerce and thus become a guild of merchants, led to
the differentiation of industrial functions amongst the new-comers, and
thus to the establishment of craft-guilds.
Another origin of the townsfolk, which must not be overlooked, is
to be found in the attendants on the palace-fortress of some great
over-lord. In the early Middle Ages all such magnates kept up an
extensive establishment, the greater ecclesiastical lords no less
than the secular often having several palaces. In Germany this origin
of the township was furthered by Charles the Great, who established
schools and other civil institutions, with a magistrate at their head,
round many of the palaces that he founded. "A new epoch," says Von
Maurer, "begins with the villa-foundations of Charles the Great and
his ordinances respecting them, for that his celebrated capitularies
in this connection were intended for his newly established villas
is self-evident. In that proceeding he obviously had the Roman villa
in his mind, and on the model of this he rather further developed
the previously existing court and villa constitution than completely
reorganised it. Hence one finds even in his new creations the old
foundation again, albeit on a far more extended plan, the economical
side of such villa-colonies being especially more completely and
effectively ordered."[2] The expression "Palatine," as applied to
certain districts, bears testimony to the fact here referred to. As
above said, the development of the township was everywhere on the same
lines. The aim of the civic community was always to remove as far as
possible the power which controlled them. Their worst condition was
when they were immediately overshadowed by a territorial magnate.
When their immediate lord was a prince, the area of whose feudal
jurisdiction was more extensive, his rule was less oppressively felt,
and their condition was therefore considerably improved. It was only,
however, when cities were "free of the Empire" (_Reichsfrei_) that they
attained the ideal of mediæval civic freedom.
It follows naturally from the conditions described that there was,
in the first place, a conflict between the primitive inhabitants as
embodied in their corporate society and the territorial lord, whoever
he might be. No sooner had the township acquired a charter of freedom
or certain immunities than a new antagonism showed itself between
the ancient corporation of the city and the trade-guilds, these
representing the later accretions. The territorial lord (if any) now
sided, usually though not always, with the patrician party. But the
guilds, nevertheless, succeeded in ultimately wresting many of the
leading public offices from the exclusive possession of the patrician
families. Meanwhile the leading men of the guilds had become _hommes
arrivés_. They had acquired wealth, and influence which was in many
cases hereditary in their family, and by the beginning of the sixteenth
century they were confronted with the more or less veiled and more or
less open opposition of the smaller guildsmen and of the newest comers
into the city, the shiftless proletariat of serfs and free peasants,
whom economic pressure was fast driving within the walls, but who,
owing to the civic organisation having become crystallised, could no
longer be absorbed into it. To this mass may be added a certain number
of impoverished burghers, who, although nominally within the town
organisation, were oppressed by the wealth of the magnates, plebeian
and patrician.
The number of persons who, owing to the decay, or one might almost say
the collapse, of the strength of the feudal system, were torn from
the old moorings and left to drift about shiftless in a world utterly
unprepared to deal with such an increase of what was practically
vagabondage, was augmenting with every year. The vagrants in all
Western European countries had never been so numerous as in the earlier
part of the sixteenth century. A portion of these disinherited persons
entered the service of kings and princes as mercenary soldiers, and
thus became the first germ of the modern standing army. Another portion
entered the begging profession, which now notably on the Continent
became organised in orthodox and traditional form into guilds, each
of which had its master and other officers. Yet another portion
sought a more or less permanent domicile as journeymen craftsmen and
unskilled labourers in the cities. This fact is noteworthy as the
first indication of the proletariat in modern history. "It will be
seen," says Friedrich Engels,[3] "that the plebeian opposition of the
then towns consisted of very mixed elements. It united the degenerate
components of the old feudal and guild organisation with the as yet
undeveloped and new-born proletarian element of modern bourgeois
society in embryo. Impoverished guildsmen there were, who through
their privileges were still connected with the existing civic order on
the one side, and serving-men out of place who had not as yet become
proletarians on the other. Between the two were the "companions"
(_Gesellen_) for the nonce outside the official society, and in their
position resembling the proletariat as much as was possible in the
then state of industry and under the existing guild-privilege. But,
nevertheless, almost all of them were future guild-masters by virtue of
this very guild-privilege."[4] A noteworthy feature of municipal life
at this time was the difficulty and expense attendant on entry into
the city organisation even for the status of a simple citizen, still
more for that of a guildsman. Within a few decades this had enormously
increased.
* * * * *
The guild was a characteristic of all mediæval life. On the model
of the village-community, which was originally based on the notion
of kinship, every interest, craft, and group of men formed itself
into a "brotherhood" or "guild". The idea of individual autonomy, of
individual action independent altogether of the community, is a modern
idea which never entered the mediæval mind. As we have above remarked,
even the mendicants and vagabonds could not conceive of adopting
begging as a career except under the auspices of a beggars' guild.
The guild was not like a modern commercial syndicate, an abstract
body united only by the thread of one immediate personal interest,
whose members did not even know each other. His guild-membership
interpenetrated the whole life, religious, convivial, social and
political, of the mediæval man. The guilds were more or less of the
nature of masonic societies, whose concerns were by no means limited
to the mere trade-function that appeared on the surface. "Business"
had not as yet begun to absorb the whole life of men. The craft or
"mystery" was a function intimately interwoven with the whole concrete
social existence. But it is interesting to observe among the symptoms
of transition characterising the sixteenth century, as noted above,
the formation of companies of merchants apart from and outside the old
guild-organisation. These latter really seem a kind of foreshadowing of
the rings, trusts, and joint-stock companies of our own day. Many and
bitter were the complaints of the manner in which prices were forced
up by these earliest examples of the capitalistic syndicate, which
powerfully contributed to the accumulation of wealth at one end of the
scale and to the intensification of poverty at the other.[5]
The rich burgher loved nothing better than to display an ostentatious
profusion of wealth in his house, in his dress, and in his
entertainments. On the clothing and ornamentation of himself and his
family he often squandered what might have been for his ancestor of
the previous century the fortune of a lifetime. Especially was this
the case at the Reichstags and other imperial assemblies held in the
various free cities at which all the three feudal estates of the
Empire were represented. It was the aim of the wealthy councillor or
guild-master on these occasions to outbid the princes of the Empire in
the magnificence of his person and establishment. The prince did not
like to be outdone, and learnt to accustom himself to luxuries, and
thereby to indefinitely increase his own expenditure. The same with all
classes.
The knighthood or smaller nobles, no longer content with homely fare,
sought after costly clothing, expensive food and exotic wines, and
to approach the affluent furnishing of the city magnate. His one or
two horses, his armour, his sword and his lance, his homespuns made
almost invariably on his estates, the wine grown in the neighbourhood,
his rough oatmeal bread, the constituents of which had been ground at
his own mill, the venison and wild fowl hunted by himself or by his
few retainers, no longer sufficed for the knight's wants. In order
to compass his new requirements he had to set to work in two ways.
Formerly he had little or no need of money. He received, as he gave,
everything in kind. Now that he had to deal with the beginnings of a
world-market, money was a prime necessity. The first and most obvious
way of getting it was to squeeze the peasant on his estate, who, bitten
by the new mania, had also begun to accumulate and turn into cash the
surplus products of labour on his holding. From what we have before
said of the ways and manners of the knighthood, the reader may well
imagine that he did not hesitate to "tower" the recalcitrant peasant,
as it was called, that is, to throw him into his castle-dungeon if
other means failed to make him disgorge his treasure as soon as it
came to his lord's ears that he had any. But the more ordinary method
of squeezing the peasant was by doubling and trebling the tithes and
other dues, by imposing fresh burdens (many of them utterly unwarranted
by custom) on any or no pretext. The princes, lay and ecclesiastic,
applied the same methods on a more extended scale. These were often
effected in an ingenious manner by the ecclesiastical lords through the
forging of manorial rolls.
The second of the methods spoken of for "raising the wind" was the
mortgaging of castle and lands to the money-lending syndicates of the
towns, or, in the case of the greater princes, to the towns themselves
in their corporate capacity. The Jews also came in for their share of
land-mortgages. There were, in fact, few free or semi-free peasants
whose lands were not more or less hypothecated. Meanwhile prices rose
to an incredible extent in a few years.
Such were the causes and results of the change in domestic life which
the economic evolution of the close of the Middle Ages was now bringing
about amongst all classes.
The ecclesiastical lords, or lords spiritual, differed in no way in
their character and conduct from the temporal princes of the Empire.
In one respect they outdid the princes, namely, in the forgery of
documents, as already mentioned. Luxury had, moreover, owing to the
communication which they had with Rome and thus indirectly with the
Byzantine civilisation, already begun with the prelates in the earlier
Middle Ages. It now burst all bounds. The ecclesiastical courts were
the seat of every kind of debauchery. As we shall see later on, they
also became the places where the new learning first flourished. But
in addition to the general luxury in which the higher ecclesiastics
outdid the lay element of the Empire, there was a special cause which
rendered them obnoxious alike to the peasants, to the towns, and to
their own feudatory nobles. This special cause was the enormous sum
payable to Rome for the Pallium or Investiture, a tax that had to be
raised by the inhabitants of the diocese on every change of archbishop,
bishop, or abbot. In addition thereto the entire income of the first
year after the investiture accrued to the Papal Treasury under the name
of Annates. This constituted a continuous drain on the ecclesiastical
dependencies and indirectly on the whole Empire. There must also be
added the cost of frequent journeys to Rome, where each dignitary
during his residence held court in a style of sumptuous magnificence.
