y now began to be also flattered and courted. The
peasant became in the large pamphlet literature of the time an ideal
figure, the type of the plain, honest, God-fearing man. [Sidenote: The
peasant idealized] Nobles like Duke Ulrich of Wuerttemberg affected to
be called by popular nicknames. Carlstadt and other learned men
proclaimed that the peasant knew better the Word of God and the way of
salvation than did the learned. Many radical preachers, especially the
Anabaptist {91} Muenzer, carried the message of human brotherhood to the
point of communism. There were a number of lay preachers, the most
celebrated being the physician Hans Maurer, who took the sobriquet
"Karsthans." This name, "the man with the hoe," soon became one of the
catch-words of the time, and made its way into popular speech as a
synonym for the simple and pious laborer. Hutten took it up and urged
the people to seize flails and pitchforks and smite the clergy and the
pope as they would the devil. [Sidenote: 1521] Others preached hatred
of the Jews, of the rich, of lawyers. Above all they appealed to the
Bible as the devine law, and demanded a religious reform as a condition
and preliminary to a thorough renovation of society. Although Luther
himself from the first opposed all forms of violence, his clarion
voice rang out in protest against the injustice of the nobles. "The
people neither can nor will endure your tyranny any longer," he said to
them in 1523, "God will not endure it; the world is not what it once
was when you drove and hunted men like wild beasts."

The rising began at Stuehlingen, not far from the Swiss frontier, in
June 1524, and spread with considerable rapidity northward, until the
greater part of Germany was in the throes of revolution. The rebels
were able to make headway because most of the regular troops had been
withdrawn to the Turkish front or to Italy to fight the emperor's
battle against France. In South Germany, during the first six months,
the gatherings of peasants and townsmen were eminently peaceable. They
wished only to negotiate with their masters and to secure some
practical reforms. But when the revolt spread to Franconia and Saxony,
a much more radically socialistic program was developed and the rebels
showed themselves readier to enforce their demands by arms. For the
year 1524 there {92} was no general manifesto put forward, but there
were negotiations between the insurgents and their quond