Page:The English Peasant.djvu/392

 sanguinary; all the villagers were forced to join, and the peasant hordes ranged over Germany like a new invasion of Huns and Goths. From the French frontier to the Danube all Germany was up; there were at least a hundred thousand peasants in arms.

A moment of possible victory came when the peasant armies surrounded Seneschal Georg, the general of the troops of the Suabian Confederation; but it was lost, and quickly after the peasants were defeated in the battle of Boeblingen. The lords took signal vengeance, and in expiation of the "Terror," Weinsberg was set on fire. During four days and four nights a sea of flames rose towards heaven. Two thousand people saved themselves; but all else—women, children, cattle, and houses—fell a prey to the devastating elements. As a foreground, Jacquet and the Black Hofman, the Hecate of the war, underwent the agony of being slowly roasted.

Münzer was in despair, and his letters and his manifestoes are the wild curses of a man who knows that both he and his cause are lost. He met the German princes with eight thousand followers at Frankenhausen. At the end of an hour the battle was lost, and five thousand peasants lay dead or wounded on the field. Münzer was taken, and after being tortured was put to death. On the scaffold he exhorted the princes who were present to be good, just, and equitable to the poor and feeble, often to read the Bible, and especially the Book of Kings. "Do not think," he said, "this will last for ever. One day, unless you are enlightened, I shall be avenged. A man like me does not die."

But they took no heed of the prophet. The peasants were slaughtered by hecatombs. The Seneschal Georg travelled over the country accompanied by twelve executioners. From Ulm, where the citizens had foreseen the demand and had apprenticed persons to the executioner's art, the leader of its mercenaries ran through Suabia and Franconia, putting all to death who fell into his power. All who uttered the word "Gospel" he hanged; this hireling, Berthold Archelin by name, boasted that he had hung twenty peasants a day. No doubt the 'prentice hands made themost of the practice. The Margrave of Baireuth and Anspach travelled from village to village with moving gibbets. In order not to lose time, the Margrave generally seized the first hundred