Everywhere the people were in arms, destroying castles, burning
monasteries, and forcing numbers of the nobles to join them, under pain
of having their castles plundered and burned. The counts of Hohenlohe
were made to enter their ranks, and were told, "Brother Albert and
brother George, you are no longer lords but peasants, and we are the
lords of Hohenlohe." Other nobles were similarly treated. Various
Swabian nobles fled for safety, with their families and treasures, to
the city and castle of Weinsberg. The castle was stormed and taken, and
the nobles, seventy in number, were forced to run the gantlet between
two lines of men armed with spears, who stabbed them as they passed. It
was this deed that brought out a pamphlet from Luther, in which he
called on all the citizens of the empire to put down "the furious
peasantry, to strangle, to stab them, secretly and openly, as they can,
as one would kill a mad dog."
There was need for something to be done if Germany was to be saved from
a revolution. The numbers of the insurgents steadily increased.
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