"Group after group slowly retired,
scattering in different directions; but the Bishop watched his
opportunity, and when they had all peaceably turned their backs, he sent
out his men-at-arms who fell upon them, and cut many down, and took many
prisoners. Great numbers took refuge in a church; but, threatened with
fire and starvation, they at length surrendered. The prophet was burned to
death on a field near the castle of Wurzburg." _Exeunt omnes._

We pass on at one bound to the chief hero of these peasant wars, whom Mrs
Percy Sinnett undertakes, in the French phrase, to rehabilitate--in other
words, to wash a little white. That Thomas Munzer has had hard justice
dealt to him, we are quite disposed to believe. Both the great parties who
divided the world of letters between them--the Roman Catholics and the
Protestants--were decidedly hostile to him. The Roman Catholics would
dwell upon his enormities in order to charge them upon the Protestants;
the Protestants, anxious to escape so ill-omened a connexion, and show the
world they had no alliance with such enthusiasts, would spare no term of
abuse, and would not venture a single word in his defence. Robertson,
writing with a quite Lutheran feeling, expresses nothing but unmitigated
condemnation. He describes the projects of himself and his followers as
being little more than the simple madness "of levelling every distinction
amongst mankind." Nor will he allow him even the ordinary virtues of the
fanatic. "He had all the extravagance, but not the courage which
enthusiasts usually possess." According to Robertson, he was nothing
better than a madman, and a coward.

We think that Mrs Percy Sinnett has satisfactorily proved that Munzer was
not a coward, and that he is entitled to all that respect which is due to
those sincere and furious fanatics, who are perhaps the greatest pests
which ever appear in society; men who may die, for aught we know, with all
the zeal and merit of martyrs, but whom the world must nevertheless get
rid of, in what way it can, and as soon as possible.

Yet we like to see justice done to every historical character, and
therefore shall follow Mrs Sinnett through some portion of her biography
of Munzer.

"Among the true men of the people of the period who, whatever may
have been their faults, have suffered the usual fate of the losing
side, in being exposed to more than the usual amount of calumny and
misrepresentation, one of