The Soil of Revolt
The religious revolution had encouraged the peasants to claim a larger share of Germany's growing economy. The hardships that had driven them to revolt several times before still weighed on them. Now that Luther had defied the Church, exposed the princes, broken down the barriers of fear and discipline, raised all believers to the priesthood and proclaimed the freedom of the Christian, the ground was readier for revolt than ever. In Germany church and state were so closely bound, and the clergy played so large a part in holding society together, that to profane and destroy their authority removed every barrier to revolution. The Waldensians, Beghards and the Brethren of the Common Life repeated their old radical claims about the meaning of Scripture. The printing of the New Testament struck the political and religious order like a blow. It exposed the clergy's slavery to human nature and worldly methods and acquainted the people with the communal life of the apostles and Christ's sympathy for the poor and oppressed. To the radicals of that age it served as a communist manifesto. Peasants and proletarians took it as the promise of a utopia in which private property would vanish and the poor would inherit the earth.
In 1521 a pamphlet called Karsthans, "the man with the hoe," who also held a pen, asked the peasants to support Luther. Another that year urged the villagers to rise against the Catholic clergy. In another, by Johann Eberlin, it was demanded that all men have a vote, that officials obey a council elected by the people, that all capitalist organizations be dissolved, that the price of bread and wine be fixed as in the Middle Ages, and that Latin, Greek, Hebrew, astronomy and medicine be taught to all children. A pamphlet of 1522, The Needs of the German Nation, falsely attributed to the late emperor Frederick III, called for the abolition of "all tolls, duties, passports and fines," the removal of Roman and church law, the limiting of company capital to 10,000 gulden, the removal of clergy from public office, the confiscation of monastery property and the sharing of its income among the poor. In 1524 Otto Brunfels declared that paying tithes to the clergy contradicts the teaching of the New Testament. Preachers mixed Protestant belief with their fancies of utopia. One claimed that the doors of paradise had been opened to peasants but nobles and clergy would not find the way in; another warned peasants against paying money to priests or monks. Müntzer, Karlstadt and Hubmaier told the people in their sermons that farmers, miners and grain growers could understand and teach the Gospel better than priests, abbots or church scholars, and Karlstadt went further and said they could do so even better than Luther. Astrological almanacs and astrologers predicted an upheaval in 1524.
Johannes Cochlaeus, a Catholic humanist, warned Luther in 1523 that townsmen and peasants would rise violently, because countless coarse letters and words against popes and officials, passed among the people or reaching their ears, had poisoned their minds. But Luther and the preachers and publishers of these writings were not the real cause of the revolt; what moved the peasants was their anger and discontent. The German Gospel and the ideas of Luther's radical followers sharpened the flames, and mixed the peasants' anger with visions of utopia, reckless excess and bold revenge.
Müntzer and Mühlhausen
Thomas Müntzer, with his fierce and extreme speeches, fanned revolt more than anyone. As preacher at Allstedt (1522) he demanded that all unbelievers, whether conservative or traditional, be put to the sword, since the godless have no right to live unless the elect grant it. He also asked the princes to lead the people in a communistic revolt against the clergy and the capitalists. When the princes did not answer, he asked the people to overthrow the princes too and to build a purified society like those Plato and Apuleius, author of the Golden Ass, had imagined. Everything is common, he wrote, and personal property must, when needed, be shared out to meet the people's needs; any prince, count or baron who hears this truth and turns away deserves to lose his head or hang. (The book's wording is stronger; it is condensed here.) Frederick the Elector tolerated his speeches as a jest, but his brother John and his cousin Duke George joined Luther in expelling Müntzer from his pastorate (1524). The angry apostle then wandered from town to town announcing the liberation of "Israel" and the approaching kingdom of God on earth.
