Protestant revolt and was looked upon with high consideration by most of
the princes of Germany, his doctrines spreading until, during his
lifetime, they extended to Moravia, Bohemia, Denmark and Sweden. Then,
in 1546, he died at Eisleben, near the castle in which he had dwelt
during the most critical period of his life.
_SOLYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT AT GUNTZ._
Solyman the Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey, had collected an army of
dimensions as magnificent as his name, and was on his march to overwhelm
Austria and perhaps subject all western Europe to his arms. A few years
before he had swept Hungary with his hordes, taken and plundered its
cities of Buda and Pesth, and made the whole region his own. Belgrade,
which had been so valiantly defended against his predecessor, had fallen
into his infidel hands. The gateways of western Europe were his; he had
but to open them and march through; doubtless there had come to him
glorious dreams of extending the empire of the crescent to the western
seas. And yet the proud and powerful sultan was to be checked in his
course by an obstacle seemingly as insignificant as if the sting of a
hornet should stop the career of an elephant. The story is a remarkable
one, and deserves to be better known.
Vast was the army which Solyman raised. He had been years in gathering
men and equipments. Great work lay before him, and he needed great means
for its accomplishment. It is said that three hundred thousand men
marched under his banners. So large was the force, so great the quantity
of its baggage and artillery, that its progress was necessarily a slow
one, and sixty days elapsed during its march from Constantinople to
Belgrade.
Here was time for Ferdinand of Austria to bring together forces for the
defence of his dominions against the leviathan which was slowly moving
upon them. He made efforts, but they were not of the energetic sort
which the crisis demanded, and had the Turkish army been less unwieldly
and more rapid, Vienna might have fallen almost undefended into
Solyman's hands. Fortunately, large bodies move slowly, and the sultan
met with an obstacle that gave the requisite time for preparation.
On to Belgrade swept the grand army, with its multitude of standards and
all the pomp and glory of its vast array. The slowness with which it
came was due solely to its size, not in any sense to lack of energy in
the warlike sultan. An anecdote is extant which shows his manner of
dealing with difficulties. He had sent forward an engineer with orders
to build a bridge over the river Drave, to be constructed at a certain
point, and be ready at a certain time. The engineer went, surveyed the
rapid stream, and sent back answer to the sultan that it was impossible
to construct a bridge at that point.
But Solyman's was one of those magnificent souls that do not recognize
the impossible. He sent the messenger back to the engineer, in his hand
a linen cord, on his lips this message:
"Your master, the sultan, commands you, without consideration of the
difficulties, to complete the bridge over the Drave. If it be not ready
for him on his arrival, he will have you strangled with this cord."
The bridge was built. Solyman had learned the art of overcoming the
impossible. He was soon to have a lesson in the art of overcoming the
difficult.
Belgrade was in due time reached. Here the sultan embarked his artillery
and heavy baggage on the Danube, three thousand vessels being employed
for that purpose. They were sent down the stream, under sufficient
escort, towards the Austrian capital, while the main army, lightened of
much of its load, prepared to march more expeditiously than heretofore
through Hungary towards its goal.
Ferdinand of Austria, alarmed at the threatening approach of the Turks,
had sent rich presents and proposals of peace to Solyman at Belgrade;
but those had the sole effect of increasing his pride and making him
more confidant of victory. He sent an insulting order to the ambassadors
to follow his encampment and await his pleasure, and paid no further
heed to their pacific mission.
The Save, an affluent of the Danube, was crossed, and the army lost
sight of the great stream, and laid its course by a direct route through
Sclavonia towards the borders of Styria, the outlying Austrian province
in that direction. It was the shortest line of march available, the
distance to be covered being about two hundred miles. On reaching the
Styrian frontier, the Illyrian mountain chain needed to be crossed, and
within it lay the obstacle with which Solyman had to contend.
The route of the army led through a mountain pass. In this pass was a
petty and obscure town, Guntz by name, badly fortified, and garrisoned
by a mere handful of men, eight hundred in all. Its principal means of
defence lay in the presence of an indomitable commander, Nicholas
Jurissitz, a man of iron nerve and fine military skill.
