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 thinking that the storm had blown over, resorted to their usual practices and made little endeavour to conclude the pourparlers at Stockach. As a result the insurrection broke out afresh, and was extended into a wider area.

In October and November, 1524, there were risings of the peasants all round the Lake of Constance, in the Allgau, the Klettgau, the Hegau, the Thurgau, and north-west of Stühlingen at Villingen. Further to the east, on the Hier in Upper Swabia, the tenants of the abbey of Kempten, who had long nursed grievances against their lords, rose, and in February, 1525, assembled at Sonthofen; they declared that they would have no more lords, a revolutionary demand which indicates that their treatment by the abbots had been worse than that of the Lupfen tenants. The peasants of the Donauried (N.W. of Augsburg) had been agitating throughout the winter, and by the first week in February four thousand of them met at Baltringen, some miles to the north of Biberach; before the end of the month their numbers had risen to thirty thousand. They were also joined by bands called the Seehaufen, from the northern shores of Lake Constance, while Hans Müller made an incursion into the Breisgau and raised the peasants of the Black Forest.

As the rebellion extended its area the scope of its objects grew wider, and it assimilated revolutionary ideas distinct from the agrarian grievances which had originally prompted the rising. A religious element began to obtrude, and its presence was probably due to the fact that it supplied a convenient banner under which heterogeneous forces might fight; Sickingen had adopted a similar expedient to cloak the sectional aims of the knights, and men now began to regard the revolt as a rising on behalf of the Gospel. In this light it was viewed by the neighbouring city of Zurich, where Zwingli's influence was now all-powerful; and the Zurich government exhorted the Klettgau peasants to adopt the Word of God as their banner. In conformity with this advice they gave a religious colour to their demands, and in January, 1525, offered to grant their lord whatever was reasonable, godly, and Christian, if he on his side would undertake to abide by the Word of God and righteousness. So, too, the Baltringen bands declared that they wished to create no disturbance, but only desired that their grievances should be redressed in accord with godly justice; and in the Allgau, where the peasant Häberlin had preached and baptised, the peasants formed themselves into a " godly union." On the other hand the Lake bands, with whom served some remnants of Sickingen's host, appear to have been more intent upon a political attack on lords and cities.

In March all these bodies held a sort of parliament at Memmingen, the chief town of Upper Swabia, to concert a common basis of action, and here the Zurich influence carried the day. Schappeler, Zwingli's friend, had been preaching at Memmingen on the iniquity of tithes, and