The Peasant War

The Peasant War

Preface

In presenting a general view of the incidents of the so-called Peasants War of 1525, the historian encounters more than one difficulty peculiar to the subject. He has, in the first place, a special trouble in preserving the true proportion in his narrative. Now, proportion is always the crux in historical work, but here, in describing a more or less spontaneous movement over a wide area, in which movement there are hundreds of different centres with each its own story to tell, it is indeed hard to know at times what to include and what to leave out. True, the essential similarity in the origin and course of events renders a recapitulation of the different local risings unnecessary and indeed embarrassing for readers whose aim is to obtain a general notion. But the author always runs the risk of being waylaid by some critic in ambush, who will accuse him of omitting details that should have been recorded.

Again, the approximate simultaneity of the risings over a wide extent of territory makes it impossible to preserve chronological sequence in the general survey. Yet again, here, even more than elsewhere, discrepancies are to be found in different accounts of the same event, and the historian, writing for the general reader, must either reconcile them to the best of his power or choose between them. He cannot well give a wealth of variorum versions or enter into elaborate disquisitions justifying the view he takes, To do either would change the character of such a work as this from a volume designed for the average reader of history to a dissertation for the benefit of a specialist student of Reformation history.

I mention these difficulties as there is always a field in a work of this nature for the ingenuity of a hostile reviewer qui cherche les puces dans la paille to hunt out minutiae on which two opinions may be held. By enlarging upon them, he attempts to disparage the work as a whole. A former volume, dealing with German Society in Reformation times, received favourable recognition, I believe, in every quarter save one. The one hostile review appeared anonymously in a literary journal, which, if I mistake not, was then making a special point of signed reviews. Internal evidence identified the critic as a gentleman who has been believed, rightly or wrongly, to have been for some years preparing material for a work on German Reformation History. Of the somewhat laboured attempts in the article in question to prove the inadequacy of my book, I will only mention one. Quoting a narrative passage, the reviewer stigmatised it as in the style of Zimmermann, which, he observes, belongs to an obsolete method of writing history. Now, Zimmermann’s method was to bring an historical event, as realistically as his power of language would go, before the mind’s eye of the reader. This method our superfine and would-be up-to-date critic describes as obsolete! I need only point out that, if so, the late Professor Freeman and the late Mr. J. R. Green, not to speak of other .leading historians, English and foreign, must be reckoned as exceedingly obsolete persons. That Zimmermann possessed in an exceptional degree the gift of such descriptive writing has been remarked by all who have read him. Personally, I make no claim to the power, and do not wish to excuse my own shortcomings, but I can only say that if such writing be obsolete, the sooner it be revived the better. Surely the faculty of reproducing the past as a living present remains the ideal of historical literary style!

The literature of the Peasants War is considerable in German-speaking countries. An immense amount of exceedingly careful research has been applied to the collection and elucidation of documents relating to the movement in different places and districts. Just as in Paris there are many retired scholars whose hobby it is to spend their lives in collecting every scrap of information concerning the French Revolution and the lives of the actors in it, so here, although perhaps on a smaller scale, there are many German bibliophiles who have devoted years to investigating in elaborate detail the facts in connection with the events and persons of the 1525 revolt. Instead of cumbering the text with a multitude of footnotes, I give here a list of some principal authorities consulted:-

Zimmermann’s Allgemeine Geschichte des grossen Bauernkrieges.

Do., 1891 edition, edited by Wilhelm Blos.

Bezold’s Geschichte der deutschen Reformation.

Janssen’s Geschichte des deutschen Volkes.

Egelhaaf’s Deutsche Geschichte im 16ten. Jahrhundert.

Lamprecht’s Deutsche Geschichte.

Ranke’s Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation.

Weill’s Der Bauernkrieg.

Hartfelder’s Geschichte des Bauernkrieges in Süddeutschland.

Amongst the collection of contemporary documents and early sources that have been found useful may be mentioned:-

Sehreiber’s Der deutsche Bauernkrieg gleichseitige Urkunden.

Baumann’s Akien zur Geschichte des deutschen Bauernkrieges aus Oberschwaben.

Zimmersche Chronik.

Villinger Chronik.

Rothenburger Chronik.

Schwabisch Hall, Chronika, etc.