Ibrahim Pasha, who led the vanguard of the Turkish force, ordered the
occupation of this mountain fortress, and learned with anger and
mortification that Guntz had closed its gates and frowned defiance on
his men. Word was sent back to Solyman, who probably laughed in his
beard at the news. It was as if a fly had tried to stop an ox.
"Brush it away and push onward," was probably the tenor of his orders.
But Guntz was not to be brushed away. It stood there like an awkward
fact, its guns commanding the pass through which the army must march, a
ridiculous obstacle which had to be dealt with however time might press.
The sultan sent orders to his advance-guard to take the town and march
on. Ibrahim Pasha pushed forward, assailed it, and found that he had not
men enough for the work. The little town with its little garrison had
the temper of a shrew, and held its own against him valiantly. A few
more battalions were sent, but still the town held out. The sultan,
enraged at this opposition, now despatched what he considered an
overwhelming force, with orders to take the town without delay, and to
punish the garrison as they deserved for their foolish obstinacy. But
what was his surprise and fury to receive word that the pigmy still held
out stubbornly against the leviathan, that all their efforts to take it
were in vain, and that its guns commanded and swept the pass so that it
was impossible to advance under its storm of death-dealing balls.
Thundering vengeance, Solyman now ordered his whole army to advance,
sweep that insolent and annoying obstacle from the face of the earth,
and then march on towards the real goal of their enterprise, the still
distant city of Vienna, the capital and stronghold of the Christian
dogs.
Upon Guntz burst the whole storm of the war, against Guntz it thundered,
around Guntz it lightened; yet still Guntz stood, proud, insolent,
defiant, like a rock in the midst of the sea, battered by the waves of
war's tempest, yet rising still in unyielding strength, and dashing back
the bloody spray which lashed its walls in vain.
Solyman's pride was roused. That town he must and would have. He might
have marched past it and left it in the rear, though not without great
loss and danger, for the pass was narrow and commanded by the guns of
Guntz, and he would have had to run the gantlet of a hailstorm of iron
balls. But he had no thought of passing it; his honor was involved.
Guntz must be his and its insolent garrison punished, or how could
Solyman the Magnificent ever hold up his head among monarchs and
conquerors again?
On every side the town was assailed; cannon surrounded it and poured
their balls upon its walls; they were planted on the hills in its rear;
they were planted on lofty mounds of earth which overtopped its walls
and roofs; from every direction they thundered threat; to every
direction Guntz thundered back defiance.
An attempt was made to undermine the walls, but in vain; the commandant,
Jurissitz, was far too vigilant to be reached by burrowing. Breach after
breach was made in the walls, and as quickly repaired, or new walls
built. Assault after assault was made and hurled back. Every effort was
baffled by the skill, vigor, and alertness of the governor and the
unyielding courage of his men, and still the days went by and still
Guntz stood.
Solyman, indignant and alarmed, tried the effect of promises, bribes,
and threats. Jurissitz and his garrison should be enriched if they
yielded; they should die under torture if they persisted. These efforts
proved as useless as cannon-balls. The indomitable Jurissitz resisted
promises and threats as energetically as he had resisted shot and balls.
The days went on. For twenty-eight days that insignificant fortress and
its handful of men defied the great Turkish army and held it back in
that mountain-pass. In the end the sultan, with all his pride and all
his force, was obliged to accept a feigned submission and leave
Jurissitz and his men still in possession of the fortress they had held
so long and so well.
They had held it long enough to save Austria, as it proved. While the
sultan's cannon were vainly bombarding its walls, Europe was gathering
around Vienna in defence. From every side troops hurried to the
salvation of Austria from the Turks. Italy, the Netherlands, Bohemia.
Poland, Germany, sent their quotas, till an army of one hundred and
thirty thousand men were gathered around Vienna, thirty thousand of them
being cavalry.
