He tried to direct the hatred of the peasants mainly towards the church endowments, through the ultimate confiscation of which he hoped to enrich himself.As soon as he received word of the Boetlingen battle, he opened hostilities against his rebellious peasants, pillaging and burning their villages, and hanging or otherwise killing many of them.The peasants, however, quickly assembled, and under the command of Gregor von Burg-Bernsheim defeated him at Windsheim, May 29.While they were still pursuing him, the call of the hard-pressed Odenwald peasants reached them, and they turned towards Heidingsfeld and from there with Florian Geyer, again towards Wuerzburg (June 2).Still without word from the Odenwald, they left 5,000 peasants there, and with the remaining 4,000 -- many had run away -- they followed the others.Reassured by false rumours of the outcome of the Koenigshofen battle, they were attacked by Truchsess at Sulzdorf and completely defeated.
The horsemen and servants of Truchsess perpetrated, as usual, a terrible massacre.Florian Geyer kept the remainder of his Black Troop, 600 in number, and battled his way through the village of Ingolstadt.He placed 200 men in the church and cemetery and 400 in the castle.He had been pursued by the Elector Palatine's forces, of whom a column of 1,200 men captured the village and set fire to the church.Those who did not perish in the flames were slaughtered.The Elector's troops then fired on the castle, made a gap in the ancient wall, and attempted to storm it.Twice beaten back by the peasants who stood hidden behind an internal wall, they shot the wall to pieces, and attempted a third storming, which was successful.Half of Geyser's men were massacred; with the other 200 he managed to escape.Their biding place, however, was discovered the following day (Whit-Monday).
The Elector Palatine's soldiers surrounded the woods in which they lay hidden, and slaughtered all the men.Only seventeen prisoners were taken during those two days.Florian Geyer again fought his way through with a few of his most intrepid fighters and turned towards the Gaildorf peasants, who had again assembled in a body of about 7,000 men.Upon his arrival, he found them mostly dispersed, in consequence of crushing news from every side.He made a last attempt to assemble the dispersed peasants in the woods on June 9, but was attacked by the troops, and fell fighting.
Truchsess, who, immediately after the Koenigshofen victory, had sent word to the besieged Frauenberg, now marched towards Wuerzburg.The council came to a secret understanding with him so that, on the night of June 7, the Union army was in a position to surround the city where 5,000peasants were stationed, and the following morning to march through the gates opened by the council, without even lifting a sword.By this betrayal of the Wuerzburg "honourables" the last troops of the Franconian peasants were disarmed and all the leaders arrested.Truchsess immediately ordered 81 of them decapitated.Here in Wuerzburg the various Franconian princes appeared, one after the other, among them the Bishop of Wuerzburg himself, the Bishop of Bamberg and the Margrave of Brandenburg-Anspach.The gracious lords distributed the roles among themselves.Truchsess marched with the Bishop of Bamberg, who presently broke the agreement concluded with his peasants and offered his territory to the raging hordes of the Union army, who pillaged, massacred and burned.Margrave Casimir devastated his own land.Teiningen was burned, numerous villages were pillaged or made fuel for the flames.In every city the Margrave held a bloody court.In Neustadt, on the Aisch, he ordered eighteen rebels beheaded, in the Buergel March, forty-three suffered a similar fate.From there he went to Rottenburg where the honourables, in the meantime, had made a counter revolution and arrested Stephan von Menzingen.The Rottenburg lower middle-class and plebeians were now compelled to pay heavily for the fact that they behaved towards the peasants in such an equivocal way, refusing to help them to the very last moment and in their local narrow-minded egotism insisting on the suppression of the countryside crafts in favour of the city guilds, and only unwillingly renouncing the city revenues flowing from the feudal services of the peasants.
The Margrave ordered sixteen of them executed, Menzingen among them.In a similar manner the Bishop of Wuerzburg marched through his region, pillaging, devastating and burning everywhere.On his triumphal march he ordered 256rebels to be decapitated, and upon his return to Wuerzburg he crowned his work by decapitating thirteen more from among the Wuerzburg rebels.
In the region of Mainz the viceroy, Bishop Wilhelm von Strassburg, restored order without resistance.He ordered only four men executed.Rheingau, where the peasants had also been restless, but where, nevertheless, everybody had long before gone home, was subsequently invaded by Frowen von Hutten, a cousin of Ulrich, and finally "pacified" by the execution of twelve ringleaders.
Frankfurt, which also had witnessed revolutionary movements of a considerable size, was held in check first by the conciliatory attitude of the council, then by recruited troops in the Rhenish Palatinate.Eight thousand peasants had assembled anew after the breach of agreement by the Elector, and had again burned monasteries and castles, but the Archbishop of Trier came to the aid of the Marshal of Zabern, and defeated them as early as May 23 at Pfedersheim.A series of atrocities (in Pfedersheim alone eighty-two were executed) and the capture of Weissenburg on July 7 terminated the insurrection here.
