German Culture Past and Present

E >> Ernest Belfort Bax >> German Culture Past and Present

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The scene we have just described in the castle vault meant not merely
the tragedy of a hero's death, nor merely the destruction of a faction
or party, it meant the end of an epoch. With Sickingen's death one of
the most salient and picturesque elements in the mediaeval life of
Central Europe received its death-blow. The knighthood as a distinct
factor in the polity of Europe henceforth existed no more.

Spalatin relates that on the death of Sickingen the princely party
anticipated as easy a victory over the religious revolt as they had
achieved over the knighthood. "The mock Emperor is dead," so the
phrase went, "and the mock Pope will soon be dead also." Hutten,
already an exile in Switzerland, did not many months survive his
patron and leader, Sickingen. The role which Erasmus played in this
miserable tragedy was only what was to be expected from the moral
cowardice which seemed ingrained in the character of the great
Humanist leader. Erasmus had already begun to fight shy of the
Reformation movement, from which he was about to separate himself
definitely. He seized the present opportunity to quarrel with Hutten;
and to Hutten's somewhat bitter attacks on him in consequence he
replied with ferocity in his _Spongia Erasmi adversus aspergines
Hutteni_.

Hutten had had to fly from Basel to Muelhausen and thence to Zuerich, in
the last stages of syphilitic disease. He was kindly received by the
reformer, Zwingli of Zuerich, who advised him to try the waters of
Pfeffers, and gave him letters of recommendation to the abbot of that
place. He returned, in no wise benefited, to Zuerich, when Zwingli
again befriended the sick knight, and sent him to a friend of his, the
"reformed" pastor of the little island of "Ufenau," at the other end
of the lake, where after a few weeks' suffering he died in abject
destitution, leaving, it is said, nothing behind him but his pen. The
disease from which Hutten suffered the greater part of his life, at
that time a comparatively new importation and much more formidable
even than nowadays, may well have contributed to an irascibility of
temper and to a certain recklessness which the typical free-lance of
the Reformation in its early period exhibited. Hutten was never a
theologian, and the Reformation seems to have attracted him mainly
from its political side as implying the assertion of the dawning
feeling of German nationality as against the hated enemies of freedom
of thought and the new light, the clerical satellites of the Roman
see. He was a true son of his time, in his vices no less than in his
virtues; and no one will deny his partiality for "wine, women, and
play." There is reason, indeed, to believe that the latter at times
during his later career provided his sole means of subsistence.

The hero of the Reformation, Luther, with whom Melanchthon may be
associated in this matter, could be no less pusillanimous on occasion
than the hero of the New Learning, Erasmus. Luther undoubtedly saw in
Sickingen's revolt a means of weakening the Catholic powers against
which he had to fight, and at its inception he avowedly favoured the
enterprise. In some of the reforming writings Luther is represented as
the incarnation of Christian resignation and mildness, and as talking
of twelve legions of angels and deprecating any appeal to force as
unbefitting the character of an evangelical apostle. That such,
however, was not his habitual attitude is evident to all who are in
the least degree acquainted with his real conduct and utterances. On
one occasion he wrote: "If they (the priests) continue their mad
ravings it seems to me that there would be no better method and
medicine to stay them than that kings and princes did so with force,
armed themselves and attacked these pernicious people who do poison
all the world, and once for all did make an end of their doings with
weapons, not with words. For even as we punish thieves with the sword,
murderers with the rope, and heretics with fire, wherefore do we not
lay hands on these pernicious teachers of damnation, on popes, on
cardinals, bishops, and the swarm of the Roman Sodom--yea, with every
weapon which lieth within our reach, _and wherefore do we not wash our
hands in their blood?_"[19]