At last Müntzer found the free city of Mühlhausen in Thuringia, whose weaving shops had gathered many workers, suitable for his purpose. Heinrich Pfeiffer, a former monk, had already set in motion, with the support of the lower middle class, a movement to remove powerful nobles from the town council. Müntzer announced his radical program to the town's workers and to the peasants of the nearby villages. On March 17, 1525, armed followers of Pfeiffer and Müntzer ousted the patricians and set up an "Eternal Council" to govern the town.
According to Melanchthon the victorious radicals drove the monks from the monasteries and seized church property. Still, the account of any theologian of that age about the beliefs and acts of the opponents cannot be taken as unbiased. Mühlhausen never saw a communist government, since Pfeiffer, who was in practice abler than Müntzer, steered the revolt in the interest of the middle class. Müntzer, expecting an attack from the emperor's soldiers, raised an army of workers and peasants and armed it with heavy guns cast in the barefoot friars' monastery. He told his soldiers to advance: forward, while the fire is hot; keep your swords always warm with the blood of the enemy. (The book's wording is shortened.)
The Peasants of the South and the Twelve Articles
Alongside the rising at Mühlhausen, the revolt of the peasants of southern Germany set the land in turmoil. A storm and hail in 1524 had destroyed the peasants' hope of a harvest at Stühlingen, which probably helped to inflame the revolt. The region lay near Schaffhausen and Switzerland, and the freedom of the hardy, hard-working Swiss peasants from feudal bonds had stirred excitement among the peasants there. On August 24, 1524, Hans Müller, at Müntzer's urging, gathered a group of Stühlingen peasants, formed them into a body called the "Evangelical Brotherhood" and swore to free the peasants of all Germany. Before long the discontented subjects of the abbot of Reichenau, the bishop of Constance and the counts of Werdenberg, Montfort, Lupfen and Sulz joined him. By the end of 1524 the number of armed peasants in southern Germany had reached 30,000. They refused to pay taxes to the state, tithes to the Church and dues to the feudal lords, and swore not to cease their effort for freedom until death. Their representatives at Memmingen, led or influenced by Zwinglian Protestants, drew up a declaration of "Twelve Articles" (March 1525) that set half of Germany ablaze.
The declaration begins by wishing peace and mercy to its Christian readers through Christ. Many enemies of Christianity, seeing the peasants gather, had mocked the Gospel and asked whether this was the fruit of the new Gospel and whether people should rise in tumult to overthrow, and perhaps to kill, clergy and rulers. The document answers these cavilers first to clear the Word of God from disgrace and then to justify disobedience as Christian rather than rebellious.
Article 1: every congregation should have the right to choose its own pastor and to remove him. Article 2: since the Old Testament made tithes a duty and the New permits them, the peasants would pay the grain tithe fairly, but it must be collected by the pastor each congregation chooses and, after his needs are met, the surplus must be shared among the poor of the village; the tithe on livestock would not be paid, because God made animals for man's use. Article 3: it has been the custom that the powerful treat us as their property, which is sad since Christ redeemed us all with his blood; Scripture commands that we live free, and we shall regain our freedom; as far as Christianity allows, we shall gladly obey the rulers chosen and set over us by God, and are sure that they as true Christians will either release us from serfdom or show from the Gospel that we were made to be serfs. Article 6: ever-growing heavy services have worn us out. Article 8: the peasants cannot pay their rents; honest officials should inspect the income of the lands and fix a fair rent, since every laborer deserves his wages. Article 10: the seizure of common pastures by some has aggrieved us. Article 11: the death duty on heirs should be abolished; we will neither pay it nor let the earnings of orphans and widows be plundered. Article 12: if any article is proved by Scripture to be wrong, we shall withdraw it. (The book omits the other articles.)