Solyman was appalled at the tidings brought him. It had become a
question of arithmetic to his barbarian intellect. If Guntz, with less
than a thousand men, could defy him for a month, what might not Vienna
do with more than a hundred thousand? Winter was not far away. It was
already September. He was separated from his flotilla of artillery. Was
it safe to advance? He answered the question by suddenly striking camp
and retreating with such haste that his marauding horsemen, who were out
in large numbers, were left in ignorance of the movement, and were
nearly all taken or cut to pieces.
Thus ingloriously ended one of the most pretentious invasions of Europe.
For three years Solyman had industriously prepared, gathering the
resources of his wide dominion to the task and fulminating infinite
disaster to the infidels. Yet eight hundred men in a petty mountain town
had brought this great enterprise to naught and sent back the mighty
army of the grand Turk in inglorious retreat.
[Illustration: THE MOSQUE OF SOLYMAN, CONSTANTINOPLE.]
The story of Guntz has few parallels in history; the courage and ability
of its commander were of the highest type of military worthiness; yet
its story is almost unknown and the name of Jurissitz is not classed
among those of the world's heroes. Such is fame.
There is another interesting story of the doings of Solyman and the
gallant defence of a Christian town, which is worthy of telling as an
appendix to that just given. The assault at Guntz took place in the year
1532. In 1566, when Solyman was much older, though perhaps not much
wiser, we find him at his old work, engaged in besieging the small
Hungarian town of Szigeth, west of Mohacs and north of the river Drave,
a stronghold surrounded by the small stream Almas almost as by the
waters of a lake. It was defended by a Croatian named Zrinyr and a
garrison of twenty-five hundred men.
Around this town the Turkish army raged and thundered in its usual
fashion. Within it the garrison defended themselves with all the spirit
and energy they could muster. Step by step the Turks advanced. The
outskirts of the town were destroyed by fire and the assailants were
within its walls. The town being no longer tenable, Zrinyr took refuge,
with what remained of the garrison, in the fortress, and still bade
defiance to his foes.
Solyman, impatient at the delay caused by the obstinacy of the defender,
tried with him the same tactics he had employed with Jurissitz many
years before,--those of threats and promises. Tempting offers of wealth
proving of no avail, the sultan threatened the bold commander with the
murder of his son George, a prisoner in his hands. This proved equally
unavailing, and the siege went on.
It went on, indeed, until Solyman was himself vanquished, and by an
enemy he had not taken into account in his thirst for glory--the grim
warrior Death. Temper killed him. In a fit of passion he suddenly died.
But the siege went on. The vizier concealed his death and kept the
batteries at work, perhaps deeming it best for his own fortunes to be
able to preface the announcement of the sultan's death with a victory.
The castle walls had been already crumbling under the storm of balls.
Soon they were in ruins. The place was no longer tenable. Yet Zrinyr was
as far as ever from thoughts of surrender. He dressed himself in his
most magnificent garments, filled his pockets with gold, "that they
might find something on his corpse," and dashed on the Turks at the head
of what soldiers were left. He died, but not unrevenged. Only after his
death was the Turkish army told that their great sultan was no more and
that they owed their victory to the shadow of the genius of Solyman the
Magnificent.
THE PEASANTS AND THE ANABAPTISTS.
Germany, in great part, under the leadership of Martin Luther, had
broken loose from the Church of Rome, the ball which he had set rolling
being kept in motion by other hands. The ideas of many of those who
followed him were full of the spirit of fanaticism. The pendulum of
religious thought, set in free swing, vibrated from the one extreme of
authority to the opposite extreme of license, going as far beyond Luther
as he had gone beyond Rome. There arose a sect to which was given the
name of Anabaptists, from its rejection of infant baptism, a sect with a
strange history, which it now falls to us to relate.
The new movement, indeed, was not confined to matters of religion. The
idea of freedom from authority once set afloat, quickly went further
than its advocates intended. If men were to have liberty of thought, why
should they not have liberty of action? So argued the peasantry, and not
without the best of reasons, for they were pitifully oppressed by the
nobility, weighed down with feudal exactions to support the luxury of
the higher classes, their crops destroyed by the horses and dogs of
hunting-parties, their families ill-treated and insulted by the
men-at-arms who were maintained at their expense, their flight from
tyranny to the freedom of the cities prohibited by nobles and citizens
alike, everywhere enslaved, everywhere despised, it is no wonder they
joined with gladness in the revolutionary sentiment and made a vigorous
demand for political liberty.