It is, however, in a manifesto published in July 1522, just before
Sickingen's attack on the Archbishop of Trier, for which enterprise it
was doubtless intended as a justification, that Luther expresses
himself in unmeasured terms against the "biggest wolves," the bishops,
and calls upon "all dear children of God and all true Christians" to
drive them out by force from the "sheep-stalls." In this pamphlet,
entitled _Against the falsely called spiritual order of the Pope and
the Bishops_, he says: "It were better that every bishop were
murdered, every foundation or cloister rooted out, than that one soul
should be destroyed, let alone that all souls should be lost for the
sake of their worthless trumpery and idolatry. Of what use are they
who thus live in lust, nourished by the sweat and labour of others,
and are a stumbling-block to the word of God? They fear bodily uproar
and despise spiritual destruction. Are they wise and honest people? If
they accepted God's word and sought the life of the soul, God would be
with them, for He is a God of peace, and they need fear no uprising;
but if they will not hear God's word, but rage and rave with bannings,
burnings, killings, and every evil, what do they better deserve than a
strong uprising which shall sweep them from the earth? _And we would
smile did it happen._[20] As the heavenly wisdom saith: 'Ye have
hated my chastisement and despised my doctrine; behold, I will also
laugh at ye in your distress, and will mock ye when misfortune shall
fall upon your heads.'" In the same document he denounces the bishops
as an accursed race, as "thieves, robbers, and usurers." Swine,
horses, stones, and wood were not so destitute of understanding as the
German people under the sway of them and their Pope. The religious
houses are similarly described as "brothels, low taverns, and murder
dens," He winds up this document, which he calls his "bull," by
proclaiming that "all who contribute body, goods, and honour that the
rule of the bishops may be destroyed are God's dear children and true
Christians, obeying God's command and fighting against the devil's
order"; and, on the other hand, that "all who give the bishops a
willing obedience are the devil's own servants, and fight against
God's order and law."[21]

No sooner, however, did things begin to look bad with Sickingen than
Luther promptly sought to disengage himself from all complicity or
even sympathy with him and his losing cause. So early as December 19,
1522, he writes to his friend Wenzel Link: "Franz von Sickingen has
begun war against the Palatine. It will be a very bad business."
(_Franciscus Sickingen Palatino bellum indixit, res pessima futura
est._) His colleague, Melanchthon, a few days later, hastened to
deprecate the insinuation that Luther had had any part or lot in
initiating the revolt. "Franz von Sickingen," he wrote, "by his great
ill-will injures the cause of Luther; and notwithstanding that he be
entirely dissevered from him, nevertheless whenever he undertaketh war
he wisheth to seem to act for the public benefit, and not for his own.
He doth even now pursue a most infamous course of plunder on the
Rhine." In another letter he says: "I know how this tumult grieveth
him (Luther),"[22] and this respecting the man who had shortly before
written of the princes that their tyranny and haughtiness were no
longer to be borne, alleging that God would not longer endure it, and
that the common man even was becoming intelligent enough to deal with
them by force if they did not mend their manners. A more telling
example of the "don't-put-him-in-the-horse-pond" attitude could
scarcely be desired. That it was characteristic of the "great
reformer" will be seen later on when we find him pursuing a similar
policy anent the revolt of the peasants.

After the fall of the Landstuhl all Sickingen's castles and most of
those of his immediate allies and friends were of course taken, and
the greater part of them destroyed. The knighthood was now to all
intents and purposes politically helpless and economically at the door
of bankruptcy, owing to the suddenly changed conditions of which we
have spoken in the Introduction and elsewhere as supervening since the
beginning of the century: the unparalleled rise in prices,
concurrently with the growing extravagance, the decline of agriculture
in many places, and the increasing burdens put upon the knights by
their feudal superiors, and last, but not least, the increasing
obstacles in the way of the successful pursuit of the profession of
highway robbery. The majority of them, therefore, clung with
relentless severity to the feudal dues of the peasants, which now
constituted their main, and in many cases their only, source of
revenue; and hence, abandoning the hope of independence, they threw in
their lot with the authorities, the princes, lay and ecclesiastic, in
the common object of both, that of reducing the insurgent peasants to
complete subjection.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Italics the present author's.

[20] Italics the present author's.

[21] _Saemmtliche Werke_ vol. xxviii. pp. 142-201.

[22] _Corpus Reformatorum_, vol. i. pp. 598-9.

CHAPTER VII

GENERAL SIGNS OF RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL REVOLT

Peasant revolts of a sporadic character are to be met with throughout
the Middle Ages even in their halcyon days. Some of these, like the
Jacquerie in France and the revolt associated with the name of Wat
Tyler in England, were of a serious and more or less extended
character. But most of them were purely local and of no significance,
apart from temporary and passing circumstances. By the last quarter of
the fifteenth century, however, peasant risings had become
increasingly numerous and their avowed aims much more definite and
far-reaching than, as a rule, were those of an earlier date. In saying
this we are referring to those revolts which were directly initiated
by the peasantry, the serfs, and the villeins of the time, and which
had as their main object the direct amelioration of the peasant's lot.
Movements of a primarily religious character were, of course, of a
somewhat different nature, but the tendency was increasingly, as we
approach the period of the Reformation, for the two currents to merge
one in the other. The echoes of the Hussite movement in Bavaria at the
beginning of the century spread far and wide throughout Central
Europe, and had by no means spent their force as the century drew
towards its close.

