Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. DEMANDS, IDEALS AND APOSTLES OF THE MOVEMENT. Astrology and mystical prophesyings appeared in the times shortly preceding the great social upheaval, foretelling strange things which were to happen in the years 1524 and 1525. One of the principal of these indicated a Noachic deluge for the summer of 1524. This vaticination was based on an alleged combination of sixteen conjunctures in the sign of Aquarius. So seriously was the prophesy believed in that extensive preparations were made, in view of the approaching catastrophe. Many, however, explained the presage as indicating a social inundation?the levelling of social distinctions by the common man . Portents were alleged to have appeared; strange monsters to have been born. Illustrated broadsheets and pamphlets were in circulation, on the title pages of which might be seen portrayed pope, emperor, cardinals and prince-prelates trembling beforethe approach of a band of peasants armed with the implements of husbandry and led on by the planet Saturn. All these things testified to the excited state of the public mind and the direction in which popular thought was turned. Meanwhile, the thinkers of the movement were preparing to give definite form to the vague aspirations of the multitude. In the uprising known as the Peasants War, as already stated, there is more than one strain to be observed, though all turns on the central ideas of equality, economic reform and political reorganisation. First of all, we have the immediate and practical side of the agrarian movement, on the lines of which the actual outbreak originated, and the special representatives of which were the peasants of South- Eastern Germany. This side of the movement is, of course, most prominently present everywhere, but in other part...