The first actual outbreak of the Peasants' War took place in August 1524, in the Black Forest, in the village of Stuehlingen, from an apparently trivial cause. It spread rapidly throughout the surrounding districts, having found a leader in a former soldier of fortune, Hans Mueller by name. The so-called Evangelical Brotherhood sprang into existence. On the new movement becoming threatening it was opposed by the Swabian League, a body in the interests of the Germanic Federation, its princes, and cities, whose function it was to preserve public tranquillity and enforce the Imperial decrees. The peasant army was armed with the rudest weapons, including pitchforks, scythes, and axes; but nothing decisive of a military character took place this year. Meanwhile the work of agitation was carried on far and wide throughout the South German territories. Preachers of discontent among the peasantry and the former towns were everywhere agitating and organizing with a view to a general rising in the ensuing spring. Negotiations were carried on throughout the winter with nobles and the authorities without important results. A diversion in favour of the peasants was caused by Duke Ulrich of Wuertemberg favouring the peasants' cause, which he hoped to use as a shoeing-horn to his own plans for recovering his ancestral domains, from which he had been driven on the grounds of a family quarrel under the ban of the empire in 1519. He now established himself in his stronghold of Hohentwiel, in Wuertemberg, on the Swiss frontier. By February or the beginning of March peasant bands were organizing throughout Southern Germany. Early in March a so-called Peasants' Parliament was held at Memmingen, a small Swabian town, at which the principal charter of the movement, the so-called "Twelve Articles," was adopted. This important document has a strong religious colouring, the political and economic demands of the peasants being led up to and justified by Biblical quotations. They all turn on the customary grievances of the time. The "Twelve Articles" remain throughout the chief Bill of Rights of the South German peasantry, though there were other versions of the latter current in certain districts. What was said before concerning the local sporadic movements which had been going en for a generation previously applies equally to the great uprising of 1525. The rapidity with which the ideas represented by the movement, and in consequence the movement itself, spread, is marvellous. By the middle of April it was computed that no less than 300,000 peasants, besides necessitous townsfolk, were armed and in open rebellion. On the side of the nobles no adequate force was ready to meet the emergency. In every direction were to be seen flaming castles and monasteries. On all sides were bodies of armed countryfolk, organized in military fashion, dictating their will to the countryside and the small towns, whilst disaffection was beginning to show itself in a threatening manner