216 PEASANTS' WAR peasant army was routed by George of Wald- burg near Leipheim on the Danube. Waldburg, the general of the Swabian league, a powerful combination of princes, nobles, and free cities, found he needed time to collect larger forces, and therefore began new negotiations. In the mean time the insurrection gathered strength, spreading southward to Tyrol, Salzburg, and some parts of the archduchy of Austria, and northward over all Franconia. It extended even to Thuringia, where Miinzer became its chief leader (see MUNZER), and to Hesse and the region on the middle Rhine. Numerous cities and towns made common cause with the peas- ants, in Franconia many nobles did the same, and the entire nobility would have joined them had they accepted the shrewd proposition of Hippler, the chief emissary of Duke TTlric, to indemnify the nobles for their losses by secu- larizing and dividing among them the posses- sions of the ecclesiastical princes. Nor did the peasants enlist, as Hippler advised them, several thousand lansquenets, who offered their services. They followed his advice only in choosing the renowned knight Gotz von Ber- lichingen for their general. Hippler busied himself also in getting together a congress of the insurgents, which met at Heilbronn, May 8, and framed a scheme for a new constitution of the German empire ; the emperor was to be the only sovereign, and all princes were to be his subjects. Hippler, Weigand, and others were moderate men ; but their plans were fre- quently thwarted by a more radical party, who burned castles and cloisters, and committed still greater atrocities. The principal of these was the massacre of Count Helfenstein with some 20 nobles captured on April 16 at the storming of Weinsberg near Heilbronn ; in spite of their entreaties they had to run the gauntlet and were stabbed. Helfenstein while treating with the peasants had continued hostilities. Only one tenth of the Franconian peasants, under command of Rohrbach, had perpetrated the massacre, yet it was charged to the whole body. It terrified the weaker princes and cities menaced by the peasants, and induced them to submit at once ; but at the same time it aroused the anger and revenge of Count Waldburg, and caused Luther, who up to this time had held a neutral position, to publish his pamphlet "Against the Rapacious, Murderous Peasants," in which he called on the princes to kill them like mad dogs, and declared that none could die in a way more pleasing to God than fight- ing against such miscreants. Count Waldburg adopted the ancient policy of dividing the enemy. With the peasant army of southern Swabia, the men who had begun the war, he concluded a treaty at Weingarten, April 17, by which they submitted the question of their wrongs to arbiters and then went home. On May 12, at Boblingen in Wurtemberg, Waldburg suddenly attacked and completely routed the peasants of the Black Forest and others ; each of the two armies numbered about 15,000 men. On May 15 the peasants of Thuringia, under Mtinzer, were routed at Frankenhausen, and on May 17 those of Lorraine by Duke Anton near Zabern. These last fought gallantly, and were conquered mainly through treachery. Waldburg now marched against the peasant armies of Franconia ; one of them under Metz- ler was routed at Konigshof en, June 2 ; another near Wiirzburg, June 4. The leader of the lat- ter, Florian Geyer, and his 600 men, called the black cohort, neither gave nor asked quarter, and all were slain. Geyer, who wanted all castles destroyed, had refused favorable terms to the garrison of the Frauenberg, the citadel above the city of Wurzburg, and had besieged it for weeks, instead of marching through the country and spreading the insurrection, as Ber- lichingen advised. But he showed himself true- hearted to the last, while Berlichingen left the peasants at the end of May, under pretence that his time of enlistment in their cause, one month, had expired. On June 8 Waldburg and the princes triumphantly marched into Wurz- burg, and witnessed the execution of the most prominent citizens, who with the leaders of the peasants, about 80 in all, were publicly be- headed. At many other places also cruel ven- geance was taken ; Rohrbach was burned at a slow fire. In southeastern Swabia 30,000 peasants of the Allgau still held out against Waldburg, but succumbed July 22, through the strategy of Georg von Frundsberg and the treachery of bribed leaders. With the last peasant army, that of Salzburg, the duke of Bavaria concluded a treaty on terms favorable to the peasants, Aug. 30 ; but their sovereign, the bishop of Salzburg, failed to fulfil its con- ditions. Wholesale executions took place after the war. The chief cause of the failure of the movement was lack of unity of action. The peasants did not sufficiently trust and obey their leaders, many of whom were honest and able, while they trusted the princes too much. The burdens of which the peasants had com- plained were in many cases greatly increased. They lost permanently the right to bear arms, to hold public meetings, and to take part in the election of their officers. The German empire lost its balance of power, which up to that time had been maintained; the peasants, with the cities and the lower nobility, counterbalancing the power of the princes, and strengthening the hands of the emperor. Now the princes reigned supreme, and the power of the emperor was merely nominal. German Protestantism never regained the opportunity lost at this time. The peasants of all Swabia and Franconia, when they rose for liberty, declared themselves in favor of the reformation. When defeated, by far the greater part of them were compelled to return to the Roman Catholic church, and to remain with their posterity in its communion. See Zimmermann, Allgemeine Geschichte des grossen Bauerrikriegs (3 vols., Stuttgart, 1841- '3), and Forg, Deutschland in der Revolutions- periode 1522-'5 (Freiburg, 1851).
