The attack began at dawn on the twenty-eighth of August, in the midst of a late-summer thunderstorm that would turn into a three-day deluge. The great cannon loaned by Philip of Hesse, “the Devil,” lofted iron and concrete balls into the city, its concussion breaking windows in the nearby villages and its roar resounding for miles around. The main gate, St. Maurtiz, was nearly shattered and the walls were broken in a dozen places. The defenders responded with cannon fire from the platforms they had constructed beside the roundels, preventing the besiegers from following up on their advantage. Jan rode through the rain on a white horse, fully exposed and indifferent to the arrows, bullets, and cannonballs. The day ended in a stalemate. That night the women repaired the walls with earth and dung and stone from desecrated tombs while Gresbeck and the other carpenters worked to fix the gate.
The rain continued without ceasing, inch upon inch. The farmers who had continued to work on the protective bulwarks behind which the soldiers would advance could do nothing in knee-deep water and soon melted away to their farms. The loose dirt they had so laboriously tossed before them dissolved under the deluge; the bulwarks became useless mounds of mud. Months of hard labor costing the Bishop a small fortune and not a few deaths had gone for nothing.
Cavalry and foot soldiers could barely move in the mire that surrounded the city, and the moat that had been successfully drained was beginning to fill again. But the cannons could continue to fire, and after two days the outer wall near the St. Mauritz Gate had been broken and the inner walls and gates were so severely battered that if the Bishop’s men could cross the moat they should be able to take the city. At dawn on the last day of August, the Devil belched a mighty blast as a signal for the final assault. Then the lesser cannons, including the Devil’s Mother, chimed in. The rain had ceased. Through the silence that followed the cannon fire the defenders could hear the trumpets blare and the reedy tremolo of the flutes that accompanied the stately procession of the cavalry. Massed squares of several thousand soldiers spread across the plains, ready for the attack.
At a signal, hundreds of men carrying bundles of straw before them streamed through the breach in the outer wall and launched themselves into the moat. The rain-swollen river Aa had brought the moat back to its previous level of more than ten feet, but the improvised straw rafts let the men cross quickly, with only token opposition.
The Bishop’s men were confident that their overwhelming numbers and the long bombardment must have terrified the Anabaptists. Within minutes the attackers had sent across scaling ladders and grappling books, set explosive mines against the gates, and established a position at the base of the inner wall. Soldiers hoisted the long heavy ladders into place and scrambled awkwardly up them, encumbered by their armor and their weapons.
These men were hardened professionals, veterans of campaigns in Spain, Italy, and France, and accustomed to violence and hardship. Their opponents were only shopkeepers, smiths, tailors, and housewives; but they were fighting both for their lives and for God. The hapless mercenaries could not have anticipated the fury they would encounter on this summer morning. Some had their hands hacked off as they grasped the top rungs of their ladders, some were battered through their helmets with heavy notched clubs, some were cloven with broadswords, some run through with spears. Those climbing behind the leaders looked up to see the strong arms of two men on either side of their ladder, holding posts and tree limbs between them which they dropped together, stripping the ladder of five or six men at a stroke. The women who had for months stirred their cauldrons of boiling pitch and quicklime in anticipation of this day dashed the caustic liquid in the faces of the enemy soldiers and poured it down their armor, or made lighted necklaces which they threw upon the men as they scurried frantically around the base of the wall. The men on the ladders fell backward into the moat, and some of those waiting below jumped into it, hoping to escape the quicklime that dissolved their flesh or the pitch that seared it, only to find the weight of their armor dragging them to their deaths.
The surviving soldiers managed to make their way back across the inner moat and through the breached outer wall to the second moat. There, in a narrow defile of thorn hedges, hundreds of the Company of Christ were hidden in the bushes, lying in wait to slaughter the soldiers as they retreated in panic from the horror they had faced at the walls. As night fell, the Anabaptists retreated into the city and raised their voices in song: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Jan and his followers were delirious with self-satisfaction, assuring each other that “if God had not been with us this day, we should surely have been lost.” Outside the high inner wall, the dead and dying lay in the thorn hedges while their women shrieked their grief. The survivors crawled and dragged themselves to safety through the thorns and across the outer moat.