Sebastian Franck’s Chronik.

Melancthon’s pamphlet on Thomas Münzer, and other documents in Luther’s Sämmtliche Werke.

Tagebuch des Herolds Hans Lutz von Augsburg, published from the original manuscript in Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins.

Lorenz Fries’s Geschichte des Bauernkrieges in Ostfranken.

Gotz von Berlichingen’s Lebensbeschreibung.

Haarer’s Eigentliche Warhafftige Beschreibung dess Bawrenkriegs.

The various pamphlets by Thomas Münzer.

Amongst monographs on special subjects connected with the events of 1525 may be mentioned :-

The chapters relating to the revolt in Thuringia, by Kautsky, in the Geschichte des Sozalismus, Band i.

Seidemann’s Thomas Münzer.

Blos’s Pater Ambrosius.

Barthold’s Georg von Frundsberg.

I give the above partial list to obviate the inconvenience of crowding up the text with references. Of all the works on the Peasants War, that of Zimmermann still holds the first place, alike for comprehensiveness of view and accuracy. Many details, it is true, have been corrected and expanded by later research, but empathetic understanding of the movement, historical insight, Zimmermann yet hardly been equalled and certainly not surpassed.

To render the present volume complete, a map of Reformation-Germany (from Spruner-Menke’s Historischer Atlas has been included.

E. B. B.

Chapter I. The Situation During the First Quarter of the Sixteenth Century.

In a former volume(1) we considered at length the condition of Central Europe at the close of the period known as the Middle Ales. It will suffice here to recapitulate in a few paragraphs the general position.

The time was out of joint in a very literal sense of that somewhat hackneyed phrase. Every established institution — political, social, and religious — was shaken and showed the rents and fissures caused by time and by the growth of a new life underneath it. The empire — the Holy Roman — was in a parlous way as regarded its cohesion. The power of the princes, the representatives of local centralised authority, was proving itself too strong for the power of the emperor, the recognised representative of centralised authority for the whole German-speaking world. This meant the undermining and eventual disruption of the smaller social and political unities,(2) the knightly manors with the privileges attached to the knightly class generally. The knighthood, or lower nobility, had acted as a sort of buffer between the princes of the empire and the imperial power, to which they often looked for protection against their immediate overlord or their powerful neighbour — the prince. The imperial power, in consequence, found the lower nobility a bulwark against its princely vassals. Economic changes, the suddenly increased demand for money owing to the rise of the world-market, new inventions in the art of war, new methods of fighting, the rapidly growing importance of artillery and the increase of the mercenary soldiery, had rendered the lower nobility, as an institution, a factor in the political situation which was fast becoming negligible. The abortive campaign of Franz von Sickingen in 1523 only showed its hopeless weakness. The Reichsregiment, or imperial governing council, a body instituted by Maximilian, had lamentably failed to effect anything; towards cementing together the various parts of the unwieldy fabric. Finally, at the Reichstag held in Nürnberg, in December, 1522, at which all the estates were represented, the Reichsregiment, to all intents and purposes, collapsed.

The Reichstag in question was summoned ostensibly for the purpose of raising a subsidy for the Hungarians in their struggle against the advancing power of the Turks. The Turkish movement westward was, of course, throughout this period, the most important question of what in modern phraseology would be called foreign politics. The princes voted the proposal of the subsidy without consulting the representatives of the cities, who knew the heaviest part of the burden was to fall upon themselves. The urgency of the situation, however, weighed with them, with the result that they submitted after considerable remonstrance. The princes, in conjunction with their rivals, the lower nobility, next proceeded to attack the commercial monopolies, the first fruits of the rising capitalism, the appanage mainly of the trading companies and the merchant-magnates of the towns. This was too much for civic patience. The city representatives, who of course belonged to the civic aristocracy, waxed indignant. The feudal orders went on to claim the right to set up vexations tariffs in their respective territories whereby to hinder artificially the free development of the new commercial capitalist. This filled up the cup of endurance of the magnates of the cities. The city representatives refused their consent to the Turkish subsidy and withdrew. The next step was the sending of a deputation to the young Emperor Karl, who was in Spain, and whose sanction to the decrees of the Reichstag was necessary before their promulgation. The result of the conference held on this occasion was a decision to undermine the Reichsregiment, and weaken the power of the princes, by whom and by whose tools it was manned, as a factor in the imperial constitution. As for the princes, while some of their number were positively opposed to it, others cared little one way or the other. Their chief aim was to strengthen and consolidate their power within the limits of their own territories, and a weak empire was perhaps better adapted for effecting this purpose than a stronger one, even though certain of their own order had a controlling voice in its administration. As already hinted, the collapse of the rebellious knighthood under Sickingen, a few weeks later, clearly showed the political drift of the situation in the haute politique of the empire.

