Came the year 1534 and the Anabaptists had suffered so many defeats that they decided to risk everything on one big, bold stroke. That they selected the town of Münster in Westphalia as the spot for their final experiment surprised no one. Franz von Waldeck, the prince-bishop of that city, was a drunken bounder who for years had lived openly with a score of women and who ever since his sixteenth year had offended all decent people by the outrageous bad taste of his private conduct. When the town went Protestant, he compromised. But being known far and wide for a liar and a cheat, his treaty of peace did not give his Protestant subjects that feeling of personal security without which life is indeed a very uncomfortable experience. In consequence whereof the inhabitants of Münster remained in a state of high agitation until the next elections. These brought a surprise. The city government fell into the hands of the Anabaptists. The chairman became one Bernard Knipperdollinck, a cloth merchant by day and a prophet after dark. The bishop took one look at his new councilors and fled. It was then that John of Leiden appeared upon the scene. He had come to Münster as the apostle of a certain Jan Matthysz, a Haarlem baker who had started a new sect of his own and was regarded as a very holy man. And when he heard of the great blow that had been struck for the good cause, he remained to help celebrate the victory and purge the bishopric of all popish contamination. The Anabaptists were nothing if not thorough. They turned the churches into stone quarries. They confiscated the convents for the benefit of the homeless. All books except the Bible were publicly burned. And as a fitting climax, those who refused to be re-baptized after the Anabaptist fashion were driven into the camp of the Bishop, who decapitated them or drowned them on the general principle that they were heretics and small loss to the community. That was the prologue. The play itself was no less terrible. From far and wide the high priests of half a hundred new creeds hastened to the New Jerusalem. There they were joined by all those who believed themselves possessed of a call for the great uplift, honest and sincere citizens, but as innocent as babes when it came to politics or statecraft. The siege of Münster lasted five months and during that time, every scheme, system and program of social and spiritual regeneration was tried out; every new-fangled prophet had his day in court. But, of course, a little town chuck full of fugitives, pestilence and hunger, was not a fit place for a sociological laboratory and the dissensions and quarrels between the different factions lamed all the efforts of the military leaders. During that crisis John the tailor stepped forward. The short hour of his glory had come.