Jan had been brilliant in his defense. His dead amounted to only fifteen men, while the Bishop had lost forty-two officers and hundreds of soldiers. It was not simply a defeat but a humiliating rout for the Bishop; had Jan followed up on his triumph immediately, he might have decimated his oppressor’s army as Judith had that of Holofernes. It would have taken von Waldeck months to persuade his skeptical allies to send him yet more men to be misled into destruction—time enough for Jan to break out and join the other dissident bands throughout northern Germany or to draw supporters to him from that same region. Perhaps he had not thought beyond mere survival; perhaps it was simply that he was more effective at improvisation than at serious planning.
Whatever the reason for Jan’s uncharacteristic lack of aggression, the Bishop was off the hook. He refrained from any more direct attacks, determining to starve the city into submission. By late December 1534, half a dozen blockhouses had been built to anchor a cordon around the city, with plans being developed for connected redoubts between them, to be patrolled night and day.
In their euphoria, the Anabaptists scoffed as they perceived the Bishop’s plan. They were stronger than ever, having overcome first the treacherous counterrevolution of Mollenheck and then a frontal attack by an enemy several times their number in terms of fighting men. Their young leader’s courage under fire and his brilliant planning had become famous throughout the region and were already drawing new supporters to his banner.
One of these was the lame goldsmith Johann Dusentschur from nearby Warendorf. Scorned by Kerssenbrück as a deformed charlatan, Dusentschur had a powerful talent for arousing his listeners to a fervent pitch of enthusiasm. Not even Rothmann or Krechting or Knipperdolling praised Jan so effusively. Did Jan’s fortunate people realize, Dusentschur said to growing crowds, that they had a truly biblical hero in their very midst? Jan was no mere Prophet—he was the one prophets anticipated; he was more than a man, he was a veritable David, returned to be their king.
The twelve Elders called Dusentschur before them to explain what he meant. As Gresbeck records the event, the goldsmith said God had told him in a vision that Jan of Leyden, famous as a soldier and a prophet, was to be their new David. He will cast the mighty down and raise the lowly; he will seize the crown and the scepter and the throne of Saul. He will take in his hand the sword of justice and bring the divine word to all the peoples of the world.
Dusentschur took a sword and handed it to Jan, saying that with that sword Jan would rule until God himself took it from him. He commanded Jan to bend his head and anointed him with oil, declaring that Jan was the true inheritor of the throne of the great King David. Dusentschur then reached into a bag by his side and withdrew a gold crown and a golden chain emblazoned with the apple, the scepter, and the sword, symbols of devine majesty, and rings for each of the king’s fingers, fashioned by the goldsmith from the confiscated treasures in the city hall. All of these he reverently bestowed on the young man who stood silently before him.
The newly anointed king reacted with becoming modesty, throwing himself to the ground in prayerful humility. He rose and looked out upon the people. He was too young for such a heavy burden, he said. But he would do his bes
t to bear it well and wisely. “In like manner,” he reminded his new subjects, “was David, a humble shepherd, anointed by the Prophet, at God’s command, as the King of Israel. God often acts in this way; and whoever resists the will of God calls down God’s wrath upon himself. Now I am given power over all nations of the earth, and the right to use the sword to the confusion of the wicked and in defense of the righteous. So let none in this town stain himself with crime or resist the will of God, or else he shall without delay be put to death with the sword.”