Luther's Two Voices
The peasants' leader, encouraged by Luther's half-revolutionary words, sent him a copy and asked for his help. In the Admonition to Peace, published in April 1525, Luther answered the peasants' appeal. He praised their readiness to test their acts by Scripture; and, referring to the growing charge of those who called him the cause of the disorder, he denied responsibility and reminded them of his insistence on obeying the law. Yet he did not stop blaming the powerful. No one in the world, he wrote, can be held responsible for this devilish uprising except you princes and lords, especially you blind bishops and mad priests and monks, who admit the truth of the holy Gospel yet whose hard hearts are not touched by it. All you do in your rule is plunder your subjects to live in lavish pride until the patience of the oppressed and poor is exhausted. You have roused God's anger, and unless you change your ways God's wrath will fall upon you. The peasants are in ferment, and for Germany this will bring only ruin, murder and bloodshed, unless our repentance moves God to prevent it.
Luther urged princes and lords to accept the justice of many of the peasants' demands and to look kindly on their condition. He also stated the peasants' own mistakes very frankly and warned them against force and revenge, telling them that resorting to force would leave them worse off. He predicted that revolt and excess would stop the Reformation and expose himself to blame. He opposed local churches collecting tithes and allowed civil authorities to tax the people to meet the cost of government. To Luther, the "freedom of the Christian" meant spiritual freedom only, and this did not contradict serfdom or even slavery. Did not Abraham and the other prophets keep slaves? Read what Paul teaches about servants, who in his day were all slaves. The third article of your declaration, he wrote, is not in accord with the Gospel; granting it would make all people equal, and equality among people is impossible, for a world government cannot last without some unequal, some free and some bound, some owners and some subjects.
If his last counsel had been followed, Germany would have been spared much bloodshed and ruin: gather some counts and lords and members of the city councils, lay your troubles before them, and let them settle them in friendship after study. You lords, avoid arrogance and reduce your force and tyranny so the poor may have room to live. The peasants also should obey and give up some demands that spring from their ambition.
But the peasant leaders felt that the time for retreat had passed and that any compromise would end in their punishment. They therefore accused Luther of treason and carried on. Some went so far in their belief in human equality that they proposed that nobles leave their castles and live like peasants and townsmen and not ride horses, since riding makes them prouder than others. The leaders also held that priests should consider themselves servants, not rulers, of their churches and be removed if they depart from Scripture. City workers joined the peasants in protesting against the grant of monopolies to nobles and the wealthy, the embezzlement of public funds by corrupt officials, and the rise of prices and low wages. One radical leader said that for the salvation of men's souls it would be better to end the luxuries of church leaders and divide their wealth among the poor. Wendel Hipler and Friedrich Weigand called for confiscation of church property, abolition of road tolls and customs duties, and a common currency, weights and measures for the whole empire.
The Risings of 1525
Among the leaders of the revolt were many types: Georg Metzler and Matern Feuerbacher, innkeepers; the agitator Jäcklein Rohrbach; some former soldiers and priests; and two knights, Florian Geyer and Götz von Berlichingen, who had taken part in Sickingen's ill-fated revolt and now led the peasants. Hauptmann and Goethe later made these two the heroes of their works. Each led a band of rebels and rarely coordinated his operations with those of other bands. Yet in the spring of 1525 the revolt suddenly swept several regions. At Heilbronn, Rothenburg and Würzburg, a rebel government of representatives of the working people took the town offices. At Frankfurt the rebel government declared that it would take over the powers of the council, mayor, pope and emperor. At Rothenburg the rebels drove priests from the cathedral, smashed religious images, leveled a chapel (March 27, 1525) and triumphantly emptied the churches' wine cellars. Towns subject to feudal lords rose, and bishops' towns demanded abolition of clerical privileges and seizure of church lands. Almost all the people of the duchy of Franconia, as well as the bishops of Speyer and Bamberg and the abbots of Kempten and Hersfeld, caught by surprise, promised to carry out the peasants' proposed reforms. William, count of Henneberg, freed his subjects. The rebels summoned Georg and Albrecht, counts of Hohenlohe, and told them: "Brothers Georg and Albrecht, swear that henceforth you will be brothers to the peasants, for you are now peasants and no longer lords." Many German towns welcomed the rebels with open arms, and many lower clergy, who bore a grudge against the powerful higher clergy, supported them.
