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.
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