Now, after Luther’s return to Wittenberg, the flood of democracy was rising among the people.  He had opened the monasteries; now the people called for redress against many other social evils, such as the misery of the peasants, the tithes, the traffic in benefices, the bad administration of justice.  Luther’s honest heart sympathized with this movement.  He warned and rebuked the landed gentry and the princes.  But when the wild waves of the Peasant War flooded his own spiritual fields, and bloody deeds of violence wounded his sensibilities; when he felt that the fanatics and demagogues were exerting upon the hordes of peasants an influence which threatened destruction to his doctrine; then, in the greatest anger, he threw himself into opposition to the uncouth mob.  His call to the princes sounded out, wild and warlike; the most horrible thing had fallen upon him—­the gospel of love had been disgraced by the wilful insolence of those who called themselves its followers.  His policy here was again the right one; there was, unfortunately, no better power in Germany than that of the princes, and the future of the Fatherland depended upon them after all, for neither the serfs, the robber barons, nor the isolated free cities which stood like islands in the rising flood, gave any assurance.  Luther was entirely right in the essential point, but the same obstinate, unyielding manner which previously had made his struggle against the hierarchy so popular, turned now against the people themselves.  A cry of amazement and horror shot through the masses.  He was a traitor!  He who for eight years had been the favorite and hero of the people suddenly became most unpopular.  His safety and his life were again threatened; even five years later it was dangerous for him, on account of the peasants, to travel to Mansfeld to visit his sick father.  The indignation of the people also worked against his doctrine.  The itinerant preachers and the new apostles treated him as a lost, corrupted man.

[Illustration:  Permission F. Bruckmann, A.-G., Munich COURT BALL AT RHEINSBERG Adolph von Menzel]

He was outlawed, banned, and cursed by the populace.  Many well-meaning men, too, had not approved of his attack on celibacy and monastic life.  The country gentry threatened to seize the outlaw on the highways because he had destroyed the nunneries into which, as into foundling asylums, the legitimate daughters of the poverty-stricken gentry used to be cast in earliest childhood.  The Roman party was triumphant; the new heresy had lost what so far had made it powerful.  Luther’s life and his doctrine seemed alike near their end.