The rising capitalists of the cities, the monopolists, merchant princes and syndicates, are the theme of universal invective throughout this period. To them the rapid and enormous rise in prices during the early years of the sixteenth century, the scarcity of money consequent on the increased demand for it, and the impoverishment of large sections of the population, were attributed by noble and peasant alike. The whole trend of public opinion, in short, outside the wealthier burghers of the larger cities — the class immediately interested — was adverse to the condition of things created by the new world-market, and by the new class embodying it. At present it was a small class, the only one that gained by it, and that gained at the expense of all the other classes.

Some idea of the class-antagonisms of the period may be gathered from the statement of Ulrich von Hutten, in his dialogue entitled Predones, that there were four orders of robbers in Germany — the knights, the lawyers, the priests, and the merchants (meaning especially the new capitalist merchant-traders or syndicates). Of these, he declares the robber-knights to be the least harmful. This is naturally only to be expected from so gallant a champion of his order, the friend and abettor of Sickingen. Nevertheless, the seriousness of the robber-knight evil, the toleration of which in principle was so deeply ingrained in the public opinion of large sections of the population, may be judged from the abortive attempts made to stop it, at the instance alike of princes and of cities, who on this point, if on no other, had a common interest. In 1502, for example, at the Reichstag held in Gelnhausen in that year, certain of the highest princes of the empire made a representation that, at least, the knights should permit the gathering in of the harvest and the vintage in peace. But even this modest demand was found to be impracticable. The knights had to live in the style required by their status, as they declared, and where other means were more and more failing them, their ancient right or privilege of plunder was indispensable to Hutten was right so far in declaring the knight the most harmless kind of robber, inasmuch as, direct as were his methods, his sun was obviously setting, while as much could not be said of the other classes named; the merchant and the lawyer were on the rise, and the priest, although about to receive a check, was not destined to speedily disappear, or to change fundamentally the character of his activity.

The feudal orders saw their own position seriously threatened by the new development of things economic in the; cities. The guilds were becoming crystallised into close corporations of wealthy families, constituting a kind of second Ehrbarkeit or town patriciate; the numbers of the landless and unprivileged, with at most a bare footing in the town constitution, were increasing in an alarming proportion; the journeyman-workman was no longer a stage between apprentice and master-craftsman, but a permanent condition embodied in a large and growing class. All these symptoms indicated an extraordinary economic revolution, which was making itself at first directly felt only in the larger cities, but the results of which were dislocating the social relations of the Middle Ages throughout the whole empire.

Perhaps the most striking feature in this dislocation was the transition from direct barter to exchange through the medium of money, and the consequent suddenly increased importance of the role played by usury in the social life of the time. The scarcity of money is a perennial theme of complaint for which the new large capitalist-monopolists are made responsible. The class in question was itself only a symptom of the general economic change. The seeming scarcity of money, though but the consequence of the increased demand for a circulating medium, was explained to the disadvantage of the hated monopolists by a crude form of the mercantile theory. The new merchant, in contradistinction to the master-craftsman working en famille with his apprentices and assistants, now often stood entirely outside the processes of production as speculator or middleman; and he, and still more the syndicate who fled the like functions on a larger scale (especially with reference to foreign trade), came be regarded as particularly obnoxious robbers, because interlopers to boot. Unlike the knights, they were robbers with a new face.