A swelling of uneasy protest from the crowd drew a sharp rebuke. The bravest among them had died with Mollenheck, but it did not require courage to see that the appearance of a stranger who declares that their young leader has been elevated to king might be less providential than it appeared. Jan’s theatrical flair was well-known, and his political shrewdness might have reminded some of their recently deceased Italian contemporary, Machiavelli. How came it that he required a stranger from another city to see his kingly qualities, rather than the preachers in Münster and the local leaders like Knipperdolling and Tilbeck, who knew him so much better? And why did these worthies appear, despite themselves, as startled and distressed as the populace? If Dusentschur’s revelation concerning Jan were as spontaneous as they both represented it as being, why did he have crown and jewels ready at hand? If Jan was so overwhelmed by the new charge laid upon him, why did he recover and accept it with such alacrity?
Jan responded immediately to the swelling unrest. “Shame on you, for complaining against the ordinance of the Heavenly Father! Even if you all joined to oppose me, I will still rule, not only over this city but over the whole world, for the Heavenly Father has said it should be so. My kingdom which begins today shall never fall!” Cowed into submission, the people retreated and, for the next three days, listened to the sermons of the newly enthusiastic preachers on the royal virtues of the tailor’s apprentice from Leyden.
King Jan’s first duty was to establish a court worthy of him. No castles were available, but the splendid residence next to the Cathedral of the evicted Bishop’s representative, Melchior von Buren, with its grand salon and its courtyard, would serve for the time being. Among King Jan’s chief attendants would be some familiar faces: Bernard Knipperdolling was now the prime minister, his duties as chief executioner taken over by one Master Niland. Bernard Rothmann was the royal spokesman, charged with the important task of communications and propaganda. The Krechting brothers whom Jan had known since he stayed with Henry, the surveyor, several years earlier, now assumed important positions in his court—Bernard Krechting as his chief of staff and Henry as his chancellor. Herman Tilbeck, the former mayor who had rescued Jan from Mollenheck, was rewarded with the office of the royal marshal, responsible for maintaining civic discipline among the merchants and guilds.
The king and his ministers were attended by a retinue of more than a hundred lesser officials and servants. The royal tailors made King Jan a splendid scarlet robe that he now wore constantly; silken gowns adorned his queen, the Lady Divara, and she and Jan’s other fifteen wives were all housed in a separate wing of von Buren’s mansion. There were a designated keeper of the royal cellar, a chef with a staff of several dozen cooks and scullery maids, a jeweler, a riding master, a butcher and a baker, a keeper of the royal wardrobe, and a chief armorer, who made for Jan a magnificent suit of armor. In a royal chapel the royal organist accompanied the court in stirring renditions of Anabaptist hymns. Most important of all, Jan now had a royal bodyguard, a score of stalwart young men, each with his own horse, who rode recklessly through the city streets to clear the way for the king and who had sworn on their lives to protect him against all harm.
Among these privileged guardians was a young aristocrat called Christoph von Waldeck. He was the Bishop’s illegitimate son by his well-born north-German mistress, captured in June after the first abortive attempt to take the city. Some believed the youth had been compelled to join Jan in order to save his own life. But nobody had forced the nobleman to marry, a few weeks after his capture, the daughter of one of Jan’s chief advisers, Christian Kerckering. Now the Bishop might anticipate an Anabaptist grandchild! In the meantime he could see his ancient name listed for all the world to see among the servants of the bastard tailor who had already humiliated him so terribly—Jan did have a cunning sense of irony.
Certainly that ironic sense was at work when he ordered his subjects to eschew all earthly vanity and pride of possession. They had, it was true, already given all of their valuables in the form of money and jewels to the city treasury; but many wore clothing that was far grander than their needs. It was to be delivered immediately to the city warehouses. No true brother in Christ needed to own more than a single coat, two pairs of trousers, two vests, and three shirts; the sisters in Christ must make do with two blouses, one fur, two collars, two pairs of sleeves, two skirts, and four chemises. Their best clothing—all that was not needed at court—would be kept for the day of their final salvation.
