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 peasants and decapitated or blinded about twenty, cutting off the wrists of the others. But nothing, perhaps, gives a more terrible idea of the horrible brutality of the soldiery the German nobles employed to maintain their power than the fate of Münzer's wife, a poor young woman of humble birth. On the eve of becoming a mother, she was dragged into the camp of the Princes, to whom she had been surrendered by the inhabitants of Mulhouse. Exposed to every outrage, she asked for a weapon to kill herself. She was violated in the presence of the army and died on the spot.

The slaughter of the sheep did not end with the first few months of vengeance. Four years after the battle of Frankenhausen, Charles V. issued a decree, ordaining that every Anabaptist, no matter of what sex or age, must be put to death either by the sword or by fire, or by any other means, and without any previous judicial inquiry. After this, Anabaptist martyrdoms are continually occurring. In more than one case the victims were undoubtedly Christians of the highest order. George Wagner, who suffered at Munich, was a man of such irreproachable conduct that even "the prince was dolorously affected at having to send him to the stake." His wife, holding her children in her arms, threw herself on her knees, and begged him with sobs to let them save his life. But he, "turning his eyes towards Heaven, said, 'My Father, many things here below are dear to me. I love my wife, I love my children, my friends, my life; but Thou art still more dear than wife, children, friends, or life. Nothing shall separate me from Thy love. I am Thine, body and soul. I am ready to die for Thee and the truth: Thou alone art the life.'" Another was Balthasar Hübmeier, who was burned at Vienna, in 1528; his wife, who encouraged him at the stake, being drowned three days afterwards in the Danube. Hübmeier, a pupil of Dr Eck, and one time Professor of Catholic Theology at Ingolstadt, is believed to have been the first who taught the principle of universal religious liberty. In this he was centuries before his age, and of course far in advance of all "the Reformers," who, to quote the words of Dr Schaff, in his "History of the Creeds," "felt the extermination of the Anabaptists necessary for the salvation of the churchly Reformation and of social order." Luther, who showed more heart than Melanchthon, writes to his brother-in-law: —