All these expenses tended to drain the resources of the territories
held as spiritual fiefs in a more onerous degree than happened to
other territories. Moreover, the system of the sale of indulgences or
remissions for all sins committed up to date was now being prosecuted
to an extent never heard of before with a view to meet the increased
expenditure of the Papal See, and especially the cost of completing
the cathedral of St. Peter's at Rome. Thus by a sort of voluntary tax
the wealth of Germany was still further transferred to Italy. Hence
can readily be seen the reason of the venomous hatred which among
all classes of the Empire had been gradually accumulating towards
the Papacy for more than a generation, and which ultimately found
expression in Luther's fulminations.
The peasant of the period was of three kinds: the _leibeigener_ or
serf, who was little better than a slave, who cultivated his lord's
domain, upon whom unlimited burdens might be fixed, and who was in all
respects amenable to the will of his lord; the _höriger_ or villein,
whose services were limited alike in kind and amount; and the _freier_
or free peasant, who merely paid what was virtually a quit-rent in kind
or in money for being allowed to retain his holding or status in the
rural community under the protection of the manorial lord. The last was
practically the counterpart of the mediæval English copyholder. The
Germans had undergone essentially the same transformations in social
organisation as the other populations of Europe.
The barbarian nations at the time of their great migration in the
fifth century were organised on a tribal and village basis. The
head man was simply _primus inter pares_. In the course of their
wanderings the successful military leader acquired powers and assumed
a position that was unknown to the previous times, when war, such
as it was, was merely inter-tribal and inter-clannish, and did not
involve the movements of peoples and federations of tribes, and when,
in consequence, the need for permanent military leaders or for the
semblance of a military hierarchy had not arisen. The military leader
now placed himself at the head of the older social organisation, and
associated with his immediate followers on terms approaching equality.
A well-known illustration of this is the incident of the vase taken
from the Cathedral of Rheims, and of Chlodowig's efforts to rescue it
from his independent comrades-in-arms.
The process of the development of the feudal polity of the Middle Ages
is, of course, a very complicated one, owing to the various strands
that go to compose it. In addition to the German tribes themselves,
who moved _en masse_, carrying with them their tribal and village
organisation, under the over-lordship of the various military leaders,
were the indigenous inhabitants amongst whom they settled. The latter
in the country districts, even in many of the territories within
the Roman Empire, still largely retained the primitive communal
organisation. The new-comers, therefore, found in the rural communities
a social system already in existence into which they naturally fitted,
but as an aristocratic body over against the conquered inhabitants. The
latter, though not all reduced to a servile condition, nevertheless
held their land from the conquering body under conditions which
constituted them an order of freemen inferior to the new-comers.
To put the matter briefly, the military leaders developed into barons
and princes, and in some cases the nominal centralisation culminated
as in France and England in the kingly office; while, in Germany and
Italy, it took the form of the revived imperial office, the spiritual
over-lord of the whole of Christendom being the Pope, who had his
vassals in the prince-prelates and subordinate ecclesiastical holders.
In addition to the princes sprung originally from the military
leaders of the migratory nations, there were their free followers, who
developed ultimately into the knighthood or inferior nobility; the
inhabitants of the conquered districts forming a distinct class of
inferior freemen or of serfs. But the essentially personal relation
with which the whole process started soon degenerated into one based
on property. The most primitive form of property--land--was at the
outset what was termed _allodial_, at least among the conquering race,
from every social group having the possession, under the trusteeship
of its head man, of the land on which it settled. Now, owing to the
necessities of the time, owing to the need of protection, to violence
and to religious motives, it passed into the hands of the over-lord,
temporal or spiritual, as his possession; and the inhabitants, even in
the case of populations which had not been actually conquered, became
his vassals, villeins, or serfs, as the case might be. The process by
means of which this was accomplished was more or less gradual; indeed,
the entire extinction of communal rights, whereby the notion of private
ownership is fully realised, was not universally effected even in the
west of Europe till within a measurable distance of our own time.[6]
From the foregoing it will be understood that the oppression of the
peasant, under the feudalism of the Middle Ages, and especially of
the later Middle Ages, was viewed by him as an infringement of his
rights. During the period of time constituting mediæval history the
peasant, though he often slumbered, yet often started up to a sudden
consciousness of his position. The memory of primitive communism was
never quite extinguished, and the continual peasant-revolts of the
Middle Ages, though immediately occasioned, probably, by some fresh
invasion, by which it was sought to tear from the "common man" yet
another shred of his surviving rights, always had in the background
the ideal, vague though it may have been, of his ancient freedom.
Such, undoubtedly, was the meaning of the Jacquerie in France, with
its wild and apparently senseless vengeance; of the Wat Tyler revolt
in England, with its systematic attempt to embody the vague tradition
of the primitive village community in the legends of the current
ecclesiastical creed; of the numerous revolts in Flanders and North
Germany; of the Hussite movement in Bohemia, under Ziska; of the
rebellion led by George Doza in Hungary; and, as we shall see in the
body of the present work, of the social movements of Reformation
Germany, in which, with the partial exception of Ket's rebellion in
England a few years later, we may consider them as coming to an end.
For the movements in question were distinctly the last of their
kind. The civil wars of religion in France, and the great rebellion
in England against Charles the First, which also assumed a religious
colouring, open a new era in popular revolts. In the latter,
particularly, we have clearly before us the attempt of the new
middle class of town and country, the independent citizen, and the
now independent yeoman, to assert its supremacy over the old feudal
estates or orders. The new conditions had swept away the revolutionary
tradition of the mediæval period, whose golden age lay in the past with
its communal-holding and free men with equal rights on the basis of
the village organisation--rights which with every century the peasant
felt more and more slipping away from him. The place of this tradition
was now taken by an ideal of individual freedom, apart from any social
bond, and on a basis merely political, the way for which had been
prepared by that very conception of individual proprietorship on the
part of the landlord, against which the older revolutionary sentiment
had protested. A most powerful instrument in accommodating men's minds
to this change of view, in other words, to the establishment of the
new individualistic principle, was the Roman or Civil law, which,
at the period dealt with in the present book, had become the basis
whereon disputed points were settled in the Imperial Courts. In this
respect also, though to a lesser extent, may be mentioned the Canon or
Ecclesiastical law,--consisting of papal decretals on various points
which were founded partially on the Roman or Civil law,--a juridical
system which also fully and indeed almost exclusively recognised the
individual holding of property as the basis of civil society (albeit
not without a recognition of social duties on the part of the owner).
Learning was now beginning to differentiate itself from the
ecclesiastical profession, and to become a definite vocation in its
various branches. Crowds of students flocked to the seats of learning,
and, as travelling scholars, earned a precarious living by begging or
"professing" medicine, assisting the illiterate for a small fee, or
working wonders, such as casting horoscopes, or performing thaumaturgic
tricks. The professors of law were now the most influential members of
the Imperial Council and of the various Imperial Courts. In Central
Europe, as elsewhere, notably in France, the civil lawyers were
always on the side of the centralising power, alike against the local
jurisdictions and against the peasantry.
The effects of the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and the
consequent dispersion of the accumulated Greek learning of the
Byzantine Empire, had, by the end of the fifteenth century, begun to
show themselves in a notable modification of European culture. The
circle of the seven sciences, the Quadrivium, and the Trivium, in
other words, the mediæval system of learning, began to be antiquated.
Scholastic philosophy, that is to say, the controversy of the Scotists
and the Thomists, was now growing out of date. Plato was extolled at
the expense of Aristotle. Greek, and even Hebrew, was eagerly sought
after. Latin itself was assuming another aspect; the Renaissance Latin
is classical Latin, whilst Mediæval Latin is dog-Latin. The physical
universe now began to be inquired into with a perfectly fresh interest,
but the inquiries were still conducted under the ægis of the old habits
of thought. The universe was still a system of mysterious affinities
and magical powers to the investigator of the Renaissance period, as
it had been before. There was this difference, however: it was now
attempted to _systematise_ the magical theory of the universe. While
the common man held a store of traditional magical beliefs respecting
the natural world, the learned man deduced these beliefs from the
Neo-Platonists, from the Kabbala, from Hermes Trismegistos, and from
a variety of other sources, and attempted to arrange this somewhat
heterogeneous mass of erudite lore into a system of organised thought.
