It was the breaking out of the French Revolution on a
small scale. Germany was desolated by infuriate bands, demolishing alike
the castles of the nobles and the palaces of the bishops, and sparing
neither age nor sex in their indiscriminate slaughter.
The insurrection was so terrible, that both Lutherans and papists united
to quell it; and so fierce were these fanatics, that a hundred thousand
perished on fields of blood before the rebellion was quelled. These
outrages were, of course, by the Catholics regarded as the legitimate
results of the new doctrines, and it surely can not be denied that they
sprung from them. The fire which glows on the hearth may consume the
dwelling. But Luther and his friends assailed the Anabaptists with every
weapon they could wield. The Catholics formed powerful combinations to
arrest the spread of evangelical views. The reformers organized
combinations equally powerful to diffuse those opinions, which they were
sure involved the welfare of the world.
Charles V., having somewhat allayed the troubles which harassed him in
southern Europe, now turned his attention to Germany, and resolved, with
a strong hand, to suppress the religious agitation.
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