The city of Salzburg, supported by the peasants and the pitmen, had been in controversy with the Archbishop since 1522 over city privileges and the freedom of religious practice.By the end of 1523, the Archbishop attacked the city with recruited Lansquenets, terrorised it by a cannonade from the castle, and persecuted the heretical preachers.At the same time he imposed new crushing taxes, and thereby irritated the population to the utmost.In the spring of 1525, simultaneously with the Suabian-Franconian and Thuringian uprisings, the peasants and pitmen of the entire country suddenly arose, organised themselves under the commanders Brossler and Weitmoser, freed the city and besieged the castle of Salzburg.Like the West German peasants, they organised a Christian alliance and formulated their demands into fourteen articles.
In Styria, in Upper Austria, in Carinthia and Carniola, where new extortionate taxes, duties and edicts had severely injured the interests closest to the people, the peasants arose in the Spring of 1525.They took a number of castles and at Grys, defeated the conqueror of the Stara Prawa, the old field commander Dietrichstein.Although the government succeeded in placating some of the insurgents with false promises, the bulk of them remained together and united with the Salzburg peasants, so that the entire region of Salzburg and the major part of Upper Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Camiola were in the hands of the peasants and pitmen.
In the Tyrol, the Reformation doctrines had also found adherence.
Here even more than in the other Alpine regions of Austria, Muenzer's emissaries had been successfully active.Archbishop Ferdinand persecuted the preachers of the new doctrines here as elsewhere, and impinged the rights of the population by arbitrary financial regulations.In consequence, an uprising took place in the Spring of 1525.The insurgents, whose commander was a Muenzer man named Geismaier, the only noted military talent among all the peasant chiefs, took a great number of castles, and proceeded energetically against the priests, particularly in the south and the region of Etsch.
The Vorarlberg peasants also arose and joined the Allgaeu peasants.
The Archbishop, pressed from every side, now began to make concession after concession to the rebels whom a short time before he had wished to annihilate by means of burning, scourging, pillaging and murdering.He summoned the Diets of the hereditary lands, and pending their assembling, concluded an armistice with the peasants.In the meantime he was strenuously arming, in order, as soon as possible, to be able to speak to the ungodly ones in a different language.
Naturally, the armistice was not kept long.Dietrichstein, having run short of cash, began to levy contributions in the duchies; his Slavic and Magyar troops allowed themselves, besides, the most shameful atrocities against the population.This brought the Styrians to new rebellion.The peasants attacked Dietrichstein at Schladming during the night of July 3d and slaughtered everybody who did not speak German.Dietrichstein himself was captured.
On the morning of July 4, the peasants organised a jury to try the captives, and forty Czech and Croatian noble prisoners were sentenced to death.This was effective.The Archbishop immediately consented to all the demands of the estates of the five duchies (Upper and Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola).
In Tyrol, the demands of the Diet were also granted, and thereby the North was quieted.The South, however) insisting on its original demands as against the much more moderate decisions of the Diet, remained under arms.Only in December was the Archbishop in a position to restore order by force.He did not fail to execute a great number of instigators and leaders of the upheaval who fell into his hands.
Now 10,000 Bavarians moved against Salzburg, under Georg of Frundsberg.
This imposing military power, as well as the quarrels that had broken out among the peasants, induced the Salzburg peasants to conclude an agreement with the Archbishop, which came into being September 1, and was also accepted by the Archduke.In spite of this, the two princes, who had meanwhile considerably strengthened their troops, soon broke the agreement and thereby drove the Salzburg peasants to a new uprising.The insurgents held their own throughout the winter.In the Spring, Geismaier came to them to open a splendid campaign against the troops which were approaching from every side.In a series of brilliant battles in May and June, 1526, he defeated the Bavarian, Austrian and Suabian Union troops and the Lansquenets of the Archbishop of Salzburg, one after another, and for a long time he prevented the various corps from uniting.He also found time to besiege Radstadt.Finally, surrounded by overwhelming forces, he was compelled to withdraw.He battled his way through and led the remnants of his corps through the Austrian Alps into Venetian territory.The republic of Venice and Switzerland offered the indefatigable peasant chief starting points for new conspiracies.For a whole year he was still attempting to involve them in a war against Austria, which would have offered him an occasion for a new peasant uprising.The hand of the murderer, however, reached him in the course of these negotiations.Archbishop Ferdinand and the Archbishop of Salzburg could not rest as long as Geismaier was alive.They therefore paid a bandit who, in 1527, succeeded in removing the dangerous rebel from among the living.
[ To part 7 ]