The Humanistic movement, so called, the movement, that is, of revived
classical scholarship, had already begun in Germany before what may be
termed the _sturm und drang_ of the Renaissance proper. Foremost among
the exponents of this older Humanism, which dates from the middle of
the fifteenth century, were Nicholas of Cusa and his disciples, Rudolph
Agricola, Alexander Hegius and Jacob Wimpheling. But the new Humanism
and the new Renaissance movement generally throughout Northern Europe
centred chiefly in two personalities, Johannes Reuchlin and Desiderius
Erasmus. Reuchlin was the founder of the new Hebrew learning, which up
till then had been exclusively confined to the synagogue. It was he who
unlocked the mysteries of the Kabbala to the Gentile world. But though
it is for his introduction of Hebrew study that Reuchlin is best known
to posterity, yet his services in the diffusion and popularisation
of classical culture were enormous. The dispute of Reuchlin with the
ecclesiastical authorities at Cologne excited literary Germany from end
to end. It was the first general skirmish of the new and the old spirit
in Central and Northern Europe. But the man who was destined to become
the personification of the Humanist movement, as the new learning
was called, was Erasmus. The illegitimate son of the daughter of a
Rotterdam burgher, he early became famous on account of his erudition,
in spite of the adverse circumstances of his youth. Like all the
scholars of his time, he passed rapidly from one country to another,
settling finally in Basel, then at the height of its reputation as a
literary and typographical centre. The whole intellectual movement
of the time centres round Erasmus, as is particularly noticeable in
the career of Ulrich von Hutten, dealt with in the course of this
history. As instances of the classicism of the period, we may note the
uniform change of the patronymic into the classical equivalent, or
some classicism supposed to be the equivalent. Thus the name Erasmus
itself was a classicism of his father's name Gerhard, the German name
Muth became Mutianus, Trittheim became Trithemius, Schwarzerd became
Melanchthon, and so on.
We have spoken of the other side of the intellectual movement of
the period. This other side showed itself in mystical attempts at
reducing nature to law in the light of the traditional problems which
had been set, to wit, those of alchemy and astrology: the discovery
of the philosopher's stone, of the transmutation of metals, of the
elixir of life, and of the correspondences between the planets and
terrestrial bodies. Among the most prominent exponents of these
investigations may be mentioned Philippe von Hohenheim or Paracelsus,
and Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, in Germany, Nostradamus, in
France, and Cardanus, in Italy. These men represented a tendency which
was pursued by thousands in the learned world. It was a tendency
which had the honour of being the last in history to embody itself in
a distinct mythical cycle. "Doctor Faustus" may probably have had a
historical germ; but in any case "Doctor Faustus," as known to legend
and to literature, is merely a personification of the practical side
of the new learning. The minds of men were waking up to interest in
nature. There was one man, Copernicus, who, at least partially, struck
through the traditionary atmosphere in which nature was enveloped,
and to his insight we owe the foundation of astronomical science; but
otherwise the whole intellectual atmosphere was charged with occult
views. In fact, the learned world of the sixteenth century would have
found itself quite at home in the pretensions and fancies of our
_fin de siècle_ theosophists, with their notions of making miracles
non-miraculous, of reducing the marvellous to being merely the result
of penetration on the part of certain seers and investigators of the
secret powers of nature. Every wonder-worker was received with open
arms by learned and unlearned alike. The possibility of producing
that which was out of the ordinary range of natural occurrences was
not seriously doubted by any. Spells and enchantments, conjurations,
calculations of nativities, were matters earnestly investigated at
universities and courts. There were, of course, persons who were
eager to detect impostors: and amongst them some of the most zealous
votaries of the occult arts--for example, Trittheim and the learned
Humanist, Conrad Muth or Mutianus, both of whom professed to have
regarded Faust as a fraud. But this did not imply any disbelief in the
possibility of the alleged pretensions. In the Faust-myth is embodied,
moreover, the opposition between the new learning on its physical side
and the old religious faith. The theory that the investigation of the
mysteries of nature had in it something sinister and diabolical which
had been latent throughout the Middle Ages was brought into especial
prominence by the new religious movements. The popular feeling that
the line between natural magic and the black art was somewhat doubtful,
that the one had a tendency to shade off into the other, now received
fresh stimulus. The notion of compacts with the devil was a familiar
one, and that it should be resorted to for the purpose of acquiring an
acquaintance with hidden lore and magical powers seemed quite natural.
It will have already been seen from what we have said that the
religious revolt was largely economical in its causes. The intense
hatred, common alike to the smaller nobility, the burghers and the
peasants, of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, was obviously due to
its ever-increasing exactions. The sudden increase in the sale of
indulgences, like the proverbial last straw, broke down the whole
system; but any other incident might have served the purpose equally
well. The prince-prelates were, in some instances, at the outset, not
averse to the movement; they would not have been indisposed to have
converted their territories into secular fiefs of the Empire. It was
only after this hope had been abandoned that they definitely took sides
with the Papal authority.
The opening of the sixteenth century thus presents to us mediæval
society, social, political and religious, "run to seed". The feudal
organisation was outwardly intact; the peasant, free and bond, formed
the foundation; above him came the knighthood or inferior nobility;
parallel with them was the _Ehrbarkeit_ of the less important towns,
holding from mediate lordship; above these towns came the free cities,
which held immediately from the Empire, organised into three bodies,
a governing Council in which the _Ehrbarkeit_ usually predominated,
where they did not entirely compose it, a Common Council composed of
the masters of the various guilds, and the General Council of the free
citizens. Those journeymen, whose condition was fixed from their being
outside the guild-organisations, usually had guilds of their own.
Above the free cities in the social pyramid stood the Princes of the
Empire, lay and ecclesiastic, with the Electoral College, or the seven
Electoral Princes, forming their head. These constituted the feudal
"estates" of the Empire. Then came the King of the Romans; and, as the
apex of the whole, the Pope in one function and the Emperor in another
crowned the edifice. The supremacy, not merely of the Pope, but of the
complementary temporal head of the mediæval polity, the Emperor, was
acknowledged in a shadowy way, even in countries such as France and
England, which had no direct connection with the Empire. For, as the
spiritual power was also temporal, so the temporal political power had,
like everything else in the Middle Ages, a quasi-religious significance.
The minds of men in speculative matters, in theology, in philosophy,
and in jurisprudence, were outgrowing the old doctrines, at least in
their old forms. In theology the notion of salvation by the faith of
the individual, and not through the fact of belonging to a corporate
organisation, which was the mediæval conception, was latent in the
minds of multitudes of religious persons before expression was given
to it by Luther. The aversion to scholasticism, bred by the revived
knowledge of the older Greek philosophies in the original, produced a
curious amalgam; but scholastic habits of thought were still dominant
through it all. The new theories of nature amounted to little more
than old superstitions, systematised and reduced to rule, though
here and there the later physical science, based on observation and
experiment, peeped through. In jurisprudence the epoch is marked by the
final conquest of the Roman civil law in its spirit, where not in its
forms, over the old customs, pre-feudal and feudal. This motley world
of decayed knights, lavish princes, oppressed and rebellious peasants,
turbulent townsmen, licentious monks and friars, mendicant scholars and
hireling soldiers, is the world some of whose least-known aspects we
are about to consider in the following pages.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] We are here, of course, dealing more especially with
Germany; but substantially the same course was followed in the
development of municipalities in other parts of Europe.
[2] _Einleitung_, pp. 255, 256.
[3] _Der Bauernkrieg_, p. 31.
[4] The three grades in the craft-guilds were those of
apprentice, companion, and master. Every guildsman was supposed to pass
through them.
[5] See Appendix A.
[6] _Cf._ Von Maurer's _Einleitung zur Geschichte
der Mark-Verfassung_; Gomme's _Village Communities_; Stubbs'
_Constitutional History_.
CHAPTER I.
FIRST SIGNS OF SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT.
The echoes of the Hussite movement in Bohemia spread far and wide
through Central Europe at the beginning of the fifteenth century. It
was not in vain that Ziska bequeathed his skin for the purposes of
a drum, since the echoes of its beating made themselves heard for
many a year in Bohemia and throughout Central Europe. The disciples
of the movement settled in different countries, and became centres
of propaganda, and the movement attached itself to the peasants'
discontent. Amid the various stirrings that took place, there are one
or two that may arrest our attention owing to their importance and
their typical character.
It was in the year 1476, when Rudolph of Scherenberg occupied the
Episcopal See of Würzburg, that a cowherd, named Hans Boheim, of the
neighbouring village of Niklashausen, who was accustomed to pipe and
to drum at local festivities, at places on the banks of the little
stream called the Tauber, was suddenly seized with an inspiration of
preaching for the conversion of his neighbours from their sins. It
appeared to him that his life had been hitherto sinful; he gave up all
participation in village feasts, he became a dreamer, and announced
that he had had visions of the Virgin. In the middle of Lent he
proclaimed that he had been given a divine mission from the Mother of
God herself to burn his pipe and drum and to devote himself entirely
to preaching the Gospel to the common man. All were to abandon their
former way of life, were to lay aside all personal ornament, and in
humble attire to perform pilgrimages to Niklashausen, and there worship
the Virgin as they esteemed their souls' salvation. In all this there
was nothing very alarming to the authorities. Peasantly inspirations
were by no means unknown in the Middle Ages; but the matter assumed
another aspect when the new seer, Hans Pfeifferlein, or "the little
piper" as he was nicknamed, announced that the Queen of Heaven had
revealed to him that there should henceforth be neither Emperor, Pope,
Prince, nor any lay or spiritual authority; but that all men should
be brothers, earning their bread by the sweat of their brows, and
sharing alike in all things. There were to be no more imposts or dues;
land, woods, pastures, and water were to be free. The new Gospel struck
root immediately. The peasant folk streamed to Niklashausen, from all
sides,--men and women, young and old, journeymen, lads from the plough,
girls from the fields, their sickles in their hands, without leave of
lord or master, and without preparation of any sort whatever. Food and
the necessary clothing and shelter were given them by those on the way
who had already embraced the new Kingdom of God. The universal greeting
among the pilgrims was "brother" and "sister".