From this time forward recurrent indications of social revolt with a
strong religious colouring, or a religious revolt with a strong social
colouring, became chronic in the Germanic lands and those adjacent
thereto. As an example may be taken the movement of Hans Boheim, of
Niklashausen, in the diocese of Wuerzburg, in Franconia, in 1476, and
which is regarded by some historians as the first of the movements
leading directly up to those of the Lutheran Reformation. Hans claimed
a divine mission for preaching the gospel to the common man. Hans
preached asceticism and claimed Niklashausen as a place of pilgrimage
for a new worship of the Virgin. There was little in this to alarm the
authorities till Hans announced that the Queen of Heaven had revealed
to him that there was to be no lay or spiritual authority, but that
all men should be brothers, earning their bread by the sweat of their
brows, paying no more imposts or dues, holding land in common, and
sharing alike in all things. The movement went on for some months,
spreading rapidly in the neighbouring territories. At last Hans was
seized by armed men while asleep and hurried to Wuerzburg. The affair
caused immense commotion, and by the Sunday following, it is stated,
34,000 armed peasants assembled at Niklashausen. Led by a decayed
knight and his son, 16,000 of them marched to Wuerzburg, demanding
their prophet at the gate of the bishop's castle. By promises and
cajolery, they were induced to disperse by the prince-bishop, who, as
soon as he saw they were returning home in straggling parties,
treacherously sent a body of his knights after them, killing some and
taking others prisoners. Two of the ringleaders were beheaded outside
the castle, and at the same time the prophet Hans Boheim was burnt to
ashes. Thus ended a typical religio-social peasant revolt of the
half-century preceding the great Reformation movement.

In 1491 the oppressed and plundered villeins of Kempten revolted, but
the movement was quelled by the Emperor himself after a compromise. A
great rising took place in Elsass (Alsace) in 1493 among the
feudatories of the Bishop of Strassburg, with the usual object of
freedom for the "common man," abolition of feudal exactions, Church
reformation, etc. This movement is interesting, as having first
received the name of the _Bundschuh_. It was decided that as the
knight was distinguished by his spurs, so the peasant should have as
his device the common shoe of his class, laced from the ankle through
to the knee by leathern thongs, and the banner whereon this emblem was
depicted was accordingly made. The movement was, however, betrayed and
mercilessly crushed by the neighbouring knighthood. A few years later
a similar movement, also having the _Bundschuh_ for its device, took
place in the regions of the Upper and Middle Rhine. This movement
created a panic among all the privileged classes, from the Emperor
down to the knight. The situation was discussed in no less than three
separate assemblies of the States. It was, however, eventually
suppressed for the time being. A few years later, in 1512, it again
burst forth under the leadership of an active adherent of the former
movement, one Joss Fritz, in Baden, at the village of Lehen, near the
town of Freiburg. The organization in this case, besides being
widespread, was exceedingly good, and the movement was nearly
successful when at the last moment it was betrayed. Even in
Switzerland there were peasant risings in the early years of the
sixteenth century. About the same time the duchy of Wuertemberg was
convulsed by a movement which took the name of the "Poor Conrad." Its
object was the freeing of the "common man" from feudal services and
dues and the abolition of seignorial rights over the land, etc. But
here again the movement was suppressed by Duke Ulrich and his knights.
Another rising took place in Baden in 1517. Three years previously, in
1514, occurred the great Hungarian peasant rebellion under George
Daze. Under the able leadership of the latter the peasants had some
not inconsiderable initial successes, but this movement also, after
some weeks, was cruelly suppressed. About the same time, too, occurred
various insurrectionary peasant movements in the Styrian and
Carinthian alpine districts. Similar movements to those referred to
were also going on during those early years of the fifteenth century
in other parts of Europe, but these, of course, do not concern us.

The deep-reaching importance and effective spread of such movements
was infinitely greater in the Middle Ages than in modern times. The
same phenomenon presents itself to-day in backward 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
aeroplane, 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 earning 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 nowadays. 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, where the vast majority could neither read
nor write, where 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 so 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. The sense of _esprit de corps_ and of that
kind of honour most intimately associated with it, it must also be
remembered, was infinitely keener in ruder states of society than
under a high civilization. The growth of civilization, 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 mankind at
large, 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.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GREAT RISING OF THE PEASANTS AND THE ANABAPTIST MOVEMENT[23]

The year following the collapse of Franz Sickingen's rebellion saw the
first mutterings of the great movement known as the Peasants' War, the
most extensive and important of all the popular insurrections of the
Middle Ages, which, as we have seen in a previous chapter, had been
led up to during the previous half-century by numerous sporadic
movements throughout Central Europe having like aims.