The lawyers were detested for much the same reason (cf. German Society at the Close of the Middle Ages, pp.219-228), the professional lawyer-class, since its final differentiation from the clerk-class in general, had made the Roman or civil law its speciality, and had done its utmost everywhere to establish the principles of the latter in place of the old feudal law of earlier mediaeval Europe. The Roman law was especially favourable to the pretensions of the princes, and, from an economic point of view, of the nobility in general, inasmuch as land was on the new legal principles treated as the private property of the lord, over which he had full power of ownership, and not, as under feudal and canon law, as a trust involving duties as well as rights. The class of jurists was itself of comparatively recent growth in Central Europe, and its rapid increase in every portion of the empire dated from less than half a century back. It may be well understood, therefore, why these interlopers, who ignored the ancient customary law of the country, and who by means of an alien code deprived the poor freeholder or copyholdcr of his land, or justified new and unheard-of exactions on the part of his lord on the plea that the latter might do what he liked with his own, were regarded by the peasant and humble man as robbers whose depredations were, if anything, even more resented than those of their old and tried enemy — the plundering knight.

The priest, especially of the regular orders, was indeed an old foe, but his offence had now become very rank. From the middle of the fifteenth century onwards the stream of anti-clerical literature waxes alike in volume and intensity. The monk had become the object of hatred and scorn throughout the whole lay world. This view of the regular was shared, moreover, by not a few of the secular clergy themselves. Humanists, who were subsequently ardent champions of the Church against Luther and the Protestant Reformation — men such as Murner and Erasmus had been previously bitterest satirists of the friar and the monk. Amongst the great body of the laity, however, though the religious orders came perhaps for the greater share of animosity, the secular priesthood was not much better off in popular favour, whilst the upper members of hierarchy were naturally regarded as the chief blood-suckers of the German people in the interests of Rome. The vast revenues which both directly in the shape of pallium, the price of investiture), annates (first year’s revenues of appointments, Peter’s Pence, and recently of indulgences — the latter the by no means most onerous exaction, since it was voluntary, though proving as it happened the proverbial last straw — all these things, taken together with what was indirectly obtained from Germany, through the expenditure of German ‘ecclesiastics on their visits to Rome and by the crowd of parasites, nominal holders of German benefices merely, but real recipients of German substance, who danced attendance at the Vatican — obviously constituted an enormous drain on the resources of the country from all the lay classes alike, of which wealth the papal chair could be plainly seen to be the receptacle.

If we add to these causes of discontent the vastness in number of the regular clergy, the friars and monks already referred to, who consumed, but were only too obviously unproductive, it will be sufficiently plain that the Protestant Reformation had something very much more than a purely speculative basis to work upon. Religious reformers there had been in Germany throughout the Middle Ages, but their preachings had taken no deep root. The powerful personality of the Monk of Wittenberg found an economic soil ready to hand in which his teachings could fructify, and hence the world-historic result. As we saw in the former volume of this history, the peasant revolts, sporadic the Middle Ages through, had for the half-century preceding the Reformation been growing in frequency and importance, but it needed nevertheless the sudden impulse, the powerful jar given by a Luther in 1517, the series of blows with which it was followed during the years immediately succeeding, to crystallise the mass of fluid discontent and social unrest in its various forms and give it definite direction. The blow which was primarily struck in the region of speculative thought and ecclesiastical relations did not stop there in its effects. The attach on the dominant theological system — at first merely on certain comparatively unessential outworks of system — necessarily of its own force developed into an attack on the organisation representing it, and on the economic basis of the latter. The battle against ecclesiastical abuses, again, in its turn, focussed the ever-smouldering discontent with abuses in general; and this time, not in one district only, but simultaneously over the whole of Germany. The movement inaugurated by Luther gave to the peasant groaning under the weight of baronial oppression, and the small handicraftsman suffering under his Eharbarkeit, a rallying point and a rallying cry.

In history there is no movement which starts up full grown from the brain of any one man, or even from the mind of any one generation of men, like Athene from the head of Zeus. The historical epoch which marks the crisis of the given change is after all little beyond a prominent landmark — parting of the ways — led up to by a long preparatory development. This is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the Reformation and its accompanying movements. The ideas and aspirations animating the social, political and intellectual revolt of the sixteenth century can each be traced back to, at least, the beginning of the fifteenth century, and in many cases farther still. The way the German of Luther’s time looked at the burning questions of the hour was not essentially different from the way the English Wycliffites and Lollards or the Bohemian Hussites and Taborites viewed them. There was obviously a difference born of the later time, but this