The sermon over, justice is administered,
often of the most terrible kind; and then in like state the king and
his court return home. On the streets he is greeted with cries of:
'Hail in the name of the Lord. God be praised!'"
Meanwhile underneath all this riot of splendour and power and
sensuality, the pangs of starvation were beginning to be felt. For
the army of the bishop of Muenster was outside the city and the siege
was very studiously maintained. The privations became more and more
terrible, and more and more terrible the means of allaying them. The
bodies of citizens that had died were eaten; and then men and women
and children were killed in order that they might be eaten too. Under
such conditions, is it any wonder that Muenster became a city of the
mad, mad beyond the sane man's wildest dreams of excess?
A few of the least demented of Jan's followers at length determined
that the tragedy must cease, and the city was delivered into
the bishop's hands. "What judgment," writes Professor Pearson,
"his grace the bishop thinks fit to pass on the leaders of Sion at
least deserves record. Rottmann has fallen by St. Martin's Church,
fighting sword in hand, but Jan of Leyden and Knipperdollinch are
brought prisoners before this shepherd of the folk.
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