The first actual outbreak of the Peasants' War took place in August
1524, in the Black Forest, in the village of Stuehlingen, from an
apparently trivial cause. It spread rapidly throughout the surrounding
districts, having found a leader in a former soldier of fortune, Hans
Mueller by name. The so-called Evangelical Brotherhood sprang into
existence. On the new movement becoming threatening it was opposed by
the Swabian League, a body in the interests of the Germanic
Federation, its princes, and cities, whose function it was to preserve
public tranquillity and enforce the Imperial decrees. The peasant army
was armed with the rudest weapons, including pitchforks, scythes, and
axes; but nothing decisive of a military character took place this
year. Meanwhile the work of agitation was carried on far and wide
throughout the South German territories. Preachers of discontent among
the peasantry and the former towns were everywhere agitating and
organizing with a view to a general rising in the ensuing spring.
Negotiations were carried on throughout the winter with nobles and the
authorities without important results. A diversion in favour of the
peasants was caused by Duke Ulrich of Wuertemberg favouring the
peasants' cause, which he hoped to use as a shoeing-horn to his own
plans for recovering his ancestral domains, from which he had been
driven on the grounds of a family quarrel under the ban of the empire
in 1519. He now established himself in his stronghold of Hohentwiel,
in Wuertemberg, on the Swiss frontier. By February or the beginning of
March peasant bands were organizing throughout Southern Germany.
Early in March a so-called Peasants' Parliament was held at Memmingen,
a small Swabian town, at which the principal charter of the movement,
the so-called "Twelve Articles," was adopted. This important document
has a strong religious colouring, the political and economic demands
of the peasants being led up to and justified by Biblical quotations.
They all turn on the customary grievances of the time. The "Twelve
Articles" remain throughout the chief Bill of Rights of the South
German peasantry, though there were other versions of the latter
current in certain districts. What was said before concerning the
local sporadic movements which had been going en for a generation
previously applies equally to the great uprising of 1525. The rapidity
with which the ideas represented by the movement, and in consequence
the movement itself, spread, is marvellous. By the middle of April it
was computed that no less than 300,000 peasants, besides necessitous
townsfolk, were armed and in open rebellion. On the side of the nobles
no adequate force was ready to meet the emergency. In every direction
were to be seen flaming castles and monasteries. On all sides were
bodies of armed countryfolk, organized in military fashion, dictating
their will to the countryside and the small towns, whilst
disaffection was beginning to show itself in a threatening manner
among the popular elements of not a few important cities. A slight
success gained by the Swabian League at the Upper Swabian village of
Leipheim in the second week of April did not improve matters. In
Easter week, 1525, it looked indeed as if the "Twelve Articles" at
least would become realized, if not the Christian Commonwealth dreamed
of by the religious sectaries established throughout the length and
breadth of Germany. Princes, lords, and ecclesiastical dignitaries
were being compelled far and wide to save their lives, after their
property was probably already confiscated, by swearing allegiance to
the Christian League or Brotherhood of the peasants and by
countersigning the "Twelve Articles" and other demands of their
refractory villeins and serfs. So threatening was the situation that
the Archduke Ferdinand began himself to yield, in so far as to enter
into negotiations with the insurgents. In many cases the leaders and
chief men of the bands were got up in brilliant costume. We read of
purple mantles and scarlet birettas with ostrich plumes as the costume
of the leaders, of a suite of men in scarlet dress, of a vanguard of
ten heralds, gorgeously attired. As Lamprecht justly observes
(_Deutsche Geschichte_, vol. v. p. 343): "The peasant revolts were,
in general, less in the nature of campaigns, or even of an
uninterrupted series of minor military operations, than of a slow
process of mobilization, interrupted and accompanied by continual
negotiations with lords and princes--a mobilization which was rendered
possible by the standing right of assembly and of carrying arms
possessed by the peasants." The smaller towns everywhere opened their
gates without resistance to the peasants, between whom and the poorer
inhabitants an understanding commonly existed. The bands waxed fat
with plunder of castles and religious houses, and did full justice to
the contents of the rich monastic wine-cellars.

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