This went on for some months, the young prophet choosing chiefly
Sundays and holidays for his harangues. Ignorant even of writing, he
was backed by the priest of Niklashausen, and by perhaps two or three
other influential persons. Many were the offerings brought to the
Niklashausen shrine. Well nigh all who journeyed thither left some
token behind, were it only a rough peasant's cap or a wax candle.
Those who could afford it gave costly clothes and jewellery. The
proclamation of universal equality was indeed a Gospel that appealed
to the common man; the resumption of their old rights, the release from
every form of oppression, as a proclamation from heaven itself, were
tidings to him of great joy. The prophetic youth was hailed by all as
the new Messiah. After each week's sermon he invited the congregation
to return next week with redoubled numbers; and his commands were
invariably obeyed. Men, women and children fell on their knees before
him, crying: "Oh, man of God, sent from heaven, have mercy on us
and pity us". They tore the wool threads from his shaggy sheepskin
cap, regarding them as sacred relics. The priests of the surrounding
districts averred that he was a sorcerer and devil-possessed, and that
a wizard had appeared to him, clad in white, in the form of the Virgin,
and had instilled into him the pernicious doctrines he was preaching.
In all the surrounding country his miracles were talked about. The
Bishops of Mainz and Würzburg and the Council of Nürnberg forbade
their villeins, under heavy penalties, from making the pilgrimage to
Niklashausen. But the effect of such measures only lasted for a short
time.
Finally, on the Sunday before the day of Saint Kilian, Hans Boheim,
on the conclusion of his discourse, invited his hearers, as usual, to
come on the next occasion. This time, however, he ordered men only
to appear, but with arms and ammunition; women and children were to
be left at home. No sooner did the tidings of this turn of affairs
reach the ears of the Bishop at Würzburg than the latter resolved to
forestall the movement. He sent thirty-four mounted men-at-arms after
nightfall to Niklashausen; they burst upon the sleeping youth, tore
him from the house where he lay, and hurried him to Würzburg, bound
on horseback. But as it was near the end of the week, 4000 pilgrims
had already arrived at Niklashausen, and, on hearing the news of the
attack, they hurried after the marauders, and caught them up close
by the Castle of Würzburg. One of the knights was wounded, but his
comrades succeeded in carrying him within the walls. The peasants
failed to effect the intended rescue. By the Sunday, 34,000 peasants
had assembled at Niklashausen; but the report of the capture of Boheim
had a depressing effect, and several thousands returned home. There
were nevertheless some among the bands who, instigated probably by
Boheim's friend, the parish priest of Niklashausen, endeavoured to
rally the remaining multitude and incite them to a new attempt at
rescue. One of them alleged that the Holy Trinity had appeared to him,
and commanded that they should proceed with their pilgrim candles in
their hands to the Castle of Würzburg, that the doors would open of
themselves, and that their prophet would walk out to greet them. About
16,000 followed these leaders, marching many hours through the night,
and arriving early next morning at the castle with flaming candles,
and armed with the roughest weapons. Kunz von Thunfeld, a decayed
knight, and Michael, his son, constituted themselves the leaders of the
motley band. The marshal of the castle received them, demanding their
pleasure. "We require the holy youth," said the peasants. "Surrender
him to us, and all will be well; refuse, and we will use force." On
the marshal's hesitating in his answer, he was greeted with a shower
of stones, which drove him to seek safety within the walls. The bishop
opened fire on the peasants, but after a short time sent one of his
knights to announce that the cause of their preacher would be duly
considered at a proper time and place, conjuring them at the same time
to depart immediately in accordance with their vows. By cajolery and
threats he succeeded in his object; the bands raised the siege of the
castle, and dispersed homewards in straggling parties. The ruffianly
scoundrel no sooner observed that the unsuspecting peasants were
quietly wending their way home in small bodies, without a thought of
hostilities, than he ordered his knights to pursue them, to attack
them in the rear, and to murder or capture the ringleaders. The poor
people, nevertheless, defended themselves with courage against this
cowardly onslaught; twelve of them were left dead on the spot; many
of the remainder sought shelter in the church of the neighbouring
village. Threatened there with fire and sword, they surrendered, and
were brought back to Würzburg and thrown into the dungeons of the
castle. The majority were liberated before long; but the peasant who
was alleged to have received the vision of the Holy Trinity, as well
as he who had wounded the knight on the occasion of the attempt at
rescue a few days before, were detained in prison, and on the following
Friday were beheaded outside the castle. Hans Boheim was at the same
time burned to ashes. The leader of the revolt, Kunz von Thunfeld, a
feudatory of the bishop, fled the territory, and was only allowed to
return on his formally surrendering his lands in perpetuity to the
bishopric. Such was the history of a movement that may be reckoned as
one of the more direct forerunners of the peasants' war.
In the years 1491 and 1492 occurred the rising of the oppressed and
plundered villeins of the Abbot of Kempten. The ecclesiastics on this
domain had exhausted every possible means of injuring the unfortunate
peasants, and numbers of free villeins had been converted into serfs by
means of forged documents. The immediate cause of the revolt, however,
was the seizure, by the abbot, of the stock of wine of a peasant
who had just died, in addition to the horse which he was empowered
to claim. An onslaught was made by the infuriated peasants on the
monastery, and the abbot had to retire to his stronghold, the Castle of
Liebenthann, hard by. The Emperor ultimately intervened, and effected
a compromise. But the first organised peasant movement took place in
Elsass[7] in 1493, and comprised burghers as well as peasants among
its numbers. They were for the most part feudatories of the Bishop of
Strassburg. By devious paths the members of this secret organisation
were wont to betake themselves to the hill of Hungerberg, north-west
of the little town of Schlettstadt. The ostensible objects of the
association were complete freedom for the common man, reformation
of the Church in the sense that no priest should have more than one
benefice, the introduction of a year of jubilee, in which all debts
should be abolished, the extinction of all tithes, dues and other
burdens, and the abolition of the spiritual courts and the territorial
juridical court at Rothweil. A _Judenhetze_ also appears amongst the
articles. The leader of this movement was one Jacob Wimpfeling. The
programme and plan of action was to seize the town of Schlettstadt,
to plunder the monastery there, and then by forced marches to spread
themselves over all Elsass, surprising one town after another.
It would seem that this was the first peasant movement that received
the name of _Bundschuh_, and the almost superstitious importance
attached to the sign of this kind emblazoned on the flag is
characteristic of the Middle Ages. The banner was the result of careful
deliberations, and the final decision was that as the knight was
distinguished by his spurs, so the peasant rising to obtain justice for
his class should take as his emblem the common shoe he was accustomed
to wear, laced from the ankle up to the knee with leathern thongs. They
fondly hoped that the moment this banner was displayed, all capable of
fighting would flock to the standard, from the villages and smaller
towns.
Just as all was prepared for the projected stroke, the _Bundschuh_
shared the common fate of similar movements, and was betrayed; and this
in spite of the terrible threats that were held out to all joining, in
the event of their turning traitors. It must be admitted that there was
much folly in the manner in which many persons were enrolled, and this
may have led to the speedy betrayal. Everybody who was suspected of
having an inkling of the movement was forced to swear allegiance to the
secret league. Immediately on the betrayal, bodies of knights scoured
the country, mercilessly seizing all suspected of belonging to the
conspiracy, and dragging them to the nearest tribunal, where they were
tortured and finally quartered alive or hung. Many of the fugitives
succeeded in taking refuge in Switzerland, where they seem to have been
kindly welcomed. But the _Bundschuh_ only slept, it was by no means
extinguished.
In the year 1502, nine years later, the bishopric of _Speyer_, the
court of which was noted for its extravagance and tyranny, had to face
another _Bundschuh_. This second movement had able men at its head,
and extended over well nigh all the regions of the Upper and Middle
Rhine. It similarly took the nature of a conspiracy, rather than of
an open rebellion. Within a few weeks, 7000 men and 400 women had
been sworn into the league, from a large number of villages, hamlets
and small towns, for the larger towns were purposely left out, the
movement being essentially a peasant one. The village and _mark_ of
Untergrünbach was its centre. Its object and aim was nothing less
than the complete overthrow of the existing ecclesiastical and feudal
organisation of the Empire. The articles of the association declared:
"We have joined ourselves together in order that we may be free. We
will free ourselves with arms in our hands, for we would be as the
Swiss. We will root out and abolish all authorities and lordships
from the land, and march against them with the force of our host and
with well-armed hand under our banner. And all who do not honour and
acknowledge us shall be killed. The princes and nobles broken and done
with, we will storm the clergy in their foundations and abbeys. We will
overpower them, and hunt out and kill all priests and monks together."
