olutionary sects, Butzer urges
the authorities to extirpate all those professing a false religion.
Such men, he says, deserve a heavier punishment than thieves,
robbers, and murderers. Even their wives and innocent children and
cattle should be destroyed (_ap. Janssen_, vol. i. p. 595).

Luther himself quotes, in a sermon on "Genesis," the instances of
Abraham and Abimelech and other Old Testament worthies, as justifying
slavery and the treatment of a slave as a beast of burden. "Sheep,
cattle, men-servants and maid-servants, they were all possessions,"
says Luther, "to be sold as it pleased them like other beasts. It were
even a good thing were it still so. For else no man may compel nor
tame the servile folk" (_Saemmtliche Werke_, vol. xv. p. 276). In other
discourses he enforces the same doctrine, observing that if the world
is to last for any time, and is to be kept going, it will be necessary
to restore the patriarchal condition. Capito, the Strassburg preacher,
in a letter to a colleague, writes lamenting that the pamphlets and
discourses of Luther had contributed not a little to give edge to the
bloodthirsty vengeance of the princes and nobles after the
insurrection.

The total number of the peasants and their allies who fell either in
fighting or at the hands of the executioners is estimated by Anselm in
his _Berner Chronik_ at 130,000. It was certainly not less than
100,000. For months after the executioner was active in many of the
affected districts. Spalatin says: "Of hanging and beheading there is
no end." Another writer has it: "It was all so that even a stone had
been moved to pity, for the chastisement and vengeance of the
conquering lords was great." The executions within the jurisdiction of
the Swabian League alone are stated at 10,000. Truchsess's provost
boasted of having hanged or beheaded 1,200 with his own hand. More
than 50,000 fugitives were recorded. These, according to a Swabian
League order, were all outlawed in such wise that any one who found
them might slay them without fear of consequences.

The sentences and executions were conducted with true mediaeval levity.
It is narrated in a contemporary chronicle that in one village in the
Henneberg territory all the inhabitants had fled on the approach of
the Count and his men-at-arms save two tilers. The two were being led
to execution when one appeared to weep bitterly, and his reply to
interrogatories was that he bewailed the dwellings of t