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 Bibli