The property of the clergy and the nobles was to be seized and divided;
as in the former case, all feudal dues were to be abolished, the
primitive communism in the use of the land, and of what was on it, was
to be resumed. The pass-word, by means of which the members of the
organisation were known to one another, was the answer to the question:
"How fares it?" The question and answer were in the form of a rhyme:--
"Loset! Was ist nun für ein Wesen?"
"Wir mögen vor Pfaffen und Adel nit genesen."
This may be paraphrased as follows:--
"Well, now! And how doth it fare?"
"Of priests and of nobles we've enough and to spare."
The idea was to rise at the opportune moment, as the Swiss had done,
to free themselves of all intermediate lordship, and to recognise
no master below the King of the Romans and the Emperor. "Nought but
the justice of God" was the motto of their flag, and their colours
were white and blue. Before the figure of a crucifix a peasant knelt,
and below was depicted a great _Bundschuh_, the sign which had now
become established as the symbol of the peasants' movements. With
consummate tact, the leaders of the revolt forbade any members to go
to confession, and it was the disregard of this order that led to the
betrayal of the cause. A peasant in confession revealed the secret to a
priest, who in his turn revealed it to the authorities. Ecclesiastics,
princes, and nobles at once took their measures. The most barbarous
persecution and punishment of all suspected of having been engaged in
the _Bundschuh_ conspiracy followed. Those concerned had their property
confiscated, their wives and children were driven from the country,
and they themselves were in many cases quartered alive; the more
prominent men, by a refinement of cruelty, being dragged to the place
of execution tied to a horse's tail. A tremendous panic seized all the
privileged classes, from the Emperor to the knight. They earnestly
discussed the situation in no less than three separate assemblies of
the estates. Large numbers of those involved in this second _Bundschuh_
managed to escape, owing to the pluck and loyalty of the peasants. A
few bands were hastily got together, and, although quite insufficient
to effect a successful revolt, they were able to keep the knightly
warriors and _landesknechte_ at bay at certain critical points, so as
to give the men who had really been the life and intelligence of the
movement time to escape into Switzerland or into other territories
where they were unknown. In some cases the secret was so well kept that
the local organisers remained unnoticed even in their own villages.
For ten years after the collapse of the second _Bundschuh_ in the
Rhenish district, the peasants remained quiet. It was not till 1512
that things began again to stir. One of the leaders, who had escaped
notice on the suppression of the former conspiracy, was Joss Fritz.
He was himself a native of Untergrünbach, which had been its seat. He
there acted as _Bannwart_ or ranger of the district lands. For nearly
ten years Joss wandered about from country to country, but amid all his
struggles for existence he never forgot the _Bundschuh_. Joss was a
handsome man, of taking and even superior manners. He was very careful
in his dress, sometimes apparelling himself in black jerkin with white
hose, sometimes in red with yellow hose, sometimes in drab with green
hose. He would seem to have been at one time a _landesknecht_, and
had certainly taken part in various campaigns in a military capacity.
Whether it was from his martial bearing or the engaging nature of his
personality, it is evident that Joss Fritz was in his way a born leader
of men. About 1512 Joss settled down in a village called Lehen, a few
miles from the town of Freiburg, in Breisgau. Here he again obtained
the position of _Bannwart_, and here he began to seriously gather
together the scattered threads of the old movement, and to collect
recruits. He went to work cautiously; first of all confining himself
to general complaints of the degeneracy of the times in the village
tavern, or before the doors of the cottagers on summer evenings. He
soon became the centre of an admiring group of swains, who looked up
to him as the much-travelled man of the world, who eagerly sought his
conversation, and who followed his counsel in their personal affairs.
As Joss saw that he was obtaining the confidence of his neighbours,
his denunciations of the evils of the time grew more earnest and
impassioned. At the same time he threw out hints as to the ultimate
outcome of the existing state of things. But it was only after many
months that he ventured to broach the real purpose of his life. One
day when they were all assembled round him, he hinted that he might
be able to tell them something to their advantage, would they but
pledge themselves to secrecy. He then took each individually, and after
calming the man's conscience with the assurance that the proposal for
which he claimed strict secrecy was an honourable one, he expounded
his plan of an organisation of all the oppressed, an undertaking which
he claimed to be in full accord with Holy Writ. He never insisted upon
an immediate adhesion, but preferred to leave his man to think the
matter over.
Joss would sometimes visit his neighbours in their houses, explaining
to them how all ancient custom, right and tradition was being broken
through to gratify the rapacity of the ruling classes. He put forward
as the objects of the undertaking the suppression of the payment of
interest after it had amounted to an equivalent of the original sum
lent; also that no one was to be required to give more than one day's
service per year to his lord. "We will," he declared, "govern ourselves
according to our old rights and traditions, of which we have been
forcibly and wrongfully deprived by our masters. Thou knowest well,"
he would continue, "how long we have been laying our claims before the
Austrian Government at Ensisheim."[8]
From speaking of small grievances, Joss was gradually led to develop his
scheme for the overthrow of feudalism, and for the establishment of
what was tantamount to primitive conditions. At the same time he gave
his hearers a rendezvous at a certain hour of eventide in a meadow,
called the _Hardmatte_, which lay outside the village, and skirted a
wood. The stillness of the hour, broken only by the sounds of nature
hushing herself to rest for the night, was, at the time appointed,
invaded by the eager talk of groups of villagers. All his little
company assembled, Joss Fritz here, for the first time, fully developed
his schemes. In future, said he, we must see that we have no other
lords than God, the Pope, and the Emperor; the Court at Rothweil, he
said, must be abolished; each must be able to obtain justice in his
native village, and no churchman must be allowed to hold more than
one benefice; the superfluity of the monasteries must be distributed
amongst the poor; the dues and imposts with which the peasants are
burdened must be removed; a permanent peace must be established
throughout Christendom, as the perpetual feuds of the nobles meant
destruction and misery for the peasants; finally, the primitive
communism in woods, pasture, water, and the chase must be restored.
Joss Fritz's proposals struck a sympathetic chord in the hearts of his
hearers. It was only when he wound up by insisting upon the necessity
of forming a new _Bundschuh_ that some few of them hung back and went
to obtain the advice of the village priest on the matter. Father John
(such was his name) was, however, in full accord in his ideas with
Joss, and answered that the proposals were indeed a godly thing, the
success of which was foretold in the Scriptures themselves.
The meetings on the _Hardmatte_ led to the formation of a kind of
committee, composed of those who were most devoted to the cause. These
were Augustin Enderlin, Kilian Mayer, Hans Freuder, Hans and Karius
Heitz, Peter Stublin, Jacob Hauser, Hans Hummel--Hummel hailed from the
neighbourhood of Stuttgart--and Hieronymus, who was also a stranger, a
journeyman baker working at the mill of Lehen, who had travelled far,
and had acquired a considerable fund of oratory. All these men were
untiring in their exertions to obtain recruits for the new movement.
After having prepared the latter's minds, they handed over the
new-comers to Joss for deeper initiation, if he thought fit. It was not
in crusades and pilgrimages he taught them, but in the _Bundschuh_ that
the "holy sepulchre" was to be obtained. The true "holy sepulchre" was
to be found, namely, in the too long buried liberties of the people.
The new _Bundschuh_, he maintained, had ramifications extending as far
as Cologne, and embracing members from all orders.
Joss Fritz had indeed before coming to Lehen travelled through the
Black Forest and the district of Speyer, in the attempt, by no means
altogether unsuccessful, to reunite the crushed and scattered branches
of the old _Bundschuh_. Among the friends he had made in this way was a
poor knight of the name of Stoffel, of Freiburg. The latter travelled
incessantly in the cause; he was always carefully dressed, and usually
rode on a white horse. The missionaries of the _Bundschuh_, under the
direction of Joss Fritz, assumed many different characters; now they
were peasants, now townsmen, now decayed knights, according to the
localities they visited. The organisation of the movement was carried
out on lines which have been since reproduced in the Fenian rising. It
was arranged in "circles," the members of which knew one another, but
not those outside the "circle". Even the beggars' guild was pressed
into the service, and very useful adjuncts the beggars were, owing to
their nomadic habits. The heads of the "circles" communicated with
each other at intervals as to the number of recruits and as to the
morale of their members. They compared notes with the two leaders
of the movement, Joss and his friend Stoffel, both of whom rode
constantly from place to place to keep their workers up to the mark.
