The Peasants’ War had a profound, lasting, and disastrous effect on the Reformation movement in Germany. It affected Luther personally, and that in a way which could not fail to react upon the cause which he conspicuously led. It checked the spread of the Reformation throughout the whole of Germany. It threw the guidance of the movement into the hands of the evangelical princes, and destroyed the hope that it might give birth to a reformed National German Church. § 6. Luther and the Peasants’ War. The effect of the rising upon Luther’s own character and future conduct was too important for us to entirely pass over his personal relations to the peasants and their revolt. He was a peasant’s son. “My father, my grandfather, my forebears, were all genuine peasants,” he was accustomed to say. He had seen and pitied the oppression of the peasant class, and had denounced it in his own trenchant fashion. He had reproved the greed of the landlords, when he said that if the peasant’s land produced as many coins as ears of corn, the profit would go to the landlord only. He had publicly expressed his approval of many of the proposals in the Twelve Articles long before they had been formulated and adopted at Memmingen in March 1525, and had advocated a return to the old communal laws or usages of Germany. He formally declared his agreement with the substance of the Twelve Articles after they had become the “charter” of the revolt. But Luther, rightly or wrongly, held that no real good could come from armed insurrection. He believed with all the tenacity of his nature, that while there might be two roads to reform, the way of peace, and the way of war, the pathway of peace was the only one which would lead to lasting benefit. After the storm burst he risked his life over and over again in visits he paid to the disaffected districts, to warn the people of the dangers they were running. After Münzer’s attempt to rouse the miners of Mansfeld, and carry fire and sword into the district where his parents were living, Luther made one last attempt to bring the misguided people to a more reasonable course. He made a preaching tour through the disaffected districts. He went west from Eisleben to Stolberg (April 21st, 1525); thence to Nordhausen, where Münzer’s sympathisers rang the bells to drown his voice; south to Erfurt (April 28th); north again to the fertile valley of the Golden Aue and to Wallhausen (May 1st); south again to Weimar (May 3rd), where news reached him that his Elector was dying, and that he had expressed the wish to see him,—a message which reached him too late. It was on this journey, or shortly after his return to Wittenberg (May 6th), that Luther wrote his vehement tract, _Against the murdering, thieving hordes of Peasants_. He wrote it while his mind was full of Münzer’s calls to slaughter, when the danger was at its height, with all the sights and sounds of destruction and turmoil in eye and ear, while it still hung in