King Jan explained that the stringent vow of poverty his subjects were to keep could not apply to himself or his court. He was entirely dead to the appeals of the world and the flesh, he assured them solemnly, but the glory of God required appropriate manifestations of pomp and splendor. The common people were not admitted to the feasts in the palace, served on von Buren’s silver platters. However, the young king knew how necessary it was to offer them bread and circuses to keep their minds from their growing privation and isolation, so he commanded that various games be played. Frequently there would be jousting, which Jan always won, accompanied by much playing of pipes and trumpets. Some days he led his followers into the despoiled Cathedral for a mock Mass; it would be introduced by tossing detritus onto the altar, such as cats’ heads, dead rats and mice, and horses’ hooves. After this would follow a play by the king, a mocking satire of Catholic rituals that often featured “monks” lifting their robes to bare their naked posteriors and farting on command. At its conclusion Bernard Rothmann would appear on stage to say, “Dear brothers and sisters, all the Masses in the world are exactly as holy and sanctified as the one you have just seen.”
The laughter of the people was uneasy, for they frequently saw King Jan as their final judge on earth. In the Market Square a crew of carpenters had constructed a throne that, covered with a cloth of gold, loomed over benches for the officers of the court and their attendants. On September 25, as on other days, the fanfare of trumpets announced the imminent arrival of the king and his court. Riding his white stallion, preceded by Knipperdolling and Krechting on foot, all enclosed within a moving box of bodyguards, Jan rode slowly into the square and took his place on the throne. On one side of the throne a young boy, a page, held a copy of the Old Testament; on the other, an older and stronger boy held a naked sword. A young woman was led before the throne, her head bare and her hands tied before her. Her name was Elizabeth Holschern. She was charged with having three times denied her husband his conjugal rights. The young woman said she had been assigned to her “husband” against her will—despite the preachers’ earlier assertions that no woman should be forced to choose a husband—and she did not regard him as having any rights over her at all. She said, in James Stayer’s translation, “Heavenly Father, if you are almighty, see to it that I never more in my life have to climb into this marriage bed.” With that, King Jan decreed that she must pay with her life for violating the will of God. The two guards who had led the woman before the throne forced her to kneel, and Bernard Knipperdolling, though he was no longer the official sword-bearer, cut off her head with a single stroke.
The next day, September 26, Katherine Kockenbeckin was executed in similar fashion because she had taken two husbands: in the Company of Christ, as Stayer aptly says, “polygamy was the Lord’s will, polyandry the Devil’s.”
Regimes based on intimidation and terror frequently collapse not from the bottom but from the top, as presumably loyal supporters are revealed to have ideas and ambit
ions of their own. But nobody, certainly not King Jan, could have expected that his first serious challenge would come from the erstwhile cloth merchant Bernard Knipperdolling, who had been wielding the sword of justice with seeming alacrity, even against young women.
Knipperdolling has always been the greatest conundrum in the story of the Anabaptists in Münster. He was the man who had everything: a wife and daughters and a network of his own and his wife’s relatives who had lived in the city for generations; a position on the city council that he had used effectively to force the previous Bishop to grant the city an unprecedented degree of independence, and later the honor of being co-mayor; a successful business that rewarded his enviable qualities of acumen and initiative. Nothing in his first five decades of life suggested that he would be capable of such murderous deeds as he had performed for the young stranger from Leyden. Now it was Jan’s turn to be surprised.
Henry Gresbeck, who gives several pages of his book to this episode, is not inclined to psychological explanations of why Knipperdolling acted as he did; he simply says that “when the spirit took him, he was not right in the head.” Herman Kerssenbrück, a sophisticated student of human nature by the time he came to write his account many years later, sees envy and jealousy as probable reasons. Knipperdolling was, after all, what we would now call a merchant-prince, one who had challenged the Prince-Bishop as a true equal in his own eyes. Now this foreigner Jan Bockelson, “a bastard, a pathetic rhyme-spinner, an adulterer, a tavern-keeper, a former tailor, a newcomer and stranger to Munster,” had elevated himself to the position of King, with royal garments and a kingly retinue who praised and protected him, while Bernard Knipperdolling, the foremost citizen of the city, was scorned and mocked as nothing more than an executioner—and even this despicable duty had been taken from him.
The Tailor-King Page 13