The first serious clash came at Leipheim on the Danube near Ulm (April 4, 1525). About 3,000 peasants led by a stubborn priest, Jakob Wehe, took the town, drank the wine barrels dry, plundered the church, broke the organ, made sandals from priests' vestments, and seated a peasant in clerical dress on the altar, bowing to him in mockery. The mercenaries of the Swabian League under a capable commander, Georg Truchsess von Waldburg, besieged Leipheim and forced the disorderly, terrified peasants to surrender. The attackers beheaded Wehe and four of his companions and burned the peasants' huts. His other companions dispersed.
On Good Friday three bands under Metzler, Geyer and Rohrbach besieged Weinsberg near Heilbronn, whose lord, Count Ludwig von Helfenstein, was known for cruelty (April 15, 1525; the book's dates for Good Friday and Easter at Weinsberg do not quite agree and are given as in the source). The peasants' envoys came to the wall to present terms of truce, but the count and his horsemen charged suddenly and killed them. On Easter, with help from some townspeople, the rebels entered the town and killed forty defenders. The count, his wife (a daughter of the late Emperor Maximilian) and sixteen knights were captured. Rohrbach, without consulting Metzler and Geyer, ordered the count and his knights to be sent through the ranks of armed peasants to their sad end. The count offered, in return for his life, the seizure of all his property, but they refused it as a pretext to gain time. The countess, who had fallen unconscious, pleaded for her husband's life. Rohrbach had two men lift her up to witness the avengers' joy. As the count walked to his death, peasants shouted their grievances: you threw my brother into the dungeon because he did not take off his cap as you passed; you put a yoke on us like oxen; you had my father's hands cut off for killing a hare in his field; your hunters' horses and dogs trampled my crop; you have taken from us every last coin. In half an hour sixteen knights followed the count to their deaths. The countess was allowed to retire to a convent. (The book's account is graphic; it is abridged here.)
The revolt had now spread almost throughout Germany. The rebels plundered monasteries or took heavy ransoms from them. A letter of April 7 says that nowhere do the rebels conceal their intention of killing Catholic clergy, destroying monasteries and bishops' palaces and uprooting Catholic worship. This may be exaggerated, but in Bavaria, Austria and Tyrol, where the Protestant movement had apparently been put down, the rebels seized many towns and forced Archduke Ferdinand to accept that sermons must conform to Scripture, the core of Protestant belief. At Mainz Archbishop Albrecht fled the storm, but his deputy saved the see by approving the peasants' twelve articles and paying a ransom of 15,000 gulden. On April 11 the people of Bamberg stripped their bishop of feudal powers, burned his palace and plundered the houses of loyal Catholics. In Alsace the revolt spread so fast that by the end of April the lives of all landowners and Catholics were at risk. On April 28 an army of 20,000 armed peasants stormed Zabern, seat of the bishop of Strasbourg, and plundered the town's monastery. On May 13 the peasants took the town, forced one man of every four to join them, and demanded that all officials except the emperor be elected or removed by the people. At Brixen in Tyrol, Michael Gaismair, formerly the bishop's secretary, raised a band, attacked the clergy, plundered the local monastery (May 12) and continued the violence for a year. A hostile chronicler describes the Inn and Adige valleys then: sedition and disorder were so general that even respectable men dared not appear in the streets, and theft and plunder were so common that they tempted even honest men. At Freiburg im Breisgau the peasants plundered the castles of nobles and the monasteries and forced the townspeople to join the Evangelical Brotherhood (May 24). At the same time bands of peasants drove the bishop of Würzburg from his castle and feasted on his stores. In June the rebels pursued Matthias Lang, the strong and warlike archbishop of Salzburg, from his palace to the fortress outside the city. At Neustadt, the elector Palatine Ludwig, besieged by 8,000 armed peasants, invited their leaders to dinner and cheerfully agreed to their demands. A contemporary says that the commoners sat down with their ruler and ate and drank together in harmony.
