he best general
division that can be put forward, although, as we have seen, there are
places where, and times when, the practical demands of the movement
seem to have asserted themselves directly and spontaneously apart from
any theory whatever.

Of the fate of many of the most active leaders of the revolt we know
nothing. Several heads of the movement, according to a contemporary
writer, wandered about for a long time in misery, some of them indeed
seeking refuge with the Turks, who were still a standing menace to
Imperial Christendom. The popular preachers vanished also on the
suppression of the movement. The disastrous result of the Peasants'
War was prejudicial even to Luther's cause in South Germany. The
Catholic party reaped the advantage everywhere, evangelical preachers,
even, where not insurrectionists, being persecuted. Little
distinction, in fact, was made in most districts between an opponent
of the Catholic Church from Luther's standpoint and one from
Karlstadt's or Hubmayer's. Amongst seventy-one heretics arraigned
before the Austrian court at Ensisheim, only one was acquitted. The
others were broken on the wheel, burnt, or drowned.

There were some who were arrested ten or fifteen years later on
charges connected with the 1525 revolt. Treachery, of course, played a
large part, as it has done in all defeated movements, in ensuring the
fate of many of those who had been at all prominent. In fairness to
Luther, who otherwise played such a villainous role in connection with
the peasants' movement, the fact should be recorded that he sheltered
his old colleague, Karlstadt, for a short time in the Augustine
monastery at Wittenberg, after the latter's escape from Rothenburg.

Wendel Hipler continued for some time at liberty, and might probably
have escaped altogether had he not entered a protest against the
Counts of Hohenlohe for having seized a portion of his private fortune
that lay within their power. The result of his action might have been
foreseen. The Counts, on hearing of it, revenged themselves by
accusing him of having been a chief pillar of the rebellion. He had to
flee immediately, and, after wandering about for some time in a
disguise, one of the features of which is stated to have been a false
nose, he was seized on his way to the Reichstag which was being held
at Speier in 1526. Tenacious of his property to the last, he had hoped
to obtain restitution of his rights from the assembled estates