Q by Luther Blissett (most recommended books txt) 📖

Frankenhausen, 15 May 1525, morning

The sign.

Striped, brilliant, purple, all of a sudden the rainbow flashes up in the sky beyond the hills and Philip’s forces, before the rapt eyes of the humble.

For a moment it banishes fear, it wasn’t heralded by rain, there’s a clear sky, it’s the sign of freedom that is already depicted on our ramshackle white cloth banners, the insignia of the people of the Lord rising to greet the blast of the heavenly trumpet in preparation for the day of reckoning.

A boom, the earth trembling somewhere, its bowels opening up to swallow them, the earth trembles, cracks, breaks open, thunders, erupts with the power of God.

A fist as big as a man hurls me to the ground, startled, my face in the mud. I turn on to one side, guided by a groan: a man like a blood clot, bone where his face should be. More shots, the dust hits our eyes, men taking cover under the horses, under the carts, in the holes blown open in the plain. I take refuge behind one of the few trees near a boy with a piece of wood stuck between his ribs, green with fear and pain.

The cannons keep on firing.

The head of the Magister impaled on a pole. That’s what they’re after. If they get that they might be merciful to the rest of us

Evil troop of fucking lackeys. Filthy bastard cunting pig-fuckers. You won’t impose conditions on the troops of God. Worm-eaten carcasses drying in the sun. Godless phalanges of Darkness. We’ll stove in your arseholes with our pick-axe handles. Lord, don’t abandon us now. Your whoring mothers fucked goats in the forest. Back you go and kiss your masters’ arses. Forgive us if we were wrong. Hell will open its vast maws, its bowels will swallow you up. If we have sinned, Thy will, Thy will alone be done. It will spit out the bones after sucking them dry one by one. Only love and the Redeemer’s word, on the day of the Resurrection of the last men. There will be no pity for your corrupt souls. May our faith in the all-powerful Lord protect us.

‘Magister! Magister!’ Crazed shouts. Mine. Chasms of panic all around, the flight of the herd from the wolf-pack.

I see him ahead of me, kneeling, flat on to the ground, frozen like a statue. Above him, I hear my voice shouting over the rumble that is approaching us on the horizon: ‘Magister! Magister!’

His eyes empty, elsewhere, a prayer mumbled slowly on his lips.

‘Magister, for God’s sake, get up!’

I try to lift him , but it’s like trying to uproot a tree or resuscitate a dead man. I kneel down and manage to turn his shoulders around: he falls into my lap. There’s nothing more to be done. It’s over. The horizon is hurtling towards us at ever greater speed. It’s over. I support his head, my chest torn apart with weeping and my final cry, spewing blood and despair to the heavens.

It’s barely daybreak when we start preparing to make our way towards the princes. Schnaps is poured down one throat after another as the flasks are passed around,, trying to wash away anxiety and fear. It’s barely daybreak, and in the vague, pale light, beneath the cold mist that is gradually, slowly rising, as though facing a curtain, we can make out a black fringe on the edge of the hills to the north. No one has sounded the alarm, but they’re already here. Magister Thomas spurs his horse, gallops from one part of the camp to the other, to revive the fire of faith and hope. Some men yell, raise their pitchforks, their hoes that have been turned into halberds, they fire into the air and yell words of disdain and defiance. Some kneel down and pray. Some stand motionless, as though caught by a basilisk stare.

A charcoal line stretches along the hill to the west, tracing the sinister outlines of the dawn, intensified by faint flashes of brightness. The army of George of Saxony is lined up, waiting on the western crest. Long black silhouettes point towards the plain: the cannons.

It explodes from the void of blood and bitter dust, the barded beast thundering down on a troop of unfortunates, paralysed with terror, crouched in prayer, or perhaps nothing but stiffened corpses awaiting their sentence of death. A pike held at waist-level, hoofs and legs skirting a ditch, pierces a kneeling unarmed man right through, a shapeless pile of limbs, bone, skin and sack-cloth. Drawing of a long sharp blade, armour rattling the beast kicks its way through the bodies, the blade comes down on a poor soul who appears on its right, begging for mercy. Bends its heavy neck, pants, bends almost till it falls, the left arm sliced clean through, off it charges again towards fresh prey, up goes a cry of ferocious exultation.

