VII.

The year 1525 was perhaps the most trying in Luther’s career. He had hitherto been disappointed in the Princes and the burghers, and now he experienced the mortification of seeing that class of people, from which he sprang himself, entering on a path which must needs prove injurious to themselves, and to the cause for which he lived and worked. Various risings of the Peasants had taken place before the time of the Reformation, in consequence of the inhuman treatment to which they were subjected by the nobles. The exactions of the priests were likewise intolerable. Some local risings took place in 1524; but in the following year that terrible contest, known as Edition: current; Page: [lxxii] “The Peasants’ War,” broke out in the south of Germany with all the fury of long-pent up despair. The origin of the insurrection must therefore be sought solely in the cause, which produced the risings of slaves or serfs in ancient and modern times. It was the revolt of men who felt their inner worth, and who were determined to shake off an unbearable yoke. The enemies of Luther attributed, however, the outbreak of the war to the influence of his teachings, in the same way as they attributed to these any other public calamity which then befell Germany; just as in modern times blinded political passions will trace the cause of the failure of a harvest, for instance, to the fact of this or that party being in power.

The first programme of the Peasants, as contained in the well-known Twelve Articles, was moderate enough. Even Luther did not entirely reject their demands, some of which he wished to see referred to the decision of legal authorities. He admonished the Peasants, however, not to have recourse to brutal violence, and at the same time he exhorted the nobles to lend a merciful ear to the cries of the sufferers. The last clause of the Twelve Articles must have struck in his heart a sympathetic chord. The Peasants declared that their demands shall not stand, in case they should be refuted by Scripture, which statement seems to be an echo of Luther’s own declaration at the Diet of Worms. But it was just that external similarity which turned out so fatal for the cause of the Reformation. The Peasants borrowed the phraseology, as it were, of Luther; they clothed their grievances in the language of the Gospel, and thus gave to the enemies of the Reformation the plausible pretext of confounding it with their own insurrection. It was of little avail for Luther himself to protest against the allegation of the insurgents that their rising was founded on a religious basis, since his enemies persistently took the form for the substance.

If all the rebellious Peasants had strictly adhered to their first programme, their cause might yet have taken a favourable turn; but, as is generally the case with revolutionary movements, there soon arose an extreme party which aimed at the Edition: current; Page: [lxxiii] total subversion of the existing order of things. Here again it was unfortunate that some points started in the manifesto of that party had been previously advocated by Luther, for his unjust antagonists laid all their demands, which have been compared to the French revolutionary doctrines of 1783, to his charge. The climax of the insurrectionary outbreak was, however, reached by the doings of Thomas Münzer and his followers, who preached and practised evangelical communism, and who accelerated by their fanatic and fantastic conduct the tragic catastrophe in this sanguinary drama. Luther was now in a most critical position. He made every effort to stem the tide of the revolution—he energetically exhorted both Princes and Peasants, and travelled about as a missionary of peace; but all in vain. His influence seemed, for the first time, to have lost its effect, and friends and foes censured him alike. The former reproached him with having deserted his own cause, whilst the latter blamed him as the originator of this fatal war. Thomas Münzer and his followers even accused Luther of base servility towards the Princes; and one of the grossest calumnies perhaps ever brought forward against a man of Luther’s stamp, was the charge that he had written his vehement publication, “against the murderous robber-bands of the Peasants,” after their total defeat. But this was untrue. He wrote it, in fact, whilst the Peasants were in the ascendancy, and whilst they disgraced their victory by barbarous acts of cruelty. When the nobles got the upper hand, and wreaked their vengeance in a most inhuman manner on the vanquished, the wrath of Luther was turned against the cruel victors. He pleaded for mercy even for the guilty, and with some of the Princes his intercession was successful. Large numbers of defeated Peasants were allowed, by Landgrave Philip of Hesse and the Prince Elector John of Saxony, the brother and successor of the Elector Frederick, to return home unmolested, whilst the Bishop of Würzburg and other anti-Lutheran lords distinguished themselves by a most refined cruelty in their treatment of the Peasant prisoners.