Posted on 07/31/2007 2:48:21 PM PDT by blam
Luther initiated nothing of the sort. Idiots simply used Luther's teaching as their excuse to kill others. None of Luther's teachings can be interpreted as initiating an age of war. Following this idiotic reasoning, Jesus was responsible for the Crusades and the inquisition while Moses cause the Holocaust.
Luther initiated nothing of the sort. Idiots simply used Luther's teaching as their excuse to kill others. None of Luther's teachings can be interpreted as initiating an age of war. Following this idiotic reasoning, Jesus was responsible for the Crusades and the inquisition while Moses cause the Holocaust.
By the same reasoning an unreasonable Pope, that forced Luther to nail his thesis to the door of the Church by selling indulgences and ignoring the teachings of Jesus, initiated the war even more than Luther did.
I add that since the Pope was infinitely more powerful than Luther, he must be thousands of time more responsible for the ensuing conflicts.
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Well, now that the United State of Europe is firmly established, hopefully this battle won’t happen at all.
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Book I, Chap. iv. : HOW SIMPLICISSIMUS’S PALACE WAS STORMED, PLUNDERED, AND RUINATED, AND IN WHAT SORRY FASHION THE SOLDIERS KEPT HOUSE THERE sets the tone for the whole story, and establishes the origin of who the narrator is. This should immediately rivet one's attention. Here's a tasty morsel from Book I, Chap. xiv: A QUAINT COMEDIA OF FIVE PEASANTS to pique one's interest:
Now before we were out of the wood, we espied some ten peasants, of whom part were armed with musquets, while the rest were busied with burying something. So our musqueteers ran upon them, crying, “Stay! Stay!” But they answered with a discharge of shot, and when they saw they were outnumbered by the soldiers, away they went so quick that none of the musqueteers, being weary, could overtake them. So then they would dig up again what the peasants had been burying: and that was the easier because they had left the mattocks and spades which they used lying there. But they had made few strokes with the pick when they heard a voice from below crying out, “O ye wanton rogues, O ye worst of villains, think ye that Heaven will leave your heathenish cruelty and tricks unpunished? Nay, for there live yet honest fellows by whom your barbarity shall be paid in such wise that none of your fellow men shall think you worth even a kick of his foot.” So the soldiers looked on one another in amazement, and knew not what to do. For some thought they had to deal with a ghost: to me it seemed I was dreaming: but the officer bade them dig on stoutly. And presently they came to a cask, which they burst open, and therein found a fellow that had neither nose nor ears, and yet still lived. He, when he was somewhat revived, and had recognized some of the troop, told them how on the day before, as some of his regiment were a-foraging, the peasants had caught six of them. And of these they first of all, about an hour before, had shot five dead at once, making them stand one behind another; and because the bullet, having already passed through five bodies, did not reach him, who stood sixth and last, they had cut off his nose and ears, yet before that had forced him to render to five of them the filthiest service in the world* . But when he saw himself thus degraded by these rogues without shame or knowledge of God, he had heaped upon them the vilest reproaches, though they were willing now to let him go. Yet in the hope one of them would from annoyance send a ball through his head, he called them all by their right names: yet in vain. Only this, that when he had thus chafed them they had clapped him in the cask here present and buried him alive, saying, since he so desired death they would not cheat him of his amusement.Now while the fellow thus lamented the torments he had endured, came another party of foot-soldiers by a cross road through the wood, who had met the above-mentioned boors, caught five and shot the rest dead: and among the prisoners were four to whom that maltreated trooper had been forced to do that filthy service a little before. So now, when both parties had found by their manner of hailing one another that they were of the same army, they joined forces, and again must hear from the trooper himself how it had fared with him and his comrades. And there might any man tremble and quake to see how these same peasants were handled: for some in their first fury would say, “Shoot them down,” but others said, “Nay: these wanton villains must we first properly torment: yea, and make them to understand in their own bodies what they have deserved as regards the person of this same trooper.” And all the time while this discussion proceeded these peasants received such mighty blows in the ribs from the butts of their musquets that I wondered they did not spit blood. Bur presently stood forth a soldier, and said he: “You gentlemen, seeing that it is a shame to the whole profession of arms that this rogue (and therewith he pointed to that same unhappy trooper) have so shamefully submitted himself to the will of five boors, it is surely our duty to wash out this spot of shame, and compel these rogues to do the same shameful service for this trooper which they forced him to do for them.” But another said: “This fellow is not worth having such honour due to him; for were he not a poltroon surely he would not have done such shameful service, to the shame of all honest soldiers, but would a thousand times sooner have died.” In a word, ‘twas decided with one voice that each of the captured peasants should do the same filthy service for ten soldiers which their comrade had been forced to do, and each time should say, “So do I cleanse and wash away the shame which these soldiers think they have endured.”
