ge history, which it now falls to us to relate.

The new movement, indeed, was not confined to matters of religion. The
idea of freedom from authority once set afloat, quickly went further
than its advocates intended. If men were to have liberty of thought, why
should they not have liberty of action? So argued the peasantry, and not
without the best of reasons, for they were pitifully oppressed by the
nobility, weighed down with feudal exactions to support the luxury of
the higher classes, their crops destroyed by the horses and dogs of
hunting-parties, their families ill-treated and insulted by the
men-at-arms who were maintained at their expense, their flight from
tyranny to the freedom of the cities prohibited by nobles and citizens
alike, everywhere enslaved, everywhere despised, it is no wonder they
joined with gladness in the revolutionary sentiment and made a vigorous
demand for political liberty.

As a result of all this an insurrection broke out,--a double
insurrection in fact,--here of the peasantry for their rights, there of
the religious fanatics for their license. Suddenly all Germany was
upturned by the greatest and most dangerous outbreak of the laboring
classes it had ever known, a revolt which, had it been ably led, might
have revolutionized society and founded a completely new order of
things.

In 1522 the standard of revolt was first raised, its signal a golden
shoe, with the motto, "Whoever will be free let him follow this ray of
light." In 1524 a fresh insurrection broke out, and in the spring of the
following year the whole country was aflame, the peasants of southern
Germany being everywhere in arms and marching on the strongholds of
their oppressors.

Their demands were by no means extreme. They asked for a board of
arbitration, to consist of the Archduke Ferdinand, the Elector of
Saxony, Luther, Melanchthon, and several preachers, to consider their
proposed articles of reform in industrial and political concerns. These
articles covered the following points. They asked the right to choose
their own pastors, who were to preach the word of God from the Bible;
the abolition of dues, except tithes to the clergy; the abolition of
vassalage; the rights of hunting and fishing, and of cutting wood in the
forests; reforms in rent, in the administration of justice, and in the
methods of application of the laws; the restoration of communal property
illegally seized; and several other matters of the same