As a result of all this an insurrection broke out,--a double
insurrection in fact,--here of the peasantry for their rights, there of
the religious fanatics for their license. Suddenly all Germany was
upturned by the greatest and most dangerous outbreak of the laboring
classes it had ever known, a revolt which, had it been ably led, might
have revolutionized society and founded a completely new order of
things.
In 1522 the standard of revolt was first raised, its signal a golden
shoe, with the motto, "Whoever will be free let him follow this ray of
light." In 1524 a fresh insurrection broke out, and in the spring of the
following year the whole country was aflame, the peasants of southern
Germany being everywhere in arms and marching on the strongholds of
their oppressors.
Their demands were by no means extreme. They asked for a board of
arbitration, to consist of the Archduke Ferdinand, the Elector of
Saxony, Luther, Melanchthon, and several preachers, to consider their
proposed articles of reform in industrial and political concerns. These
articles covered the following points. They asked the right to choose
their own pastors, who were to preach the word of God from the Bible;
the abolition of dues, except tithes to the clergy; the abolition of
vassalage; the rights of hunting and fishing, and of cutting wood in the
forests; reforms in rent, in the administration of justice, and in the
methods of application of the laws; the restoration of communal property
illegally seized; and several other matters of the same general
character.
They asked in vain. The princes ridiculed the idea of a court in which
Luther should sit side by side with the archduke. Luther refused to
interfere. He admitted the oppression of the peasantry, severely
attacked the princes and nobility for their conduct, but deprecated the
excesses which the insurgents had already committed, and saw no safety
from worse evils except in putting down the peasantry with a strong
hand.
The rejection of the demands of the rebellious peasants was followed by
a frightful reign of license, political in the south, religious in the
north. Everywhere the people were in arms, destroying castles, burning
monasteries, and forcing numbers of the nobles to join them, under pain
of having their castles plundered and burned. The counts of Hohenlohe
were made to enter their ranks, and were told, "Brother Albert and
brother George, you are no longer lords but peasants, and we are the
lords of Hohenlohe." Other nobles were similarly treated. Various
Swabian nobles fled for safety, with their families and treasures, to
the city and castle of Weinsberg. The castle was stormed and taken, and
the nobles, seventy in number, were forced to run the gantlet between
two lines of men armed with spears, who stabbed them as they passed. It
was this deed that brought out a pamphlet from Luther, in which he
called on all the citizens of the empire to put down "the furious
peasantry, to strangle, to stab them, secretly and openly, as they can,
as one would kill a mad dog."
There was need for something to be done if Germany was to be saved from
a revolution. The numbers of the insurgents steadily increased. Many of
the cities were in league with them, several of the princes entered in
negotiation concerning their demands; in Thuringia the Anabaptists,
under the lead of a fanatical preacher named Thomas Münzer, were in full
revolt; in Saxony, Hesse, and lower Germany the peasantry were in arms;
there was much reason to fear that the insurgents and fanatics would
join their forces and pour like a rushing torrent through the whole
empire, destroying all before them. Of the many peasant revolts which
the history of mediævalism records this was the most threatening and
dangerous, and called for the most strenuous exertions to save the
institutions of Germany from a complete overthrow.
At the head of the main body of insurgents was a knight of notorious
character, the famed Goetz von Berlichingen,--Goetz with the Iron Hand,
as he is named,--a robber baron whose history had been one of feud and
contest, and of the plunder alike of armed foes and unarmed travellers.
Goethe has honored him by making him the hero of a drama, and the
peasantry sought to honor him by making him the leader of their march of
destruction. This worthy had lost his hand during youth, and replaced it
with a hand of iron. He was bold, daring, and unscrupulous, but scarcely
fitted for generalship, his knowledge of war being confined to the
tactics of highway robbery. Nor can it be said that his leadership of
the peasants was voluntary. He was as much their prisoner as their
general, his service being an enforced one.