Thereafter they would decided how they should deal with the peasants when they had fulfilled this cleanly task. So presently they went to work: but the peasants were so obstinate that neither by promise of their lives nor by any torture could they be compelled thereto. Then one took the fifth peasant, who had not maltreated the trooper, a little aside, and says he: “It thou wilt deny God and all His saints, I will let thee go whither thou wilt.” Thereupon the peasant made the reply, “he had in all his life taken little count of saints, and had had but little traffic with God,” and added thereto with a solemn oath, “he knew not God and had no art nor part in His kingdom.” So then the soldier sent a ball at his head: which worked as little harm as if it had been shot at a mountain of steel. Then he drew out his hangar and “Beest thou still here?” says he. “I promised to let thee go whither thou wouldst: see now, I send thee to the kingdom of hell, since thou wilt not go to heaven”: and so he split his head down to the teeth. And as he fell, “So,” said the soldier, “must a man avenge himself and punish these loose rogues both in this world and the next.”
Meanwhile the other soldiers had the remaining four peasants to deal with. These they bound, hands and feet together, over a fallen tree in such wise that their back-sides (saving your presence) were uppermost. Then they stript off their breeches, and took some yards of their match-string and made knots in it, and fiddled them therewith so mercilessly that the blood ran. So they cried out lamentably, but ‘twas but sport for the soldiers, who ceased not to saw away till skin and flesh were clean sawn off the bones. Me they let go to my hut, for the last-arrived party knew the way well. And so I know not how they finished with the peasants.
Source: The Simplicissimus Project
The Swedes were a major powerin Northern and Central Europe from the Thirty Years War [Gustavus Adolfus] through Charles XII’s defeat at Poltava at the hands of Peter the Great
Unrelated to this topic, but you might be interested:
http://www.physorg.com/news104901547.html
3,000-year-old mask found in Aleutians
A whalebone mask discovered at an Alaskan archaeological site was probably broken during an Aleut funeral 3,000 years ago, scientists said.
Mike Yarborough, who heads the dig on Unalaska Island in the Aleutian chain, told The Anchorage Daily News the mask is about 2,000 years older than any other to have been found. Only the upper half of the mask was found and it had old cracks in it.
Archaeologists began working on the hillside because a new bridge is to be built there, replacing an old wooden-decked one. The dig, originally scheduled to last only a month, has been extended because the site has proved to be much richer than anyone expected.
The village was inhabited at a time when the climate in the Aleutians was much colder and the islands were surrounded by ice year-round. The inhabitants lived in stone houses with under-floor air spaces for heating.
The mask resembles a 1,000-year-old one found on the Alaskan peninsula. Denise Rankin, vice president of the tribal corporation on Unalaska, said the eyes and other features are also familiar to her.
“They look just like an Aleut face,” she said.
It was the Orange Barrel.
Thanks.
War never has been pretty.
The blood seems to have thinned. They sure don’t know how to deal with insolent Muslims.
Thanks Renfield.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1873120/posts
Thanks for the links.
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