ride on horseback, because it raised them above their fellows. Except he became as a peasant the noble could not enter the kingdom of brotherly love. Who, it was asked, made the first noble, and had not a peasant five fingers to his hand like a prince? Still more attractive than the proposed equality of social standing was the suggested equality of worldly goods; and, though in the latter case the ideal no doubt was that of levelling up and not of levelling down, it was declared enough for any man to possess two thousand crowns.
It might well be inferred, even if it had not been stated by the peasants themselves, that they derived these ideas from teachers in towns; and it was the co-operation of the town proletariate which made the revolt so formidable, especially in Franconia and Thuringia. A civic counterpart of Eberlin's peasant Utopia was supplied by a political pamphlet entitled The Needs of the German Nation, or The Reformation of Frederick III. As in the case of the Twelve Articles of Memmingen, the principle of Christian liberty was to be the basis of the new organisation; but it was here applied specifically to the conditions of the poorer classes in towns. Tolls, dues, and especially indirect taxes should be abolished; the capital of individual merchants and of companies was to be limited to ten thousand crowns; the coinage, weights, and measures were to be reduced to a uniform standard; the Roman civil and canon law to be abolished, ecclesiastical property to be confiscated, and clerical participation in secular trades-against which several Acts of the English Reformation parliament were directed-to be prohibited.
Some of these grievances, especially those against the Church, were common to rich and poor alike, but socialistic and communistic ideas naturally tended to divide every town and city into two parties, and the struggle resolved itself into one between the commune, representing the poor, and the Council, representing the well-to-do. This contest was fought out in most of the towns in Germany; and its result determined the amount of sympathy with which each individual town regarded the peasants' cause. But nowhere do the cities appear to have taken an active part against the revolution, for they all felt that the Princes threatened them as much as they did the peasants. Waldshut and Memmingen from the first were friendly; Zurich rendered active assistance; and there was a prevalent fear that the towns of Switzerland and Swabia would unite in support of the movement. The strength shown by the peasants exercised a powerful influence over the intramural struggles of commune and Council, and in many of the smaller towns and cities the commune gained the upper hand. Such was the case at Heilbronn, at Rothenburg, where Carlstadt had been active, and at Würzburg. At Frankfort the proletariate formed an organisation which they declared to be Council, Burgomaster, Pope, and Emperor all rolled into one; and most of the small cities opened their gates to the peasants,