The muster-roll would be held on these occasions, as at Lehen itself,
after dark, and in some woodland glade, near the village. The village
taverns, generally the kitchens of some better-to-do peasant, were
naturally among the best recruiting grounds, and the hosts themselves
were often heads of "circles". Strange and picturesque must have been
these meetings after nightfall, when the members of the "circle" came
together, the peasants in their plain blue or grey cloth and buff
leather, the leaders in what to us seem the fantastic costumes of
the period, red stockings, trunk-hose and doublet slashed with bright
yellow, or the whole dress of yellow slashed with black, the slouch
hat, with ostrich feather, surmounting the whole; the short sword for
the leaders, and a hoe or other agricultural implement for the peasant,
constituted the arms of the company.
There was a visible sign by which the brethren recognised each other:
it was a sign in the form of the letter H, of black stuff in a red
field, sewn on to the breast-cloth. There appears also to have been
another sign which certain of the members bore instead of the above;
this consisted of three cross slits or slashes in the stuff of the
right sleeve. This _Bundschuh_, like the previous one in Untergrünbach,
had its countersign, which, to the credit of all concerned, be it said,
was never revealed, and is not known to this day. The new _Bundschuh_
was now thoroughly organised with all its officers, none of whom
received money for their services.
The articles of association drawn up were the result of many nightly
meetings on the _Hardmatte_, and embodied the main points insisted
upon by Joss in his exhortations to the peasants. They included the
abolition of all feudal powers. God, the Pope, and the Emperor were
alone to be recognised as having authority. The Court at Rothweil
and all the ecclesiastical courts were to be abolished, and justice
relegated to the village council as of old. The interest payable on the
debts of the mortgaged holdings of the peasants was to be discontinued.
Fishing, hunting, woods and pasture were to be free to all. The
clergy were to be limited to one benefice apiece. The monasteries and
ecclesiastical foundations were to be curtailed, and their superfluous
property confiscated. All feudal dues were to cease.
The strange and almost totemistic superstition that the mediæval mind
attached to symbolism is here evinced by the paramount importance
acquired by the question of the banner. A banner was costly, and the
_Bundschuh_ was poor, but the banner was the first necessity of every
movement. In this case, it was obligatory that the banner should have
a _Bundschuh_ inscribed upon it. Artists of that time objected to
painting _Bundschuhs_ on banners; they were afraid to be compromised.
Hence it was, above all things, necessary to have plenty of money
wherewith to bribe some painter. Kilian Mayer gave five vats of wine
to a baker, also one of the brotherhood, in Freiburg, to be sold in
that town. The proceeds were brought to Joss as a contribution to
the banner fund. Many another did similarly; some of those who met
on the _Hardmatte_, however, objected to this tax. But ultimately
Joss managed, by hook or by crook, to scrape together what was deemed
needful. Joss then called upon a "brother" from a distant part of the
country, one known to no one in Freiburg, to repair to the latter
city and hunt up a painter. The "brother" was in a state of dire
apprehension, and went to the house of the painter Friedrich, but at
first appeared not to know for what he had come. With much hesitation,
he eventually gasped out that he wanted a _Bundschuh_ painted.
Friedrich did not at all like the proposal, and kicked the unfortunate
peasant into the street, telling him not to come in future with such
questionable orders. The artist instantly informed the Town Council of
Freiburg of the occurrence; but as the latter did not know whence the
mysterious personage had come, nor whither he had gone, they had to
leave the matter in abeyance. They issued orders, however, for all true
and faithful burghers to be on the look-out for further traces of the
mischief.
After this failure, Joss bethought him that he had better take the
matter in hand himself. Now, there was another artist of Freiburg, by
name Theodosius, who was just then painting frescoes in the church at
Lehen; to him Joss went one evening with Hans Enderlin, a person of
authority in the village, and Kilian Mayer. They invited him to the
house of one of the party, and emptied many a measure of wine. When
they had all drunk their fill, they went to walk in the garden, just as
the stars were beginning to come out. Joss now approached the painter
with his project. He told him that there was a stranger in the village
who wanted a small banner painted and had asked him (Joss) to demand
the cost. Theodosius showed himself amenable as regards this point, but
wanted to know what was to be the device on the banner. Directly Joss
mentioned the word _Bundschuh_, the worthy painter gave a start, and
swore that not for the wealth of the Holy Roman Empire itself would he
undertake such a business. They all saw that it was no use pressing him
any further, and so contented themselves with threatening him with dire
consequences should he divulge the conversation that he had had with
them. Hans Enderlin also reminded him that he had already taken an oath
of secrecy in all matters relating to the village, on his engagement to
do church work, a circumstance that curiously enough illustrates the
conditions of mediæval life. The painter, fearful of not receiving his
pay for the church work, if nothing worse, prudently kept silent.
Joss was at his wits' end. The silk of the flag was already bought, and
even sewn; blue, with a white cross in the middle, were the colours;
but to begin operations before the sign of the _Bundschuh_ was painted,
entered into the head of no one. In accordance with the current belief
in magic, the symbol itself was supposed to possess a virtue, without
the aid of which it was impossible to hope for success. There was
nothing left for it but for Joss to start on a journey to the free city
of Heilbronn in Swabia, where he knew there lived a painter of some
ability. Arrived there, Joss dissembled his real object, pretending
that he was a Swiss, who, when fighting in a great battle, had made a
vow that if he came out safe and sound, he would undertake a pilgrimage
to Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), and there dedicate a banner to the mother
of God. He begged the painter to make a suitable design for him,
with a crucifix, the Virgin and St. John the Baptist, and underneath
a _Bundschuh_. The Heilbronn artist was staggered at the latter
suggestion, and asked what he meant. Joss appeared quite innocent, and
said that he was a shoemaker's son from Stein-am-Rhein, that his father
had a _Bundschuh_ as his trade-sign, and in order that it might be
known that the gift was from him, he wished his family emblem to appear
upon it. Round the flag were to be the words: "Lord, defend Thy Divine
justice". These representations overcame the painter's scruples, and in
a few days the banner was finished. Hiding it under his doublet, Joss
hurried back to Lehen.
At last all was ready for the great coup. The _Kirchweihe_ (or village
festival, held every year on the name-day of the patron saint of a
village church) was being held at a neighbouring village on the
19th of October. This was the date fixed for a final general meeting
of the conspirators to determine the plan of attack and to decide
whether Freiburg should be its object, or some smaller town in the
neighbourhood. The confederates in Elsass were ordered, as soon as the
standard of revolt was raised in Breisgau (Baden), to move across the
Rhine to Burkheim, where the banner of the league would be flying.
Special instructions were given to the beggars to spy round the
towns and in all inns and alehouses, and to bring reports to Lehen.
Arrangements were also made for securing at least one or two adherents
in each of the guilds in Freiburg. All these orders were carried out
in accordance with the directions made by Joss before his departure.
But whilst he was away the members lost their heads. When too late
they bethought themselves to win over an old experienced warrior who
lived in Freiburg, a cousin of one of the chief conspirators at Lehen.
Had they done so earlier it is likely enough that he would have been
able to secure them possession of the city. As it happened, things
were managed too hurriedly. Before matters were ripe the chief men
grew careless of all precautions, so confident were they of success.
One of the conspirators within the city set fire to a stable with
a view to creating a panic, in the course of which the keys of the
city gates might be stolen and the leaguers admitted. The attempt,
however, was discovered before the fire gained any hold, and merely
put the authorities on the alert. Again, three members of the league
seized upon a peasant a short distance from the city, dragged him
into a neighbouring wood, and made him swear allegiance. After he had
done this under compulsion they exposed to him their intentions as
to Freiburg. The peasant proving recalcitrant, even to the extent of
expressing horror at the proposal, the three drew their knives upon
him, and would have murdered him when the sound of horses was heard on
the high road close by, and, struck with panic, they let him go and
hid themselves in the recesses of the wood. The peasant, of course,
revealed all to his confessor the same evening, and wanted to know
whether the oath he had taken under compulsion was binding on him.
The priest put himself at once in communication with the Imperial
Commissary of Freiburg, who made the City Corporation acquainted
with the facts. Two other traitors a few days after came to the
assistance of the authorities, and revealed many important secrets.
Count Philip of Baden, their over-lord, to whom these disclosures were
made, was not long in placing them at the disposal of the Corporation
of Freiburg and of the Austrian Government at Ensisheim. Late the
following night, October 4, messengers were sent in all directions to
warn the authorities of the neighbouring villages and towns to prepare
themselves for the outbreak of the conspiracy. Double watches were
placed at the gates of Freiburg and on all the towers of the walls. The
guilds were called together, and their members instructed to wake each
other up immediately on the sound of the storm-bell, when they were
all to meet in the cathedral close. The moment that these preparations
were known at Lehen, a meeting was called together on the _Hardmatte_
at vespers; but in the absence of Joss Fritz, and, as ill-luck would
have it, in that also of one or two of the best organisers who were
away on business of the league, divided counsels prevailed. In the
very midst of all this, two hundred citizens of Freiburg armed to the
teeth appeared in Lehen, seized Hans Enderlin and his son, as also
Elsa, the woman with whom Joss had been living, besides other leading
men of the movement. Panic now reigned amongst all concerned. Well
nigh every one took to flight, most of them succeeding in crossing
the frontier to Switzerland. The news of the collapse of the movement
apparently reached Joss before he arrived in Lehen, as there is no
evidence of his having returned there. Many of the conspirators met
together in Basel, amongst them being Joss Fritz with his banner.
