"I seriously reproved my good Hans for his untoward jest," was the easy
comment of Truchsess upon this circumstance.
Throughout Germany similar slaughter of the peasantry and wholesale
executions took place. In many places the reprisal took the dimensions
of a massacre, and it is said that by the end of the frightful struggle
more than a hundred thousand of the peasants had been slain. As for its
political results, the survivors were reduced to a deeper state of
servitude than before. Thus ended a great struggle which had only needed
an able leader to make it a success and to free the people from feudal
bonds. It ended like all the peasant outbreaks, in defeat and renewed
oppression. As for the robber chief Goetz, while he is said by several
historians to have received a sentence of life imprisonment, Menzel
states that he was retained in prison for two years only.
In Thuringia, as we have said, the revolt was a religious one, it being
controlled by Thomas Muenzer, a fanatical Anabaptist. He pretended that
he had the gift of receiving divine revelations, and claimed to be
better able to reveal Christian truth than Luther.
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