Luther's Fury
While Germany was the scene of these events, Luther printed at Wittenberg the tract Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants (mid-May 1525). Its harsh tone astonished princes and peasants, churchmen and humanists alike. Frightened by the peasants' excesses, by the chance that law and order in Germany would collapse, and by rumors that he himself had set the fire, Luther now took the side of the owners openly. He had not meant to condemn the peasants in his earlier book, since they had declared themselves ready to mend their ways, but before he knew it, forgetting their promises, they had fallen like mad dogs on plunder and rebellion. All they do comes from Satan, especially from the arch-devil Müntzer who rules Mühlhausen. He must expose their sins, and then teach the rulers how to act in the present state of affairs.
Anyone proved to be a rebel has broken the law of God and the empire, and whoever puts him down first does right and deserves praise. Revolt brings killing and bloodshed, widows and orphans, and turns everything upside down. Therefore it is the duty of every man, openly or in secret, to strike down, wound or kill rebels, remembering that nothing is more poisonous, harmful and devilish than rebellion; killing a rebel is like killing a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will bite you and many others. (The book's wording is very harsh; it is softened here.)
Luther also denied that Scripture gives any warrant for common ownership of property. The Gospel does not make a man's goods everyone's, except for those who freely choose to follow the apostles' way of life, as told in the fourth chapter of the Acts. Unlike our mad peasants in revolt, the apostles did not demand that anyone's property, even Herod's or Pilate's, be handed over to the people; they gave up only their own. While our peasants want to snatch others' goods and keep their own, bravo for their Christianity! He did not think a devil was left in hell, since all had entered the bodies of the peasants.
In this tract Luther promised Catholic rulers that if they punished the rebels without trial he would pardon their sins. He advised Protestant rulers to try prayer, penitence and talks to end the revolt; but if the rebels persisted, they should draw the sword at once, for every prince must remember that he is God's servant and bears the sword to take wrath on wrongdoers (Romans 13). A prince who could punish the rebels but held back from fear of bloodshed would be responsible for all the killing and crime they committed. And if anyone thought such punishment harsh, let him remember that the revolt has become unbearable and, if it continues, one should expect the end of the world.
To Luther's misfortune, his protests reached the public when the nobles had already begun to put down the rebels, and so the Protestant reformer was unjustly held responsible for the massacres and crimes committed by the opponents of the revolt. It is hard to believe that his words influenced the lords and rulers whose existence was at stake. Their interest was to quell the revolt with such harshness that it would be a lesson to later generations.
The Suppression
The nobles and landlords for some time amused the simple peasants with talk of terms of settlement and promising bait, broke up many of their camps, and meanwhile mustered their forces to crush the revolt.
In the midst of the turmoil Elector Frederick died (May 5, 1525). He had understood that he and the other princes had provoked the peasants by violence and oppression, and thought extreme measures against them unjustified, and urged his successor, Duke John, to avoid severity. But John thought his brother's policy had been too soft, and after Frederick's death he marched his forces, with those of Duke Henry of Brunswick and Philip, landgrave of Hesse, against Müntzer's camp outside Mühlhausen. The two forces, each of about 8,000 men, were unequal in everything but numbers. The poor equipment, lack of discipline and low morale of the peasants, even with their homemade cannon, left them helpless against the duke's trained soldiers. Müntzer tried to raise the peasants' spirits with speeches, leading them in prayer and hymns. In the first clash the peasants lost hundreds and fled to the town of Frankenhausen (May 15, 1525). The attackers pursued them and killed 5,000 and sentenced 300 prisoners to death. (The book adds a gruesome condition on which the prisoners' wives obtained pardons; it is omitted here.) Müntzer, who had hidden, was captured and, after confessing his errors under torture, was beheaded. The attackers then advanced on Mühlhausen and crushed Pfeiffer and his 1,200 soldiers defending the town. Pfeiffer and other leaders were put to death, but the townspeople escaped punishment by paying an indemnity of 40,000 gulden ($10,000,000 in the book's conversion).