They decided to seek an asylum in Zürich. But they were fallen upon
on the way, and two were made prisoners, the rest, among them Joss,
escaping. Those of the conspirators who were taken prisoners behaved
heroically; not the most severe tortures could induce them to reveal
anything of importance. As a consequence, comparatively few of those
compromised fell victims to the vengeance of their noble and clerical
enemies. In Elsass they were not so fortunate as in Baden, many persons
being executed on suspicion. The Imperial Councillor Rudolph was
even sent into Switzerland to demand the surrender of the fugitives,
and two were given up by Schaffhausen. Joss's mistress was liberated
after three weeks, and she was suspected of having harboured him at
different times afterwards. The last distinct traces of him are to be
found in the Black Forest ten years later, during the great rising;
but they are slight, and merely indicate his having taken a part in
this movement. Thus this interesting personality disappears from human
ken. Did the energetic and enthusiastic peasant leader fall a victim
to noble vengeance in 1525, or did he withdraw from public life to a
tranquil old age in some obscure village of Southern Germany? These are
questions which we shall now, it is probable, never be able to answer.
At the same time that the foregoing events were taking place there
was a considerable ferment in Switzerland. Increase of luxury was
beginning to tell there also. The simple cloth or sheepskin of the old
_Eidgenosse_ was now frequently replaced, in the towns especially,
by French and Italian dresses, by doublets of scarlet silk, by
ostrich feathers, and even by cloth of gold. In the cities domestic
architecture began to take on the sumptuousness of the Renaissance
style. The coquettish alliance with Louis XI. in the preceding century
had already opened a way for the introduction of French customs.
Gambling for high stakes became the fashionable amusement in town and
country alike. The story of Hans Waldmann, although belonging to a
period some years earlier than that of this history, illustrates a
decline from the primitive simplicity of the ancient Switzer, a decline
which had become infinitely more accentuated and general at the time
of which we treat. All this led, of course, to harder conditions for
the peasants, which, in the summer of 1513, issued in several minor
revolts. In some cases, notably in that of the peasants of Canton Bern,
the issue was favourable to the insurgents.
In the neighbouring country of Würtemberg an insurrection also burst
forth. It is supposed to have had some connection with the _Bundschuh_
movement at Lehen; but it took the name of "The Poor Conrad". It was
immediately occasioned by the oppression of Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg,
who, to cover the expenses of his luxurious court, was burdening the
peasants with ever-fresh exactions. He had already made debts to the
extent of a million gulden. The towns, no less than the peasantry,
were indignant at the rapacity and insolence of the minions of this
potentate. First, an income-tax was imposed without the concurrence of
the estates, which should have been consulted. Next, an impost was laid
on the daily consumption of meal and wine. The butchers and millers
and vintners were then allowed to falsify their weights and measures,
on the condition that the greater part of their increased profits
went to the duke. "The Poor Conrad" demanded the removal of all these
abuses; and, in addition, the freedom of the chase, of fishery and
of wood-cutting, and the abolition of villein service. In the towns
the poorer citizens, including both guildsmen and journeymen, were
prepared to seize the opportunity of getting rid of their _Ehrbarkeit_.
This movement was also, like the _Bundschuh_ at Lehen, suppressed for
the time being. We have gone at length into the history of the Lehen
_Bundschuh_ as a type of the manner in which the peasant movements of
the time were planned and organised. The methods pursued by "The Poor
Conrad," the midnight meetings, the secret pass-words, the preparations
for sudden risings, were in most respects similar. The skilled and
well-equipped knighthood of Duke Ulrich, though inferior in numbers,
readily dispersed the ill-armed and inexperienced bands of peasants
whom they encountered. To this result the treacherous promises of Duke
Ulrich, which induced large numbers of peasants to lay down their arms,
contributed. The revolt proved a flash in the pan; and although those
who had partaken in it were not punished with the merciless severity
shown by the Austrian Government at Ensisheim, it yet resulted in no
amelioration of the conditions of the people. Many of the leaders, and
not a few of the rank and file, fled the country, and, as in the case
of the Lehen _Bundschuh_, found a refuge in Northern Switzerland.
In the autumn of 1517 Baden was once more the scene of an attempted
peasant rising, its objects being again much the same as were those
of the previous enterprises. Rent and interest were to be abolished,
and no lord recognised except the Emperor. The plan was to surprise
and capture the towns of Weissenburg and Hagenau, and to make a clean
sweep of the imperial councillors and judges, as well as of the knights
and nobles. This conspiracy was, however, also discovered before the
time for action was ripe. There were also, in various parts of Central
Europe, other minor attempts at revolt and conspiracies which it is not
necessary to particularise here. The great rebellion of the year 1514,
in Hungary, however, although not strictly coming within the limits of
our subject, deserves a few words of notice.
At Easter, in that year, the whole of Hungary was stirred up by the
preaching of a crusade against the Turks, then hard pressing the
eastern frontier. All who joined the crusade, down to the lowest
serf, were promised not merely absolution, but freedom. The movement
was immensely popular, thousands crowding to the standards. The
nobles naturally viewed the movement with disfavour; many, in fact,
sallied forth from their castles with their retinues to fetch back
the fugitives. In many cases the seizures were accompanied with
every circumstance of cruelty. As the news of these events reached
the assembled bands in their camp, a change of disposition became
manifest. The enthusiasm for vanquishing the Turk abroad speedily gave
way to an enthusiasm for vanquishing the Turk at home. Everywhere
throughout the camp were heard threats of vengeance. Finally, one
George Doza, who would seem to have been a genuine popular hero in the
best sense of the word, placed himself at their head. George Doza's
aims were not confined to mere vengeance on the offending nobles.
They extended to the conception of a complete reorganisation of the
conditions of the oppressed classes throughout the country. In vain
an order came from the Court at Ofen for the army to disperse. Doza
divided his forces into five bodies, each of which was to concentrate
its efforts on a definite district, at the same time summoning the
whole population to join. The destruction of castles, and the slaughter
of their inmates, became general throughout the land. For a moment the
nobles seemed paralysed; but they soon recovered themselves, and two
of their number, Johann Zapolya and Johann Boremiszsza, aided by the
inhabitants of the city of Buda-Pesth, got together an army to save the
situation for their colleagues. They were not long in joining battle
with the insurgents. The latter, deserted at the beginning by some of
their leaders, who went over to the enemy, fought bravely, but had
eventually to yield to superior arms and discipline. A large number of
prisoners were taken, of whom the majority were barbarously executed,
and the rest sent home, with ears and noses cut off.
Meanwhile, George Doza, who had been besieging Szegedin, withdrew his
forces, and gave battle to Bishop Csaky and the Count of Temeswar,
who were advancing with troops to relieve the town. After two days'
hard fighting, victory rewarded the bravery of the peasants. Doza's
followers demanded vengeance for their murdered and mutilated comrades.
The bishop was impaled, and the royal treasurer of the district hanged
on a high gallows. But Doza's was the only division of the popular
army that met with any success. The rest, on coming to grips with the
nobles, were dispersed and almost annihilated. The remnants joined the
forces of their commander-in-chief, whose army was thus augmented from
day to day. Doza now issued a decree abolishing king and higher and
lower nobility, deposing all bishops save one, and proclaiming the
equality of all men before God. One of his lieutenants then succeeded
in recruiting what amounted to a second army, containing a large force
of cavalry. He moved on Temeswar, but committed the imprudence of
undertaking a long siege of this powerful fortress. After two months
his army began to get demoralised. A few days before the place would
have had to surrender, Doza was surprised by the Transylvanian Army.
In spite of this, however, he deployed his troops with incredible
rapidity, and a terrific battle, long undecided, ensued. After several
hours of hard fighting, one of the wings of Doza's army took to flight.
General confusion followed, in the midst of which Doza might have
been seen in the forefront of the battle like an ancient hero, hewing
down nobles right and left, until his sword broke in his hand. He was
then instantly seized, and made prisoner in company with his brother
Gregory. The latter was immediately beheaded. Doza and about forty of
his officers were thrown into a vile dungeon in Temeswar and deprived
of all nourishment. On the fourteenth day of their incarceration,
nine alone remained alive. These nine, Doza at their head, were
led out into the open space before their prison. An iron throne was
erected there and made red hot, and Doza, loaded with chains, was
forcibly placed upon it. A red-hot iron crown was laid upon his head,
and a red-hot iron sceptre thrust into his hand. His companions
were then offered their lives on condition that they forthwith tore
off and devoured the flesh of their leader. Three, who refused with
indignation, were at once hewn in pieces. Six did as they were bidden.
