' War was
the inevitable break with a long economic past, now intolerable and
hopeless. There is some evidence to show that the number of serfs was
increasing. This process, by menacing the freedom of the others,
united all in the resolve to stop the gradual enslavement of their
class, to reckon with those who benefited by it.

How little now there was in the ideals of the last and most terrible of
the peasant risings may be seen by a study of the programs of reform
put forward from time to time during the preceding century. There is
nothing in the manifestos of 1525 that may not be found in the
pamphlets of the fifteenth century. The grievances are the same, and
the hope of a completely renovated and communized society is the same.
One of the most influential of these socialistic pamphlets was the
so-called _Reformation of the Emperor Sigismund_, written by an
Augsburg clergyman about 1438, first printed in 1476, and reprinted a
number of times before the end of the century. Its title bears witness
to the Messianic belief of the people that one of their {90} great, old
emperors should sometime return and restore the world to a condition of
justice and happiness. The present tract preached that "obedience was
dead and justice sick"; it attacked serfdom as wicked, denounced the
ecclesiastical law and demanded the freedom given by Christ.

The same doctrine, adapted to the needs of the time, is preached in the
_Reformation of the Emperor Frederic III_, published anonymously in
1523. Though more radical than Luther it reflects some of his ideas.
Still more, however, does it embody the reforms proposed at Nuremberg
in 1523. It may probably have been written by George Ruexner, called
Jerusalem, an Imperial Herald prominent in these circles. It advocated
the abolition of all taxes and tithes, the repeal of all imperial civil
laws, the reform of the clergy, the confiscation of ecclesiastical
property, and the limitation of the amount of capital allowed any one
merchant to 10,000 gulden.

Though there was nothing new in either the manner of oppression or in
the demands of the third estate during the last decade preceding the
great rebellion, there does seem to be a new atmosphere, or tone, in
the literature addressed to the lower classes. While on the one hand
the poor were still mocked and insulted as they always had been by
foolish and heartless possessors of inherited wealth and position, from
other quarters the