At about the same time Truchsess took Böblingen peacefully and bombarded the peasants' stronghold from the wall (May 12). The survivors were cut down by his cavalry, and so the revolt in Württemberg ended. Truchsess then burned Weinsberg to the ground and had Jäcklein Rohrbach, whom the book blames for the "massacre of Weinsberg," burned alive. He then marched on Königshofen and Ingolstadt, took Würzburg, and beheaded eighty-one rebels as a warning to others (June 5). Florian Geyer fled Würzburg to an unknown fate and joined the men of legend. Götz von Berlichingen surrendered in time, later fought the Turks in Charles V's ranks, and died in his castle at eighty-one (1562, by the book). Rothenburg fell to the nobles' forces on June 20 and Memmingen soon after. The Alsatian revolt was put down with the slaughter of between two and six thousand peasants at Lupstein and Zabern (May 17 and 18). By May 27, in Alsace alone, the number of peasants killed, many after surrender, exceeded 20,000. The air in these towns was heavy with the stench of corpses. Margrave Casimir beheaded, hanged, maimed or blinded the peasants who surrendered to him. (The book lists these mutilations; the details are condensed.) Finally, wiser princes intervened to check the nobles' savagery, and at the end of August the Diet of Augsburg asked the victors to ease the punishment and fines of the defeated. A philosophical noble asked: "If all the rebels are killed, how shall we get peasants?"
In Austria the revolt lasted a year. In January 1526 Michael Gaismair announced one of the most extreme revolutionary programs across Tyrol. He asked that all "godless" men (that is, non-Protestants) who violated the word of God or oppressed the common people be put to death; that churches be stripped of images and sacred vessels and the mass abandoned; that town walls and fortresses be demolished, leaving only villages, with all people equal; that officials and judges be chosen by the vote of all adult men; that no money be paid to feudal lords as dues or rent; that the tithe be given to the reformed church or the poor; that monasteries become schools and hospitals; that mines be nationalized; and that the state fix prices. Gaismair for a time repelled the forces sent against him. Finally he had to take refuge in Italy. Archduke Ferdinand set a price on his head, which went to two Spanish assassins who killed him at his house in Padua in 1528.
The Cost
The losses in life and property from the Peasants' War were so heavy and terrible that Germany saw nothing like them until the Thirty Years' War. During and after the revolt 130,000 peasants alone were killed (the book's figure). About 10,000 rebels were put to death in the territory of the Swabian League. The executioner of Truchsess boasted that with his own strong hand he had killed 12,000 condemned men (also the book's figure). The peasants razed hundreds of castles and monasteries; hundreds of towns and villages were destroyed or emptied of people or ruined by heavy fines. More than 50,000 homeless peasants fled along the roads or took refuge in the woods. The number of orphans and widows grew sadly. The peasants had burned many of the documents that fixed their rents, and the documents drawn up after the revolt made their debts to the lords heavier. In Austria, Baden and Hesse the peasants gained some relative freedom, but elsewhere the chains tightened; east of the Elbe the peasants could not break them off until the nineteenth century. Democratic movements were strangled at birth, censorship of books increased under Catholic and Protestant rulers alike, humanism withered, and the love of life, art and letters that the Renaissance had breathed into hearts gave way to theology, piety and thoughts of the world to come.