"Dogs!" cried Doza. This was the only sound that escaped him. Torn
with red-hot iron pincers, he died. The defeated peasants were impaled
and hanged by the hundred. It is estimated that over 60,000 of them
perished in this war, and in the reprisals that followed it. The result
of the insurrection was a more brutal oppression than had ever been
known before.
At the same time various insurrections of a local nature were taking
place in Germany and in the Austrian territories. Amid the Styrian
and Carinthian Alps there were movements of the peasants, who, in
these remote mountain districts, seem to have retained more of their
primitive independence. In the south-west of Austria there were three
duchies--Kärnthen (Carinthia), Steiermarck (Styria), and the Krain.
At Kärnburg, a short distance from Klagenfurt, was a round stone, on
which were engraved the arms of the country. When a duke assumed the
sovereignty, a peasant belonging to one of the ancient families of a
neighbouring village in which this particular right was hereditary,
attended to offer the new duke the homage of the peasantry. Round the
stone, on which sat the aged representative of the rural communities,
the peasantry of the neighbourhood were gathered. The over-lord,
attired in peasantly costume, advanced towards the stone. With him
were two local dignitaries, one leading a lean black cow, the other an
underfed horse. Bringing up the rear followed the remaining nobility
and knighthood, with the banner of the duchy. The peasant who was
sitting on the fateful stone cried: "Who is he who advances so proudly
into our country?" The surrounding peasants answered: "It is our prince
who comes." "Is he a righteous judge?" asked the peasant on the stone.
"Will he promote the well-being of our land and its freedom? Is he
a protector of the Christian faith and of widows and orphans?" The
multitude shouted: "This he is, and will ever be so". That part of the
ceremony concluded, the duke had to take an oath to the peasant on the
stone that he would not disdain, for the welfare of the land, in any of
the respects mentioned, to nourish himself with such a wretched beast
as the cow accompanying him, or to ride on such a lean and ill-favoured
steed. The peasant on the stone then gave the duke a light box on
the ears, and conjured him in patriarchal fashion to remain ever a
righteous judge and a father to his people. The old countryman then
stood up, and the nobles surrendered to him the cow and horse, which he
led home as his property.
The above singular custom had been kept up in Carinthia until the
middle of the fifteenth century, when the Emperor Frederick III.
refused, in his capacity of local lord, to don the peasant garb,
although he compromised the matter by giving the peasants a deed
establishing them in their ancient freedom. The growing pressure of
taxation and the new imposts, which the wars of Maximilian entailed,
led, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, to an agitation here
also, and, finally, to a rising in which, it is said, as many as 90,000
peasants took part, but which did not immediately come to a head,
owing to timely concessions on the part of the Emperor. The league of
the peasants, in this case, extended over Styria as well as Carinthia
and the Krain. It broke forth again in the spring of 1517, owing to
renewed oppressions on the part of the nobles. Several castles, during
the three months that the revolt lasted, were destroyed, and large
stretches of country laid waste. Not a few nobles were hurled from
their own turrets. The Emperor Maximilian, who, throughout the whole
affair, showed himself not unfavourable to the cause of the peasants,
held his hand, as it would seem, so long as the latter confined
themselves to punishing the notoriously rapacious among the territorial
magnates; but afterwards, when the armed bodies of peasants gradually
melted away, and those that remained lost all discipline, degenerating
into mere plundering bands, he sent a party of a few hundred knights,
who speedily routed the ill-armed and disorderly hordes. Little quarter
was given to the fugitives, and the usual bloody executions followed.
There was, in addition, a heavy indemnity laid on the whole peasantry,
which took the form of a perpetual tax. The revolt in the Krain lasted
longest, and was suppressed with the most bloodshed. Those in Styria
and Carinthia came to an end much sooner, and with less disastrous
results to those who had been engaged in them.
But it was not alone in Germany, or, indeed, in Central Europe, that
a general stirring was visible among the peasant populations at the
beginning of the sixteenth century. It is true that the great revolts,
the Wat Tyler insurrection in England, and the Jacquerie in France,
took place long before; but even when there was no great movement,
sporadic excitement was everywhere noticeable. In Spain, we read of
a peasant revolt, which Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim was engaged
by the territorial lord to quell by his supposed magical powers. In
England, the disturbances of Henry VIII.'s reign, connected with the
suppression of the monasteries, are well known. The expropriation
of the people from the soil to make room for sheep-farms also gave
occasion to periodical disturbances of a local character, which
culminated in 1549 in the famous revolt led by John Ket in East Anglia.
The deep-reaching importance and effective spread of movements was
infinitely greater in the Middle Ages than in modern times. The same
phenomenon presents itself to-day in barbaric and semi-barbaric
communities. At first sight one is inclined to think that there has
been no period in the world's history when it was so easy to stir up
a population as the present, with our newspapers, our telegraphs, our
postal arrangements and our railways. But this is just one of those
superficial notions that are not confirmed by history. We are similarly
apt to think that there was no age in which travel was so widespread,
and formed so great a part of the education of mankind as at present.
There could be no greater mistake. The true age of travelling was the
close of the Middle Ages, or what is known as the Renaissance period.
The man of learning, then just differentiated from the ecclesiastic,
spent the greater part of his life in carrying his intellectual wares
from court to court, and from university to university, just as the
merchant personally carried his goods from city to city in an age in
which commercial correspondence, bill-brokers, and the varied forms
of modern business were but in embryo. It was then that travel really
meant education, the acquirement of thorough and intimate knowledge
of diverse manners and customs. Travel was then not a pastime, but a
serious element in life.
In the same way the spread of a political or social movement was at
least as rapid then as now, and far more penetrating. The methods were,
of course, vastly different from the present; but the human material
to be dealt with was far easier to mould, and kept its shape much more
readily when moulded, than is the case now-a-days. The appearance of a
religious or political teacher in a village or small town of the Middle
Ages was an event which keenly excited the interest of the inhabitants.
It struck across the path of their daily life, leaving behind it a
track hardly conceivable to-day. For one of the salient symptoms of
the change which has taken place since that time is the disappearance
of local centres of activity, and the transference of the intensity
of life to a few large towns. In the Middle Ages, every town, small
no less than large, was a more or less self-sufficing organism,
intellectually and industrially, and was not essentially dependent on
the outside world for its social sustenance. This was especially the
case in Central Europe, where communication was much more imperfect
and dangerous than in Italy, France, or England. In a society without
newspapers, without easy communication with the rest of the world,
when the vast majority could neither read nor write, when books were
rare and costly, and accessible only to the privileged few, a new idea
bursting upon one of these communities was eagerly welcomed, discussed
in the council chamber of the town, in the hall of the castle, in the
refectory of the monastery, at the social board of the burgess, in
the workroom, and, did it but touch his interests, in the hut of the
peasant. It was canvassed, too, at church festivals (_Kirchweihe_), the
only regular occasion on which the inhabitants of various localities
came together. In the absence of all other distraction, men thought
it out in all the bearings which their limited intellectual horizon
permitted. If calculated in any way to appeal to them, it soon struck
root, and became a part of their very nature, a matter for which, if
occasion were, they were prepared to sacrifice goods, liberty, and even
life itself. In the present day a new idea is comparatively slow in
taking root. Amid the myriad distractions of modern life, perpetually
chasing one another, there is no time for any one thought, however
wide-reaching in its bearings, to take a firm hold. In order that it
should do this in the _modern mind_, it must be again and again borne
in upon this, not always too receptive intellectual substance. People
require to read of it day after day in their newspapers, or to hear
it preached from countless platforms, before any serious effect is
created. In the simple life of former ages it was not so.
The mode of transmitting intelligence, especially such as was connected
with the stirring up of political and religious movements, was in
those days of a nature of which we have now little conception. The
sort of thing in vogue then may be compared to the methods adopted
in India to prepare the mutiny of 1857, when the mysterious cake was
passed from village to village, signifying that the moment had come
for the outbreak. We have already seen how Joss Fritz used the guild
of beggars as fetchers and carriers of news and as auxiliaries in
his organisation generally. The fact is noteworthy, moreover, that
his confidence in them does not seem to have been misplaced, for the
collapse of the movement cannot certainly be laid to their account. The
sense of _esprit de corps_ and of that kind of honour most intimately
associated with it is, it must also be remembered, infinitely keener
in ruder states of society than under a high civilisation. The growth
of civilisation, as implying the disruption of the groups in which the
individual is merged under more primitive conditions, and his isolation
as an autonomous unit having vague and very elastic moral duties to his
"country" or to the whole of mankind, but none towards any definite and
proximate social whole, necessarily destroys that communal spirit which
prevails in the former case. This is one of the striking truths which
the history of these peasant risings illustrates in various ways and
brings vividly home to us.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] We adopt the German spelling of the name of the province
usually known in this country as Alsace, for the reason that at the
time of which this history treats it had never been French; and the
French language was probably little more known there than in other
parts of Germany.
[8] It will be seen from the historical map that Breisgau and
Sundgau were feudal appanages of the house of Austria. Ensisheim was
the seat of the _Habsburg_ over-lordship in the district (not to be
confounded with the _imperial_ power).