Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/205

 in 1524 the earliest sets of articles propounded by the peasants contained no mention of religious reform.

And yet the assertion that there was no connexion between the Reformation and the Peasants' Revolt is as far from the truth as the statement that the one produced the other. The frequent association of religious and social movements excludes the theory of mere coincidence. Wat Tyler trod on the heels of Wiclif, and Ziska on those of Hus; Kett appeared at the dawn of English Puritanism, and the Levellers at its zenith. When one house is blown up, its neighbour is sure to be shaken, especially if both stand on the same foundation; and all government, whether civil or ecclesiastical, rests ultimately on the same basis. It is not reason, it is not law, still less is it force; it is mainly custom and habit. Without a voluntary and unreasoning adherence to custom and deference to authority all society and all government would be impossible; and the disturbance of this habit in any one respect weakens the forces of law and order in all. When habit is broken, reason and passion are called into play, and it would be hard to say which is more fatal to human institutions. The Reformation had by an appeal to reason and passion destroyed the habit of unreasoning obedience to the Papacy, and less venerable institutions inevitably felt the shock.

This appeal against habit and custom was made to the peasant more directly than to any other class. Popular literature and popular art erected him into a sort of saviour of society. In scores of dialogues he intervenes and confounds with his common sense the learning of doctors of law and theology; he knows as much of the Scriptures as three parsons and more; and in his typical embodiment as Karsthans he demolishes the arguments of Luther's antagonist, Murner. He is the hero of nearly all contemporary pamphlets; with his hoe and his flail he will defend the Gospel if it comes to fighting; and even Luther himself, when Sickingen had failed, sought to frighten Princes and Prelates with the peasant's spectre. The peasant was the unknown factor of the situation; his power was incalculable, but it would not be exerted in favour of existing institutions, and when hard pressed the religious Reformers were prepared, like Frankenstein, to call into existence a being over which their control was imperfect.

The discontent of the peasantry in Germany, as in other countries of Europe, had been a painfully obvious fact for more than a generation, and since 1490 it had broken out in revolts in Elsass, in the Netherlands, in Württemberg, at Kempten, at Bruchsal, and in Hungary. The device of the peasant's shoe, whence their league acquired the name of Bundschuh, had been adopted as early as 1493, and again in 1502; and the electoral Princes themselves had admitted that the common people were burdened with feudal services, taxes, ecclesiastical Courts, and other exactions, which would eventually prove intolerable. Hans Rosenblüt complained before the end of the fifteenth century that