Q by Luther Blissett (poetry books to read txt) 📕
The final blow: 'Omnia sunt communia, sons of whores!'
His head flies into the dust.
* * *
The houses are being ransacked. Doors smashed in with kicks and axe-blows. We'll be next. No time to lose. I lean over him.
'Magister, listen to me, we've got to go, they're coming... For the love of God, Magister...' I grasp his shoulders. He whispers a reply. He can't move. Trapped, we're trapped.
Like Elias.
My hand clutches my sword. Like Elias. I wish I had his courage.
'What do you think you're doing? We've had enough of martyrdom. Go on, get out while you can!'
The voice. As though from the bowels of the earth. I can't believe he's spoken. He's moving even less than be
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The final words are drowned by the noise, and Magister Thomas has to yell at the top of his voice. I too leap into the middle of this joy: never again will we be driven out of any city.
M�hlhausen, 10 March 1525
The meeting is in the home of the cloth-maker Briegel. Pfeiffer and the Magister are going to have to talk with the representatives of the people about which claims to present in the Council chamber. They’ve invited me, too, while Ottilie will go to talk to the women of the city. Briegel is a small businessman, and so is H�lm, a porcelain-manufacturer and wood-carver. The spokesman of the peasants is small, hairy Peter, rough face and black eyes, disproportionately wide shoulders from working in the fields.
A humble house, but solid and clean, very different from the hovels we saw in Gr�nbach.
Briegel speaks first, and explains the situation.
‘So this is how things are. We can put the representatives of the corporations in a minority. We propose the extension of the vote to citizens who don’t belong to the guilds, but who live within the walls or in the hamlets outside the walls. Some of those fat bastards will be able to make a bit of noise, but they are well aware that all the people are on our side, and I believe that just to avoid rebellion they’ll accept the new arrangement.’
He gives H�lm the floor. ‘Yes. I think it’s possible to impose our programme as well, they certainly won’t want to risk their estates. Basically all we’re asking is that the citizenry can make its own decisions, without always being subjected to their rules.’
There’s a moment of silence, a rapid exchange of glances between Pfeiffer and the Magister. Under the table a big grey dog crouches on my shoes: I stroke one of his ears while Pfeiffer speaks.
‘Friends, allow me to ask you why we should lower ourselves to making pacts with an enemy that we have already beaten. As you have said, the population is on our side, the city can be defended without any need for municipal guards, we can do it without any difficulty. What interest do we have in maintaining some fat merchants in the council?’
He waits for his words to sink in, and then continues.
‘Thomas M�ntzer has a suggestion that I support wholeheartedly. Let’s throw out the corporations and the brewers and set up a completely new council.’
The Magister intervenes impetuously: ‘A Perpetual Council, elected by the whole of the citizenry without distinction. From which any representative and public magistrate can be dismissed at any time if the electors insist that they are not adequately represented and governed by him. The people could then organise into periodical assemblies to make judgements all together about the running of the council.’
H�lm, perplexed, nervously smoothes his beard. ‘It’s a bold idea, but you might be right. And what do you suggest we do about taxation?’
Pfeiffer answers: ‘Everyone puts what he can afford into the council coffers. Everyone must be allowed to feed and clothe his own family. For that reason a proportion of the taxes will be sent to help the poor and the dispossessed, a kind of coffer of mutual aid for the purchase of bread, milk for the children, anything they might need.’
Silence. Then a murmur from the depths of Peter’s chest. The peasant is shaking his head.
‘That’s all very well for the city,’ the toothless words emerge with difficulty, ‘but what’s going to change for us?’
Briegel: ‘You don’t want the city of M�hlhausen to assume responsibility over every cottage in the region, I hope!’
The dog, tiring of me, rolls over, and a kick from the head of the household sends him listlessly away. He crouches in a corner and starts gnawing on a dusty bone.
Peter starts again. ‘The peasants are fighting. The peasants must know what they’re doing it for. We want this city, and all the others, to decide to support our requests to the lords.’ �
He isn’t looking at H�lm or Briegel, but Pfeiffer, straight in the eyes.
‘We want the twelve articles to be approved by everyone.’
I laugh to myself, reflecting that it was I who read the articles to him, yesterday, when the text reached the city fresh from the press.
Pfeiffer: ‘It strikes me as a reasonable suggestion,’ he looks at H�lm and Briegel, who are both silent. ‘Friends, the city and the country are nothing without each other. The front has to stay united, we have common interests. Once we’ve got rid of the big crooks, the princes will be next to pay!’
His incitement hangs over the table for a moment, and then H�lm erupts: ‘And let erupts the twelve articles be approved by the city and included in our programme. But before we do anything else, let’s resolve these issues we have before us here, or everything’s going to end up right in the shit.’
Eltersdorf, late January 1527
Last night I dreamed about Elias
I was walking barefoot at night along a twisting path, and he was at my side. All of a sudden, a wall of white rock rose up in front of us, with a narrow crack above our heads. Elias lifted me up and I managed to stick my head into the hole. I asked him to pass me the torch so that I could see better: a kind of long, damp gallery. Once inside I understood that he would never be able to reach me, there was no purchase on the wall. Then I turned back, but he had already disappeared. With some difficulty, torch in hand, I started creeping down that narrow passage.