The Peasants' War halted the Reformation in Germany. Although Luther again and again condemned the revolt and warned the peasants against violence, the revolt took on the color of the Protestant movement: economic hopes appeared in the dress of Luther's expressions. Common ownership came to be seen as the only way back to apostolic times. Charles V called the peasant revolt a "Lutheran movement." Conservatives put the Protestants' confiscation of church property on the same level as the peasants' plundering of monasteries. In southern Germany frightened princes and lords renewed their loyalty to the Church of Rome. In places like Bamberg and Würzburg even some landowners were executed for being Lutherans. The peasants themselves came to see the Reformation as a trap meant to deceive them and turned from it, calling Luther "Doctor Liar" and "the princes' toady." For years after the revolt Luther was so hated by the German people that he scarcely dared to leave Wittenberg, and could not in 1530 be at the deathbed of his father. On June 5, 1525, he wrote that what God had done for the world through him was forgotten and that now lords, priests and peasants were all against him and threatened his life.
Luther was not a man to fall down before his enemies and ask pardon. On May 30, 1525, he wrote to Nikolaus von Amsdorf that it was better for all the peasants to be killed than for the princes and magistrates to be destroyed, because the peasants had taken the sword without God's leave. In July of that year he published An Open Letter on the Harsh Book Against the Peasants, in which he held his critics unworthy of an answer, since they had shown themselves rebellious at heart like the peasants and undeserving of pity. Rulers should seize such men by the collar and stop their loose tongues. If you think this answer harsh, tyrannical and meant to gag people, he wrote, you are not wrong. Rebels do not deserve a reasoned reply, since they flee from reason; their answer is a fist that makes their mouths bleed. The peasants have no ears to hear; they must be opened with bullets. He would not hear of mercy, for his ear was bound to God's command. If God's will is for retribution, why talk of mercy? Did not Saul sin by pity toward the Amalekites when God expected him to carry out his wrath? You talk of mercy now that the peasants are crushed; why not when they rose, plundered, killed and burned? Why did they have no mercy on the lords and princes, whom they meant to destroy? (The book's wording is much harsher; it is shortened.) Luther argued that forbearance and mercy are required of Christians only where their own rights and interests are in question, but in civil and national office they must put justice before pity, since the unruly, sinful nature that mankind inherited from Adam and Eve makes government, law and punishment unavoidable to keep order. Our duty to a society threatened by crime is heavier than our duty to the criminals.
Had the peasants' aims been achieved, he said, no honest person would have been safe from them, anyone with a penny more than another would have been tormented for it, the violence they began would have had no end, women and children would have been dishonored, in the end they would have fallen on each other, and peace and security would have vanished everywhere. Could anything be bolder and more careless than peasants who have filled their bellies and gained power? Donkeys with fists would rule and force everyone to obey them.
Judging Luther
Luther's sharp statements on the Peasants' War surprise us. Today social order is so firm that we think it will last forever and tolerate those who disturb it by violence. But the peasants' reckless plunder of people's property and the risks the revolt posed to law and order, to government and the system of production and distribution in Germany, put Luther in a difficult position. The events during and after the revolt justify his fear that the religious revolution in Germany would be left barren. His opposition to the revolt may also be explained by gratitude to the princes who had protected him at Wittenberg, Worms and the Wartburg; perhaps too he feared that the nobles and princes of Germany, turning away from the Reformation, would leave him defenseless against Charles V and Clement VII. For Luther the only freedom worth struggling and dying for was freedom of worship and salvation by the judgment and impulse of one's own conscience. What difference did it make, in this fleeting world that ends in eternity, whether one was serf or prince? In other words, Luther held that a man who has spiritual freedom and God's grace should accept the situation this world provides.
Even so, the peasants had cause to resent Luther. He had foreseen a social revolution and said it would please him even if the people stained their hands with the bishops' blood. He himself had stirred the revolt, shaken the social order, and made the power of the state small before divine power. He had also not protested against the confiscation of church property by civil authorities. At a time when the ballot box was illegal to them and oppressors were arming themselves daily, what other way was open to the peasants than force? The peasants felt that the new faith had sanctified their goals, stirred their acts and desires, and at the last moment abandoned them. Luther's opposition turned some peasants from religion; many of them, led by Jesuit preachers, returned to the Catholic Church; and others, following the extremists whom Luther had rejected, took the New Testament to be a herald of communism.