Muenzer, himself, seems to have realised the wide abyss between his theories and surrounding realities.This abyss must have been felt the more keenly, the more distorted the views of this genius of necessity appeared, reflected in the heads of the mass of his followers.He threw himself into widening and organisms the movement with a zeal rare even for him.He wrote letters and sent out emissaries in all directions.His letters and sermons breathed a revolutionary fanaticism which was amazing in comparison with his former writings.Gone completely was the ***** youthful humour of Muenzer's revolutionary pamphlets.The quiet instructive language of the thinker ' which had been so characteristic of him, appeared no more.
Muenzer was now entirely a prophet of the revolution.Incessantly he fanned the flame of hatred against the ruling classes.He spurred the wildest passions, using forceful terms of expression the like of which religious and nationalist delirium had put into the mouths of the Old Testament prophets.
The style up to which he worked himself reveals the level of education of that public which he was to affect.The example of Muehlhausen and the propaganda of Muenzer had a quick and far-reaching effect.In Thuringia, Eichsfeld, Harz, in the duchies of -Saxony, in Hesse and Fulda, in Upper Franconia and in Vogtland, the peasants arose, assembled in armies, and burned castles and monasteries.Muenzer was more or less recognised as the leader of the entire movement, and Muehlhausen remained the central point, while in Erfurt a purely middle-class movement became victorious, and the ruling party there constantly maintained an undecided attitude towards the peasants.
In Thuringia, the princes were at the beginning just as helpless and powerless in relation to the peasants as they had been in Franconia and Suabia.Only in the last days of April, did the Landgrave of Hesse succeed in assembling a corps.It was that same Landgrave Philipp, whose piety is being praised so much by the Protestant and bourgeois histories of 'the Reformation, and of whose infamies towards the peasants we will presently have a word to say.By a series of quick movements and by decisive action, Landgrave Philipp subdued the major part of his land.He called new contingents, and then turned towards the region of the Abbot of Fulda, who hitherto was his lord.On May 3, he defeated the Fulda peasant troop at Frauenberg, subdued the entire land, and seized the opportunity not only to free himself from the sovereignty of the Abbot, but to make the Abbey of Fulda a vassalage of Hesse, naturally pending its subsequent secularisation.
He then took Eisenach and Langensalza, and jointly with the Saxon troops, moved towards the headquarters of the rebellious Muehlhausen.Muenzer assembled his forces at Frankenhausen 8,000 men and several cannons.The Thuringian troops were far from possessing that fighting power which the Suabian and Franconian troops developed in their struggle with Truchsess.The men were poorly armed and badly disciplined.They counted few ex-soldiers among them, and sorely lacked leadership.It appears that Muenzer possessed no military knowledge whatsoever.Nevertheless, the princes found it proper to use here the same tactics that so often helped Truchsess to victory-breach of faith.On May 16, they entered negotiations, concluded an armistice, but attacked the peasants before the time of the armistice had elapsed.
Muenzer stood with his people on the mountain which is still called Mount Battle (Schlachtberg), entrenched behind a barricade of wagons.The discouragement among the troops was rapidly increasing.The princes had promised them amnesty should they deliver Muenzer alive.Muenzer assembled his people in a circle, to debate the princes' proposals.A knight and a priest expressed themselves in favour of capitulation.Muenzer had them both brought inside the circle, and decapitated.This act of terrorist energy, jubilantly met by the outspoken revolutionaries, caused a certain halt among the troops, but most of the men would have gone away without resistance had it not been noticed that the princes' Lansquenets, who had encircled the entire mountain, were approaching in close columns, in spite of the armistice.A front was hurriedly formed behind the wagons, but already the cannon balls and guns were pounding the half-defenseless peasants, unused to battle, and the Lansquenets reached the barricade.After a brief resistance, the line of the wagons was broken, the peasants' cannon captured, and the peasants dispersed.They fled in wild disorder, and fell into the hands of the enveloping columns and the cavalry, who perpetrated an appalling massacre among them.Out of 8,000 peasants, over 5,000 were slaughtered.
The survivors arrived at Frankenhaus, and simultaneously with them, the princes' cavalry.The city was taken.Muenzer, wounded in the bead, was discovered in a house and captured.On May 25, Muehlhausen also surrendered.
Pfeifer, who had remained there, ran away, but was captured in the region of Eisenach.
Muenzer was put on the rack in the presence of the princes, and then decapitated.He went to his death with the same courage with which he had lived.He was barely twenty-eight when he was executed.Pfeifer, with many others, was also executed.In Fulda, that holy man, Philipp of Hesse, had opened his bloody court.He and the Prince of Hesse ordered many others to be killed by the sword -- in Eisenach, twenty-four; in Langensalza, forty-one; after the battle of Frankenhaus, 300; in Muehlhausen, over 100;at German, twenty-six; at Tungeda, fifty; at Sangenhausen, twelve; in Leipzig, eight, not to speak of mutilations and the more moderate measures of pillaging and burning villages and cities.