With the redoubtable Goetz at their head the insurgents poured onward,
spreading terror before them, leaving ruin behind them. Castles and
monasteries were destroyed, until throughout Thuringia, Franconia,
Swabia, and along the Rhine as far as Lorraine the homes of lords and
clergy were destroyed, and a universal scene of smoking ruins replaced
the formerly stately architectural piles.
We cannot go further into the details of this notable outbreak. The
revolt of the southern peasantry was at length brought to an end by an
army collected by the Swabian league, and headed by George Truchsess of
Waldburg. Had they marched against him in force he could not have
withstood their onset. But they occupied themselves in sieges,
disregarding the advice of their leaders, and permitted themselves to be
attacked and beaten in detail. Seeing that all was at an end, Goetz von
Berlichingen secretly fled from their ranks and took refuge in his
castle. Many of the bodies of peasantry dispersed. Others made head
against the troops and were beaten with great slaughter. All was at an
end.
Truchsess held a terrible court of justice in the city of Würzburg, in
which his jester Hans acted as executioner, and struck off the heads of
numbers of the prisoners, the bloody work being attended with laughter
and jests, which added doubly to its horror. All who acknowledged that
they had read the Bible, or even that they knew how to read and write,
were instantly beheaded. The priest of Schipf, a gouty old man who had
vigorously opposed the peasants, had himself carried by four of his men
to Truchsess to receive thanks for his services. Hans, fancying that he
was one of the rebels, slipped up behind him, and in an instant his head
was rolling on the floor.
"I seriously reproved my good Hans for his untoward jest," was the easy
comment of Truchsess upon this circumstance.
Throughout Germany similar slaughter of the peasantry and wholesale
executions took place. In many places the reprisal took the dimensions
of a massacre, and it is said that by the end of the frightful struggle
more than a hundred thousand of the peasants had been slain. As for its
political results, the survivors were reduced to a deeper state of
servitude than before. Thus ended a great struggle which had only needed
an able leader to make it a success and to free the people from feudal
bonds. It ended like all the peasant outbreaks, in defeat and renewed
oppression. As for the robber chief Goetz, while he is said by several
historians to have received a sentence of life imprisonment, Menzel
states that he was retained in prison for two years only.
In Thuringia, as we have said, the revolt was a religious one, it being
controlled by Thomas Münzer, a fanatical Anabaptist. He pretended that
he had the gift of receiving divine revelations, and claimed to be
better able to reveal Christian truth than Luther. God had created the
earth, he said, for believers, all government should be regulated by the
Bible and revelation, and there was no need of princes, priests, or
nobles. The distinction between rich and poor was unchristian, since in
God's kingdom all should be alike. Nicholas Storch, one of Münzer's
preachers, surrounded himself with twelve apostles and seventy-two
disciples, and claimed that an angel brought him divine messages.
Driven from Saxony by the influence of Luther, Münzer went to Thuringia,
and gained such control by his preaching and his doctrines over the
people of the town of Mülhausen that all the wealthy people were driven
away, their property confiscated, and the sole control of the place fell
into his hands.
So great was the disturbance caused by his fanatical teachings and the
exertions of his disciples that Luther again bestirred himself, and
called on the princes for the suppression of Münzer and his fanatical
horde. A division of the army was sent into Thuringia, and came up with
a large body of the Anabaptists near Frankenhausen, on May 15, 1525.
Münzer was in command of the peasants. The army officers, hoping to
bring them to terms by lenient measures, offered to pardon them if they
would give up their leaders and peacefully retire to their homes. This
offer might have been effective but for Münzer, who, foreseeing danger
to himself, did his utmost to awaken the fanaticism of his followers.
It happened that a rainbow appeared in the heavens during the
discussion. This, he declared, was a messenger sent to him from God. His
ignorant audience believed him, and for the moment were stirred up to a
mad enthusiasm which banished all thoughts of surrender. Rushing in
their fury on the ambassadors of peace and pardon, they stabbed them to
death, and then took shelter behind their intrenchments, where they
prepared for a vigorous defence.