The dust settles. A burst of daylight on the massacre. Nothing but bodies and wounded cries. Not a roar. Then I see them: the army appears, iron, pikes, standards in the wind, and the restrained fury of the horses pawing the ground. The galloping mass comes down the flank of the hill, the deafening clatter of hoofs and armour; black, heavy, inexorable as death. The horizon runs towards us, obliterating the plane.

It isn’t the blow of steel running me through, it’s the grip of Samson, hoisting the Magister into the air, towards the clouds and grabbing me by an arm.

‘Get up, quick!’

Elias, an ancient warrior, his face black with earth and sweat, almost a dream. Elias, strength, showing me the way, shouting at me to run with him, away from death.

‘Make way for me, boy, I need you!’

Magister Thomas on his shoulders, me finding my legs.

‘Take these!’

The Magister’s bags, I grip them tightly and run on ahead, pushing bodies out of the way, full tilt on the road out of hell.

Run. To the town. That’s all. Not a thought. Not a word. That man’s hope is shattered, I am opening the way of his salvation.

Almost blindly.

Carafa’s eye

(1525-1529)

Letter sent to Rome from the Saxon city of Wittenberg, addressed to Gianpietro Carafa, dated 28 May 1525

To the most illustrious and reverend Lord Giovanni Pietro Carafa, in Rome.

My most honourable lord, it is with great satisfaction that I write to you to give you the happy news: Your Lordship’s orders have been carried out as quickly as possible, and have had the desired result.

You may already received news from Germany, and you will know that the army of the insurgent peasants there has been defeated. As I write these lines the mercenaries of the princes are preparing to douse the final flames of the greatest revolt that these marshlands have ever known.

The best-fortified rebel city, M�hlhausen, which was at the centre of the conflagration, surrendered some days ago to the princes’ troops, and the head of their leader, Heinrich Pfeiffer, fell yesterday in the square at G�rmar, along with that of Thomas M�ntzer. It is said that during his last hours the preacher, although under torture, remained silent, without a word of complaint as he waited for the executioner, and that only once, in the last moment of his life, did he raise the voice for which he made himself so famous among the mob: ‘Omnia sunt communia,’ They say that was his final cry, the same motto that has animated the popular fury of recent months.�

Now that the blood of the two most dangerous men has commingled on the cobblestones, your Lordship can doubtless take pleasure in his foresight and wisdom, in which Your faithful observer has always had a blind trust.

But still: to come to the vow of frankness that you have requested from me, I shall confess that I had to act with considerable haste, risking the months of work and effort concentrated on the attempt to win the trust of the peasants’ fiery preacher. Only thanks to such machinations, furthermore, was it possible to hasten M�ntzer’s ruin. Once I had offered him my services, and information concerning the intrigues in Wittenberg, I gained his trust, and was able to pass on to him the false news that spurred him on to his final battle. To tell the truth, I must say that our man has been a great help to us in hastening events onwards: the sole effect of my missive was to blot out the light of reason. A ragged army could never otherwise have hoped to defeat the well-armed forces of landsknechts and the princes’ cavalry.

So, my Lord, given that you are so magnanimous as to request my opinion on the state of things so far, pray let your grateful servant unburden his heart of all that he has seen, and his judgements upon it.

When Your Lordship’s kind heart chose me to observe at first hand the dealings of the German princes with the monk Martin Luther, I could never have imagined what the Lord God had in store for that region. The human intellect could never have divined that apostasy and heresy would forge so strong a pact with secular power, and would root itself so firmly in the soul of the people.

Nonetheless, in these grave circumstances, Your steadiness of resolve requested that I seek out an antagonist of the damned Luther, to foment the spirit of rebellion in the people against the apostate princes and weaken their unity.

When it was not within the power of human faculties to recognise the serious danger that that this would represent for the man who presented himself as the champion of Catholicism, Emperor Charles V, Your wisdom lay in showing Your humble servant the correct direction in which to guide our work