Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

324 DEBT
Casimir dutifully doled out governorships and other prize offices to
his father's creditors. He tried to get his house in order, but this proved
urprisingly difficult. His enthusiastic embrace of Luther's reforms in
1521 clearly had as much to do with the prospect of getting his hands
on Church lands and monastic assets than with any particular religious
fervor. Yet at first, the disposition of Church property remained moot,
and Casimir himself compounded his problems by running up gambling
debts of his own said to have amounted to nearly 5o,ooo guilders.34
Placing his creditors in charge of the civil administration had predictable
effects: increasing exactions on his subjects, many of whom
became hopelessly indebted themselves. Unsurprisingly, Casimir's lands
in the Tauber Valley in Franconia became one of the epicenters of
the revolt of 1525 . Bands of armed villagers assembled, declaring they
would obey no law that did not accord with "the holy word of God."
At first, the nobles, isolated in their scattered castles, offered little resistance.
The rebel leaders-many of them local shopkeepers, butchers,
and other prominent men from nearby towns-began with a largely
orderly campaign of tearing down castle fortifications, their knightly
occupants being offered guarantees of safety if they cooperated, agreed
to abandon their feudal privileges, and swore oaths to abide by the rebels'
Twelve Articles. Many complied. The real venom of the rebels was
reserved for cathedrals and monasteries, dozens of which were sacked,
pillaged, and destroyed.
Casimir's reaction was to hedge his bets. At first he bided his time,
assembling an armed force of about two thousand experienced soldiers,
but refusing to intervene as rebels pillaged several nearby monasteries;
in fact, negotiating with the various rebel bands in such apparent good
faith that many believed he was preparing to join them "as a Christian
brother."35 In May, however, after the knights of the Swabian League
defeated the rebels of the Christian Union to the south, Casimir swung
into action, his forces brushing aside poorly disciplined rebel bands
to sweep through his own territories like a conquering army, burning
and pillaging villages and towns, slaughtering women and children. In
every town he set up punitive tribunals, and seized all looted property,
which he kept, even as his men also expropriated any wealth still to
be found in the region's cathedrals, ostensibly as emergency loans to
pay his troops.
It seems significant that Casimir was, of all the German princes,
both the longest to waver before intervening, and the most savagely
vengeful once he did. His forces became notorious not only for executing
accused rebels, but systematically chopping off the fingers of accused
collaborators, his executioner keeping a grim ledger of amputated