In Franconia and Middle Germany the peasant movement went on apace. In Franconia one of its chief seats was the considerable town of Rothenburg, on the Tauber. The episcopal city of Wuerzburg was also entered and occupied by the peasant bands in coalition with the discontented elements of the town. The sacking of churches and throwing open of religious houses characterized proceedings here as elsewhere. The locking up of a large peasant host in Wuerzburg was undoubtedly a source of great weakness to the movement. In the east, in the Tyrol and Salzburg, there were similar risings to those farther west. In the latter case the prince-bishop was the obnoxious oppressor. The most interesting of the local movements was, however, in many respects that of Thomas Muenzer in the town of Muelhausen, in Thuringia. Thomas Muenzer is, perhaps, the best known of all the names in the peasants' revolt. In addition to the ultra-Protestantism of his theological views, Muenzer had as his object the establishment of a communistic Christian Commonwealth. He started a practical exemplification of this among his own followers in the town itself. Up to the beginning of May the insurrection had carried everything before it. Truchsess and his men of the Swabian League had proved themselves unable to cope with it. Matters now changed. Knights, men-at-arms, and free-lances were returning from the Italian campaign of Charles V after the battle of Pavia. Everywhere the revolt met with disaster. The Muelhausen insurgents were destroyed at Frankenhausen by forces of the Count of Hesse, of the Duke of Brunswick, and of the Duke of Saxony. This was on May 15th. Three days before the defeat at Frankenhausen, on May 12th, a decisive defeat was inflicted on the peasants by the forces of the Swabian League, under Truchsess, at Boeblingen, in Wuertemberg. Savage ferocity signalized the treatment of the defeated peasants by the soldiery of the nobles. Jaecklein Rohrbach was roasted alive. Truchsess with his soldiery then hurried north and inflicted a heavy defeat on the Franconian peasant contingents at Koenigshaven, on the Tauber. These three defeats, following one another in little more than a fortnight, broke the back of the whole movement in Germany proper. In Elsass and Lorraine the insurrection was crushed by the hired troops and the Duke of Lorraine; eastward, on the little river Luibas. In the Austrian territories, under the able leadership of Michael Gaismayr, one of the lesser nobility, it continued for some months longer, and the fear of Gaismayr, who, it should be said, was the only man of really constructive genius the movement had produced, maintained itself with the privileged classes till his murder in the autumn of 1528, at the instance of the Bishop of Brixen.