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 quiet spiritual dram-drinking, and probably it would have gone no further but for the ruthless persecution which their doctrines called down upon them. Zwingli himself was hostile to them, and repressive measures were taken against their Swiss adherents; but in most parts of Germany they were condemned to wholesale death. Six hundred executions are said to have taken place at Ensisheim in Upper Elsass, a thousand in Tyrol and Görz, and the Swabian League butchered whole bands of them without trial or sentence. Many were beheaded in Saxony with the express approbation of Luther, who regarded their heroism in the face of death as proof of diabolic possession. Duke William of Bavaria made a distinction between those who recanted and those who remained obdurate; the latter were burnt, the former were only beheaded. Bucer at Strassburg was less truculent than Luther; but Philip of Hesse was the only Prince of sufficient moderation to be content with the heretics' incarceration.

The doctrine of passive resistance broke down under treatment like this, and men's sufferings began to set their hands as well as their minds in motion; a conviction developed that it was their duty to assist in effecting the purification which they believed to be imminent. In Augsburg, Hans Hut proclaimed the necessity incumbent upon the saints to purify the world with a double-edged sword, and his disciple, Augustin Bader, prepared a crown, insignia, and jewels for his future kingdom in Israel. Melchior Hofmann told Frederick I of Denmark that he was one of the two sovereigns at whose hands all the firstborn of Egypt should be slain. Not till the vials of wrath had been outpoured could the kingdom of heaven come. Hofmann, who had preached " the true gospel " in Livonia and then had combated Luther's magical doctrine of the Eucharist at Stockholm, Kiel, and Strassburg, had by his voice and his pen acquired great influence over the artisans of northern Germany; and here, where men's dreams had not been rudely dispelled by the ravages of peasants and reprisals of Princes, revolutionary ideas took their deepest root and revolutionary projects appeared most feasible. From 1529 onwards there were outbreaks in not a few north German towns, at Minden, Herford, Lippstadt, and Soest; but it was at Münster and Lübeck that the revolution in two different forms assumed a worldwide importance.

Münster had long been a scene of strife between Catholic and Protestant. The Lutheran attack was at first repelled by the Catholics, and Bernard Rottman, the most prominent of the Reforming divines, was expelled from the city. But he soon returned and established himself in the suburbs, where his preaching produced such an effect on the populace that the Reformers became a majority on the Council and secured control of the city churches. In 1532 the Chapter and the rest of the Catholic clergy, with the minority of the Council, left Münster to concert measures of retaliation with Count Franz von Waldeck, the newly-elected Bishop of Mü