I woke up and waited for Vogel’s cockerel to herald the beginning of another day of toil. The image of Elias didn’t leave me until evening. That vast strength, that voice, is still with me.
*
On 16th March the townspeople assembled in the church of Our Lady to elect the new Council. From that moment the city was ours.
The task assigned to me, along with Elias, was to organise the citizens’ militia. In case of an attack, the princes wouldn’t find us unprepared. Elias taught the people how to form themselves into a phalange, level their pikes, face a man in hand-to-hand combat. With the Magister’s help he divided them into units of about twenty men, and assigned each of them a part of the wall to defend in case of attack. Anyone with any military experience whatsoever was appointed captain by his own militia. I became responsible for communications between the units, and chose a few alert and trustworthy boys as messengers. I was handed a short dagger, and in the evening I could practise using it with the unbeatable Elias.
Then, in April, the citizens of Salza revolted. The suggestion that we go to their aid was put to the vote and accepted unanimously. We assembled four hundred men, sure that this would be a good opportunity to put those months of training to the test. The Magister and Pfeiffer spent a long time talking to the heads of the insurgents, but they seemed more concerned about extracting minimal concessions from the lords than knowing what was going on around them. They gave us two huge barrels of beer for having gone all the way there, and that was their only gesture of thanks.
That evening, while we were camped under the moon, I heard the Magister having a long discussion with Pfeiffer about the risks of each town acting independently. Only exhaustion brought their animated conversation to an end.
On the way back we were joined by a messenger coming from M�hlhausen, who had been sent by Ottilie. Hans Hut had reached the city with some very important news, and letters. The Magister read some of them to the troop: by now the revolt was spreading throughout the whole of Thuringia, from Erfurt to the Harz mountains, from Naumburg to Hesse. Other cities were following M�hlhausen’s example: Sangerhausen, Frankenhausen, Sonderhausen, Nebra, Stolberg… And, in the mining region of Mansfeld: Allstedt, Nordhausen, Halle. And indeed in Salza, Eisenach and Bibra, the peasants of the Black Forest.
This news lifted our hearts, there was no stopping us now, the hour had come. While we were returning towards M�hlhausen, we sacked a castle and a convent. No one was killed, the owners gave themselves up to us without resistance, trying to move us to pity so that we would spare their goods and concubines. As regards the women, not a finger was laid on any one of them. As to gold, silver and food, we didn’t leave a scrap. M�hlhausen welcomed us in triumph, and the two gigantic barrels of beer were quickly drained by the thirst of our fellow citizens.�
The party lasted all night, with singing and dancing, in that place that was the centre of the world to us, a place of dreams, the last few days of spring, free and glorious M�hlhausen. It was as though all the forces of life had converged within those walls to pay homage to the faith of the elect. No one could have taken that moment away. Not a troop of soldiers or a shot from a cannon.
Before dawn I found Elias sitting on a chair, reviving the dying embers of a fire. The light from the coals drew strange outlines on that sombre face, which now seemed to have a shadow of fatigue or anxiety. As though something unimaginable were running through Samson’s mind.
He turned around when I was close to him. ‘Good party, eh?’
‘Best I’ve ever seen. Brother, what’s happening?’
Without looking at me, with the rare sincerity he sometimes showed: ‘I don’t think … I don’t think they’d be up to fighting a real battle.’
‘You’ve trained them well. And anyway, I think we’re about to find out.’
‘Yes, that’s just it. You’ve never seen the soldiers of the princes, the people the lords entrust with the defence of their safes…’
His expression was lost in the flickering of the flames.
‘Why… have you?’
‘Where do you think I learned to fight?’
In barely a moment he read the question in my face.
‘Yes, I was a mercenary. Just as I’ve done so many other crap jobs in my life. I was a miner, and don’t imagine that it’s all that much better just because you don’t kill anyone. You kill, believe me: you kill yourself, under the ground, getting blinder and blinder like moles, and with the fear of being trapped down there, maybe staying down there forever. I’ve done vile things, and I hope that the Lord God in his infinite mercy will have pity on me. But now I’m thinking about them, those wretches we’re sending into battle against real troops.’
A hand on his shoulder. ‘The Lord will help us, he’s been with us so far. He won’t abandon us, Elias, you’ll see.’
‘I pray for that every day, son, every day…’
***
To Herr Thomas M�ntzer, brother in faith, pastor in Our Lady of M�hlhausen.
My good friend.
Thank you for your letter, which I received just yesterday, and thank you to our Lord God for the news it announces. We hope that He has finally found in Thomas M�ntzer of Quedlinberg the helmsman of the ship that will chase Leviathan into his abyss.
Since our parting, it could not be said that my private situation is in accord with the magnificence of the events being prepared for the wretched of Germany; perhaps the Lord has decided to bring me back into that latter group, to make me a full participant in future glory. My family have stayed in Nuremberg,
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